I’m starting a new series on the blog today. I realized the other day that I have had a nearly lifelong habit of rewriting stories that drive me crazy—usually because I love them but they just took a wrong turn at Albuquerque, but sometimes because a particular character didn’t get what was coming to them, in my estimation, and I need JUSTICE. This habit started in college (I think; it might have been senior year in high school) with Wuthering Heights. Man…that Heathcliff sure chapped my hide. I simply could not accept that he got off scot-free at the end of the book; he was such an abusive, disordered…ARGHHH! Even now it raises my blood pressure to think that that book was sold to women as a swoonworthy romantic epic for a century and change. And then we wonder why we pick abusive romantic partners…. (Don’t get me started on that topic; I’ll write a whole other post on that some other day.) Anyway, if you want to read that first rewrite, it’s here. (I re-read it today and it’s still very satisfying [rubs hands and cackles].) But before I plunge into my first rewrite for the “I Have Notes” series, let me try to explain why I’ve kept the rewriting habit.
First of all, rewriting is not FanFiction. I always keep roughly to the scope of the original story, with the original characters and setting. If I introduce any new elements, they’re really minor and required to fix the story in my opinion. I’m not trying to build out the universe of the original story; I’m trying to nudge it closer to its ideal expression within that universe (to my tastes, at least).
Second, I don’t rewrite because I think I’m somehow a better writer than the original author. Most of the time, it’s exactly the opposite: I’m trying to extend the lines of the good elements the author crafted so I can learn by doing. I’m trying to make *myself* into a better writer by (a) making explicit for myself what works and what doesn’t work for me about the story and (b) making changes along the lines of what works to fix what doesn’t work. Kind of like a remote, asynchronous apprenticeship.
So, in this series I’ll start with a synopsis in case you’re unfamiliar with the story. Then, I’ll give a TL;DR of my notes. Then, for the few of you who still care at that point, I’ll give notes on what worked, what didn’t, and what I would fix. These days that’s all I tend to do—jot down notes on the rewrite; I very rarely sit down and actually generate the rewrite in a imitation of the author’s style like I did with Wuthering Heights.
OK, that was a lot of throat-clearing. On to “I Have Notes…for ‘Welcome to Samdal-ri.’” It probably goes without saying but SPOILERS.
Synopsis: “Welcome to Samdal-ri” is a rom-com starring Ji Chang-wook as Cho Yong-pil (and now you know why I watched it, as rom coms are not usually my jam…) and Shin Hye-sun as Cho Sam-dal. Currently streaming on Netflix. Sam-dal and Yong-pil grew up together in the tight-knit village of Samdal-ri on Jeju Island. Their mothers were best friends and haenyeo, traditional women divers who drive the economy in the small villages, protect the waters, and form a kind of matriarchal government on the island (side note: haenyeo are SO BOSS that they have been designated a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage). Sam-dal calls herself a “dragon rising from a small stream” as a kid and leaves the island as soon as she can to become a fashion photographer in Seoul, breaking off her romance with Yong-pil in the process. But she gets cancelled by a rival in Seoul, so the first episode finds her returning to Jeju in ignominy 8 years after leaving. Yong-pil is still there working as a weather forecaster, but their families are no longer speaking because his mother died while diving years before and his father blames Sam-dal’s mother, Mi-ja, the head haenyeo for Samdal-ri. Still, he and Sam-dal find themselves attracted to each other in spite of everything that has happened between them, and that magnetism drags them face-first through a number of heartaches and secrets—including Yong-pil’s dad’s role in their original break-up, Mi-ja’s hidden heart problem which nearly kills her while diving, and the fact that another of their tight group of childhood friends, who’s now gorgeous and wealthy, is also in love with Sam-dal. Sam-dal initially resists being sucked back into these problems and a community she found too close for comfort, but eventually she figures out that that’s the only way she’s going to find her way back to her true self as a person and as an artist. She embarks on an exhibition of old-school photographs of Jeju’s weather, defeats her rival in Seoul, reconnects with Yong-pil, and heals the rift between their families in the process. (I’m leaving out a LOT of side-plots here as Sam-dal has 2 sisters, each with their own set of dramas, one of which includes a contested theme-park development that will threaten the haenyeo’s livelihoods and dolphin habitat; yes, there’s a side-plot involving dolphins as well.)
TL;DR “Welcome to Samdal-ri” should have orbited more tightly around its truly resonant core theme—the haenyeo—in order to generate a compelling plot arc of loss, love, and healing.
What worked for me: Well, story aside, they shoot on Jeju, which is ridiculously beautiful, and you just can’t get any more dramatic and amazing than the haenyeo tradition as a backdrop to the romance. The relationships between Sam-dal and Yong-pil’s families, among their friends, and among the haenyeo are realistic, tangled, and compelling. Everyone is up in EVERYONE’S business, and both the bitter and sweet sides of that dynamic are served up in a nice, tense balance. As a bonus, we learn a lot about tangerine cultivation (pro tip: industrial-grade vinegar keeps the birds off your crop). And there’s a truly heartwarming little twist in which the reason that Yong-pil has insisted on staying at the Jeju weather office, rather than taking repeated promotion offers on the mainland and abroad, is revealed: it’s so he could protect Mi-ja, the only mom he has left, by monitoring the weather and, through the office’s CCTV network, her diving buoy, which he keeps recovering for her in a distinctive pattern without telling her why. I mean, are your eyes totally dry after reading that? If so, this whole genre is probably not for you…. Final point: the actor who plays Ko Mi-ja, Kim Mi-kyung, is so amazing that she holds together by the sheer force of her talent a show that would have otherwise splintered into side-plots on the Reef of Improbability.
What didn’t work for me: 1. The resolution of Sam-dal’s identity issues and 2. the rift between her and Yong-pil’s families. First, Sam-dal is so whiny and unlikeable that I started to wish that one of the waves that Yong-pil keeps showing up in the nick of time to save her from would succeed in sweeping her out to sea. She’s such a mean girl, and Yong-pil is so devoted to her despite the zero return on investment, that it just doesn’t track. Sam-dal’s character needs to show a little more grit, and some concern for anyone but herself, in order for me to feel she deserves her happy ending. True, she sacrificed her happiness with Yong-pil at his father’s request and broke up with him so he wouldn’t lose his father along with his mother, but that was one action 8 years before the show even started; we need a little more character development. Second, and related, the 20-year rift between the families seems unbridgeably wide up through episode 13, and then all of a sudden in the span of a single episode, after a couple of starchy lectures, a bowl of soup, and a visit to a temple, suddenly the dad is all grins and blessings.
What I would change: There’s a relatively simple change that would fix the majority of the problems above and give the show some needed emotional depth and bite to boot. Sam-dal’s photo exhibition should be on the haenyeo, not the weather. In the show, there’s already a similar exhibition mounted early on, so it would be easy to recast it as Sam-dal’s project. In the process of photographing her mother and her colleagues, unearthing archival and family photos, and opening the exhibition, she could organically and believably reconnect with her family’s and her community as well as elevate her career to a more serious and authentic level than fashion photography. And, the exhibition, mounted in episode 15 or 16, could provide a more believable catalyst for Yong-pil’s dad (in addition to all the other pressures) to finally start truly grieving the loss of his wife, letting her go, and starting to forgive Mi-ja and her family; this would work even better because it’s hinted he’s starting to get dementia and forgetting her face—so the exhibit could be somewhere he could come to remember her when that happens. Working the exhibition into the show in this way would pay homage to the haenyeo better, adding emotional heft to the series. As a bonus, it would tie in Sam-dal’s younger sister, Hae-dal, finally starting to dive and learning to be a haenyeo, which is already in the show as well, via photos of her and her mom diving together. Sam-dal should start putting the exhibit together earlier, like in episode 6 or 8, in order to scaffold her character development better. Similarly, the efforts to get Yong-pil’s dad to come around should start earlier so they climax naturally in his grudging and surprising viewing of the exhibition opening.
The Rookery 