Writing Like A Klingon

J. Hull has a funny article on the problem of writing from the Klingon point-of-view:

One of the fundamentals of Klingon language is the concept that there is no verb “to be.” No is, est, ist, etre, esta, etc. In Klingon, nothing is; everything does.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek, or even if you’ve happened to catch one of the movies, you’ve probably noticed that these guys are very externally oriented. No matter what situation or what potentially hostile alien entity they run into, they’re always the ones to suggest “shoot first and ask questions later.”

"there are several words meaning “to fight” or “to clash against”, each having a different degree of intensity. There is a plethora of words relating to warfare and weaponry and also a great variety of curses (cursing is considered a fine art in Klingon culture). "

While you could see Klingons struggling to come up with new ideas or envisioning some new plan that could help them, changing their nature or pretending to be something they are not seems impossibly foreign to their natures. This isn’t to say that you couldn’t write a Be-er Klingon into a story — in fact, it might actually be interesting to see. But when you’re raised in a world that says “The window smashed Worf” instead of “Worf smashed the window,” chances are you’re going to prefer to solve things externally.

So don’t be a Klingon when it comes to writing movies. Klingons make awful screenwriters. Well, not completely awful. I’m sure their plays are viscerally exciting, but every story would have the same kind of externally motivated Main Character. There would be no Casablanca, no Romeo and Juliet, no Unforgiven, and no Hamlet. A culture without these kinds of stories is just sad.

You can't write if you have no interior life or the ability to understand the hearts and minds of other people. Of course that doesn't stop hollywood from churning out one empty headed action movie after another. And I'm pretty sure Klingons did write 300.