The Story Behind The MYSTERIES OF THE GOLDEN STOOL

MYSTERIES OF THE GOLDEN STOOL 4

#motgs

MYSTERIES OF THE GOLDEN STOOL was the working title and did not change. There are scenes in the story that are written around my personal experiences.?

There had been fifteen Kings who had mounted the Legendary Golden Stool. The current King is the sixteenth. In 1999 when the current King was being installed I was among the media accredited to the official ceremony. I had taken a part time job as a cameraman for a new television station in Kumasi called Fontomfrom TV. The CEO, late Charles Kofi Bucknor, a great friend who influenced my life as a filmmaker, assigned me to the funeral activities of the fifteenth King and events leading to the selection and the installation of sixteenth. Nobody knew who it was going to be. There were a few eligible contenders which included Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, then known as Barima Kwaku Dua. I had the rare fortune to record an interview our station did with him. We were not surprised that he was selected eventually. He stood out among his peers. I went through the public events and I must say that everything I saw and recorded became working materials for the book.

A classic event that took place during the installation formed the content I use in writing a scene Chapter 8:? Work For Idle Hands.?

I was part of the campaign team of Kufuor for President 2000. My deep involvement took me away from the story from 1998 to 2009. I also became part of his Presidential staff when he took office and for the eight years not much was put down. Although I was not writing or typing anything, there were events I encountered that also influenced other chapters and scenes in the formulation of the entire book.?

By the end of his eight years in office, I was still not finished and the story was still in screenplay.? In 2009, my appointment to the Office of the President was terminated. It took me some time to debrief myself and to come to the realisation that I have the script to complete. I got down to it and read through over and over again, correcting and readjusting the contents to the way I wanted it to be. By 2011, major parts of the story were complete except the fourteenth Chapter that dealt with the scenes in the Tomb of the departed Kings. Then it came to me also how difficult it could be finding funding for a film production, an epic such as MYSTERIES OF THE GOLDEN STOOL. I started searching for sources of film funding and how to write a budget for a film. I remembered the movie “Lord of the Rings” by Peter Jackson. I had purchased the book, a set of seven volumes. I also had the DVD of the trilogy. The making of the movie really inspired me to get serious with my script, that stories like that could have a good following. I watched the movies over and over. It became evident that my movie may be long in coming so I took the decision to do as was done with the “Lord of the Rings,” to publish the book first: after all, if I don’t get the movie done, I could have produced the book. Again, I thought that it would be easier with the book to search for film funding than with a manuscript or screenplay.?

So, in 2011, I began to transcribe the story from a screenplay to a novel format. It took me about two years to do the conversion. This offered me the opportunity to rewrite some of the scenes. It helped me to improve the content, the flow, the suspense and the general feel of the story structure. I had the time to do extra research for more credible information to support some of the fictious scenes to make them turn out to be trur to life. By the time I was done, the story had tremenduously improved and had become richer, like the legendary wine, the longer it stays, the better it becomes.?

The use of appellations of the Kings in the tomb was one of the toughest parts of my writing. I did not know who could assist me get them. The next was someone to edit the book. I thought of an old friend Enimil Ashong who was one time an entertainment columnist with Ghana Times (New Times) newspaper. I also thought about Nanabenyin Dadson, another friend, but I had lost contact with both of them. I went to Madam Elizabeth Ohene, my former senior colleague at the Office of the President who had been the Presidential Spokesperson and later became Minister of State at the Ministry of Education. She was a former editor of the Daily Graphic. She knew me very well and I thought she would not decline my request to edit my manuscript. She accepted and took the manuscript. For close to four months, I did not hear from her. I became very anxious.Then one day she sent me an email that there had been a family emergency that could not give her ample time to finish my work. She recommended I should find someone else to assist. Wow! But, in fact Madam Ohene had started working on it and made some great corrections and added a few recommendations for me to work on. She was the first person to read my manuscript. Her first impression and comment to me was that the story looked like a movie story. I felt overjoyed. I thought that was a revelation: for her to scent the cinematic feel made me feel I was on the right track.

#motgs