The Many Quiapos of Ricky Lee

If Trip to Quiapo is the journey to becoming a screenwriter, what happens after you get there?

(SPOT.ph) In Trip to Quiapo, National Artist Ricky Lee imagines three kinds of writers, all trying to get to Quiapo. The first studies the roads paved by writers who came before them, following their work as a kind of map. The second takes the circuitous route—wandering, taking detours, stopping here and there for gossip, but eventually arriving in Quiapo like the first writer. The third ignores the existing roads altogether—they get lost, they get held up, they cross rivers and mountains, snake through marketplaces and churches, and eventually make their own Quiapo. This is Lee’s favorite of the three.

There are many Quiapos, Lee writes. The point is not simply to find the way there, but to find your own way there. Along the way, he gives a practical field guide, teaching not just the technical language of a screenplay, but also how to stay resilient during one of the most uncertain journeys a writer can take. The road to the screenplay, or to the story, is littered with mariteses and critics, producers and gatekeepers, rewrites and rejections, and of course, the kontrabida known as your day job. But Lee’s seminal text is peppered with advice from veterans in the field—directors and writers lighting your path like sages and half-saints you meet on the way to your Quiapo. Not least of these sages is Lee himself.

Trip to Quiapo has been part of the journey of generations of Filipino writers since its first publication in 1998. Almost thirty years later, the beloved National Artist is set to release a follow-up book in time for Cinemalaya 2026. 

Quiapo Ilalim: Pagsusulat ng Iba’t-Ibang Daan revisits the old themes, while going deeper into the anatomy of a script—dismantling a scene, building the world of a character, and breaking down the structural choices, beats, and narrative mechanics that make a story work.

The new cover, designed by Karl Castro, is, in his words, an “ode to the colors, anachronisms, dynamism and possibility embodied by Quiapo”—whatever your Quiapo. Diagonal lines point every which way on the cover, embodying the many directions one can take to Lee’s mythical place.

Ilalim also seems to be the writer’s own Quiapo: an interior journey where one encounters his own wonderful megalopolis: a sprawling city populated by superstars, errant girls, macho dancers and patriarchal monsters, to name but a few of its unforgettable inhabitants.

It is also a Quiapo that has been built over time. Lee has been teaching his workshops—for which the original book has served as de facto textbook—since 1982, and generations of writers have passed through them. The sprawl of this experience seems to have condensed the text into perfectly distilled lessons. This is perhaps where Ilalim becomes more personal.

Part memoir and part manual, Ilalim suggests that the relationship between a writer and what he writes is never quite one-way. Lee can be exacting about the mechanics of a scene, and then arrive at something much harder to pin down: the strange lives characters take on once the writer has written them.

In one of the most memorable passages in the book, he writes: “Lagi nating sinasabi na tayong manunulat ang lumilikha ng character. Pero ngayon, pagkatapos ng maraming dekada ng pagsusulat, hindi na ako sigurado.” After decades of writing and teaching, Lee arrives at a less tidy understanding of character. You create them, but they may have their own ideas about you; at some point, the boundary between writer and character starts to blur. “Minsan, pakiramdam ko, hindi ako lumikha sa kanila,” Lee writes, “sila ang lumikha sa akin.”

The journey to Quiapo is often uncertain, sometimes thankless, but always irresistible. You get lost, you take detours, you make your own road. And just when you’ve found it, this new book reminds us that there’s always somewhere else to go.

Quiapo Ilalim: Pagsusulat ng Iba’t-Ibang Daan will be launched on August 14, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. at Cinema 3, Red Carpet Cinemas, Shangri-La Plaza.