Have you noticed a whole lotta’ lamenting going on that writers don’t want to study craft anymore?
Social media guru Kristen Lamb’s incisive lament.
And the people who run writer’s conferences are flooded with workshop proposals on how to format your manuscript for e-pubbing and sell it on social media. Writing craft workshops? Not so much.
The lamentations are part worry that writers don’t feel they have to care about craft anymore. We all hear mythic tales of novices who hit it huge in e-pubbing and some of us think, “Why bother reading Hemingway or taking that class on POV? I’ll just throw my 480,000-word family-epic-meets-shades-of-Twilight-with-zombies masterpiece up on Amazon. Viola’!”
But it might not be as insidious as that. Maybe taking classes and reading books on writing gets a bit, well, dry after awhile. No offense at all to those teachers who put on terrific craft workshops and write super-helpful books. It might also be that we’re all too ADD from the multi-stimulus age to pay attention for long.
My solution: TV! Also movies and music. (Though not all at the same time.) The visual and aural stimulation of other kinds of storytelling help keep us awake enough to absorb some basics of good craft.
I’ve blogged previously about some great TV show seasons. Also, what writers can learn from Eminem, the Oscars, and story songs.
Clearly, I believe religiously in the cross-pollination of pop culture disciplines.
A good TV writer like David Chase of The Sopranos can go up against the best novelists for creating epic storytelling full of great dialogue, a troubled hero with a tragic flaw and Shakespearean-level stakes.
If Aristotle himself were alive today, you might catch him with his iPod, listening to the storytelling skills of Eminem’s song Stan, or the poetic ramblings of U2′s Bono, or the excellent turns of phrase of Kanye West.
And I wonder if high-brow literary critics like Harold Bloom secretly saw The Avengers this last weekend and recognized some classic themes.
So don’t worry if writer’s craft classes are languishing. Good storytelling goes on all around us and it has since cave paintings and campfire stories. Don’t lament for lost workshops, but turn on your TV instead. You can always find something worthwhile and who knows? You might learn something about
writing cinematically, or how to hook a scene so the reader wants to turn the page, or how to create snappy dialogue.
If nothing else, you might catch a fun rerun of Xena.
And speaking of The Avengers: tune in next time on Watching Too Much Television for a Joss Whedon primer.
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AMC’s The Killing: Fooled Me Once
“Good show. Kind of slow but it’s slow with atmosphere, not boredom.”
My main nitpick: “I have friends in Seattle who want everyone to know it doesn’t rain nearly that much.”
I loved the writing and the acting. The lead detectives were unusual and fascinating, with an offbeat developing relationship. The writers didn’t flinch from showing the grief of murder victim Rosie Larsen’s family, the true aftereffects of a murder. I defended the show against charges that it moved too slow.
This season? Yeah, I recorded the first episode. It’s sitting in my DVR, unwatched. I’ve read a few reviews, tried to get myself back in the mood. But I think it’s all over between me and AMC’s dampest detective show.
What happened? The finale, that’s what.
After numerous red-herrings and devastatingly wrong leads, the intrepid detectives didn’t solve the murder. And the show featured a ‘gotcha’ moment where we were supposed to mistrust the wonderful relationship that had built all season between the two lead detectives.
Spokespeople for the show went on about how it was based on a Danish television show and gosh, they do things differently in Daneland, don’tcha know.
But the part that really griped my cookies was those people, and they’re always there when someone writes a story that ticks me off, who blathered on about innovation in writing and how you’re brilliant if you buck the conventions and do something different. Here’s the huge problem with their logic.
A murder mystery that plays out over a dozen episodes definitely causes some penting up. And then when the writers go, “Gotcha’! No solution for you!” it’s not innovative or daring or creative. It’s just achingly disappointing. It makes the audience feel as though it’s more important for the show’s creators to fool you than to tell you a good story.
The other major fail is one of character. Linden is shown as being a dedicated cop to the point of abandoning her family just to solve this murder. And then she doesn’t? It makes her look incompetent. It’s difficult for the audience to want to stay with her and watch her keep failing at this.
The show sacrificed character for plot, and for a bad plot at that. To paraphrase someone, good writers ask what happens next. Great writers ask what the characters do next.
The writers of AMC’s The Killing apparently asked, “How do we give the audience an ending that will tick them off as much as possible? Leave them feeling betrayed and frustrated? Make them talk about us in the press?”
If they were aiming for some other goal? EPIC FAIL.