Keep It Interesting
This is a post that I’ve been meaning to make for a couple of weeks. It’s riffing off a wonderful post on Ian Tregillis’s blog www.iantregillis.com where he compared and contrasted The Sarah Conner Chronicles and New Amsterdam. Go check it out, because he makes some amazing points about good storytelling vs. trite storytelling.
I thought I’d amplify a bit as a long time screenwriter about how hard that is to accomplish. There are a lot of reasons you keep seeing the same scene (with different character depending on which show your watching) over and over again. The first, really nuts and bolts reason is money. When you are making a television show you have a number of permanent sets — the bridge, the bar at Ten Forward, Picard’s office. Giles library, Buffy’s house, the club. Well, you get the idea. As a writer you set as many scenes as possible in these already constructed sets because it saves time and money not to have to build a new set or go out on location. Also, the production is amortizing the cost of these sets against the budget.
When Ian and I set down to create our world for our spec pilot OUTPOST, we thought a lot about what would be standing sets. How often would we use them if we got lucky and the show went to series? Could we pick places that would be visually interesting.
The truth is your going to have scenes where information has to be transmitted to the audience. The captain’s office whether you’re on the Enterprise, or at NYPD headquarters is a standard, conference rooms, etc. As Daniel Abraham often says — the control of information delivery is critical to a good writer — and that’s true whether you’re writing prose or a screenplay.
There are techniques to keeping this kind of imparting of knowledge fresh and interesting. Sorkin in the West Wing used the “walk and talk” brilliantly. That sense of movement, people who are busy, sharp, quick dialogue got you over what could have been a turgid recitation of “what you need to know” in a very smooth and effective manner.
If the budget can afford it setting a scene in an unexpected place can also help. When the first cops talking in the bathroom scene occurred it was really cool and different. The director got to show of his/her chops by shooting using the mirrors, and you had guys unzipping their flies, etc. I don’t remember where I saw this for the first time. Hill Street Blues probably, but if somebody knows of an earlier incident, let me know. Anyway, it was different, it was new, it was cool and exciting. Now, of course, it’s as trite as the conference room. So, maybe you have the cops come to report to their captain while he’s taking his kids to the amusement park, and they’re talking while he supports his little girl who’s riding a carousel horse. (I’m not saying these are _good_ ideas, just examples).
Another trick that can help make a scene seem less boring and familiar is giving the actor some “business” to perform. They’re kneading bread while the conversation takes place, or hanging drapes, or feeding the cats, paying off the pizza delivery kid.
There’s a danger to “business” too. Sometimes business can undercut the power of a scene. Sometimes the actor’s faces and the words can carry a moment. I had a critical scene in one of the Reasonable Doubts scripts ruined by a less than good director. This was a scene where a rouge DEA agent is warning Dickie (Mark Harmon) that they’re going to kill Mark. It should have been a tense moment between two men who are threatening each other. Instead the director made it a scene about making coffee, because he had the bad guy busily putting in a filter, measuring in the coffee, pouring in the water, etc. etc. When I watched the scene in dailies it was as flat as a fallen souffle.
So, here’s my two cents added to the discussion begun over at Dr. Tregillis’s blog.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
We’ve discussed the “business” issue for one or two scenes in Outpost, as I recall.
It strikes me that they use “business” quite a bit on Law & Order, at least in the original-series episodes that I catch in repeats every once in a while.
Often during the first half of an L&O episode, the detectives interview a sequence of witnesses and/or suspects who are all very busy doing things while being questioned as part of a murder investigation. I understand (I think I understand) why this is done in terms of keeping the scenes dynamic, but it always strikes me as a little overdone. I mean, if two homicide detectives came to my house to ask me a few questions pertaining to the dead body that was found in my car, you know what? I’d put the freakin’ cake batter down and answer their questions. Politely.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
That’s a great point. When the characters physical actions seems out of character for the moment and what’s occurring, that can also be jarring to the viewer.
It’s just damn hard to keep things vital. When you’re reading a book the back of your head fills in the setting, and the action (with a bit of help from the writer), but the reader can embellish as they see fit.
When it’s a visual medium like a movie or TV show we’ve got to have it on the screen in a way that’s interesting and not confusing. The whole shaky cam thing makes me ill. LIterally.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
In fairness to L&O, I think more often the people doing things while being interviewed are not suspects or people who are central in the case. It’s usually when they’re following up on an alibi that seems shaky. You know it’s the people being asked, “Did you ever seen John leave work early?” or “Did Mary ever seem really mad ever getting off the phone with her husband?”
The ones being asked “Did you kill your wife?” are, by contrast, generally sitting quite politely.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
“really mad AFTER” and “Did you ever SEE.”
My goodness, I am fat with typos this evening.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
“I mean, if two homicide detectives came to my house to ask me a few questions pertaining to the dead body that was found in my car, you know what? I’d put the freakin’ cake batter down and answer their questions. Politely.”
I dunno. At the rate with which bodies pile up in L&O, murder in NY might become fairly mundane. I’d also ask the detectives if I was the first person they were questioning. If I was, I’d know I didn’t do it.
March 25th, 2008 at 8:39 am
I’ve been watching both of those programs, and I’d be very interested in seeing Tregillis’s comments on them—but when I click on your link, I come up with a general Web site that neither contains the essay you refer to, nor contains any link to it that I can locate. Can you provide a more specific link, or instructions on how to navigate to the essay?
March 25th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Ian’s most recent blog post is on the home page of his website. Click on “read more” and it will give you the full, current essay, and on the side a list of past blog posts. Or you can use the orrery on the left side of the main page. Dates will light up if there has been a blog post on that date. He wrote that entry on March 11th, 2008.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
The direct link to the blog entry Melinda mentioned is here. Thanks for the feedback, William, regarding your difficulty finding it; my web designer and I are going to tweak the page so people see the blog more easily.
And you do make a good point about L&O, Jason. Now that I think about it, the actual suspects usually do give the detectives a little more attention…
March 25th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Thanks to Melinda and Ian for the help in finding the essay. If I may make a layout suggestion, as someone who reads a number of blog entries, I went up to the bar at the top and looked for an icon that pointed to “click here to see blog”—and wasn’t having any luck finding it. That might be a place to put a link.
Anyway, now I’ve read the essay, and found it enjoyable, as well as making a sound point.
Mind you, I’m willing to watch network television programs with fantastic content, even if they’re not brilliant (not having cable gives me fewer choices in that line). Since last fall I’ve looked at Heroes, Journeyman, Lost, Smallville, Moonlighting, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and New Amsterdam—and stuck with all of them except Journeyman and Moonlighting, which I gave up on after one episode each. All of the others were sufficiently entertaining to persuade me to keep watching. But, yes, some of them are pretty formulaic, and New Amsterdam is one of those.
There’s a thing I figured out about television as recently as sixth season Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is when I started watching it: most of the television I had seen had people whose motivation was purely conventional. It didn’t have to make actual sense as something a human being would feel or do; it just had to be good enough to convince a television audience to accept it for an hour. In contrast, seeing Whedon’s storyline about Buffy’s sexual obsession with Spike and her unwillingness to have any of her friends know about it made sense to me as a way a human being might actually behave; and the fact that I found it a bit creepy made the characterization of Buffy more complex than simple “heroine who does good things for good motives.” I haven’t gotten much of that sense from a lot of the shows I mentioned—not from Heroes, for example, and not very often from Smallville, though I’m enough of a superhero fan to watch both. I do get a bit more of that from Sarah Connor Chronicles, particularly from the mother/son conflict over “if not now, when?” Its people are a bit more interesting to me. Its dialogue also seems fresher.
And, well, I’m one of the people who watches the show partly to watch Summer Glau kick cyborg ass. Up until January, I was playing in a friend’s superhero campaign where my character was a teenage Hispanic girl with superhuman dexterity, speed, and perception; I remember the first time I saw Serenity, coming away saying, “River’s fight scenes are exactly the kind of thing I’ve been trying to do with my character!” But I do prefer my fight scenes to have some sort of context to motivate the fight. The writers on this show have been giving me a richer sense of context, not by idiot lecture but by the classic sfnal technique of indirect exposition.
March 26th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Like William, I often have trouble with character motivation on television shows. I like to call it “Lost” syndrome, where the characters’ motivation seems to be more suited to making the scene dramatic rather than serving their self-interest. Melinda and I have talked about this a number of times, and Melinda has a number of good observations about why this happens in serialized shows, where it’s often in the show’s best interest to keep everything static. Perhaps, Melinda, you can bring up some of this in another post.
March 26th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Melinda,
Are you still working on section/chapter titles for your book, and still thinking they should be music-themed? I’m not sure if this would help, but this link–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite
–breaks down the names of the four sections of a suite (or five, if you count the “prelude.”) They are Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue. I had forgotten about this, but happened to be reminded of it today, so I thought I’d share. The different sections are distinguished by tempo and rhythm; I don’t know how well they’d correspond to your work, but I remember now that you said you had four POV characters in the book — four POVs, four sections of a suite …
… anyway, just throwing it out there.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:19 am
That is a great observation. I wonder if being forced to occasionally rely upon motivations that are “good enough” for the hour, but not necessarily realistic, is a difficult problem for TV writers, especially on shows with fantastic content (which are the shows I tend to gravitate toward). By doing something unexpected, slightly creepy, and yet somehow realistic as in your example, they added depth to the characters and presented something new and interesting at the same time. Or so it seems to me…
March 27th, 2008 at 9:15 am
You beat me to the punch, Sam. You’ve pointed this out to me in novels, too, and I was thinking about your observations when I made my previous comment. (Especially since I recently found myself making that same misstep in the final chapter of my novel, which I am now fixing in the second draft.)
Anyway, yeah, Melinda, what Sam said. Tell us about that.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Thanks, Jason, for the link. I went with Prelude and Coda, but dropped the idea of using musical titles for the other chapters. It just started feeling to precious and self-conscious. My protagonist’s sections are in first person so I set them apart by putting his name under the chapter heading.
I’ll take another look. My editor still have to give me notes, and Critical Mass weighs in tonight with notes on the final section. There will be another chance to make changes.
Unfortunately that desire to make changes never ends. Book on is going to be published on May 13th, and now I wish I’d done some things differently. *sigh*
March 27th, 2008 at 10:09 am
May 13th, wow, that’ll be here in no time. I’m really looking forward to reading it.
Can I just say, I think it’s so cool that you’re using the “Prelude” idea. That I contributed to one of your books — even if only in such a tiny, tiny way as that — just trips me out.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Yes, thank you, Jason. There’s a lot of push-back against “prologues”. I needed a prologue, but I didn’t want to hit a nerve right out of the box. Your suggestion of prelude was great, and then, keeping to the theme, instead of an epilogue I have a coda.
In some ways my antagonist is a girl who is dancing on her grave so some of the dance motifs might work. I’ll look at at again after I get Patrick’s notes.