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.

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.

The ones being asked “Did you kill your wife?” are, by contrast, generally sitting quite politely.

My goodness, I am fat with typos this evening.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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*

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.

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.