6 Writing Tips I Learned While Lying on My Sofa
I binge. I am a binger. Over the past few weeks, I have binge-watched “The Americans,” “Game of Thrones” (which, for obvious reasons, I want to rename “Game of Throwns”), the final season of “Breaking Bad” and “True Detective.” Here’s what I have learned, in no particular order because I am lazy about these things.
1. Need to resolve one conflict while simultaneously creating more? Slit a throat! This is mostly used in “Game of Thrones,” but I wouldn’t put it past “The Americans” or “Breaking Bad.” I’m not sure I can use this technique in my light, witty contemporaries, but perhaps a figurative slitting of a throat can come into play.
2. Keep your heroine looking her best by slinging her long hair over one shoulder at all times. Watch “The Americans” if only to see Keri Russel’s hair. It is voluptuous and voluminous and always (and I mean always) over one shoulder. If spotting it were a drinking game, no one would be sober after thirty minutes. The lesson? Maintain realism. The hair-over-one-shoulder is distracting in an otherwise fairly gritty and compelling show. Hair plays a very different role in “Breaking Bad,” where Walter White starts out with hair, then has chemo and loses his hair, then shaves his head because he’s become more sinister.
3. Journeys are great for pacing. Literally and figuratively. “Game of Thrones” is one big journey, more or less. An epic saga with lavish sets and a million extras (and plenty of horse eye-candy for me), journeys are its birthright. And as much as I feel sorry for the characters, few of whom ever seem to catch a break (or take a bath), all that conflict sure makes the story trot along.
4. Make your characters complex enough to care about. In “True Detective,” Rust (Matthew McConaughey) is an obsessive, brilliant, socially inept detective who is haunted by his brutal past. Martin (Woody Harrelson) is genial, good at his job, and loves his wife and daughters, but he also has a frightening temper and an adulterous streak. These are flawed, multi-faceted characters, and although I might not want to have dinner with them, I sure did care about them. Then there’s Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister in “Game of Thrones”—love him! Because he’s your basic charming, handsome, drunk, womanizing ne’er do well, but he’s also scathingly intelligent, caring, tortured by his family and the moral compass for the Lannister clan, who tend toward evil to maintain their power. Oh, and he’s a dwarf. So there’s that. Complexity a go-go.
5. Conversely, avoid making your characters too limited. I might get some pushback on this one based on the examples I’m about to throw your way. I watched the entire first season and episode one of the second season of “House of Cards” starring Kevin Spacey, and the pilot episode of “Scandal.” I love Kevin Spacey and I’ve heard good things about “Scandal.” However… Spacey’s Frank Underwood is interesting, but so diabolical as to be a caricature of a power-mad, stop-at-nothing politician. In “Scandal,” Olivia Bishop and her crew are simply too good, too smart and too fast-talking (and they all sound alike) for me to take them seriously. In both shows there’s conflict, but it’s unsatisfying.
6. Choose habits/gestures/vices that enrich your characters—and make the habit interesting. I know I just pooed all over Frank Underwood in “House of Cards,” but now I’m going to say something I liked. He and the other half of the über-power-couple, Claire (Robin Wright), share a nightly cigarette while sitting in their open bay window. It’s a device that advances the plot and characterization, both because of what they talk about, but also because it offers a glimpse into their marriage. The activity is intimate, but potentially deadly too. And it’s a rather unusual ritual.
A final note about perfect characters. In Thrown, my hero Grady is not perfect. He can be petty. He has a temper. Jealousy almost does him in. He’s not a bad guy, but yeah, he makes some bone-headed decisions and is sometimes a dolt. I thought this was a good thing, that he was more human, with issues to overcome. Imagine my shock and surprise when some readers hated him. I know there are romances where the hero is practically perfect, where he never puts a gorgeous foot wrong and his internal conflict springs from some terrible event in his past. But I guess I prefer heroes who are perfectly…imperfect. Even Ted Beaudine, Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ perfect hero goes all imperfect—deliciously so—in his story, Call Me Irresistible. So I’m in good company.
What have you learned from television shows, good or bad? Do share!
