Living the Fictional Dream

Last night, I tuned into the premier of the new show, Castle. It’s another crime procedural, but it stars Nathan Fillian (Firefly, Drive), so as a fan, I had to give Castle a try.

I’d heard some bad things about it — that it was silly and badly written with campy dialog — but I have to say that I don’t totally agree. There was an emphasis on humor in the show, but I didn’t find it silly or badly written. Maybe the person who wrote the review that I read just isn’t used to humor in crime procedurals?

Nathan was his charming self, of course, as the author Castle. A little over the top, it’s true, but I think that was an appropriate choice for a character with such celebrity status. And it seemed that the smarmy side of him was more his public side — we saw glimpses of the man underneath the persona, such as when he was with his daughter or great scene when he analyzed the female lead.

The female lead (whose name, I have sadly forgotten), a police officer, was all right as a straight woman. The best line of the whole thing was when she got assigned to work with Castle, and her co-worker said, “The control freak saddled with something she can’t control? This is going to be better than Shark Week!” The female lead’s character was a bit flat to me in the pilot, but I think there are opportunities for her to grow, assuming the show isn’t yanked off the air after four episodes. Her main purpose at the get-go is to be a foil for Castle’s antics, which she did well, and over time, they will be able to deepen her into something more than the straight woman.

If you don’t know the set-up to this show, basically, Castle writes mystery/crime novels and he gets partnered up with a straight-laced female cop to help solve real crimes (under the guise that he is doing research for his latest book). The cop works in the system and plays by the rules. Castle is used to his charm and fame getting him what he wants when he wants it. There is also an old-for-her-age teenaged daughter (a la Rory from Gilmore Girls) and a wacky mother (the actress who plays the mother is a scene stealer!).

My biggest nitpick with the pilot episode had to be Castle’s celebrity status. Are there really fiction authors out there who are treated like rock stars? Authors who have a book launch or an autograph signing and young girls come in skimpy dresses begging him to sign their chests? Now, granted, I’ve never been to a Stephen King signing — I’m sure they are crazy, but it’s hard for me to picture even him being thrust upon by sexy bimbos. Sure, the actor who plays Edward in the Twilight movie gets that, but does Stephanie Meyer?

Ah well, as a conceit of the show, I can suspend my disbelief. And, as a wanna-be published novelist, it sure would be nice to believe that a few best sellers would get an author movie star treatment.

My favorite scene in the pilot was when Castle attended his regular poker game with three other writers in his genre. I loved how they ribbed Castle for killing off the main character of his popular book series (he was bored writing the character) and how they proclaimed that they would all be earning royalties off their main characters until they had no other options. And I enjoyed it when Castle laid out the case he was helping the police with (someone did a series of copy cat murders based on Castles lesser-known works) as if it were a mystery novel, and the other authors were aghast at the simplistic plot structure.

All in all, I thought it was an enjoyable show, and worth watching. I’m not a big crime procedural fan, but Castle, like Bones, twists the formulaic genre into something a little different and a lot more interesting. Sure, there is still the formulaic crime solving, but it’s tempered by unique characters that (hopefully, if Castle is follows the Bones model) have continuing character arcs that give the show more focus that merely the bloody murder. And, to me, characters are the most important thing — especially in the TV medium where you have to want to come back week after week. The undercurrent of humor also gave the show a lighter tone that most procedurals, something that makes it all the more palatable to me.

I don’t have a big blog topic to talk about today, so I thought I’d turn the spotlight around on you guys.

What is your absolute favorite part of writing? Why do you return to the keyboard day after day? It’s a fairly frustrating job — lots of work for little to no money (unless you make it big with a novel, and even then midlist authors are having a hard time squeaking by these days).

I answer that last question easily. I write because I have to write. I would be making up stories in my head anyway. I might as well write them down. And if I’m going to bother writing them down, then I should make them the best they can be, and see if anyone else out there thinks they are worth sharing. I don’t expect to get rich or famous of off it (though I’ll take it if it comes!).

My favorite part of writing, though, has to be that escape. I love disappaering into someone else’s world, seeing that world through their eyes, and yet also having a hand in creating that world. Getting into the creative zone is an amazing feeling. Nonwriters don’t understand when I say I’m not making all this up — the characters tell me what’s going on. But it’s true, and any writer knows it!

I also really love creating characters and world building and all the intricacies there-in. Those are my favorite parts of the creative process itself, but my favorite thing about writing, the escape of the creative zone — definitely!

I recently sat down with my husband and watched all of the Lost episodes that have aired this season. This show is quite the conundrum — both from a viewer’s perspective and from a writing perspective.

A lot of people gave up on the show in seasons 2 and 3, when it had a bit of a downturn. I still thought the episodes were good, but (to me) it just started to feel like the writers didn’t know where the heck they were going. However, I still enjoyed watching, so I stuck with it and was rewarded by the second (and longer) half of season 3 and all of season 4, which I thought were excellent. To me, season 5, so far, has lived up to its promise. I think that the secret was the creators of the show making a deal with the network so they knew in advance how many seasons/episodes they were going to make. Ever since that point the show seems to have purpose and direction.

Lost is, of course, fairly famous for ponderous plot twists that seem to go nowhere. Look at the tailies from season 2 — we spent all this time with them, and now all of them are dead except for Bernard. What was the point, then?

And look at Walt. In season 1, he was quite a fixture, and the way that his mind seemed to control the world around him was fascinating (OMGWTFPolarBear, anyone?). And then he disappeared, only to be briefly seen in cameos hence forth (luckily, the show is now 3 years later than it was, so in this season’s cameo, it was OK that the kid is tall now). And there were other things, too. I won’t go to the trouble of listing them all out here.

I think the point that a writer should take away from all this is that you have to be careful of rabbit trails and loose ends. They just frustrate the reader/viewer and turn them off of your concept. I think if the Lost writers had had a clearer vision of the end game from the beginning, we would have had a much more satisfying journey through their world, sans loose ends. From a novel perspective, these are the kinds of things that happen in a first draft — then you get people to critique your work and weed all the unnecessary stuff out on the second draft.

I also know some people who feel like Lost has gone too far out there. They were OK with smoke monsters and random polar bears, but huge initiatives with compounds on the island and time travel? That was too much for them. Personally, I’m a genre nut to the core, so I can suspend my disbelief. I haven’t been bothered on that account.

Whatever your criticisms about Lost, they do a lot of things right, too. Their story-telling is compelling and the whole story is so detailed that it amazes me. You see an actor who had one or two lines in season 1 and he comes back in season 5 with a mysterious agenda. Characters who seem unrelated turn out to cross paths in many mysterious ways. A throw-away line of dialog in one episode, turns out to be of great importance later on.

And then there are the characters. Sure, the show isn’t all perfect (I still hate how they maligned poor Charlie!), but other characters are written spot on. And I love the story-telling technique that uses flash backs and flash forwards to flesh out the character while giving impact to whatever plot is currently going on in the present day.

As a writer, some of the lessons I take away from the good elements of Lost are (1) give characters a detailed backstory and use what you can to enhance the story (but don’t over use — just because you know what your character ate for lunch every day in middle school, don’t tell us unless it affects the current story), (2) pay close attention to your plots — an intricately plotted story that works is much more fascinating that a story with a lack of plot or plot details that contradict each other, and (3) following on number 2, be consistent — know those small details and bring them back to make the world feel more real and distinct.

As a viewer, though, there is one worry that I have regarding Lost. I want the ending to be worth it. After all these years of build up, wrong turns, recoveries, and plot twists, the ending pretty much has to be spectacular to satisfy the viewers and to pull the story together. Now, I don’t want the writers to simply pander to viewers — I want them to stay true to their vision and give us the real story. But, after all this, expectations are high, so it has to be spot on. And that can be a problem in the land of television. No one can please everyone — but, keep in mind, that just because you’re not pleased or it wasn’t what you wanted, that doesn’t mean it’s not a good story.

The problem is, if the ending doesn’t work, then it will basically cast everything that came before in a negative light. We’ll all be thinking, “Why did I invest six years in this show and put up with all the twists and turns if this is what I got for it?”

Hopefully, though, we will at least be able to remember that, no matter what, Lost was a fun, exciting ride. And the journey is the thing — especially in television.

I have been having the craziest dreams the past few months. I wrote about a month ago about a vivid dream I had that was a scene from a novel — it happened again last weekend.

The new dream was somewhat of a mish-mash of plot elements from two different movies — Go! and The Prestige, if you can imagine that combination. But the weird thing was that the combination worked. And with enough fleshing out, those plot elements would combine into something really different.

It would be a Y/A novel — probably either sci-fi or more of an adventure story, depending on the angle I took on a certain element. There would be some mystery thrown in, also.

I’m not sure which one of these novel dreams excited me more. Maybe the first (the mythological creatures/fantasy world one), but only slightly.

I wonder if this is how Stephanie Meyer felt when she dreamed the dream that became Twilight?

I tell you, it would be so nice not to work full-time. I’ve got all these novel ideas buzzing around in my brain, and little to no time to actually work on something. It’s a lot easier to work on short fiction when you work full-time — or, at least it is for me. Getting into that novel mindset requires more time and energy that I can come by easily when 40 hours of the week or more are devoted to technical writing.

Of course, the catch-22 is that to justify quitting your job to write full time, you really need to have a novel deal in the works.

So, in February, I turned my attention to my writing group’s monthly prompts contest in an attempt to get myself writing again. Writing has been slow (which is putting it generously) since NaNo and the holidays. All in all, it was a good choice and helped me break out of that no-writing rut I was stuck in.

I’m pretty picky about prompts as a rule, but it was fun to stretch myself to address some of the prompts that Stephanie picked out for us (check out her blog to see some of the crazy prompts that she thinks up — I love ‘em).

The bad part about doing one of these contests is when the result of the writing isn’t anything I’m proud of, nothing that I want to pursue or groom into something I can submit. And, that does happen when you stretch yourself to write prompts that maybe weren’t something that truly inspired you.

But, on the whole, this month’s prompts worked out pretty well for me. I wrote five, and two of them I will definitely be working on more. I’m pretty sure that those two will be ready to submit somewhere with only a few light edits. They are a little wacky, but I think they have promise. And one of the other three I think could, with some more intense work, also have promise. The final two, I don’t think will go anywhere, but even they were fun to write — it was good to stretch those muscles.

So, that’s better than half, which is a really good turn out as far as I’m concerned.

I think I’m done with prompts for a bit. Hopefully, this got me warmed back up again, and now the ideas will flow a little more on their own. But I think it was a good goal to pursue for February.