TV Can Be a Good Teacher, Can't It?

This week, I brought a chapter of my current work in progress to my writers’ group for critiquing. The scene takes place in a backyard, where the RCMP are confronting a suspect holding a baseball bat. The group offered a lot of helpful comments about the scene, but the comment that struck me most came from a writer who told me to watch the TV show Cops. She said she learned how real police officers talk to people from that program. (She also said that after viewing a few episodes, she’s decided that no one under eighty-nine should be allowed to drink, but that’s another story.)

I like TV, though I don’t actually sit down to watch many programs. I use it as background noise for cooking, washing dishes, or working on writing-related things like market searching and online promotion. Television as a research tool isn’t something I’ve considered much. Occasionally, I’ll watch a documentary that ties in with a piece I’m working on. But when another colleague told me to watch DaVinci’s Inquest to get a feel for how local crimes are handled, I began to think about other benefits for writers.

Great plot ideas can spring up, for instance, especially from the news. And one of the few shows I did actually sit down to watch, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, inspired an interest in horror/vampire novels, especially ones that incorporate humor. And what about screen writing? I’ve often thought about trying to adapt my own stories into screenplays. One way to learn would be to study excellent screen adaptations. I read Brideshead Revisited years ago and loved it. I also watched the adaptation with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Edwards and was completely blown away by the production. Should I ever buckle down to study screenwriting, that book and screenplay would be a great place to start. So maybe I should watch more TV. Seems there's still a lot to learn from it.

For excerpts of Taxed to Death and Fatal Encryption, visit http://www.debrapurdykong.com/

Bright Lights and ....?

Many thanks to all of you who contributed words of comfort and
common sense during my sartorial meltdown over choosing
whatever would make me look the least fashioned challenged
the taping of my TV interview..

You want to know what I chose? Aw, come on – you really do - don't
you? Well pretend damn it! I went for … guess? Yup – you got it. All
black. But – sans the silver toed boots.

It actually was a big kick for me. I've had 3 other TV things but
they were all 1 cameraman, sort of off the cuff and once the camera
man told me to delay the start of my talk for 10 minutes while he ran
to CVS to buy a DVD/tape – he'd forgotten to bring any!

This time there were 3 camera men and a sound man. We actually had
a dress rehearsal, went over the questions and set up camera angles.
There was even a nice young lady who come over and powdered my
big old red nose! (didn't do much good that I could see).

The hostess was super nice and the ½ hour flew by. So much so that
yours truly who can never shut up, started getting the cut sign when
I was about halfway through the passage that Darleen (the hostess)
had asked me to read from Shadow of Innocence. "EEEk," I thought.
What should do? Read faster? Just say, "the end"?
Doggedly I plowed on as producers and camera men waved clip
boards in the background. I had to finish the last words from my
favorite passage.
I heard the words, "Roll credits!" as I finally rounded the corner of
the last sentence and finished with…. "Bridget screamed."
"And close," the producer whispered. I looked up at Darleen. Was
she gonna brain me with the water pitcher?
Nope. She was sweet and gracious. "The Book is Shadow of
Innocence," she said holding it up. "And the author Ric Wasley.
Thank you so much for coming Ric." She smiled.
"Thank YOU Darleen!" I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then we sat there – our smiles frozen to our faces as the camera and
sound men fussed with various things. "Can we move?" I whispered
to Darleen from between my gritted, smiling teeth. Finally we got the
official nod.
Now was I gonna get hammered about running over? Nope.
The producer was nice about it and said he see what he could do in
editing but best of all Darleen leaned over and whispered to me, "that
was fun – can you come back in the Fall?" Could I? Just try to keep me
away!
So went my half hour of fame and they were nice enough to burn me 3
DVD's of the show.

Well it was lots of fun and now it's back to the real world of pounding
the keyboard and taking out the garbage (and probably in about that
order).
But thanks all for letting me share with you my tiny slice of
the `glamorous' life.



All the best
Ric

Ric Wasley
Author/Musician
• Shadow of Innocence – 2007
• Acid Test – 2004

And please check out my McCarthy Family Mysteries free sample chapters on Amazon and Google!
Baby Boomer article series: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ric_Wasley

Medium premiere - "And Then"...snooze time!

Last night I sat down to watch the highly anticipated season premiere of Medium, one of my favorite shows. My first reaction to the episode titled "And Then", was: "Good God, what did they do with the writers?" I am not sure if this was the product of the writers' strike or if it was taped earlier, but the episode was flat, predictable and...in one word, BORING. Sorry, NBC.

Spoiler alert!

In the premiere, we are given a recap of what happened last season and left with a depressed cast who should all go on some meds.

Allison (Patricia Arquette) was depressed because no one would take her calls or listen to her dreams and she was having money problems.

Her usually witty husband Joe (Jake Weber) was depressed because he was out of work and his mother wouldn't lend him money.

Their teenage daughter Ariel (Sofia Vassilieva) was depressed because she realized that another girl sang better than her (and maybe she was depressed because the writers made her do something nice instead of act like the spoiled brat that we have all come to want to smack).

Detective Lee Scanlon (David Cubitt) was depressed because he has been demoted to playing with puppets instead of being an active crime investigator.

His girlfriend (what's her name) was also equally depressed (and depressing) as she waded through her few lines as if reading off a cereal box. Though maybe her depression is justified--NBC doesn't even see fit to acknowledge her role in the cast, even though she's been in many episodes.

Allison's former boss D.A. Devalos (Miguel Sandoval) was depressed because someone else has his job and now he'll have to go back to being just a...sigh...lawyer.

Then there's Academy Award-winning Anjelica Huston who plays Cynthia Keener, an investigator for "Ameritips". I'm sure that she was depressed because her role was so minute. I hope they develop her character better in future episodes.

Let's see...who else was depressed? Oh yes, let's not forget the millions of viewers who watched, predicted every step and tried to keep from dozing off. Pass the Valium!

As for plot, it was equally as depressing: a kidnapped boy, a pointless side-story about Ariel auditioning for a school musical, a dream of the kidnapper's feet (he likes to dance) and another dream of mice, a scene where Scanlon finds the dead boy packaged up in a doll box and mice running around.

At this point I thought, the killer is a young man who likes to dance and he's an exterminator. And lo and behold, it seems that maybe I should take over for Allison Dubois. What's disappointing is that there's no real investigation. The killer just conveniently shows up, let's himself into the scene of the crime (dancing to music, of course)...

"And Then"?

The show is over. (Thank God!) Talk about anti-climactic. A visit to your dentist for a root canal would be more suspenseful and less painful.

So please, NBC...get some good writers! I loved this show! I love the cast! But hey, there are other new shows on now, so give us some credit here and write for the intelligent viewer. We deserve better.

By the way, my paranormal suspense novel Divine Intervention is often compared to Medium (and CSI and Ghost Whisperer) and will definitely appeal to fans of the show. And I can promise you there are no flat characters and the story line is anything but predictable or boring. So while you're waiting for Medium to get back on track, feel free to pick up a copy of Divine Intervention at Amazon.