Writing Advice I Took from These Films and TV Shows
Alias - Tension can be found not only in whether the character will survive, but how they'll get into and escape a deadly situation. Throughout the show, we can be pretty sure that Sydney Bristow won't die on us. But that doesn't keep the vast majority of episodes from being absolutely riveting and tense. How the heck did she get into this one, and how the heck is she going to get out of it? See, this is how I frame my compulsive bingeing of this show as a well of inspiration. There are other lessons here, too, such as Moral gray areas help keep up the tension and Whenever a concept even comes close to getting old, shake things up (the main constant in Alias is that nothing really stays constant for long - by the halfway point of season 2, there's absolutely no hope for a newcomer being able to understand what's going on), but this is the biggest one I took away from the show. I'll keep taking away more, though, from watching it again and again.
Dark Phoenix - Stick with the promising plots. There are so many lessons to be found here about what not to do, but one thing that stuck out to me especially was all the wasted potential. Character arcs started off good and went awry as the story went off to focus on shapeshifting aliens. Though the (supposedly) climactic sequence takes place on a train, the story derailed many scenes earlier. It could theoretically have been great (and I was hoping that it was going to be despite warning reviews), but resorting to cliché and abandoning the good stuff made it suck. Because of that, I won't be watching this again and again.
Gilmore Girls - Wit is everything. Now, this show has pretty good plotting and compelling characters, but what's the soul of the show? Of course, it's the high-speed witty banter. Lorelai always has the perfect comeback, and so we just keep laughing. It's all so smart that it's hard to believe, but it's so much fun to watch anyway.
Star Wars - Archetypes work. I have loved these films (even the prequels!) since I was five years old. They were some of the first stories I got to know. However, though, they're stories that have on the most part been told many times over, with characters that, no matter how old or young they may look, are essentially thousands of years old. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo - we've seen them all before, but Star Wars is more beloved by modern audiences than most of the stories that inspired it. Creativity at its root is rarely doing something entirely new so much as portraying it in a new way.
The West Wing - Educational can be cool. This show immerses the viewer in the world of the West Wing and the people who work there, and is pretty much the most fun way possible to learn about the inner workings of the federal government. It's consistently smart in the way it explains things to the viewer, its regular moments of hilarity and profundity, and is overall excellent TV fare. Yet it actually teaches the viewer about government. How many people would sit around watching political documentaries? Hint: a good deal fewer than those who watched this show.
Dark Phoenix - Stick with the promising plots. There are so many lessons to be found here about what not to do, but one thing that stuck out to me especially was all the wasted potential. Character arcs started off good and went awry as the story went off to focus on shapeshifting aliens. Though the (supposedly) climactic sequence takes place on a train, the story derailed many scenes earlier. It could theoretically have been great (and I was hoping that it was going to be despite warning reviews), but resorting to cliché and abandoning the good stuff made it suck. Because of that, I won't be watching this again and again.
Gilmore Girls - Wit is everything. Now, this show has pretty good plotting and compelling characters, but what's the soul of the show? Of course, it's the high-speed witty banter. Lorelai always has the perfect comeback, and so we just keep laughing. It's all so smart that it's hard to believe, but it's so much fun to watch anyway.
Star Wars - Archetypes work. I have loved these films (even the prequels!) since I was five years old. They were some of the first stories I got to know. However, though, they're stories that have on the most part been told many times over, with characters that, no matter how old or young they may look, are essentially thousands of years old. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo - we've seen them all before, but Star Wars is more beloved by modern audiences than most of the stories that inspired it. Creativity at its root is rarely doing something entirely new so much as portraying it in a new way.
The West Wing - Educational can be cool. This show immerses the viewer in the world of the West Wing and the people who work there, and is pretty much the most fun way possible to learn about the inner workings of the federal government. It's consistently smart in the way it explains things to the viewer, its regular moments of hilarity and profundity, and is overall excellent TV fare. Yet it actually teaches the viewer about government. How many people would sit around watching political documentaries? Hint: a good deal fewer than those who watched this show.
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