My lovely and talented sister-in-law Wendy Duren is blogging about what she’s doing, what she’s reading, and what she’s writing. While she mostly talks about novels, she mentions that she found inspiration the other night in a scene in an episode of LOST.
It
accomplished everything dialog should: it revealed character, revealed
the characters’ emotional states, communicated information, moved the
story along, and, my favorite, was chucked full of subtext. And, it did all that very quickly. It was to the point, without side trips, without the mental meanderings that often trip up dialog in romances. I love stumbling across things like this. I feel inspired and motivated to write. My creative well has been filled at a time when I didn’t notice the level was low. All that and eye candy too. Wow.
It’s not often you find novelists conceding that TV writing is writing… and that spoken dialogue can inspire you the same way the written word can.
If you wanted to hear a novelist “conceding that TV writing is writing… and that spoken dialogue can inspire you the same way the written word can,” you should have heard David Morrell’s talk on Stirling Silliphant and ROUTE 66. I believe a lot of the comments Morrell made can be found in his book on writing, but what it boils down to is that he was inspired to become a writer by the first episode of the TV series.
David’s talk was great; fascinating stuff. At one point, he even asked if Lee was in the audience. He was probably in the bar, though.
Very few TV shows are as well written as that episode was. It was great. More shows need to be written like that.
Hello brother-in-law dear. Ok, so this means next time you ask me about my writing, I can’t duck the answer, right?