You know what they say about it...

“TV will rot your brain.”

This is not always true. Or, maybe it is true and that’s what’s wrong with me. But at least in my own little mind, TV has some serious merit when it comes to my creative process.

Take any standard TV drama (they’re not all created equal, but most follow a typical pattern) and you come up with a formula that has some creative advantages over movies (and in my opinion, even books). 1) Time: time for fully fleshing out storylines, time to explore the motives and personalities of supporting characters, and time for flexibility. 2) Parallel and interlocking story arcs: episodic dilemmas are encompassed by a larger, more ambitious, more complex over-arcing theme or conflict. I’m sure that’s all in some TV Writing for Dummies guide book somewhere, but typically, a book doesn’t follow this television format.

This is where I’m screwed up. No matter how many times I review the general guidelines for romantic fiction, and no matter how many romantic novels I read (especially contemporary ones) I can’t help but think that this narrow focus on two characters with a heavy emphasis on sex is missing something. The tendency for an author to stub one’s toe on the denouement so that loose ends are quickly and haphazardly tied up leaves a lot to be desired. It leaves me desiring more, I should say instead. I’m always left with questions like: “yeah, but what about that guy?” “Married? Really? They’ve known each other a week and their whole relationship is based on sex. But this is true love of the marriage variety??” I understand about page limits and wanting to keep readers hooked with hot-and-heavy, I get it, I do. But I always want more, which tends to drive me more toward horror, mystery, or fantasy writing with a good dose of literary fiction thrown in. So maybe I should leave romance alone and not try to make something it’s not, BUT…

I love TV. I usually have one or two shows at most that I follow routinely and I like to think of myself not as a having my brain “rotted out”, but of being an active viewer. I love secondary characters and subplots, side adventures, a slow buildup of relationships, a natural progression toward an end result. TV gives us that.

I love minimalistic dialogue that is driven by shifting glances and facial expressions. I had a professor assign us all the task of eavesdropping on the campus green. “Take a notepad and pen and just start listening to someone’s conversation. Write what you hear, not what you think sounds best.” I ended up with lots of “gonna, woulda, coulda, shoulda” and lots of clipped sentences: “you think?” “Nope.” “For real.” “Says who?” That kind of thing. So I like dialogue that feels real as opposed to reading absolute poetry rolling off the tongue of some gangbanger. Saying lines aloud gets writers thinking about “now, how would a character like this really say his lines?” And as a result, when a truly epic, earth-shattering line of dialogue is used, it’s much more impactful than if the character has been delivering monologues throughout the whole of the piece.

I love to watch facial expression. Tics, flinches, honest and dishonest faces. I like to learn a character/actor’s repertoire of expressions and then try to predict how he or she will react to revelations in scenes to come.

TV gives us auditory stimulation. It helps you realize that in a scene set on a busy street, there’s traffic and voices and car horns and stereos, a hot dog vendor yelling, children shrieking as they play.

And I love the visual storytelling of TV. Landscapes and sets, vistas, cozy interiors. I love creative shots and camera angles, and I think about ways to incorporate that in written language. I ask myself how I would film a scene if it were on TV, and that usually helps me understand how I want to write it: from which viewpoint to start.

I think if I asked any pro in the business, he or she would tell me I’m going about things all wrong. My writing needs to be narrower, more focused, and needs to fit more neatly into a decided genre. But, if writing is art, then I’m going stick to my guns and say that a writer’s approach is part of her art. So no, TV is not rotting my brain. (Not completely anyway, though I’m sure I’ve been totally corrupted.)