You will continually find me posting on here about sub plots of movies and television shows. I will continually tell you that some of the best writing today is happening for the screen. Yes we have far too many fake reality shows polluting the air waves, but, it appears to have forced some really great writers to band together doing phenomenal work.
If you happen to have cable, satellite or live in those token few areas where USA Network is over the air, you may have noticed they tend to run NCIS marathons. I’m not talking about the all day marathons, I’m talking about the mini-binges of 4 +- episodes in an evening. Writers should love this show, especially the older episodes where they continually rip off classic movies, but do it right. They have Tony DiNozzo actually say the movie and describe its plot in just a few lines.
Recently I watched for the umpteenth time the episode where Bishop writes a letter on NCIS electronic stationary to President Harry Truman. This is a mechanism I hope they explore and utilize more often. As a writer you should watch this episode many times, even if it is the only episode of NCIS you ever watch. The mechanism utilized here is powerful. It shows a vulnerability which can be used to pull the audience in. This worked particularly well on the episode because we learn not only does Bishop have that Midwest girl next door image, she has a story teller’s voice. Kind of that Midwest girl next door reading to children thing.
The lead in for this letter was spot on. Since “she and Jake hit the skids” and she doesn’t keep a journal (hazard of her security clearance) she didn’t have many people to talk to, so, she wrote a letter to the person who created modern-day NCIS.
As a vehicle in a story to convey character information, background, or any other chunk of monologue a writer wishes to throw out there, this is phenom. When I was writing Infinite Exposure I used email and letters a lot. In truth I did it because that is how the terrorists communicated. I took it a step farther though. That step made ebook conversion a real PITA until the pathetic readers managed to support multiple fonts. I put every character’s letters in a different font. I think I did the same for emails too. I did that so even if you dozed off a bit reading, when you hit that block of text you knew _exactly_ which character wrote it.
Sending a letter to a dead person isn’t something I’ve tried, but I found that episode stunning for its boldness to do that. I think Fox Mulder or Dana Scully used to do something similar in the X-Files. Each of us brings to the table some knowledge or opinion of the dead person being written to. The simple fact the person’s name is used conveys volumes of information to the audience.
Each of you should consider employing something like this in your writing. It works just as well in a book. If you are writing some grizzled shoot-them-all detective that even Dirty Harry would call an A-hole give him or her a vulnerable moment. Set them down at the keyboard, or better yet, an ancient mechanical typewriter they bought for $10 at a garage sale so everyone can “hear” the hammers striking as they read.
Dear Agatha,
My current case has me at my wits end. This is truly a situation where beating a confession out of someone isn’t the solution. Since you gave the world Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple I wondered if I could impose on you to hear the facts as we know them and help me puzzle this out . . .
