Over the decades we have had books which pushed the dark boundaries. I’m not talking about satanic or twisted sexual rituals, I’m talking about the dark arts of taking human life and exposing corruption. Unless you are only going to write warm fuzzy stories about a boy and his dog or quaint little romance novels, you are going to face this ethical, moral and legal dilemma. Make no mistake, this type of dilemma exists for every writer, especially writers for popular television shows. The very well done and popular television show Castle. If you happen to pay attention when they are running the show opening you will hear a statement much like the following:
There are two types of people sit around all day thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers. I’m the kind that pays better . . .
The show attempts to deal with this issue in the opening. It kind of works for the fan base as this opening statement gives the writers a pass for leaving things out and delving into cheesy. Another very popular show, Burn Notice (also known as “Blowing Sh*t Up in Miami”) didn’t attempt to deal with it up front. They left moral and ethical discussions to Micheal’s voice overs and direct character interaction. If you watch early episodes and compare them with some final season shows you will see how the writing shifted more from “how to make” to “just use some C4 and government issued detonators.” In large part I believe this came about because of the rise in terrorism, but that is my personal belief. Since the early episodes established the street credit, the later episodes got a pass when it came to taking shortcuts.
Pick a popular crime/mystery television show and they have all had to deal with this. Even the NCIS franchise has trimmed back the Abbey “how it was done” explanations.
Many decades ago, when I was in junior high and/or high school there were people who had copies of The Poor Man’s James Bond. Back then it was more “could something this bizarre actually work?” than anything nefarious. Another oddity was those who had seen portions of the book began pointing out how certain movies and television shows seemed to borrow from it. We didn’t know it then, but this highly vilified book was research material for many professional writers. Wes Craven didn’t even try to hide it in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street The female lead had a copy of the book open while she was booby-trapping her bedroom.
I veered off into this post from my continued posting of rentals because I realized a theme in a group of rentals. I knew why I watched them and thought you might need to know why you, as an aspiring or accomplished writer, should watch them. These particular stories fall into two main categories.
Holding the author accountable
Author of a killers manual titled “Hit Man” gets publisher sued by victims family.
Edgar Allan Poe has a deranged fan using his books to commit murder. John Cusack delivers a great performance.
Even the previously mentioned Castle series had a fan using his books to stage murders.
Not a rental, but some of you are probably too young to remember when the family of a teen sued Ozzy over the teen’s suicide.
Boundary of journalism and whistle blowing
Benedict Cumberbatch always delivers a performance worth watching and he proves it here. This is a thought provoking movie which points out the total lack of journalism in the world and draws into question what responsible journalism really is. If one of your goals in life is to be a writer, you need to watch this movie. Should you, as a writer, present what you have first to the powers that be so they can declare it all classified and crush the story before it happens?
Sadly none of the Snowden movies have bubbled to the top of my rental queue. I do hope they delve into the moral and ethical questions rather than just try to sell movie tickets.
This is an amazing true story about what happens when a journalist crosses over from journalism to fiction without changing jobs. This is also the true story which gave Wired magazine its street cred.
Sadly, I have not seen Spotlight but it is on my list because it tries to document what may very well be the last true effort in journalism America ever sees.
I have also not seen Truth but it should be on every writer’s list.
This is a post about self censorship. We all do it, especially when we do not realize we are doing it. We couch this topic in quaint phrases such as “writing style”, “genre” and “honesty.” People have a subconscious ability to sense/feel when a writer is being honest. A really good exercise for you would be sitting through a Castle marathon. If you have the TNT network in your channel list, you don’t even have to spend money. A few nights per week there tend to be Castle marathons. Notice how, when the writers go deep and get heavy on the details of the crime, the show doesn’t have to sell itself. When the writers stay shallow the show gets a much cheesier feel and has to be carried the chemistry of the cast. As an author putting out a novel, you don’t have a cast to bail you out.
