Category: By Larry Brody

Larry Brody on Scene Construction

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The TV Writer on TV Writing
by Larry Brody

Scenes are more than signposts on your way to the end of the screenplay road. They’re more than just moments in which story or character points are thrown out at the viewer or reader. A good scene in a screen or teleplay — and by good I mean EFFECTIVE in terms of getting the response you want — is a mini-film in itself, with a beginning, middle, and end.

Scenes need to be structured so that their intensity grows and then climaxes, like microcosms of your script. (And, I think it’s clear, sex too – but we’re not going there right now.)

This doesn’t mean that a scene should go on and on. far from it. read article

Larry Brody on Making Your Scenes Flow

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The TV Writer on TV Writing
by Larry Brody

Over my years running various TV series I’ve been amazed at how many professional writers don’t understand the basics of good storytelling. In a nutshell, the trick to working out your plot is to always remember that the scenes must flow from and to each other in a progression that takes into account three different elements of audience appeal. As in, the scene progression must be logical, surprising, and climactic.

What this means is that everything that happens must grow out of what happened before. On one level, given the personalities of the characters and the situation they are in, each plot point must be inevitable. And on another level, these inevitable twists and turns mut be such that the reader or viewer could never have predicted them.

Sound paradoxical? Crazy? Let’s take a true crime example. The kind of thing that happens all too often in real life. read article

Larry Brody on Outlining and Writer’s Block

EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to the first in what we hope will be an ongoing weekly series of writing tips and tricks from our Beloved Leader, LB, AKA this guy.

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The TV Writer on TV Writing
by Larry Brody

One of the big differences between beginning writers and old pros is that beginning writers are always telling me how much they love sitting down at the keyboard and winging their scripts, while the pros invariably stress the importance of having a good outline before they start writing. read article

Current TV Shows LB is Now Giving Up

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by Larry Brody

The latest list of series I’ve recorded the latest episodes of but know damn well I’m never going to watch:

  • DOCTOR WHO
    When Russell T. Davies brought back DOCTOR WHO 10 years ago the Doctor was a hero who took as much delight in being in danger as he did in extricating himself and others from it. Under Steven the Imposter Moffat the Doctor became, first, a self-doubting human-like fool, and now, a true villain who destroys everyone with whom he comes into contact. I love Peter Capaldi as an actor but won’t watch the show again till the Moff’s been replaced by a real showrunner who knows what the gig’s all about.
  • BONES
    This cute romantic buddy show has aged into one in which star David Boneanaz has aged into a new personification of the role that made him famous. No, I don’t mean Angel from the show of the same name, I mean Angelous, Angel’s dark side. This is what happens to formerly nice people who become producers, whether they start out as actors, writers, or lovers.
  • THE LIBRARIANS
    I tried, really I did, but if I wanted insipid pseudo-science adventures about ancient, magical artifacts, I would have watched WAREHOUSE 13. And THE LIBRARIANS, unfortunately, is an even weaker version of the same premise, proving that TNT makes even worse sci-fi than SyFy.
  •  SCORPION
    The stupidity of this series’ action-packed yet purely technological MacGuffins and the absurdity of its premise that high I.Q.s are what define genius and all geniuses have the most obnoxious forms of Asperger’s Syndrome have combined over the past year and a half to create genius-level boredom. The show has been pure self-parody since halfway through the pilot, and although I wanted to believe that was deliberate, I’m sad to say that I can’t fool myself anymore.
  • NCIS
    I discovered NCIS while recovering from a heart attack and accompanying surgery. Now, after seeing almost 13 full seasons I finally have healed enough to realize that as much fun as this series’ ’70s TV-like presentation can be, its gung-ho chauvinism and repetition of the same 2 plots week after week have severed its spine…which ain’t easy considering that it was made of jello.

And here’s a special bonus disappointment currently on Netflix:

  • LAST TANGO IN HALIFAX
    This BBC loser started off as a serious drama about something to which I totally related: Romance and the rediscovery of what’s important in life at an age when most people are just sitting around and waiting to die. I identified with Derek Jocobi as the male lead, Alan (even though both the actor and the character are substantially older than I am), and my wife felt the same about Anne Reid’s female lead, Celia. But at this moment, with 3 episodes left to watch in the third series, I’ve had it with the weak, self-pitying men and strong but catastrophically rigid women. All the characters keep on making the same mistakes, over and over and over, and I’ve written – and maybe lived – enough soap opera to never be able to put myself in a place where I can enjoy it.

That’s it for now, kids. Off I go to spend a few pleasant moments of pushing, “Delete, delete, delete….” read article

Larry Brody Surfs the Interwebs

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by Larry Brody

 Most people these days haven’t seen much (any?) of my old TV writing or producing oeuvre, but even though TVWriter™’s readers may have missed my old HAWAII FIVE-O or FALL GUY or SILVER SURFER et al episodes, I still get much more eMail than I ever thought I would asking about various aspects of my life.

A common question is, “What on the internet interests you?” I have no idea why that’s such a big question, but there it is. So what better place to reply than here, on the very selfsame internet we all know and love.

Most of my internet time is professional, looking for TV writing related news and events and working on the various aspects of TVWriter™. But the web also works well as a substitute for my morning newspaper, and do a fair share of surfing around on it the same way I used to spend time flipping through pages of newsprint, to which, by the way, I’ve always been highly allergic.

My allergy free online mornings usually start with comic strips I’ve been reading for what seems like centuries. These include Boffo, Dilbert, Zits, Dick Tracy, Non Sequitur, Luann, Drabble, Doonesbury (Sunday only; the other days are re-treads), and the strip that seems to uncannily parallel events in my own life, Ballard Street. read article