Throw your hero off a cliff.
Yep, that’s the ticket. Think about it. Are you boring your reading audience with wonderful Mr. Nice Guy who may be a bit shy, but so darn good looking he’s irresistible?
Okay, he can be all that, but does he spend his days at the lake faithfully with his one true love and have nothing more exciting than crossing against a light to spice up his day?
Yer Friendly Neighborhood munchman promised LB he would review all the Summer 2016 shows – and then missed most of the June shows. (Or, rather, was sulking in my wi-fi challenged tent at a location I can’t divulge and didn’t get to see them. Don’t know how many I really “missed.”) But ole muncho is here now, so let’s get this over with started:
POWER
Power’s back and still nowhere near as enjoyable as the much more badly written Empire, proving that going over the top is always more fun.
Apropos of our Beloved Leader Larry Brody’s decision to post his wonderful, award-winning poetry here on TVWriter™, we present this enlightening interview with Jessi Klein, head writer of in, hip and trendy (and also fucking funny) Inside Amy Schumer.
Cuz truth to tell, every writer we know is at heart a genuine, 24-karat poet. It’s just that so many of us them are too embarrassed to come out.
In her hilarious essay collection You’ll Grow Out of It, Klein, head writer of Comedy Central’s Inside Amy Schumer and a former Saturday Night Live writer, muses on what it means to be a woman who doesn’t ever feel much like one.
Sometimes I ask myself whacky questions. Like, do rhino teeth get filled? Are we just computer constructs inn some alien game and if so are there rules and how can I get a copy of them? Who cleaned up after Hannibal’s elephants? How did Noah keep all those animals in the ark from eating each other?
There’s been a lot of bangedy bang in the news lately and so what else is new and the answer is nothing, but this prompts another whacky question: why can’t somebody do something about the gun problem? Nothing draconian: despite the irresponsible claims of some political types, Mr. Obama doesn’t want to take your firearms away. If that was on the agenda, you’d think that the presidential minions would have at least begun the effort by now. Dude’s been in office more than seven years and so far he hasn’t confiscated so much as a cap pistol.
Making an effort to forbid guns to known criminals or mental patients would be a possible opener. So would a national registry of folks who want to buy guns. In other words, let’s clamp down on the gunnies as fiercely and mercilessly as we clamp down on those young snots who want drivers’ licenses!
In compelling narratives, there’s always the ‘good guy’ (protagonist) – usually a person, versus the ‘bad guy’ (antagonist) – person, corporation, object or whatever, sometimes even themselves, and it’s a given that a battle of wills is raging with ‘guns’ real or metaphorical, accompanied by a roller-coaster ride of triumph and tragedy. Don’t we just love putting our character/s through hell?
We do put them through hell, don’t we? In every scene the ongoing battle shows up blatantly in the scene or more subtly, informing the scene and driving the narrative forward. Let’s take a moment to think this through, wtf are they fighting over?
Wanting and needing are rarely if ever, the same thing…