DPP: Feed the Muse Day 3

[angelicalangie.livejournal.com]

DPP: Feed the Muse day 3

Today I am looking at the role television has played in your writing. Specifically BSG the traditional roles of lead actor/actress and how BSG's 'non-traditional' format has affected your viewing and writing of Lee and Kara.

In television casting we have lead characters, in BSG you can argue that these were EJO and Mary McDonnell. This assumption however would be based both on age and experience of the actors and the position they hold in the hierarchy of the positions they serve on the show.

However, in the shooting of the television show, no one particular character was focused on as being central to the series, in a form of Cinema Verite rarely found in television. In a away this particular methodology manages to make the viewer more intimate with the characters and environs they exist in.

How does this affect your writing? Has it inspired you in its 'honesty' or hindered where you wanted to go with plot or character story lines? How have you overcome any difficulties if you have had them or if it has helped you, how?

Comments

[kdbleu.livejournal.com]

I love stories with a lot of characters. In fact, I would say that one of the weaker points of my writing (more in original works) is that I create too many characters. Characters that exist only to flesh out the universe I'm creating and not because they have anything to add to the story I'm trying to tell.

So one of the things I've taken away from BSG is how a story littered with characters uses or doesn't use those characters to their full potential. I've become a lot more comfortable honing the focus of my stories and adding only characters that are necessary, which has meant cutting characters out when I came to realize their role was being played more efficiently by someone else. I've learned I like keeping the main action to just a couple of character with everything else spinning off of them, instead of meandering through a large group.