It’s no wonder I’m getting AADD…
And can’t concentrate on my W.I.P.
For longer than a few seconds at a time.
It’s TV’s fault!
Hey, don’t scoff, I can prove it.
The other day when got power to the TV again…
I made dinner, sat down…
Picked up the TV remote and surfed…
Stopping when I got to the 1996 movie…
Cagney and Lacey: True Convictions.
While I ate my homemade chicken soup…
I occurred to me that I felt happy, relaxed…
Was it the soup?
Watching Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly act?
Was it–
Wait a minute!
It wasn’t the soup or the women…
It was my eyes! And my mind!
They weren’t jumping trying to make sense…
Of hundreds of 3 sec camera moves and angles…
The camera actually stayed on each scene…
For as long as the scene needed…
For story development…
For character interaction…
Even for some well placed humor.
And my eyes weren’t bouncing in their sockets…
Trying to keep up with the steady cam shots…
(which in my opinion are anything but steady)
It’s true! Don’t’ believe me?
Watch any current TV show or movie…
And count how long the camera stays on any one scene.
See?
And sometimes there’s even two scenes per screen!
Like in Burn Notice.
Stop already!
My life if busy and rushed enough!
I don’t want to watch TV…
Only to feel more busy and rushed...
And have my eyes feel...
Like they just watched a ping pong tournament for an hour.
I know pacing is important…
But c’mon!
What about you?
Do you like the fast pacing in TV shows and movies?
How do you handle pacing in your stories?
Always, Em-Musing
2 comments:
See, this is where I think I'm going to be in trouble when it comes to publishing my books.
Even though my inciting incident usually hits within the first two pages, my build-up to what happens, to the first climax is slow. I build the tension so by the last 2/3 of the book, it's a page turner. I can't start a book with a bang and keep it up. Too much for me to keep up.
I don't like when the pacing is too fast, the conflict so high I have to look away, take a break, from the story. Writing short stories I need to have the conflict introduced very early. I think learning screenwriting would be helpful to my fiction writing!
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