Author: Susan L. Lin

[AS SEEN ON TV] Week Two: AMC’s The Killing

As Seen On TV

As Seen on TV is a new weekly series of blog posts I’ll be doing in response to reading/dissecting the pilot scripts of various television programs, both old and new, and then watching or re-watching the pilot episodes they spawned, whenever appropriate.

 Last Week: The WB’s Supernatural

Warning: spoilers through the season two finale of The Killing are more or less guaranteed.

And so we go from the series with an entirely nomadic sense of place to a series that is very much rooted in place: in this case, a moody, overcast Seattle. That initial, nearly still shot overlooking the calm lake in the pilot does wonders in establishing both the tone and the location before a single word has been uttered, or a single body shown. Unlike Supernatural, The Killing doesn’t bother with prologues. Solving the Rosie Larsen case is the focus here (as it should be) and although our protagonist Sarah Linden has an unlimited supply of skeletons in her closet, we’ll meet them later in the season—all in good time. So much of this show is about secrets, and all of the characters have them in spades: the suspects, the victims, and especially our two leads, Detectives Linden and Holder. Much of the intrigue in watching the show as the episodes unfold is witnessing the lengths they’ll all go to protect those secrets, both from the other characters and from the viewers watching from home. This becomes more and more apparent as the season progresses, but we’ll revisit that later.

The first sequence of the episode features two intercut scenes…

[AS SEEN ON TV] Week One: The WB’s Supernatural

As Seen On TV

As Seen on TV is a new weekly series of blog posts I’ll be doing in response to reading/dissecting the pilot scripts of various television programs, both old and new, and then watching or re-watching the pilot episodes they spawned, whenever appropriate.

Warning: spoilers for episodes other than the pilot are very possible.

I read two scripts for Supernatural, both the earliest draft and a much later one. I wish now that I could find more early pilot drafts for other shows, but there don’t seem to be a lot out there. What shocked me about the earlier draft was how completely different the backstory and family mythology were at that point. I’d known that Eric Kripke, the creator of the show, had originally envisioned two journalists on the road fighting evil (as opposed to the eventual Sam and Dean characters), but I had no idea that the story had still evolved so much since he’d decided to go with a pair of brothers instead. If he’d run with this earlier script, the show would’ve been a lot different. I think it would’ve been interesting to see the dynamic between the two brothers unfold, especially as they learned the trade of hunting (in this version that whole world was hidden from them when they were younger), but I don’t think that show would’ve lasted as long as the one we know has. The Winchester brothers’ complicated family history and dark, conflicted childhoods are key to the success of their characters.

The teaser of the later script opens up with a prologue depicting an incident that happened over twenty years ago…

As Seen on TV

As Seen On TV, Musings

I’ve decided to start blogging again.  Posts may initially be short and somewhat irregular, but I’ll be working up to what is hopefully a more reliable schedule. My goal is also to write more posts that are informative to a wider audience and not strictly personal.

I just graduated from California College of the Arts with my MFA in Writing this past May, and in the weeks since then I’ve had a lot of time to think about where I want to go next, both in terms of my writing and my overall career.  I’ve always wanted to work a TV-related job, but I think what held me back in the past was not knowing how to make that happen.  Now that I’m living near L.A. and have some more experience with screenwriting under my belt, I finally have a chance to start making this happen.  In the coming weeks I’ll be reading a teleplay from a current or past show that I admire on Sunday and spending the rest of the week analyzing its parts, (re)watching the final episode it spawned (if at all possible), and figuring out why it works well and what could be better.  I hope to blog about this weekly.  For the first week, I’ve chosen an early draft of the pilot episode of Supernatural, written by Eric Kripke, which was first included in the season 1 DVD set.  The first five seasons make up one of my favorite television shows and I’m looking forward to exploring it on a deeper level.

What is it about writing for television, particularly cable television, that appeals to me?  Strangely, although I’ve always loved television and dreamed of having a job in the industry, I didn’t think I would enjoy a job behind the scenes in the writers’ room.  Why?  Because as a fan and active participant in various fandoms over the years, I’ve seen how crazy the rabid fans can get.  It’s impossible to please everyone, and the ruts that happen every once in a while are often blamed solely on the writers, who get all sorts of hate on various modes of social media.  Not only are these writers trying to please the fans, but they are trying to please the network and keep the ratings up.  Not only that, but they are trying to create an organic and continuous story that appears in that magic little light box for a short time once a week, never knowing when the plug might get pulled before they have a chance to end the narrative on their own terms. Not only that, but they must compromise and work well with a large group of other writers.  And yet, I find that these seemingly negative points are challenges that I can learn from.  Not to mention that I love to work collaboratively with other people; writing fiction is far too solitary.  Ultimately, there is something fragile about writing in a serialized format that you can’t get with writing films or novels, something special about viewing the ever-fluid and unfinished product as it plays out on screen.

A lot has happened since my last post and I intend to write about those things as well: the projects I’ve completed, the ones I’ve only started, and the ones that are planned for the near future.  Until then.

Gonna Make It Through This Year

Inspiration, Musings, News

(This is why people like me should not be allowed to start blogs. I now have at least 7 or 8 and I hardly ever update any of them.)

The One Thing That Stays Mine

I saw this boat named Possible Dream in Santa Barbara on New Year’s Day and it seemed like a sign of good things to come.

When I was younger I always thought New Year’s resolutions were somewhat lame.  After all, the break between one year and the next is a rather arbitrary one that doesn’t really mean anything.  Nevertheless, I made two resolutions in 2010: to start flossing every day & to get published.  I accomplished both.  In 2011, I made one resolution: to finish my novel Touching the Morning.  I can say that that didn’t really happen, although I did get halfway there and I ended up writing about 100,000 words last year, which I’m sure shatters all previous personal records to put it mildly.  On the downside, I didn’t get any new publications.  To be fair, I hardly submitted anything, but that’s kind of the problem–that you either have time for one or the other, and not both.

This year I again make one resolution, which is to try harder to be my real self around other people.  I hardly recognize myself when I’m in a public setting, and I need to work on that.  Aside from that, I guess I would just like to get some serious work on my other novel (not that aforementioned one, frankly I don’t have much hope for that one anymore) and to take advantage of all the opportunities that are presented to me.

I might or might not be in grad school now.  I didn’t want to say anything about it when i was applying, but you know, these things happen faster than you can say WTF.  I love my new school almost as much as I love food!

An Education

Inspiration, Musings

Yeah, I changed the theme again.  I like this new one a lot (rainbows!) and I might actually keep it for more than a month.

Teachers and professors always have a word or two to describe what they think I am: “taciturn” or “reticent” or something else that means basically the same thing.  I once had an instructor tell me that I should talk more in class because if I didn’t, I was letting others control the direction of the workshop and I was getting someone else’s education, not mine.  It was good advice.  But as soon as he put it that way, I understood that that’s how I like it.  That’s how I want it.  I already know what I’m interested in, what I see when I read a story.  I’m interested in discussing what other people discover because for whatever reason, I might be blind to it otherwise.  It reminds me of the Beth Waters song, “Sweaters.”  There’s a verse (and the chorus) at the end that goes like this:

and it called to mind how I’d always felt
like I’m the last one to hear of things
I’m in the back of the room watching all of you
I go unnoticed but I notice everything

but I believe I can change the world just give me time
I believe I can change the world just give me time
I believe, I believe I can change the world
I believe I can change the world
just give me time

Anyway, he told me I should work on that in future classes.  I told him I was graduating next week.

The Fire Tree

Excerpts

As promised, here is one of the earliest excerpts of the novel I’m currently working on.  I wrote this part in high school, most likely around 2004.  It was initially a short story called The Fire Tree but the title has changed several times since.  I cut out this particular slice of backstory completely.  Originally the protagonist was an artist but then I made her brother an artist instead.  Now, no one in the story is an artist, so I guess it’s safe to post.  Trees remain an integral part of the story however.

When I was 13, my art class spent 3 months painting trees with opaque watercolors.  Pine trees, oak trees, ferns, and various bushes I don’t even know the name of.  You say it, we painted it.  The first two weeks were all technique.  Then we painted landscapes for two more weeks.  The first day we went outside to paint from direct observation, the wind was out of control.  Leaves were blowing everywhere, and my easel kept toppling over, threatening to fall on me every five minutes.  Cars drove by on their way to the building and we got some strange looks.  I felt strangely at home there, regardless.

I never looked at a tree the same way again.

I might as well admit that that part is largely autobiographical since I did do that in one of my art classes when I was younger.  Another reason to cut it out.  I’m going to be posting an old video next, because I don’t think I ever posted it, and there will be reminiscing.

This Is Not An April Fools Joke!

News

So March has come and gone, and my final word count for my novel tops out at 12,697. Considering my original goal was 30,000 words, one might view this outcome as ultimate failure. However, it’s still much more than I usually write, especially when I have no assignment due. Also taking into account the number of words I wrote for other projects, I think I’m doing as well as can be expected. Change doesn’t happen overnight, in case I didn’t mention that in my last post.

I also found some of my earliest drafts of this novel, back in 2003 when it was called The Fire Tree. The name has since changed about seven times. So have the characters’ personalities their circumstances and conflicts with each other. The basic premise however has remained the same. I’m thinking of pasting one of those excerpts in this blog at some point. Maybe. It’s pretty interesting to go back and look at now.

1,000 Words A Day

Musings

There I go, not updating again when I didn’t even finish my post from last time! If you’ll remember (or just scroll down to the previous entry) I had ended with a quote from something I’d written when I was fifteen. When I first went back to read this journal about five years later, the summer before my senior year of college, I think I recognized that entry as a defining point in my life as a writer. Because as I recall, I did not “write my heart out” that summer. As I recall, it was actually long time before I wrote anything substantial again, outside of a class assignment. As I pointed out so astutely eight years ago, something had changed about writing for me. I was hypercritical of everything, and I only saw the flaws. When I was a child, I could fill notebook after notebook of scribbled stories that made no sense, paying absolutely no attention to grammar or spelling. I was just getting those words on the page as quickly as they came to me, and they were always coming.

Needless to say, it isn’t like that for me now. I have always prized quality over quantity, and prefer books and stories with sparse but evocative language. Such is my style, which is why I write short-shorts and prose poetry and novellas. However, there is something to be said of banging out a certain number of words per day, whether or not they’re complete crap. To this day, I cannot understand how some people do it. Am I insanely jealous? Absolutely. Even if their writing isn’t that great? You bet. I’ve attempted NaNoWriMo 3 times in my life. Once was in 2002 when I was fifteen. I got about five pages into my story before I lost interest. The second was in 2009 when I was twenty-two. I believe I lost interest after two pages, which was rather pathetic, although that story did wind up being the short I published in Rougarou last fall. The third time is still ongoing this month (I was busy last November) and while I’m doing okay, it has still been a disappointing exercise for me. The month is almost over, and I’m currently sitting at around 11,750 words. Compared to my first two attempts, I suppose this is an accomplishment. However, I promised myself 1,000 words a day, and that clearly hasn’t quite been happening. Well, I guess change doesn’t happen overnight. Something I can perhaps take pride in: The longest continuous work I’d ever written was around 16,000 words, for some horrible sci-fi comedy I wrote when I was 10-11. Sad, right? Yes, but I’ve officially surpassed that now with this current story as I already had 5,500 words written before now. Add that to the 11,000+ and perhaps I really am capable of finishing a full-length novel someday. Small victory, but I shall take it. Another thing to take into account is that I’ve actually written 15,000+ words this month, because I’ve been working on another story at the same time. Let’s not even get into how many words I wrote in January and February. Math is no longer my forte.

But my point is, regardless of whether I’ve reached my goals, things might finally changing around here.

Diary of a Young Girl

Musings

Recently, I have been cleaning around the house and so I’ve been reading some of my old notebooks and journals. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes embarrassing, sometimes quite insightful. I especially love some of my opinions on writing and art. Here are a few excerpts.

June 11, 1996: …My stories Always come out confusing don’t they. Well at least I wrote it with my imagination and it a good story…

Yeah, I sound brainwashed. I should note that that was written on my 9th birthday. Here’s another:

January 31, 2000: …Writing’s a lovely subject. Writing is hard. When you finally think the story is going well, you just sort of lose it. Is this how all authors felt when they were 12? Is this how they feel now? Argh. I say that a lot nowadays. I can’t help it…

I should mention that the longest continuous work I’ve ever written I penned when I was 10-11 years old. This is a fact that depresses me often, but I hope to change it this year. It is one of my resolutions for 2011, in fact: to finally finish a full-length novel, or at least get past the 20,000 word mark in a single story. Fast forward a few years to age 15:

May 25, 2003: I’ve been writing a lot less in the past few weeks. It feels weird for me to not write (yes, I’m aware that I’m splitting infinitives, but it sounds better that way, so there.) Here’s the deal. I love to write. it is one of my favorite things to do, third only to visual art and dance. But now I can’t stand reading any of it. All I see are the flaws, and lately they’re everywhere. Time ceases to exist when I’m drawing or designing. I can be working on something for hours without even realizing it. I never felt that way about writing. […] I always told myself writing was the only way I could be another person while still being me… I’m determined to go back to writing and to how it used to make feel–that I could do anything. This summer I’m going to write my heart out. If it wasn’t meant to be then it wasn’t. But I’m not going to go down without a fight. I love life too much and I want to write too badly to see it end like this…

First of all, I should mention that I was disgustingly emo in high school and everything I wrote was dripping with teenage angst. I assure you that I was never suicidal, even if those last few sentences sound highly suspicious. But as I said, I loved life too much to ever think about dying. In fact, I have always been afraid of death. I had a strong reaction, reading this entry just now (It was titled “get it together”) but I will save my thoughts for the next entry because they could get quite long.