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If you overuse it, you lose it
Jul. 5th, 2014 08:52 amShoshanna and I watch TV most nights over dinner. For me, it's a nice way to wind down after a day of beating my brain against thorny science and often-opaque writing, trying to transform it into something that communicates clearly. The phrase "sitcom" is supposed to be short for "situation comedy", but other than The Simpsons, we don't watch situation comedies. So I instead choose to interpret the abbreviation as "sit comatose", which is a fairly good description of my mental state by the time 9 PM rolls around.
One constant in our TV watching: somewhere, somewhen, someone in one of our shows is going to vomit. No, really. I can't remember the last time we watched TV for more than an hour without at least one scene of someone vomiting. Some nights, we get an incident in every show. It's gotten so we can see it coming from a mile off, long before the character starts turning green about the gills.
I'm hard-pressed to imagine a failure of imagination so severe that Hollywood and their national network equivalents have no other way ("acting", say, or clever writing) to let us know that a character is feeling stressed beyond their meal-retention point. Possibly I should just shut up and be grateful that they've chosen regurgitation rather than defecation to communicate their point. (Having said that, I belatedly remember the -- literal -- cacodemon in Dogma, which we just watched the other night*.)
* On the whole, an excellent film, and worth it just to see baby Matt Damon and baby Ben Affleck, still barely old enough to grow a single beard between them. Plus, Jay and Silent Bob are worth the price of admission all by themselves. The film is frequently pedantic, and occasionally strays into sophomoric theology, but mostly it's funny and occasionally it's surprisingly profound. Plus, Alanis Morisette is an unexpectedly great casting choice, though I won't spoil the film by telling you why.
I suppose I shouldn't expect much from TV; after all, I'm doing the sit comatose thing most nights, not looking for inspirational, thought-provoking drama. But still...
As a writer, it's worthwhile taking a long step back and examining the gimmicks you're using to tell your readers what a character is thinking and feeling. It's easy to fall into the trap of overusing something that, infrequently used, might retain its ability to communicate. (In short: a little barfing goes a long way, thank you very much.) Overused, it becomes cliché and loses its impact. It also means you're getting lazy as a writer, and need to try something new to challenge yourself.
One constant in our TV watching: somewhere, somewhen, someone in one of our shows is going to vomit. No, really. I can't remember the last time we watched TV for more than an hour without at least one scene of someone vomiting. Some nights, we get an incident in every show. It's gotten so we can see it coming from a mile off, long before the character starts turning green about the gills.
I'm hard-pressed to imagine a failure of imagination so severe that Hollywood and their national network equivalents have no other way ("acting", say, or clever writing) to let us know that a character is feeling stressed beyond their meal-retention point. Possibly I should just shut up and be grateful that they've chosen regurgitation rather than defecation to communicate their point. (Having said that, I belatedly remember the -- literal -- cacodemon in Dogma, which we just watched the other night*.)
* On the whole, an excellent film, and worth it just to see baby Matt Damon and baby Ben Affleck, still barely old enough to grow a single beard between them. Plus, Jay and Silent Bob are worth the price of admission all by themselves. The film is frequently pedantic, and occasionally strays into sophomoric theology, but mostly it's funny and occasionally it's surprisingly profound. Plus, Alanis Morisette is an unexpectedly great casting choice, though I won't spoil the film by telling you why.
I suppose I shouldn't expect much from TV; after all, I'm doing the sit comatose thing most nights, not looking for inspirational, thought-provoking drama. But still...
As a writer, it's worthwhile taking a long step back and examining the gimmicks you're using to tell your readers what a character is thinking and feeling. It's easy to fall into the trap of overusing something that, infrequently used, might retain its ability to communicate. (In short: a little barfing goes a long way, thank you very much.) Overused, it becomes cliché and loses its impact. It also means you're getting lazy as a writer, and need to try something new to challenge yourself.