While watching the NBC show, Heroes and the new Fox television show Drive, I noticed something that has become a great revelation to me. NBC with Heroes, CBS with Jericho, Fox with Drive, and ABC with Lost have discovered the key to making a new TV show stick. So if you ever have wanted to work for Hollywood and make great shows, I am about to give you a leg up on everyone else and you will become known worldwide. Here is it:If you every do a TV Series, always start in the middle of the story, then start telling from that point and fill in back story as you go while at the same time moving the story along.
That is it. That is what is going on with Heroes, Jericho, Drive, Lost and any “mainstream hit” correctly on the major networks. This is what all these shows are doing. They start you from a confused point, just like the main character so you can relate to them and what is going on and as the main character learns more, you learn more. So obvious, right? I am sure a lot of you missed this too? But then I though back to when was the first time I remember seeing this on TV and the first shows that came to me were The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and the Prisoner. They did this same thing and all these show were hits of their day. Hell even the greatest sci-fi show of all times, Babylon 5 did this. That is the “new” secret to do a great show.
And now I realize I did the same thing when I created NeoExodus, but I did it all by accident. Or did I know what I was doing deep down? Who knows? Just think about it for a second and tell me what story you could create with this new information. Talk to you later…
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ReplyDeleteA lot of great novels do the same thing - I believe that the term is "In Medias Res". It's a great plot device to hook the readers from the get-go.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res