Powerful Stories That Break Through the Stratosphere

There's a phenomenon in the world of fiction that I can't explain.  But when it happens, it's like magic.

We read a lot of novels during our lifetime (at least most do).  Probably a small percentage of those are truly bad books; the vast majority are average--you read it and say, "hey okay" then forget it and move on.  But if you're lucky, you'll read a handful of books that rock your world.  Books that are so good you are deeply and emotionally drained afterward.  Books that had such deeply developed characters you keep coming back to them and thinking about them and their situations again and again.

To me, it works the same for television.  I've watched a ton of TV shows in my day.  Each show has at least one episode that should never have seen the light of day it was so bad, several episodes that are average to good, and then a few that are stupendous and stick in your memory forever.

Last Monday's Hawaii Five-0 episode (11/21/11) for me was one of those stupendous, remember forever episodes.  I think it will stand as one of the best episodes of the entire series.  The episode appealed to me personally and as a writer.

Personally because the best way to press my buttons is to give me a book or a show that utilizes the concept of "the team coming together in a major crisis to back up one of their own."  When I think of the most memorable TV shows I can recall, they always follow this format.  For example, there's an episode of Gunsmoke in which Matt turns in his badge to go after the man who nearly killed Kitty.  But the entire town turns out to back him up and the effect was magic.  Ditto for a particular episode of The Young Riders--the Express riders were trying to defend a runaway slave, but when they themselves were endangered, the entire town showed up to save the day. For me, cinematically, nothing beats this type of story.

Enter the most recent Five-0 (btw, if you have not yet seen this episode, beware--SPOILER ALERT!!!!).  For a writer, this was a dream episode to study.  Sure, as writers of novels we don't have the advantage of conveying our stories on film, but we must still write powerful characters.

The reason this episode was so powerful was because of the depth of the characters and the careful attention to detail that they gave it.  I will cite only a few or this will turn into a dissertation. 8-) :

The character of Jenna Kaye:
She was a fun addition to the show last season and she worked because they didn't use her in every single episode.  In this episode, she betrayed Steve McGarrett in the worst possible way.  But even now, I'm very conflicted about her. 

I have a hard and fast rule.  No one messes with McGarrett and gets away with it.  NO ONE.  So I'm glad she was gunned down in the episode.  That said, even a week later I find myself conflicted--could I forgive her for what she did if I were in Steve's shoes? I honestly don't know.  Was she only sorry about how things turned out because Josh (her fiance) was dead?  If he HAD been alive would she have walked away and left Steve to be tortured to death by Wo Fat?  Jenna was smart and thought fast on her feet.  And who of us in her situation could maim the rapidly decomposing body of our fiance to pull a pin and give someone else a shot at survival?  That is DEEP stuff, and a deep character.  As a writer, if you write a character that leaves the reader thinking about characters THAT much, you have definitely arrived--you have captured the magic.  It's what any of us hope for in our fiction.  But it is so elusive a thing it is seldom achieved.

The Improved Danny Williams:
While Steve and Danny's partnership is the core of Hawaii Five-0, I didn't care much for Danny Williams in season 1.  While I appreciated his ever-present sense of humor, he came off as a jerk to me a lot of the time--unteachable, unbending, and apparently holding the belief that he was the only one who knew anything about police procedure or protocol.  The powers that be at CBS chose the perfect time to air this newest episode.  Had they filmed this episode during Season 1, I would not have bought into it.  Season 1 Danny Williams didn't have it in him to go to a hostile foreign country and rescue Steve.  Danny's character has grown a lot in season 2 and it makes him an all around better character.

As novelists, unless we're writing a series with recurring characters, we don't have a year and a half to develop the depth of our characters.  Nevertheless, we have to strive for depth in our characters, and to show how they've grown.  It's not easy, but the rewards are fabulous.

The Many Complexities of Steve McGarrett:
Talk about a character with limitless story potential.  We have a man living in two worlds--military and civilian law enforcement.  The dynamics of his family provide endless story opportunities and make him a character with many facets--and many conflicts.  While the every-day person's life may not be so dramatic, Steve McGarrett encompasses the question we all have to answer for ourselves--in life, we're going to get clobbered, get knocked down time and again.  How do you hold up over the years.  Do you overcome the setbacks or do the setbacks overcome you?  If one by one people betray your trust, at what point do you stop trusting?  You've got a smokin' bad Navy SEAL on one hand and a vulnerable guy on the other.  LOTS of character material to work with.

Attention to Detail:
The end of last Monday's episode as they left Korea in the helicopter is one of the most powerful I've ever seen.  The mix of seriousness and humor, the different character responses, and the attention to detail.  The musical score.  The acting was terrific.  But it was the details that impressed me most.  Take for example one small gesture.  They've just rescued a man who has been chained up, beaten and tortured.  And his comrades are smart enough to know this man--that the one thing he needs the most is to feel a sense of control after it has been stripped away from him--so they hand him one of the rifles, which he promptly checks and makes sure is ready to go.  To some, such a thing might seem a trifling detail in a fictional story, but that little trifling detail packed a world of power into it and spoke volumes not only of the recipient of that action, but those around him.

WOW.  I am so pleased to have had an opportunity to see this episode.  I am reminded again of the power of story.  And it encouraged me.  Truth is, I don't know if I'll ever be able to write a story with the depth and power of this one.  But it makes me more determined then ever to work hard at my craft.  Because you never know when one of your stories will be THE ONE.  That one story that rocks the world of its readers. 

There's no greater reward for a writer then when one of your stories drains your readers, for all the best and most powerful reasons.  It makes the endless hours of time investment all worth it.

Get Rid of Throw-Away Characters

I first touched on this issue in my October 11 post, which you can see here:

http://bkjackson.blogspot.com/2011/10/on-writing-does-adding-more-characters.html 

In that post, I mentioned the television show Hawaii Five-0 (modern version featuring Alex O’Loughlin), currently in its second season.  In that post I discussed the fact that the Five-0 powers that be added 2 new characters to the show this season, and whether that addition was a bad thing or a good thing.

One new character, Joe White, has actually had a distinct and unique purpose for being present on the show.  The other, a character named Officer Lori Weston, is what we call in fiction a throw-away character.

Five-0 just aired its 10th episode of the season on Monday night, so is almost half-way through this second season, assuming they film approximately 23-24 episodes per year.  In all of these episodes, not ONCE has the character of Weston done or said ANYTHING that only she could do.  All of her lines and scenes could easily have been performed by any of the other Five-0 team members.

While I love Five-0, and most of the season 2 episodes have been pretty good, I think the producers and powers that be at Five-0 have the same problem novel writers do—they find it very difficult to step back and admit when they need to cut one of their darlings.

We’ve all been there—written a character into our story that we personally were in love with.  We thought they were a marvelous addition to the story.  But then your crit partner or your editor gets a hold of your manuscript and tells you, “Sorry, but this character serves no useful purpose.  Get rid of them and give their scenes to one of the other characters in your book.”

OUCH!  It hurts.

I wish the powers at be at CBS would murder their darling and move on - bringing the show back to its successful core—the fab foursome of Steve, Danny, Chin & Kono (with occasional appearances by Joe White). 

I don’t know how many episodes are typically filmed before a series begins airing, but I hope that if we’re going to be stuck with Weston all season long (talk about unendurable torture), that when the DVD’s for season 2 become available, that they sell two versions.  I want to buy the season 2 DVD’s with Weston’s scenes cut out—that way I can take all that wasted time and use it for other, much more valuable things.

In the meantime, I think this has caused me to coin a new phrase for editing fiction.  Each time I read my own or someone else's work and I see a character who serves no purpose in the story, I can see myself getting my nice red pen and writing "Get rid of your Weston!".

So I guess that does give Weston's character one useful purpose after all. 8-)

Hawaii Five-0 aka "Hey Mikey, she likes it!"

We interrupt our regularly scheduled writer broadcasting to discuss fluff. 8-)

Anybody who knows me knows I hate remakes of any sort. Movies and television shows that get reincarnated almost always universally stink. I’m a firm believer that once the magic of a show is done, it’s done. There’s no going back.



Enter Hawaii Five-0 circa 2010. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually like this show.


But the whole thing is very weird.


I should preface my comments by saying that I don’t have cable TV (or TV at all), so I can’t actually watch the show. My only exposure to the new show is from watching the sole full episode (#19) that is available for viewing on the internet, and watching the many small film clips on hulu.com. I also perused some of the fan fiction, which, while it’s not uncommon for fanfic authors to write out-of-character of the show in question, you can still get a good baseline for the gist of a show.


By watching the many small film clips available, I’ve been able to piece together the gist of the show, and the main characters.


First the bad news. This show doesn’t appear to have much of anything in common with the old one. Yes, they took the same show title; the same character names (though Kono appears to have shrunk and had a sex change operation), a close theme song and a few seconds of similar opening credit photography (I especially like that they kept the “Steve McGarrett turning around on the high-rise” and the end scene with all the flashing lights and view of the city.)


But there the similarities end.


The only similarity I have noticed to the old show is that the original Steve McGarrett came from a naval intelligence background. So does this one.


But this Steve McGarrett is nothing like the old one. Without being able to see episodes, I still haven’t answered the big question in my mind.  The appeal of the old show was Steve’s intelligence, his ability to figure things out and outwit the bad guy. And there are Jack Lord mannerisms that are synonymous with Steve McGarrett to me such as the finger-snapping while he’s figuring things out.


I’ve seen no finger snapping. But that’s all right. They shouldn’t try to approximate Jack Lord’s unbeatable portrayal. I am seeing some of that intelligence and figuring out of things in this Steve McGarrett, but not enough to tell for sure how closely that parallels the old. But I really like who they selected to play Steve in this version (Alex O’Loughlin). He’s a great choice and I have quickly become drawn to him as a lead character. I can see lots of potential there if the show’s writing is good.


I also like the actor who plays Chin Ho Kelly. He seems to have a lot of charisma and appeal and I like the calm intelligence he portrays which I also recall was part of the original Chin’s character.


I’m still reeling a bit that they kept the Kono character’s name and gave him a sex change operation. Weird. Nevertheless, this Kono appears very likeable as well.


The character I have the most problems with is Danno. There is absolutely no similarity whatsoever between this Danno and the old. And that wouldn’t bother me so much except that this Danno comes across as extremely obnoxious a great deal of the time. While I think some degree of the antagonistic banter between him and Steve is needed, sometimes this actor, either by his choice or the producer’s, seems to go well over the top. Call it over-acting, call it unhoned instincts about a character. Whatever you call it, I hope that as Scott Caan settles into this role in subsequent seasons that he will tone it down just a little. As he comes across right now, if I were Steve I would be very hard pressed to work with him on a daily basis and would be tempted to dangle him off the edge of the high rise like he did a perp. No one wants to hang out with someone who is overly obnoxious all the time.


Maybe I will change my mind about him as more episodes are made available on the net. We’ll see. But right now, I view him as the weak link. But all it requires for a fix is to just scale back a titch on the obnoxiousness.


I love the macho, butt-kicking style of the show as I’ve seen it so far, but hope they will also allow for some good solid friendships to grow between the characters too. It would be nice to sense that it’s not just all macho bluff and bluster (even Kono-ette seems good at carrying out macho bluff and bluster), but genuine caring as well. I haven’t been able to absorb that from the film clips I’ve seen thus far.


Mostly, I’m just reeling at the fact that I actually LIKE a remake. Mark this date on your calendars. LOL! And it’s the first time since I gave up watching television in 1992, that I wished I had TV.