I’ve spent the Summer editing my debut romance novel, set for publication in February. It’s called SO THIS IS HAPPENING and it’s a workplace dramedy.
The fact that I’ve been so preoccupied with my book means that every time I watch or read something, I’m compelled to scrutinize it. Naturally, this has led me to compile an exhaustive watchlist, judged almost entirely by criteria dictated by wherever I happen to be in the writing process.
The list is getting long so I’m doing you all a favor and breaking it out into a 1+ posts.
Before we start, however, a special shout out to Francesca Bossert, fellow romance author for THE EMPRESS and all around good samaritan who kindly offered to animate my book cover. Given travel plays a key part in my book, it’s such a beautiful tribute to the story. Not to mention, seeing Becca and Royce full of life and dimension. Check it out:
I’ll start with ripping off the band-aid because why not get the hard one out of the way early. Here are a few things I’ve watched recently that could have benefited from the editing room.
Project Hail Mary: This film, adapted from Andy Weir’s (The Martian) novel of the same name, has been equally cherished by fans and critics. Ryan Gosling, its star, can carry any film or SNL episode. That is for sure. He can sing, dance, act and make our hearts swoon. And power up vibrators too, apparently, but that’s something you’ll need to read my book to learn more about. Either way, what I learned from this 2.5 hour film is male directors love to give their audiences BIG films they think are worthy of being extra long, when 9/10 times they aren’t. Just ask Christopher Nolan whose last film to come in just shy of 2:30 was 2010’s Inception. Coincidentally, it was also his last decent film.*
The Skinny: This film could have been done and done in a tight 1:45 with fewer cinematic montages and back story expos (that no one asked for) and more Rocky and Ryan scenes because the heart of the film is the ET construct. Never doubt the powerful connection between an alien and his or her human. Just don’t.
Alice & Steve: The mid-life British Gen X dramedy about two good friends who stop being friends when he starts dating her adult daughter is not worth the watch. Despite the acting talents and chemistry of its stars, including Flight of the Concords’ Jemaine Clement, and Nicola Walker (The Split, Annika, and my personal fav, Last Tango in Halifax), the script creates obstacles that even a seasoned comic, like Clement, can’t rescue himself from.
The Skinny: The show was so packed with throwaway jokes and examples of neurotic interiority being externalized that it ultimately killed the setup. And that’s coming from a person who could watch Curb Your Enthusiasm re-runs non-stop. I’m not sure the show was salvageable regardless, but the parting shot involving Clement and Walker’s characters did demonstrate what we’d all wanted to do after watching the first fifteen minutes.
Writer Lesson: I hate killing words, but damnit, you need to. Most of it’s ego. Really, it is. Focus on the primary story you’re telling and taking the reader along in the cleanest, possible way. Also, don’t get too voiceover-y in your writing. Interiority is hard and should be used sparingly. Move to the action - the dialogue, the movement, the interplay between the senses. I often think about author Joan Didion when I think about pacing and rhythm of novels.
“As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs.”
Plus, you can pull all your unused jokes and deep cuts into a “parking lot” as Alisa Kennedy Jones and I discussed!
Lastly, Project Hail Mary’s best moments center on the budding connection between two life forms, who on paper having nothing in common. It’s the relationship that makes the film, not the science, which is really just window dressing.
* 2017’s Dunkirk came in under 2 hrs but that’s likely a technicality given how expensive it was to make (between $100-150 million).
Silo, Season Whatever: This sci-fi show on Apple TV+ about the end of times, where humanity is holed up in bunkers because the climate has become so catastrophic, used to feel a lot more far-fetched. These days, it’s more like: “Oh, the air quality is so bad the sky is orange? Okay. Just another Tuesday in the Northeast during wildfire season.” “Oh, wait, we have a wildfire season, now?” Wait, what’s the protocol? Well, wearing masks, as always, which inhabitants of this show know a thing or two about.
Ferguson in “Silo” The Skinny: This show is all about mystery and suspense which naturally lend themselves to lying. Fine, Hey, I’m a paying Britbox subscriber now and an Agatha Christie card-carrying fan of just about any Poirot or Marple adaptation from this century and of course, Ustinov, but where I start to see red, is when there are so many lies on a show you can’t even track the story. Doesn’t help that we have to wait at least a year between seasons. Now they’re giving “Vitamin D” to the Silo residents, which is a forgetting drug. Between the characters forgetting what’s happening and my perimenopausal haze, this show is really starting to lose a key demographic: me. Don’t get me started on the two timelines popping up this season which take place 300 years apart.
Writer Lesson: I mentioned keeping it simple with the word volume in the KILL YOUR DARLINGS section, but the bigger lesson here is don’t get too cocky that you take your audience/readers for granted. Keep them in the story. That also assumes there is a story, a primary one, that you’re invested in telling. The multiple off ramps make sense for a “Choose Your Own Adventure” pathway but not for a story with a heroine you’re rooting for, like Juliette in Silo. And don’t give your main character amnesia. That’s a minor grievance. But they are your eyes and ears, and you need a quasi-reliable narrator, after all.
Not Suitable for Work: One of my Summer binge shows has been a Mindy Kaling one. I love her brand of funny. Who doesn’t love Never Have I Ever, Sex Lives of College Girls, The Mindy Show, etc.? But where her latest one, about young professional twenty-somethings living in Murray Hill, went off course was when every character started sounding like Mindy. Most notably Kell Washington (Nicholas Duvernay), a nice, aspiring actor on the show. The dialogue felt inauthentic and, after a while, hard to listen to. I would still watch a season two because this is Kaling, but listening to her characters on this show really highlighted the importance of character voice, which leads me to the next lesson.
Writer Lesson: Read your work out loud. It probably doesn’t hurt do it in the voice of the character you are envisioning. This will ensure you nail their manner of speaking. One issue I find as I review my manuscript is word bias. I love the words “Fair” or “True” (don’t psychoanalyze this) and then, at some point, realize I’ve given them to both main characters. The problem is that “fair” really belongs to the more socially justice-oriented character. It’s not to say that people who are around each other a lot don’t influence one another’s ways of speaking, but try and be true to what a character will say and how they will say it. Oh, and don’t write people speaking English as a second language who speak English perfectly. This doesn’t make sense, unless they learned English as a kid. Ultimately it’s more than just words when it comes to voice, but start there!
Kylie: Pop princess Kylie Minogue has had a long career, and, naturally, it’s had its ups and downs. Her journey is documented in a new three-part Netflix series. I can’t say the documentary made me more or less interested in her, beyond reminding me of some of her early hits and her Neighbours career. And her relationship with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence. But I did appreciate Kylie’s approach to her life and career. She knows what she’s good at, and she leans the hell into it. In her case, that’s pop music. She experimented with indie music for a while and acting, of course, but found her way back to pop in her 30s.
Ted Lasso, Season 4: Ted is back, and that’s good, because Jason Sudeikis is basically Ted Lasso at this point. The first episode of the current season is out, and Ted is going back to Richmond, U.K., this time coaching a women’s football team. What I liked about the first episode is that the show’s trademark warmth and fuzziness, along with its willingness to lean hard into cringe, are all still on full display. This show knows exactly what it needs to do. And that is, end every episode with a heartwarming, life-affirming scene or two set to a Mumford & Sons song which is sure to elicit a least a waterfall of tears from yours truly. And it delivers. Every single time. Because, of course it does.
Writer Lesson: Play to your strengths. You won’t be able to do everything well. In my case, it’s that I don’t particularly write closed door steaminess well. I may never be 5/5 on the spicy romance, chili peppers scale, but funny, situational rom-comedy with a touch of grief and emotional depth, backed by really funny chosen family. Yes. I can do that. Oh and I can write the hell out out of a workplace. Did yo hear that Mindy Kaling? Oh, and I’m taking calls, too.
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