A Whole New World

Twitter.  You may have heard of it.  Me, I'm too verbose to be an early adopter of anything requiring concision.  140 characters?  Is that even enough room for a haiku?  I've got ThingsTo Say, people!

But if you want to get better at stuff, you've gotta do things that aren't a natural fit.  People use a phrase around here, "in his wheelhouse," meaning that a task plays to a person's known strengths, and thus they are the perfect choice, sure to succeed.

To a point.  On Season 3 of Sanctuary, I was fortunate to write a couple of episodes that were right down my alley, containing the sort of stories that I'm drawn to and known for writing.  In fact the second of my two Season 3 episodes, "Awakening," is one that I actively pursued being assigned to because I was so fond of its premise. 

In the course of writing Season 4, through the vagaries of scheduling and the needs of the ongoing story, the two scripts I wrote were well outside my usual specialty -- each in a different way.  For 403, "Untouchable," in particular, I had to tap into a style and structure that did not come naturally to me.  (More about the details of that after it airs. Spoilers, Sweetie!)  And you know what?  I am more proud of those two scripts than of anything I've done in a long time.  I had to really wake up and dig down to get 'em done, and the results are something I am very proud of.

So, lesson re-learned: Don't fall back on old tricks when you can embrace new challenges.

And so, finally, Twitter.  With ComiCon looming large in my sights, shiny new Smartphone in hand, I figured I'd jump in the deep end.  I quickly found myself tweeting from any place I was standing still -- and cursing when I couldn't get a wireless connection from inside the press room while I waited for the Sanctuary Cast to make their rounds.  No signal!  Unthinkable!

Yesterday I participated in an event organized by some of our Sanctuary publicity gurus, in honor of the release of our Season 3 DVD sets.  A number of cast and crew with Twitter Handles were recruited to play #SanctuaryTwitterTag for the day, passing a virtual baton around cyberspace by tagging one another with questions.  Of course it didn't go to plan -- which I soon realized was all for the best.  It would have been less fum and less memorable if it had all gone off without a hitch!  (This is another of those important life lessons, I assure you.)

At the end of the day, I saw tweets from fans that resonated with me, saying that they had found and were now following one another thanks to participating in the event.  I was reminded of the times when I was in frequent attendance at Highlander Conventions, realizing that while the panels with cast and crew are the initial reason for coming, after the first time the fans are gathering to see one another as much as to see us.  That they could have (and sometimes do have) awesome conventions without us showing up at all.  Their shared love is the glue to their community, online or off.  We are mere facilitators. 

And I figured out the secret to keeping it short on Twitter, too.  It's a conversation, not a lecture.  Characters on TV aren't supposed to make speeches longer than five lines, why would I? 

Except over here, of course.  Still got Things To Say.

Why We Fight

Jill Golick over at Running With Scissors posted a reminder of the underlying nature of the TV Business. The truth is somewhat grim, but enlightenment is always of value. She quotes Wade Rowland's very salient point that, while on a day to day basis we may think our job is to sell scripts to producers, or series to to networks, in fact it is not the shows that are the commodity of television -- it is the viewers. The entertainment value of our shows is not their purpose -- it is a means by which we obtain the attention of the audience, and that attention is what is then sold to advertisers.

Wow.

Humbling.

One interesting this about this model is that it highlights the similarities between traditional broadcast TV and the Web -- both places where the goal is to lure viewer eyeballs in a certain direction by any means necessary, and then put ads in front of those eyeballs.

Considering how superficially similar film and television are, it's sobering to realize that they are built on vastly different models. Films have more in common with books -- in both cases, the goal is to get the viewer to pay their own money to experience the fictional world you have built. But in the TV/Web model, as Rowland points out, the viewer is neither the buyer nor the seller -- they are what is being bought and sold.

This doesn't necessarily change the process of writing, per se -- the immediate goal, Be Interesting, still applies -- but it could change the way we think about our customers, when we realize just what we're really selling them. It's not our stories, or our personal brilliance as storytellers. It's our ability to draw attention.

It explains a lot.

Beyond the Frame

Here's my favorite fiction/reality blurring site of the moment:

http://www.eagleeyemovie.com/

Click on "Eagle Eye: Free Fall" to see what I mean.

Suddenly, I'm interested in seeing this movie.

The Future of Marketing Is The Future of Storytelling?

Last night at the "Breaking In Again" panel at the Writers Guild, a number of podcasters and webisode writers/producers/directors spoke about the future of what is now called "New Media" but will soon be known, we imagine, merely as "Media."

Mary Feuer, former head writer at lonelygirl15 and currently the writer/director of the "With The Angels" web series, premiering soon on Strike TV, talked about creating content that stretches beyond the video frame. Characters on lonelygirl15 had mySpace pages for their fictional selves. They created a website, rich with layered content, for a pharmaceutical company mentioned in the storyline.

Very recently, it was a groundbreaking idea to create an illusory reality online, reflecting the fictional world inhabited by TV Characters. Now, it's almost de rigeur to at the very least have a Barney's Blog, if not a whole Dunder Mifflin website. (Which I assume exists. Wait a sec.... Yep. It sure does.)

Which does create interesting creative challenges. Who blogs for the characters? Who vets those blogs to make sure they don't violate canon? The Official Network Website for a show I worked on recently had bonus content on it that was written by the PR department, using an old show bible and outdated pilot script -- the material was wildly off base.

Does the potentially infinite nature of this material create a barrier to entry at the same time as it creates an enhanced experience? Ideally, this additional material makes the story richer, and creates an interactive thrill for the participant who follows the trail and finds all the Easter eggs. But are there viewers who feel daunted by the mass of links they'd need to follow to become fully versed in a work of fiction, and back off?

YAARG!

Or is that YA ARG?

I recently heard about this new project from Scholastic books (hence the YA) called The 39 Clues, a sort of DaVinci Code for the under-16 set, that includes books, trading cards, and a real-time scavenger hunt that seems to spill out of the Internet into the real world (hence the ARG).

Although the attempt to create a Potter-esque phenomenon by design, as opposed to by catching lightning in a bottle, is fraught with pitfalls, they do seem to have a catchy premise, so I'll be watching with interest to see if it catches fire.

Does anyone else remember Masquerade?