So Many Words, So Little Time

Stephen King – one of my favorite writers of all time, at least until he abandoned the horror genre in favor of more literary and sci-fi fare – gave an interview to Parade magazine this weekend. He told the Sunday freebie that he wrote 1500 words a day. He didn’t say how long it took him to write those words, or whether that was every day or just weekdays minus holidays, but knowing King’s output, I’d imagine it’s every freaking day of the week.

King has worked hard and built a career to envy. He can write whatever he wants. He can live wherever he wants. He can play in a rock band with other writers. His kids are writers, too. He can write TV shows if he wants, or movies, or novellas, and his work gets gobbled up like those past-eating dinosaurs in The Langoliers.

He was also the victim of my one-and-only act of literary plagiarism, committed when I was 12. My mother had signed me up for a summer writing workshop, held in the living room of a local author, and had demanded that I write something to give to the woman. Not as prolific at writing on demand as I am now, I cobbled together a short story based heavily on a character’s dream in King’s novel ‘Salem’s Lot. I changed things around, but it was still King’s idea, and when I told the instructor that King was my favorite author and she proceeded to devour his books like Cujo terrorizing the woods of Maine, I spent every session in dread that she would confront me over my theft. She never did, but obviously the guilt still haunts like Sara Tidwell.

My desire to be Stephen King has waned little since. I even have a vampire novel (based on my vampire screenplay) whose mythology was largely inspired by ‘Salem’s Lot and is only a draft or two away from a self-published birth.

However, I am a long, long way from 1500 words a day. What could I accomplish with that much output? I currently force myself to cough up 5000 words a week – 1250 a day, with Fridays off. I’m close to finishing the first draft of my second novel (the vampire novel clocks in at 30K, meaning I have to double it before I can even consider uploading it somewhere.)

There have been days when the writing just flows, when I go over the 1250 without even trying, when my characters speak to me and the plot points hit their targets without effort. But most days I want to pull out my eyelashes. Scenes feel flat, dialogue goes on way too long, and transitions are obvious and clunky. Those days, the writing is just torture and I have to drag myself across the 1250 finish line.

And then when I finally hit “the end,” I know what’s waiting for me. My first drafts aren’t structural marvels of graceful plotting and character growth. They’re way too long; they have subplots that add nothing to the main plot; they have scenes just for laughs that lead nowhere. I know writing is rewriting; for me, it’s also amputation. Followed by transplant.

Several years ago, King wrote a memoir/writing book in which he shared an edited section of one of his published works. The editing was all in the writing. A few adverbs exorcised; some sentences reworked or cut altogether and he was good to go. The plot and characters, it seemed, were all there in the first draft. All he needed to do was polish the writing.

Is there a trick to meeting a word count when the work isn’t flowing? Is there a magic formula when it comes to constructing plot and creating character, one that enables a writer to get them right the first time? If so, I haven’t figured it out.

As is typical for me when I can see “the end” from my current word count, my head is filled with stories. Not the story I’m working on, of course, but the story I want to write next. There’s a mystery. There’s another mystery. There’s the YA I was working on last summer and the YA that sprung up in my head last week. And another women’s fiction novel. After all, I’ve written two already (counting my current WIP). And with romance being the best-selling genre, shouldn’t I try my hand at one of those as well?

The only way I’ll be able to write all the stories I want to tell is if I buckle down to a 1500-word a day requirement. Of course, Stephen King doesn’t have to work as hard to do his own sales and marketing as we indie writers do. Maybe if he did, he’d cut down his word count a little. Say, to 1250 words a day, four days a week.

I still wish I were Stephen King.

TV: From a Vast Wasteland to Another Cultural Obligation

I’m avoiding my DVR.

My DVR currently holds 20 hours of TV, including the last several episodes of critically acclaimed shows like Bates Motel and Hannibal. To watch 20 hours of TV takes about… 20 hours. In other words, an entire part-time job for the week. And that doesn’t count upcoming TV for this week; the season finales of Bates Motel, Nashville and my daily dose of General Hospital.

TV used to be a way to simply veg out after a long day, and I suppose to those whose diets include heavy doses of reality fare, it’s still that way. But now that we’re in the second Golden Age of Television, where every new Showtime or AMC or FX show is not only a major commentary on past and current political and social constructs, TV is no longer a relaxation tool. It’s the visual equivalent of a college-level English class.

Here’s a short list (in no particular order) of the impactful shows that thoughtful Americans are supposed to be following: The Walking Dead, Mad Men, Nurse Jackie, Homefront, Veep, Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife, House of Cards, Breaking Bad, Bates Motel, The Following, The Americans, Game of Thrones, the Good Wife, Nashville, Hannibal, Scandal, The Killing, Top of the Lake, Rectify. You know these shows are important because not only do they get reviewed in Entertainment Weekly, but their writers and actors are featured in the New York Times, Time magazine, and the New Yorker. And please note that this list contains only the impactful shows. If you want to keep up with what the chattering classes are watching, there’s no time for Grey’s Anatomy, Bones, or any reality show. Yes, even the Bachelor.

Once upon a time, there were only three channels (four if you count PBS, but most people didn’t), and TV took a break in the summer. Now there are hundreds of TV channels, Hulu, and Netflix is streaming original content. Add Arrested Development to the list above when its second life premieres. And if there’s any show you didn’t get around to watching during its first incarnation, Netflix will helpfully stream all seven seasons so you can “binge-watch.” Yes, it’s not enough just to watch one episode a week if you’re watching on Netflix. You have to take a weekend and watch one after the other till your eyes bleed and your bladder throbs.

First world problems, indeed.

There are now so many choices, and the choices are so good and so important and so high-brow, that good TV has now become another obligation, like closely tracking political news and following obscure but fabulous people on Twitter. I know I should be watching Downton Abbey, but by this point I have like three seasons to catch up on, and no matter how wonderful it apparently is, and hearing the spoilers doesn’t hurt because I have no idea who these people are, watching Downton Abbey has all the appeal of re-reading Dickens’ “Bleak House.”

Maybe instead of watching a mini-marathon of Bates Motel episodes to prepare for tonight’s season finale, I should just turn on my Kindle and pick a good book instead.

Oh my god, I have thirteen new books on my Kindle…

The Mother's Day Hangover

With yesterday being Mother’s Day, a lot of blogs and twitter feeds I follow were bursting with stories about cute-but-screaming babies, cute-but-messy toddlers, cute-but-bratty grade schoolers. There are a lot of Mommy blogs out there, and they are mostly funny and the kids are adorable, but it does seem like “Mommy” now means a woman who has children under the age of 13 or so. There’s not a whole lot of talk out in the blogosphere about kids with raging acne or who are failing physics or who make Sue Heck look like Homecoming Queen by comparison. Maybe it’s because outlets like Facebook have taught us that social media is used solely for the purpose of bragging about our children, and since they aren’t so adorable at 15 and perhaps aren’t getting straight A’s or quarterbacking the state champion football team, parents of teenagers keep quiet unless there’s bragging rights to be claimed. Or maybe it’s because that phrase “little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems” has never been more true, and we’re all terrified that our children – only a few years away from legal adulthood – are making huge mistakes that will doom them to living out life in our basements, juggling jobs as waiters and Wal-Mart cashiers, their fancy college degrees gathering dust in the corner.

Unemployment rates can be parsed however you want, but the fact remains that new college graduates are mostly working at jobs that do not require a college education. The fact also remains that once a college graduate has stepped onto the Wal-Mart trajectory, the changes of stepping back off and onto a professional track grow harder and harder as time goes by. So while our kids kill themselves to get into good colleges and we kill ourselves trying to pay for them and save for retirement at the same time, that college degree is no longer the guarantee it was once, a ticket to a middle-class life.

For parents who are my age, it’s doubly frustrating because it’s such a different situation than what we dealt with. My parents were gracious enough to be born a few years before the baby boomers, and, as such, we Generation X parents were a baby-bust echo. There were plenty of college seats to go around. Kids who didn’t work hard in high school were assumed to be underachievers whose needs simply weren’t being met, rather than lazy-asses who couldn’t be bothered to crack a book. The University of Maryland, College Park would admit just about anyone who got over 1000 on the SATs.

As for jobs after college, nearly everyone I graduated with had a professional position within a few months. Granted, I believe things were a bit more challenging for the women I went to school with – there was still a lot of talk about needing to start somewhere as a secretary first; talk I’m pretty sure the male graduates didn’t hear – but I had my own business cards less than six months after graduating, and while the workforce was an up-and-down place, especially after I had a baby, there was never any time where I felt that I’d made a mistake that was going to doom me for life. Having earned that degree put me on a completely different path than those who don’t, and every time I log onto Facebook and check the statuses of the people I went to school with, there’s a bright red line separating those of us who had college degrees four years after we graduated high school, and those of us who did not.

Today’s young adults cannot say the same. And that’s why the “big kid/big problem” looms so ominously. Never before has each misstep made by a teenager seemed so consequential. Twenty years ago, if a kid overslept and missed an interview for an internship, it was no big deal. Today, it seems that each opportunity is so rare and so important, oversleeping or a flat tire or a just plain bad interview will ensure that the kid spends the rest of his life in your basement, working at McDonald’s and giving you some illegitimate grandchildren.

Sociologists say that this generation of young adults, currently in college and freshly graduated, is the first one who will not do better than their parents. Is there anything more ironic? My generation of parents is the helicopter parent generation. We quit our jobs to make sure someone was available to drive them to soccer practice; we argued with their math teachers over how homework was graded; we hired tutors to help them write college essays and we gave them a pass on the after-school jobs we were required to take so they could play sports or volunteer or do something that looked better on their college applications than scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. And now it seems that all this helicoptering has been for naught; that in fact it may have boomeranged right back on us just like our children have, by teaching them that a door is too hard to open if we are not there to open it for them.

My parents were not helicopter parents; they had their own lives and pretty much left me alone to figure out mine. But in one respect, my father was a better helicopter parent than I’ve been so far. I ended up majoring in his profession, and he got me my first job out of college. That job led to my second, which led to my third, which ended up with me having an impressive career until my husband’s winner-take-all position led me to chose between my own job and my child. Because of that, I am not in a position to help him get his first job, even though he’s interested in similar work. If I had stayed, rather than quitting in order to take better care of him, I’d be in a much better position to help him secure that all-important first job. Instead, all I can do is offer ideas and nag.

I don’t know whether it’s the helicopter parenting that made our kids unable to get a professional job out of college (I hear horror stories sometimes about parents accompanying their kids to job interviews or calling their kids’ bosses) or it’s just a bad economy in which companies aren’t hiring because they don’t have to – their exempt workers are putting in 60-hour weeks and Republicans are kindly working to abolish overtime for those who are non-exempt. But the result is the same – college graduates who can’t get a job better than working reception at the local gym; taking out huge loans for a graduate-level degree that won’t guarantee a job either… and the government accepting that this is the new normal by requiring health insurance companies to keep “kids” on their parents’ policies till they are 26. When I was 26, I was married, had a full-time professional job, a house and a baby.

The irony of Mother’s Day is that it’s the one day where Mom is supposed to be pampered, in recognition of the 364 other days of the year when she’s busting her butt taking care of other people. We do this as an investment in the future – we work for our kids so they’ll be hard-working, successful, professional adults who’ll someday give us grandchildren to coo over and babysit occasionally. But now the future looks disturbingly like the present, except that instead of cute 7-year-olds watching TV on the couch, it’ll be not-so-cute 27-year-olds who are there, waiting for dinner while they play their videogames, wondering what happened to the 17-year-old who graduated high school with honors and matriculated to the college of his dreams. As for the parents, the “Mother’s Day Hangover” could last just as long as active motherho

What Good Writers Can Learn From Bad Writing

Before we are writers, we are readers. From our earliest days in school, the written word is an important part of the curriculum. In kindergarten we start with classics such as “The Very Hungry Caterpillar.” As grade school continues, we are taught to write paragraphs that start with a topic sentence, include two-to-three supporting sentences, and then finish with the concluding sentence. At the same time, we are taught books that have won prestigious awards. When I was in school in the 1970s, it was “Where the Red Fern Grows,” “Up a Road Slowly,” “My Side of the Mountain.” My son, in grade school in the 2000s, read books like “The View from Saturday,” “Sarah, Plain and Tall,” and “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.” Both of us, in high school, read some of the same books despite the 25 year age difference between us: “Lord of the Flies,” “The Great Gatsby.” The writing instruction expands to research papers – we are taught to create a thesis, cite research to support our arguments, and write a compelling conclusion. Many of these papers are written about these books, talking about the symbolism of certain blinking lights or talking pig heads. We are taught to dissect the language, the metaphors, the overall meaning of these great books.

Yet, what these books do not teach us is how to be a great writer – or even a good one. Most K-12 English classes have their students write essays. Maybe there’s an occasional short story, but the concentration is more on understanding what makes a great book great – not how to create a great book yourself. In college, only students who major in English or creative writing might have the opportunity to take such classes.

As an adult, I read many books on fiction and took lots of classes in order to make myself a better writer. These classes rarely use passages from great books; rather, there’s a lot of generalized instruction on how to build a character or establish a setting. Some of these books might also offer suggestions on traps to avoid, but without being exposed to them (Hemingway, for instance, didn’t have such problems), how does a writer know what they look like?

I’ve spent the past year reviewing books for chicklitcentral.com, many of which had been self-published. While several of these books had problems so deep that the site ended up not publishing the review, reading these books was as much an education for me as the classics. A book on writing fiction may advise the writer to avoid episodic storytelling, for example, but until I read a novel that was a series of minor adventures rather than one all-encompassing story, I didn’t realize how that type of storytelling affected pacing and minimized the impact of the climax and conclusion.

Writers can learn just as much from bad writing as they can from good writing. Seeing other people’s mistakes in action is the best way to see exactly what those mistakes look like, and the best way to avoid making these mistakes yourself.

Over the past year, I’ve been lucky enough to read books lacking conflict, overloaded with back story, featuring protagonists who were absolutely flawless, uneven tone, and unrealistic love interests. I consider myself lucky because seeing (or reading) these problems in action illustrated them for me in a way that just reading about them on a check list cannot do.

Does this guarantee I won’t make the same mistakes in my writing? Of course not. Does it guarantee that I won’t make different, perhaps even exotic errors with my current WIP? Absolutely not. No books are flawless, and the writing process is fundamentally different than the reading and editing processes. But I do think that having read such books make me more aware from the beginning of how these mistakes play out, and what to avoid from a plot and character standpoint.

So the next time you check out an interesting book only to discover loads of bad reviews, consider downloading it anyway. Reading it may not be all that entertaining, but it could be instructive.

She Ain't Heavy, She's My Daughter

One of the most interesting books I’ve read this year was “The Heavy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Diet, A Memoir,” by Dara-Lynn Weiss. It’s the story of how Weiss helped her nearly obese 7-year-old daughter Bea overcome her food addiction and achieve a healthy weight. With all the talk about childhood obesity, Weiss has firsthand experience with how difficult the battle is. It’s not about adding more time at recess or swapping white bread for wheat bread. Bea was an active child with healthy eating habits who did not drink soda. Weiss did not take her daughter to McDonald’s every day. Yet Bea’s body told her to eat more food than it required to run, and the excess pounds kept piling on. Most of the book is about Weiss’ struggle to help Bea control the urge to eat. In the beginning, she concentrates on making sure her daughter has plenty of healthy food and no sweets. But the weight stays on. It’s only when Weiss begins counting her daughter’s calories does the weight loss become consistent. The book ends happily – Bea achieves a normal weight and is able to control her urges when she goes off to sleep-away camp.

I found the book interesting because I’ve always thought there was a fundamental difference between people who were naturally skinny and those of us who aren’t. I remember in high school going over to a friend’s house whose mother had just baked chocolate chip cookies. The scent was overpowering. I would have eaten every single one of them if I could. My friend had half a cookie. She just wasn’t hungry, she explained. Needless to say, this friend was quite skinny, and I was not.

Weiss notes that from the time Bea was eating solid foods, she liked just about everything Weiss put in front of her, and was a charter member of the clean plate club. The girl’s eating habits were innate; she was born with a body telling her to eat more than it needed. “She complained constantly of being hungry,” Weiss writes. “She polished off adult-sized plates of food. Other kids didn’t.”

I can’t imagine what it took for someone as young as Bea to learn to ignore the messages from her body, chose healthy foods, and stop eating before she felt satiated. Except for the naturally skinny (an ever-dwindling population), these are abilities most adults don’t have. Weiss did an amazing job helping her daughter lose weight even while she was terrified she’d lead her daughter down “an unhealthy path of food obsession and body image problems.” I hope that Weiss keeps readers updated on her daughter’s progress as she grows older. Unfortunately, I doubt that she’ll do that because Weiss has been vilified by the public.

Before Weiss published the book, she and Bea were the subject of an article in Vogue. Perhaps because of the magazine’s content, perhaps because an article couldn’t capture the entire nature of Bea’s problem, Weiss was not seen as a woman who rescued her daughter from a lifetime of illness and ridicule. She was seen as a shrew who literally took candy from a baby. When the article was published, it reached far more than the Vogue readership. Excerpts appeared everywhere online, and the commentary was brutal. Weiss was a vain, self-centered New Yorker who was starving her child in order to have her conform to the “Vogue” beauty standard.

Not surprisingly, Weiss was crushed. She had helped her daughter with a serious medical issue, and she had thought she might be able to help other parents in similar situations. Instead, she was being called a monster.

I wouldn’t blame Weiss if she took Bea into hiding for the rest of her life as a result of this treatment. But it would be a shame if she did. Weiss learned so much during this process, and there is so much we can learn from her and Bea. Did the diet really enable Bea to overcome her food addiction, or did she develop some kind of amazing willpower that allowed her bypass all the desserts offered at camp? As someone who struggles with this issue every day, I want to know how she did it.

Weiss’ treatment illustrates the amazing hypocrisy there is toward the country’s obesity issues, at both the child and adult level. While child obesity levels have become alarming, Weiss’ story illustrates that the offered solutions won’t cut it. It’s not about activity levels or the content of school lunches. But pointing that out and restricting a child to an appropriate amount of calories – even a child who is obviously heavy and obviously consuming more food than she needs – is seen as harmful behavior. Yet when that child grows into an obese adult, he or she is shamed and blamed for making poor food choices. The obese, we have decided, did it to themselves.

Yet every day more and more research is published showing that humans have little control over their appetites. “Salt Sugar Fat” discusses food manufacturers’ deliberate formulas that make their products addictive. Studies of bacteria in the gut reveal that the obese carry different microbes than skinny people. Gastric bypass surgery, once seen as a last resort for the heaviest of the heavy, is shown to have an immediate, positive effect on controlling the appetite – and also plays a factor in the stomach bacteria.

Yet solutions less drastic than surgery are still few and far between. Meanwhile, every day it seems there is another article about superskinny models or mannequins or Photoshopped pictures. When two-thirds of Americans are overweight, I am not sure that the superskinny models are part of the problem. I do not see a superskinny model and eat a gallon of ice cream in response. Yes, I’m sad that my abs will never look like hers. But I know that she’s been Photoshopped and probably has a drug problem in order to cope with the fact that she’s only allowed 100 calories a day.

America has an obesity problem. And it’s not caused by videogames or school lunches or kids not walking home from school. As a nation, adults and children alike have lost touch with their innate hunger and satiety sensors. We can no longer self-regulate our appetites and are forced to use external clues, such as calorie counts and measuring cups, to tell us when to stop eating. Dara-Lynn Weiss has an important story to tell about how a young child learned to regulate her overeating. It would be a real loss if judgmental, hypocritical voices stop her from sharing this journey.

Looking for Mr. (or Ms!) Right Agent

The good news is, I finally finished the revision of my novel. It’s off to the publishers who requested it back in December, and I’ve returned to the chore of querying agents. I’m hoping that the fact that two publishers are looking at it will make the book more appealing – after all, if publishers are already looking at it, that answers the question about whether it’s commercial, right?

I know there are some writers who love this process – they’re the ones who are combing through the writer’s guide to agents before they’re even finished their first drafts – but I am definitely not one of them. (I would much rather be working on my next novel, or outlining that new idea I had for a screenplay, or reading someone else’s book.) While it’s gratifying that there are many agents out there who say they are looking at new writers and want to read women’s fiction, it still feels like an exercise in futility. I know the statistics on first time writers and the slush pile. I know how much work it takes for an agent to sell a new book by a first-time writer. Just those two factors are depressing enough.

Even worse is when I look at these agents’ web sites to see what specifically they’re looking for, beyond genre. They set extremely high standards and very low standards at the same time. They warn writers to proofread their work; not to depend completely on spell check. And then they say they’re looking for “exquisite writing,” “characters that move and inspire,” “amazing, unique voices.” I wilt in the face of these requirements. (I can proofread, however.)

I understand an agent, who receives hundreds of queries a month, wanting to represent only the brightest, shiniest properties available. As a reader, though I am not looking for the qualities that move them. I don’t want exquisite writing. I want writing that tells the story in such a way that the writing becomes invisible. (There’s a joke about movie reviewing; that appreciating the cinematography is a way of saying you didn’t appreciate the plot. I feel the same way about the “exquisite writing” comment. If it’s the fancy turns of phrase that caught your eye, what does that say about the characters or plot twists?) I don’t need characters that move and inspire; I want characters I can identify with. As for voice? I’m looking for plot.

Yes, I’m a reader/book reviewer, but when I take a look at the bestseller’s list, it seems to me that many readers agree with me. The biggest sellers are propelled by the best plot twists. If I were an agent, “commercial potential” would be the number one factor I’d be looking for.

And truthfully, my writing is not exquisite. I don’t spend a lot of time describing flowers or sunsets or the way the sunlight sparkles off my heroine’s hair like so many tiny diamonds. My characters are average women in specific situations. I believe my biggest strengths as a writer are dialogue and structure. Is that enough?

I have a list of about 50 agents, and I’m hopeful, but not too much. I know the odds. And at the same time, I’ve met a lot of women’s fiction writers through Facebook over the past year, and nearly all of them have gone the self-publishing route, and they seem happy. Still, I’m not ready to put that dream aside – the one where my book is published by a major house, where I’m not paying out of pocket for editing, cover design and distribution. And I’d much rather spend my time working on my next book rather than marketing this one.

Whatever happens, I’ll let you know.

PS: For those of you who are curious, here’s my one-paragraph synopsis of my novel, “Keeping Score” – women’s fiction at 89,000 words:

Divorced mom Shannon Stevens and her best friend Jennifer spend every weekend on the sidelines, cheering on their 9-year-old sons in their soccer and baseball games. When Shannon’s son Sam decides to go out for a summer travel baseball team, Shannon is sucked into a mad world of rigged try-outs, professional coaches, and personal hitting instructors. But it’s the crazy, competitive parents who really make Shannon’s life miserable. Their sons are all Derek Jeter and Bryce Harper, and Sam isn’t fit to fetch their foul balls. Even Jennifer succumbs to the competition, placing her son Matthew on a top travel team and keeping Sam from earning a spot. Sam winds up on a struggling team that constantly loses to Matthew’s, and Shannon winds up in a flirtation with Matthew’s coach. Can she really date the man who didn’t think Sam was good enough for his team? As Sam works to make friends, win games and become a better baseball player, Shannon tries to keep from becoming one of those crazy baseball parents herself. In this world, it’s not about whether you win, lose, or how you play the game… it’s all about KEEPING SCORE.

Nashville and Smash: Why One Worked and the Other One Didn’t

Last year, two rather similar TV shows debuted to impressive press coverage and ratings. Smash, a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of a Broadway musical, was produced by Steven Spielberg, featured Angelica Huston and held the promise of a real Broadway musical being staged from the TV version. And Nashville was created by “Thelma and Louise” scriptwriter Callie Khouri, produced by her Nashville-producer husband T. Bone Burnett, starred Connie Britton, and held the promise of real country hits coming out of the TV show.

With NBC banishing Smash to the graveyard of Saturday nights, it’s obvious that one of these shows succeeded while the other failed. And while there’s been plenty of press given to Smash’s former showrunner and her personal and professional failings, as always, a close look at the storytelling reveals what worked for Nashville and what was sorely missing from Smash.

When the shows first debuted, I was more interested in Smash. I love big, splashy Broadway musicals; when I was ten I tried to write my own musical based on an album of my parents’. I love Wicked so much I’ve seen it four times, and Smash star Megan Hilty played Glinda. And it’s New York! Nashville, on the other hand, was about country music, which I can’t stand. But it starred Connie Britton, and who doesn’t love Connie?

Right from the start, both shows were structured in a way that foresaw its success or doom. Nashville featured three point-of-view characters – Juliette, who was on top and trying to stay that way; Rayna, who’d once been on top and who was trying to stay relevant, and Scarlett, who was at the bottom of the ladder and looking for a way to step up. Smash, on the other hand, has a plethora of point-of-view characters – Tom, Julia, Karen, Ivy, Derek, Eileen, and Jimmy. Originally, the show was centered around whether Karen or Ivy would be selected to play Marilyn, and while that question is a little too narrow to sustain a show, limiting the points of view to Karen and Ivy (and perhaps Julia) would have given the program a greater sense of focus and urgency. (A point of view character in a TV program is any character whose actions and goals drive a plot line.) Furthermore, as characters Karen and Ivy were just too similarly situated. Karen was fresh off the farm, but chorus-girl Ivy was looking for her big break-out role – they were only a rung or two separated from each other on the ladder. The show would have been quite different had Ivy been a Rayna James or a Juliette Barnes competing with Karen’s Scarlett-like character.

Nashville also features an important element that Smash is sorely lacking – a “will they or won’t they” couple for fans to root for. Guitar-player Deacon has never gotten over ex-lover Rayna, and earlier this season it was revealed that he fathered her older daughter (which he does not yet know). The sexual tension between these two is high, and the ages of the characters make this couple particularly appealing to the 18-49 female demographic that dominates TV viewing. Smash, unfortunately, has no such couple. Karen is currently saddled with smarmy, snarky, musical-writer/ex-drug dealer Jimmy, a character nearly as distasteful as last season’s Ellis. Last season she was stuck with political hack Dev, who added absolutely nothing to the series and was wisely dismissed (as was Ellis). In the last episode, director/womanizer Derek told Karen he had feelings for her, but he is such a dislikable character that no one could possibly be rooting for the two of them to get together. Last season Derek hooked up with Ivy, but that storyline seems to have been dropped. The other point-of-view characters have been involved in minor romances that don’t seem to have rooting value for anyone. Although last season married Julia had an affair with a married actor, a storyline I found intriguing, but that too has been dropped.

These storyline decisions may not be the only reason why Nashville is doing well and Smash is circling the drain. But I do think they offer two important lessons to writers:

One, use life stages to compare and contrast your main characters to each other. The stories of Rayna, Juliette and Scarlett are specific to Nashville. But the echo they provide can be duplicated in other locales. For example, if a main character is a new mom, having characters around her who have no children or older children can highlight her dilemmas. If the character is a teacher, having a mentor and a newbie in her life helps focus on her specific challenges.

Two, give your audience an outcome to root for. Whether or not you deliver that specific outcome is a different – and debatable – subject, but your audience (reader or viewer) needs to want something to continue reading or tuning in. Nashville, and many other popular TV and book series, delivers this with Rayna and Deacon. Smash was not even able to give audiences a specific Marilyn to root for. Ask yourself, what do I want my audience to want? If this is a question you can’t answer, there may be a problem with your structure or characters.

Personally, I want Rayna to become a motherfigure to Juliette, to get back together with Deacon, and then to have it all explode in her face when her daughter’s paternity is revealed. For Smash, I just want it to end quickly.