The Next Big Thing

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine

This past Saturday, as I approached the TV room to eat lunch (yes, I usually eat in front of the TV; I'm all about multitasking), I heard a woman singing "O Come All Ye Faithful" on the set. There must be a Christmas concert on, I thought.  When I arrived, it turned out to be Carol Brady singing in her church, circa 1969.

It was the Brady Bunch's first Christmas as a blended family. All the kids were there, smiling proudly from the pews as their mother sang Oh come, let us adore him, Christ our Lord.  Little Cindy gave her new stepdad a grateful smile when he put his arm around her. Alice might have even been present, comically tearing up as she often did during any tender moment.

While I watched, I could only think how unlikely it would be for such a scene to appear on a modern-day sitcom. Even on TV Land, where this vintage show was airing, the newer comedies feature anything but a wholesome family unit.  If alien lifeforms tuned into today's TV they would assume that everyone on Earth is permanently divorced and cranky.

Entertainment gets less innocent and more cynical as each year passes.  We see it in books, films, music, art, everywhere we look. In a world where Hannah Montanas become Miley Cyruses, it's a fair question to ask, "Huh?"

Part of the answer is, we are wired to always be looking for the next big thing.  And, by its nature, the next big thing can't be like the old thing.  There has to be something extra, and the trend has always been to make it more extreme.

Take young adult fiction. It wasn't that long ago when Harry Potter stirred up a cauldron of controversy. A short time later, the tide turned toward vampires.  Riding the bloody waves of Twilight, there was even a book and a movie called Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.  I expect any day now to see Benjamin Franklin, Zombie Slayer.

The Hardy Boys have given way to The Hunger Games.  Nancy Drew is now Divergent.  Brilliant and imaginative, these new series replace G-rated mysteries about missing maps with dark, dystopian content.  Critics fear they encourage rebellion while fans praise them for the theme of overcoming suppression.  Either way, they're flying off the shelves.

On TV and in movies, portrayals of sex, drugs, rock & roll and violence are off the charts, alongside language that used to be considered not ready for prime time.  Edgy sells.  Controversy means publicity.

Without even debating the rightness or wrongness of any of the above, one does have to wonder where it will end.  How much further can we go before all sense and sensibility, values and virtues live only in nostalgia?

I applaud the many Southern writers we are privileged to work with who strive for something better. These are the ones who realize it's possible to grab a reader's attention without offending half their audience.  They weave a masterful tale and leave the reader feeling like they've traveled a high road and not spent the weekend in Babylon.

Wherever you are in your own journey as a writer or a reader, I invite you to buck what some call progress and follow the road less traveled. If more authors and audiences demanded it, maybe the next big thing could be a return to something that's easy to feel is gone forever.

Together we could make Alice cry more happy tears.

Who's on First?

by Gary Fearon, Southern Writers Creative Director

At the beginning of every story, the audience is ready to meet the new set of characters you've dreamed up for them.  One of the challenges in writing that opening scene can be deciding which of your characters your audience will meet first.

Protagonist, in its original Greek, means "first in importance".  While this person will be the central figure of the story, we don't necessarily need to make them the first to appear.  There will be times when it's advantageous to bring them in later.

Taking a cue from stage plays, especially musicals, the star of the show is often saved until the end of the big opening number.  In West Side Story, both street gangs establish their roughhouse hatred for one another in song and dance long before we ever meet Tony or Maria.  In many cases, this is to allow a Broadway star to make their own magnificent entrance.  But this approach can also allow for a little discussion about the hero before they arrive on the scene, if we need some advance information about their importance. 

Then again, in The Addams Family musical, the entire ensemble (complete with stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth) appeared onstage from the get-go.  These familiar characters needed no introduction, and the sum of the whole had much greater initial impact than if they had been introduced individually.

And there's The Sound of Music, which begins with the heroine, Julie Andrews, singing solo in a meadow.  We learn up front how much both music and the beautiful country she lives in mean to her before anything else takes place.

One of the most inventive character introductions I've ever read started with opening paragraphs describing a fellow walking through a college campus.  It spoke of him appreciating the seasonal decorations and other pleasant details, and at one point he stopped along the way to help someone.  Without a word of dialogue, and without knowing much about this fellow, we already identified with him and liked him. When this fellow arrived at his destination, which turned out to be hiding behind the girls' locker room, the tide began to turn in a very uncomfortable way.  The author had managed to make the reader bond unwittingly with the villain of the story.  Disquieting, and brilliant.

In a murder mystery, the bad guy will often appear before the hero does, if only in shadow.  By the time Perry Mason is called in, the adventure has begun and he gets to play hero from his very first scene. We never see him lounging at his desk with his feet up waiting for something to happen, because it already has.  This tactic is typical in most series, where we are already familiar with the lead character who will carry the adventure.

Who the audience should be introduced to first can sometimes be determined by their role in the story. Will everything revolve around their wants and needs, with a huge character arc taking place?  Or are they more a participant in a bigger theme (like class warfare, as in Romeo and Juliet)?  That bigger conflict may be the thing to establish first.

So whether you place your protagonist in the first paragraph or save them for a grand entrance, this most important character in your story deserves a proper introduction via fortuitous timing.

And speaking of timing, for those of you who came here expecting Abbott & Costello, why not take a break and check out the rapid-fire repartee of these vintage vaudevillians.  If you're a writer who hates to revise, you may be inspired to know that this now-classic routine was originally written as "Who's the Boss?"

The Thrill is Gone

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director, Southern Writers Magazine

After enjoying my favorite Chinese buffet this weekend, I clicked open my fortune cookie to reveal the following message inside:  

Change is not just essential to life. It is life.

Surprisingly, only minutes earlier, I had decided that my blog post for today would be about change. I don't know how Confucius does it.

What I do know is that last week, I had heard several different authors express the following rather curious sentiment: They talked about how passionate they are when they first come up with an idea, and how passionate they remain during its writing, but once they finish the last page, something changes. The passion that drove them is now replaced with a certain apathy.  No longer do they feel an all-consuming desire to share their words with the world.

What is it that makes the passion go away?

• Arriving at their destination.  Their vision centered around getting the story out of their head and onto the written page. For many writers that's all they ever really asked of themselves.

• Not wanting to take the next step. The fun part -- the writing -- is behind us. You mean now we have to find a market for it?

• Fear of failure. Nobody likes rejection, especially after slaving over a hot keyboard creating their masterpiece. If nobody sees it, then we're safe from criticism.

• Fear of success. Really? The idea that anyone would actually resist success sounds unbelievable, but we creatures of habit can be funny that way. Change is inherently scary, even when it's good.

There are more passion killers, but you get the picture.  When post-writing apathy creeps in and the thrill is gone, what can we do to change it?

We can understand that what we write has a purpose far beyond what we initially envisioned. Each of us has a message that is uniquely ours. When the muse compels us to write something, it should be our mission to make sure the world hears it. No one starts a writing project with a commitment that no one will ever see it (unless it's their diary).

We wouldn't be writers if we didn't have a voice that begs to be heard.  When the writing is done, make seeing it through to its destination the part that's even more fun. The real thrill comes when your writing changes someone else's life. And someone is waiting to be changed by your words right now.