I don’t watch much current TV due to my inability to commit to sitting at a regular time every week (and I’m not used to the DVR possibilities yet…give me time.)  But TV show seasons on DVD?  I’m on it.  My current show obsession is Friday Night Lights.

Normally I don’t watch TV with my writer’s hat on.  I just want to enjoy the story unfolding without thinking about why it’s good or what the writers did well.  TV is supposed to be my brain-dead time.  But every time I get done watching an episode of FNL, I can’t help thinking, “Wow, they did ____ so well!” 

So I’ve been pondering what, exactly, they do so well and why it keeps me hooked, even though I’m on season 4 and there’s been some turnover of characters.  The plot isn’t groundbreaking.  It’s a football town…there’s a game every week and all the drama that surrounds it and the people involved with it.  It’s not special effects or a particularly unique story world.  Which leaves…characters.

I’m fascinated by the shades of gray a character can manifest.  I’d much rather have a handful of grays than one really bad, aka “black” character who’s 100% evil…or someone who’s good all the time.  FNL has this concept down.  They can have a character we generally don’t like, who continually makes bad decisions or does the wrong thing and yet…one episode has that character showing their human side, doing something good. 

For instance, Billy Riggins.  He’s kind of a loser.  He’s got few aspirations other than dating strippers and drinking.  There are sympathetic moments built in because he and his younger brother Tim Riggins (hello, abs!) are on their own, no parents, and have been for quite a while, and though very little really matters to Billy, he watches out for Tim, who’s now in high school.  So the writers build the foundation for Billy to have some redeeming qualities.  (This is important…if they didn’t, then the scene I’m about to mention wouldn’t be believable and would lack the impact.)

When Tim is about to graduate from high school, he tells Billy he’s changed his mind about college.  He’ll stay in town, help Billy open his new mechanic business, they’ll stay close, etc.  Billy, who is scared of screwing up the business and knows Tim would be an asset, steps up to the plate, so to speak.  He says, basically, the hell you will.  And he gives him the pep talk of a lifetime, saying how no one in their family has been to college.  That the family’s future lies with Tim.  That Billy wants his future kids to see Tim as what is possible if they try hard enough, he wants them to be able to look up to Tim, to be like Tim.  It’s 90% unselfish and totally supportive of Tim, while sacrificing something for himself at the same time.  Big tear-jerking scene.

Then there’s Tyra, the former bad girl who’s spent 3 years getting her shit together to try to go to college.  Her mom is useless, her sister is the stripper who’s marrying Billy Riggs.  Neither of them understand Tyra.  Neither of them is there for her.  In fact, her mom has questioned why she even wants to work so hard to go to college.  And then…when Tyra hits rock bottom and is convinced she’ll never make it into a school, it’s her mom who’s there for her.  Her mom who gives her huge encouragement, who tells her she surprises her every single day and that she doesn’t know how Tyra has gotten so far, but she knows she’s not done yet.  And because it’s so unusual for her mom, it packs a powerful punch for the viewer.  Because this mostly dark-gray character has lightened about ten shades and done the right thing at the right time.

The other thing the writers do is take a character we love, who is a lighter shade of gray, and show them making a bad decision or doing the wrong thing.  And they make us understand the character’s motivations so well that we can’t help but understand on some level.  We might not like it.  We might scream at the TV about it.  But we get where the character is coming from.

Back to Tim and Billy Riggins.  In season 4, the mechanic business is running, but not making much money.  Tim has dropped out of college in spite of Billy’s speech the previous season.  Tim’s down on his luck, but he’s still a basically good guy.  Billy, desperate for money because his pregnant wife is having medical problems and they don’t have insurance, starts stripping stolen cars for big bucks.  Tim finds out and blows up, because he’s going to ruin what they have.  And then…Tim joins in.  Yes, he wants money too, to buy some ranchland, but we also know he does it because he’s got his brother’s back.  We hate that he makes the decision, but we understand why, and on some level, we have to admire that he’s doing it, at least a little, because of the “we’re in this together” bond he and his brother share.

The writers of Friday Night Lights do this every single episode.  They make us understand why characters do what they do.  Sometimes they have good reasons, sometimes heartbreaking ones, but the characters are what keep me staying up too late for “just one more episode.”  If I can learn to do this half as well in my writing, it’s worth the loss of sleep.

Anyone else a fan of Friday Night Lights?  Are there other shows that do an awesome job with characters and motivations?  If so, I’ll be checking them out on DVD.  All in the name of research, of course.

As is my way, I’m a week late posting this.  Yay for consistency.   Just a quick link to an interview I did at Working Writers…hope you’ll stop by and read it…

AKA Adventures in Pathetica…

My husband came home from work yesterday a few minutes early so he could go on a bike ride.  I was about to start cooking dinner and, since both boys rejected his invitation to join him, he asked me if I wanted to go.  A couple months ago, we bought me a brand new cheap-ass (but pretty colored) bike from WalMart and since I had yet to use it, I agreed.

What better way to take advantage of the gorgeous fall weather than with a leisurely bike ride, right?  Except I forgot that when you’re pushing 40 (hard) and haven’t ridden a bike for, oh, a few years, there’s nothing leisurely about getting on the damn thing.

There’s a bike path less than a mile from our house and I’m here to tell you, my legs hurt before we even hit the path.  I soldiered on, though, as I do have some pride. 

We made it to the path and went in the direction I hadn’t been on before (I’d been the other way on foot, thank you), my husband leading the way.  He was pretty far ahead of me when I heard my cell phone fall out of my back pocket onto the pavement.  (I know.  Stupid of me to have it there.  But my need for it is an entirely different post.)  I stopped.  Husband didn’t notice.  I got off my bike and…yeah.  Legs=jello. 

I played it off as if nothing was wrong, got my beloved phone, got back on my bike.  By the time I caught up with my husband (who had stopped, otherwise I never would have caught up), we’d gone quite a ways.  We rode farther, this time with me in front and out of breath, him no doubt feeling like he was chaperoning our 8-year-old, who only just learned to ride his bike this summer. 

I kept waiting for the path to loop around and head back because he’d mentioned there was a loop this way but…yeah, you know where I’m going.  The path kept heading west.  So finally, when I knew I might never be able to walk again, I dropped my pride and asked if it looped soon, please God.

Him:  This section doesn’t have a loop.

Me:  *hitting brakes*

Him:  We can turn around whenever you want.  (With that I-didn’t-really-want-a-real-workout-anyway tone.)

Me:  *turning around wordlessly because, yeah, not enough oxygen*

Him:  *laughing*

The ride back was painful but uneventful.  When we got to our “exit” to our street, there is, of course, a killer uphill climb.  My husband thought I was being dramatic when I chanted with every rotation of the pedals, “Hill…Killing…Me…Dead…”

We got home and I willed the muscles in my legs to work properly when I finally tried to walk.  Made it through the garage and up the stairs to the kitchen.  Reached for my inhaler and greeted the 8-year-old ray of sunshine. 

His observation about our death-defying journey down the bike path that never ends?

“That was fast.”

So the whole homeschool-all-day, write-at-night thing isn’t really working out for me.  Partly because, writing-wise, I’m working on something that isn’t under contract and therefore I lack an external deadline, and partly because teaching my son is sucking my brains and energy out.  (In a good way, if that’s possible.  I’m actually *cringe* enjoying the homeschool gig most days.  Never thought I’d say that…)

But my natural creative time, formerly from about 9pm-1am, seems to have taken a vacation.  I gave myself a couple of weeks to adjust to homeschooling because I’m infamously resistant to change but…it’s been a month.  The only thing that’s made me open the file is a 100-for-100 challenge (100 words a day for 100 days…if you miss a day, you start over at day 1) with my plotting group, goddesses that they are.  Most nights I’m churning out…a whopping 150-300 words.  Everyone writes at her own pace, but a comfortable yet challenging daily goal for me is more like 2000-2500 words. 

So um, yeah.  Daytime homeschooling + evening writing=colossal fail.

The logical solution, of course, is to try getting up butt-early to write, before anyone else is awake.  I know lots of writers who do this successfully.  I’ve always wished I could.  There are a couple of excuses issues I have with it.  First, my creative juices seem to flow at a negative speed before about 10 or 11am.  Second…my internal rhythm is out-of-whack.  I don’t naturally match society schedules — you know, the whole sleep while it’s dark thing?  I’ve been struggling (unsuccessfully for the most part) to shift my sleep hours to midnight to seven am.  And now I’m going to shift it another two hours earlier? 

Yes.  I am.  God help me, I’m going to try. 

I got up at 5:30 this morning for a test drive.  Made a beeline for the fireplace with my laptop.  The house was quiet.  My brain wasn’t quite plugged in yet.  But…I wrote a couple hundred words and took a bunch of other notes.  And I think if I stop resisting the idea, I could write a couple thousand more.  Every day.  And then…maybe I could have free time in the evenings to do mindless things like watch TV and read.  You know, before I go to bed at the old lady hour of…10 o’clock.

It’s been test week for my homeschooled kid.  8 tests in 4 days.  We’re both brain dead (and have 2 more to go!  Caffeine and sugar never looked so good.)  So…random thoughts.  That’s all I’ve got:

Earlier this week we got an email that some kind of flight club is giving free airplane rides to kids this weekend.  How cool, right?  The municipal (I think…what does that mean anyway?) airport is about a mile from our house and my husband reserved both our boys a ride.  Great opportunity, yeah?  Except I have a fear of little planes and they’ll be going up in two-seaters or something of the sort and…I’m pretty sure I could work up a decent anxiety attack about the situation between now and tomorrow…

Every year after the Ritas are awarded (the “Emmy” of romance writing for those unfamiliar with it) I tell myself it’d be cool to read some of the winning books and authors.  This year I’ve actually done it.  The two I’ve read so far were entirely worthy!  Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles won for best young adult book and it was one of the best books I read this year.  Kristan Higgins won for best single title contemporary but I read a different book by her instead of the winner…All I Ever Wanted.  Very good as well (maybe it will win next year as it’s her newest release).  The writing is amusing…Higgans has a great sense of humor…the characters are awesome and the story kept my interest. 

Diet Mountain Dew is from the gods.  That’s all I have to say about that.

Anyone familiar with the new Borders Rewards Super Duper program?  (Deluxe or Exclusive or…I don’t know what it’s called actually.)  I’ve always stayed adamantly away from rewards programs where you have to pay to belong but…this is Borders.  They are my book/crack provider.  You pay $20 and get 10% off just about everything.  So if you spend $200 over the course of the year, you’ll break even.  *glancing around guiltily* Let’s just say I’ll meet that minimum.  Quickly.  In fact, I spent more than ten times that over the course of the year I worked there.  (What?  I only worked there 10 months?  Whatever.)  Anyone else a member? 

So that pretty much tells you what’s up with my weekend, actually.  Scary plane rides, bookstore visits, more excellent books (maybe even Rita winners) and…Diet Mountain Dew.  Anyone else have so much excitement planned?