SF and WW; Mrs. Landingham

[mrissa]

I was thinking about what SF writers could learn from West Wing, and one of the big ones is to trust your audience to buy into fiction itself, and do not overexplain. The big example I'm thinking of is with time. In the universe of this show, US Presidential elections occur in even-numbered years not divisible by four. And they do not explain it. There is no blundering about babbling about the Great Election Reset of 1874 or how it actually makes sense to do it this way because of the Utah Compromise of 1986 or anything like that. Because anyone who looks at this and says, "But no, I can't watch and enjoy this show, because the US President is elected in even-numbered years divisible by four," is also probably going to say, "The President isn't named Josiah Bartlett, and I've never seen this press secretary before in my CNN-watching life." There is a certain amount of buy-in you can expect for your fiction, and explaining it weakens it.

In a similar vein, they carefully do not specify Bartlett's predecessors. Is he in place of Clinton? Is he Clinton's successor? If they started trying to answer those questions, they would raise exactly the questions they do not care about, regarding why the elections are in the wrong years, rather than doing what they wanted to do with the pressures of modern national-scale politics. There are almost always questions you don't want to answer in a piece of fiction, either because they are boring or because you have no good answers for them (and ideally the latter category is not of great interest either). So what you need to do is not lead the viewers directly to these questions--I am looking at you, Battlestar Galactica. You need to give the viewers (or readers) more interesting things to think about--if you have dedicated fans, they will be asking lots of questions, and if you're doing a good job, the questions are related to what you're actually trying for, or are at least complementary (spelling important: not complimentary) to your aims rather than working at counterpurposes with them.

Last week I was watching the end of S2 of West Wing, in which Mrs. Landingham dies. She just dies. They're building up to a million other things, because this is a show with long plot arcs and a tendency to remember the things you might have thought they'd forgotten. And then wham, out of the blue, drunk driver, no more Mrs. Landingham.

I am not really in a frame of mind to deal with this sort of thing optimally. But when I have a minute to think about it, I approve of this behavior. The universe does not step back and say, "You are trying to deal with breaking a major scandal without ruining a Presidency. You are trying to keep a civil war from starting in a nearby country. You have taken on a major corporate group who will fight your agenda tooth and nail, and some people from your own party--as well as members of the other party--are going to fight alongside them, and some of them are doing so for good reasons. You also have family obligations and an entire agenda you haven't gotten to, and incidentally you have MS. So all that is really too much for one guy, so the universe will make sure you don't lose your secretary/beloved adopted big sister figure, because that would be much too much." The universe doesn't make those interventions. There is no button for "too much." And enough of the previous issues have been built from previous decisions that it's not a matter of a pile of improbable coincidences--which the universe does do. It's just...the ongoing pile of stuff. And you swallow hard and go on, or you rant and rave and then go on, depending on how you're made and how you're pushed. But you do go on. Thanks, show.

Comments

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

One of the best things ever done on Star Trek was when Tasha Yar just died, no warning, no drama. Alive one minute, dead the next. The manner in which it was Just Not A Big Deal to anyone except the crew was well done.

We shall not speak of Tasha 2.0 because that just blew.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If only it had been any character other than Tasha Yar that had died like that. Tasha Yar was the reason I watched that show; when she died, I stopped. As an adult I think I might enjoy going back and watching old episodes, particularly as a workout filler.

[elsue.livejournal.com]

The show got way better later (starting season 3 or so? I forget).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But--and when I was 10, this was crucial--it did not have Tasha Yar. Mostly.

[elsue.livejournal.com]

This is true. It was largely Yar-less. Although I loved the way they did the Yar-sort-of-return. It was elegant.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

Later, on DS9, it got to have Major Kira Nerys, which was pretty spiffy. Still not Tasha Yar. But pretty spiffy.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I watched all the DS9s with Timprov about five years ago, and I really enjoyed them. But Tasha Yar was one of the two crucial fixes in Next Gen, to my 9-year-old brain: they changed the intro to say "no one," which took my breath away the first time I heard it, that they had noticed that they'd gotten it wrong and fixed it, and they had a girl who was in a non-girly job. After that Dax and Kira were good, but they had already said to my childhood self, "You're right, we shouldn't have cut you out of the intro, and we shouldn't have had the woman be a space switchboard operator. We're sorry. We'll do better next time." And then did. That was all I really needed.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

I think Sorkin did a good job of writing in characters with a certain amount of ignorance about the government, so that he would have the excuse to have characters deliver a lot of expository material. He even hangs a lampshade on it in S2: "Josh likes to explain things and I, well, let him". But yeah, at the same time, he didn't feel the need to spell everything about his characters out.

I love the end of season 2. Everything from the Stackhouse Filibuster on, watching things unravel. And listening to Brothers in Arms still gives me chills.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I was really impressed with Sen. Stackhouse's office. It was exactly the right blend of gorgeous Minnesota stuff and kitschy Minnesota crap that a Senator would have been given. The uff da plaque was the right font. The candlestick that never came quite into focus was perfect. The Senator himself didn't have quite the right vowels, but hey, not every Minnesota Senator is originally from here, so I can go with that part.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

If memory serves, there was a horned Viking helmet in there, too, which was cool.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't remember that one way or the other, but I remember a photo of ladyslippers. It was so very full of stuff that I wouldn't be surprised if there were a dozen really cool things I didn't even notice.

[cesario.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more. The elections in 2002, etc, really bugged me for about thirty seconds after I first started watching the show, and then before you knew it, boom, who cared? And Mrs Landingham's death, likewise.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Mrs. Landingham's death absolutely destroyed me. The ranting and raving in the cathedral, likewise. I remember sitting there going "this is true." (Plus back then my Latin was up to it. Now I'd have to google, which takes a bit of the shine off.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have only dog-Latin. But it was enough for the lecture Jed gives God.

[laurel]

I wish I'd liked that episode more, sometimes an unfortunate thing about having watched a lot of TV is that an episode or scene comes along that is too much like something from another show or episode and not as good. So it's distracting. I appreciated it on one level, on another I was thinking "this doesn't hold a candle to Homicide: Life on the Street, they did it so much better."

With The West Wing, I found it distracting how often Sorkin recycled material he used on Sports Night. Certain storylines would yank me out of the show and make me like it less.

Don't get me wrong-- there's a lot of The West Wing I like a whole bunch and bits of the end of season two were really fine if I recall correctly. (The Stackhouse Filibuster is one of my favorite episodes, if I recall correctly.)

I should revisit the series sometime and see how it fares a second time through. (And faster; I watched the whole show as it aired on TV from week to week.)

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

Even without knowing Latin, it was still pretty clear what was going on.

I think that Sorkin not translating that which didn't require it was another good thing that applies to sci-fi.

[braddr.livejournal.com]

That scene, with Bartlet calmly ranting at God, is one of my all time favorites. It's so in character, so... perfect.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

There are almost always questions you don't want to answer in a piece of fiction, either because they are boring or because you have no good answers for them (and ideally the latter category is not of great interest either).

I am glad to hear you articulate this, because there's a corner of my brain eternally worried that readers are hung up on questions like where the fae of the Onyx Court get their food and clothing from. Which to me is both boring and something I don't have a good answer for; as far as I'm concerned, the day I start answering questions like that about my faeries is the day they cross the line of mundanity and never come back.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For me it would be a problem if you started answering questions like that and then didn't finish, or if the incomplete answers didn't look like they could go anywhere consistent. Not raising those questions is fine (in context, depending on what else the book is up to). Answering them well is fine. It's the middle ground that's really no good.

And seriously, you can't answer every question someone is going to come up with. Someone will have a personal need to know where the fairies go to the bathroom or whether, in fact, fairies have that need. That doesn't mean every book has to come with a diagram of their sewage facilities.

[rmnilsson.livejournal.com]

One thing that does come up for me is when a story has sufficiently godlike beings, I wonder what they're doing when there aren't mere mortals around for them to be enigmatic to. Like Elrond. What was he doing with his days while the ring was lost? I mean, I'm sure he was monitoring fey resonances or something, but that couldn't take his whole day? Did he play a lot of cribbage?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, yah. Who doesn't? I mean, if he'd been from Wisconsin and played sheephead instead, I think Tolkien would have told us.

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

I have all sorts of comments related in quite a number of different ways to this post that I can't make until after you're through ... mmm, at least "Evidence of Things Not Seen" (S4). Suffice it to say that I shall look forward to your thoughts on the next few seasons.

Patience is a virtue, daharyn, patience is a virtue...

(I also stopped watching TNG after Yar's death when I was young.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It'll take me awhile to get that far, but I will let you know.

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

There are almost always questions you don't want to answer in a piece of fiction, either because they are boring or because you have no good answers for them (and ideally the latter category is not of great interest either).

Ooh, this is Very Smart. I know this, but I often forget, and get myself tangled up trying, for completeness' sake, to address questions I'm not really interested in addressing.

Thank you!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And while I used the trivial toilet example above with swan_tower, there are other things that are vitally relevant to one book and completely trivial to another. Context, context, context.

[laurel]

"I was thinking about what SF writers could learn from West Wing, and one of the big ones is to trust your audience to buy into fiction itself, and do not overexplain."

That's so true. Some TV shows get it right, others don't. Of course I'm sure mileage varies on this and it's a tricky line to walk. How much do you explain? What don't you explain? Sometimes shows will be going on at a good clip without explaining certain sorts of things and then they'll feel the need to explain one thing and that kinda wrecks things as suddenly the viewer wants answers to the questions that previously they were fine leaving unanswered.

Some viewers are more comfortable with "just going with it" than others. The better a show is, the more the audience will "just go with it". (And sometimes they'll have fun filling in blanks with fanfic or just musing about things. It's when the writers on the show go there after not having gone there, that it gets clunky and messy.)

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

"I was thinking about what SF writers could learn from West Wing, and one of the big ones is to trust your audience to buy into fiction itself, and do not overexplain."

I'm lookin' at you, midichlorians.

I haven't seen that episode since my dad died. I'm not sure I could watch it the same way, now.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah. It was hard enough for me to come upon it at this time. I can see your related-but-different angle there, too.