Tag: writing advice

Why it works, Star Trek the original series

I grew up watching Star Trek, Next Generation with my grandma. It’s pretty mainstream now, but back then Star Trek was a niche show. A nerd show. 

But being a nerd is cool now, so screw that. And now Star Trek’s got so much love it can’t handle it. I could be a bitter hipster about that. I mean, I liked Star Trek before it was cool. Or, I could just appreciate that everyone loves Star Trek. 

Third option. I could revisit Star Trek as a writer and see why it works. I like option three. 

Of course, I couldn’t possibly talk about all things Star Trek in one post. So over the next few weeks, we’re going to look at all of the different Star Trek shows, starting with the original series and ending with Picard.

Today, we’re starting with the original series. Why does it work?

Let’s start with the fact that it probably shouldn’t work. I mean, it was kind of a mess. The budget was garbage, the special effects were terrible, the costumes looked tragic.

But it does work. The series ran from September of 1966 to June of 1969. This means that the whole series started and finished seventeen years before I was born. And yet I can tell you Kirk’s last words.

Oh my. 

No, not the way Sulu says it. 

We’re going to break this down, but I can sum up in three words why Star Trek worked so well. Why it has survived well into the 21st century and will hopefully be around for a lot longer.

It was fearless.

Okay, it could get away with being fearless. No one expected the show to succeed. So it was working with little to no budget and a bunch of actors no one had ever heard of before. So, it could get away with anything. 

There’s a great quote by Lorne Michaels that I live my life by. The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready. It goes on because it’s 11:30. 

Well, someone must have told Roddenberry that quote. Because let me tell you, Star Trek went on because it was 11:30. This lead to some hilarious moments. Like the tribble incident. 

On the off chance you don’t know this story, man are you in for a treat.

In the iconic episode, Trouble with Tribbles, there’s a scene where Kirk opens a hatch and is just showered with the fuzzy little things. If you look closely, or hell not that closely, you can see the shadow of a stagehand shoveling the tribbles through the hatch. 

Okay, so what is there to learn from this? Who wants to go into the world with their shirt untucked, so to speak? Why would you want to put work out there when it’s not ready?

Well, is it not ready? Or do you just feel not ready? 

Let me tell you something, from my heart to yours. You are never, ever going to feel ready. Your book, tv show, podcast, movie script, is never going to feel ready. It’s never going to match up with the flawless project in your head because how could anything ever be that perfect?

So, because we have to assume that nothing will ever be ready, we have to go on because it’s time. Because it’s 11:30, or we’ve revised the damn thing so much we’re sick of looking at it, or we’ve had it sitting on our desk for years. Does that mean sometimes we’re going to see hands throwing tribbles out of the hatch? Yeah, of course. But the alternative is never sending anything out. Pick one.

Here’s the other way Star Trek was fearless. And it’s arguably a bigger deal. Star Trek wasn’t afraid of doing things that were taboo at the time. Like having a Russian man and an Asian man as officers. Like having a black woman as an officer. 

Like having the first interracial kiss in American history on television. 

In an episode called Plato’s Stepchildren, Kirk and Uhura share a passionate kiss. Funny story about this kiss, aside from it being the first one of its kind in America. The producers were worried about it, so they wanted to film the scene a few ways. Shatner agreed but then proceeded to intentionally fuck up every single take that didn’t include the kiss until they’d run out of time and had to use the scene as it was written.

That’s right. Shatner decided to be a dick to force social change. Good use of bad behavior. 

Not all the episodes worked, that’s for sure. The ones that missed, missed hard. But the episodes that work, work amazingly well. They work so well that they’re still working to this day. 

See you next week when we’ll be talking about Next Generation.

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Writing to be read Vs. Writing to be heard

<a href="http://Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/opropriomarco-4405610/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=4300802">Marco Migorança Migorança</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=4300802">PixabayArtwork by Marco Migoranca

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you’re not as old as you think you are and people older than you want you to shut the hell up.

This has been said with love, as someone who complains too often about being in her mid-thirties. 

(It’s my fault I feel old, by the way. I watch all these creators on YouTube who are in their twenties. They’re all great, inspiring women who make me feel like a crone.)

But I’m not old. And even if I was, I’m still not too old to learn new things.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that I’m learning a new way to write. 

This year I launched a true-crime podcast called Off The Bone with the amazing Boxhuman. I’m getting ready to launch a fiction podcast sometime this year. In creating these new podcasts, I’ve learned to write a different way. I’ve learned to write content that’s meant to be heard instead of read.

It kind of astounds me how different it is to write this way. I don’t know why this should be so shocking. It’s a totally different medium. But I think if I’d realized how different it was going to be, how alien it would feel, I might have chickened out.

If you’re considering starting a podcast, let me share with you what I’ve learned. Here are four things to consider when writing to be heard. 

Are you talking over people’s heads?

I’m not a big fan of talking down to people or thinking I’m smarter than others. I’m not. That being said, sometimes my word choice is, well, unusual. 

If I’m writing a blog post or book that doesn’t matter so much. If a reader doesn’t know the word I used, they can look it up. But if someone’s listening to a podcast, they don’t have as much time to stop and look up some archaic weird word I used. The same can be said for concepts or references unless I’m going to take the time to stop and explain them.

Now, I’m not saying you should assume people won’t know what you’re talking about. I’m also not suggesting that challenging people with new concepts is a bad idea. But we all have topics and theories that we know a stupid amount about. Like, more than most people do and anyone needs to. Maybe that’s why you’re doing a podcast to start with. Maybe the whole point is to explain more about the life cycle of kiwi birds. But if you’re just quickly referencing some obscure thing like everyone knows what you mean, that’s going to throw some people off. You’re going to lose listeners. So don’t go over people’s heads. If you’re talking about something complex or not commonly understood, take a few seconds to make sure everyone’s on the same page. Or at least in the same book.

How do your sentences sound?

Sentence structure is one of the real nut and bolts parts of grammar that I don’t always pay as much attention to as I should. Usually when I’m writing it’s to tell a story or entertainingly convey information. The smaller the piece, the more I pay attention to sentence structure, though. I also pay more attention to word usage and flow to convey an emotion.

When you’re writing a script to read out loud, though, you want to keep in mind that you are going to have to actually read it out loud. And it needs to sound a certain way.

Do yourself a favor, and read your entire script out loud as part of your editing process. Some sentences look and feel just fine on the page, but sound clunky and soulless when spoken. 

Are you droning on?

Remember earlier when we talked about not talking over people’s heads? Please, for the love of Benji don’t use this as an excuse to drone on.

Yes, the point of most podcasts is to talk at length about a certain topic. But that doesn’t mean you need to over-explain.

Let’s say I’m writing a podcast about HH Holmes. (Which I did). Do I want to talk about how he put people down a body chute to his basement to ‘play’ with the corpses? (Not like that, you pervert.) Oh yeah, that’s the kind of content a listener is there for. Do I need to go into a lengthy explanation of how the chute was built? Probably not. Maybe I want to toss in a little bit of info, but a ton is not needed. 

How’s your pacing?

Honestly, a lot of this advice comes down to this one factor. Is your pacing entertaining? Are you giving information in an informative way without bludgeoning someone with facts they can’t absorb?

This goes for fiction, too. Info dumping isn’t a great idea in a book. It’s even worse in a podcast. If you go into an info dump on the page, at least the reader can go back over it a couple of times if they need to soak it all in. But people listen to podcasts most often when they’re doing other things. I listen to them while I edit, wash dishes, schedule social media, or any of the other less glamorous parts of writing. (It’s not all prancing through a mental playground, folks. Writing is work. Work worth doing, the best work there is, but still work.)

The point is, if someone’s listening to your podcast while driving to the grocery store and you info dump on them, they’re not going to retain half of what you just said. And if they didn’t retain it, you might as well have not wasted anyone’s time by saying it. 

So what do you think? What should writers keep in mind while writing a script to be read? And, as a bonus, what’s your favorite podcast? Let us know in the comments below. 

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