story rhythm

The book I'm reading on TV writing has about a half a page talking about story rhythm. It says "You don't want to cut from one high-pitch sequence to another. After a while that gets tiresome. Instead, cut from a high-pitch sequence in the A story to a dramatic beat in the B story. Cut from a serious scene in the A story to a comic beat in the B story." And it talks about mixing it up and slow dramatic beats and fast action beats.

What I was thinking is that the poetry book has a much larger section on rhythm, and maybe some of it still applies. Poetry rhythm is all about stressed and unstressed, not funny-serious or something, but you still have a pattern formed. Lots of different named patterns actually. So there's lots of suggestions for how to mix things. And then theres metre, patterns of rhythm, and how it influences meaning. In a poem there can be a tension between poetic metre and normal speech metre, so that the metre of the poem can make a word that would normally be unstressed and insignificant be stressed and significant.

I was wondering if that translates to plots too. Like, if you have a rhythm pattern that goes serious-funny serious-funny and then you drop in a scene that could be read either way, would the reading be influenced by the pattern? Or if there were a sequences of important-to-the-plot scenes mixed with trivial-character scenes, and then there was a character scene where a plot scene was expected to be, would it be linked to plot more? Or could plot importance be deemphasised by hiding it where trivia had been so far?


Since I've never seen anything like that in books the answer is probably 'no'.
But the question was fun to think of.

(no subject)

you know, I think one a week is about the right speed to watch Ghost Whisperer
cause trying to watch them all in a row means crying for about 1/3 of the time.


... and yet I keeps on watching ...

Ghost Whisperer thoughts

Ghost Whisperer had an interesting pair of episodes. One where there was a crash and the paramedic-husband got hurt, and the one after that where the guy he was transporting who died haunted him. That was nifty. The first one was about guilt and blaming yourself and secrets and putting the blame in the right place and the second one was about forgiveness even when people are actually doing the bad things and it was interesting because they didn't all hug and share and end up happy, half the people wanted the ghost to be tormented and the family just kind of agreed that he did bad things but now it was over. And the ghost agreed that his son protecting his mom was the good thing to do, even though the knock on consequences included ghost. Not waving away blame, just accepting it and moving on.

So it was very themey and philosophical. And also didn't make me cry.

And it brought up the idea of a malign spirit and how Melinda doesn't know how to get rid of those. I bet that'll bite later. I mean I saw the last episode but I've missed a bunch in the middle so it just seems like a dangly plot thread to play with.

Her talents are introduced from the start but her problems sort of build up as we go along. It feels like a slower build up than typical? I don't quite know why I think that though.


A bit I liked was when the first ep in the pair seemed to be all "everything happens for a reason" and suggesting the guy dying saved lives, but the second ep showed that to be totally not the case. It's a nice subtle way to play with the fate vs destiny thingy. It leaves the accident meaningless or even totally bad even though it kicked off a string of good consequences at the hospital.


I also like how I don't always spot the ghost. There was a bit where Melinda was talking to a doctor's wife and found out he had dementia and then she went to see him and told him she told her and he said she'd never do that and Melinda said "Your wife's been dead for two years" and the surprise-kick really really worked. And you could see the look on his face too. Just, boom - if you can forget that you're not going to fool anyone.




I started out watching this because I'm attempting to write ghost stories. But these are a very specific kind of... shiny crystals?... talk it through kind of ghost stories. When I'm starting with a main character who can do martial arts and stuff then that isn't always the solution that will best showcase his talents.

Which makes me realise stuff to do with the plot for my next fic. Have to start with the skills of the individual characters as well as their emotions. Otherwise the plot half gets a bit floppy.

See, I'm working on fic!
... you know, in a purely theoretical sense ...