How Your TV Addiction Can Benefit Your Writing

with guest blogger Amanda Wen.

I adore fall. Cooler weather, kids back in school, football…and TV season premiere time! I actually don’t watch a ton of shows, due to pickiness, kids, and lack of time, but the ones I do watch, I am invested in, to a point that may not be entirely healthy.

So what am I doing obsessing over TV? I’m a writer! I’m supposed to be writing! (Cue Rick Castle’s “You Should Be Writing” screensaver). 

Well, I’m getting inspiration. And so can you. 

First and foremost, I get inspiration for characters. When I first get an idea for a book, there are vague, nebulous characters floating around in my head. Usually, fairly soon after, an actor on a show I’m watching will spring off the screen and plop down into my book. Using this approach, a doctor from Chicago Med became a fourth-grade teacher with a six-year-old son, a cop from Cold Case became a tell-it-like-it-is preacher, and Jack and Rebecca from This Is Us have left 20th century Pittsburgh to find themselves on the Kansas frontier. For me, a book character can’t fully come to life until I see his or her doppelgänger on my TV screen.

TV is also a gold mine for studying body language, mannerisms, and dialogue. It’s a little bit creepy to stare at strangers on the street, and definitely on the weird side to ask them to repeat a phrase so you can write it down, or a movement so you can figure out how to describe it. But when watching a show, you can stare at people all you want. Slo-mo, rewind a dozen times…they don’t care. And it’s usually not creepy. Always a plus.

While I’ve got my favorite types of shows, what will make me watch a show faster than anything else is compelling characters. Medical show, procedural, family drama…whatever. If they’ve got angsty back stories, flaws that choose the worst possible time to surface, childhood wounds that pop up at inconvenient times, and if they overcome those wounds and become stronger people over the course of an episode or a season, then I’m sold. When I find myself especially loving or hating a character, I try to figure out what aspects of their personality make them stand out to me, then incorporate those traits into my own characters. 

Of course, as a romance writer, I love it when characters couple up, and I nearly always have a “ship.” (For you non-fangirls out there, ‘shipping’ is when you root for a romantic relationship between two characters). Just like with individual characters, when you’ve got a ship you’re fired up about, you can use your viewing time to figure out why. Maybe his protectiveness is a nice foil to her independence. Maybe he’s straitlaced, and she’s a cut up. Maybe it’s their high level of intelligence and witty dialogue, or maybe it’s a case of sizzling on-screen chemistry. When you figure out what you love about a TV couple, you can recreate it when writing your own.

But as much as we can learn about characters, well-crafted TV shows can show us a thing or two about other areas of writing as well. Always wanted to set a book in a city not your own, but can’t scrounge up the cash to travel? While a show set in one of those cities won’t take the place of other research, it can prove a nice supplement. Many shows shoot some scenes on location, giving you a feel for the city and its people. One of my favorite shows, Cold Case, frequently shot on scene in Philadelphia, and many local landmarks, including the famous Geno’s Cheesesteaks, featured prominently in the series. 

In addition to locale, TV shows can help you with other aspects of setting. Careful attention to your favorite shows can give you insight into the inner workings of a police station, hospital, law firm, restaurant, or even historical period. The enormous caveat here, of course, is that any research gleaned from a show is only as good as the research the show itself put into it. Some things on television are totally legit, but many truths are stretched, to put it mildly, to make for better TV. Grey’s Anatomy or Chicago Med can’t be your only source for researching your dashing doctor hero, but it can be one of many tools in an arsenal of knowledge. 

Camera work can also be a helpful blueprint for those of us who paint our pictures with words. Often viewers will get a glimpse of some random prop: a clock on the wall. A steaming mug of coffee. A character’s necklace. Sometimes these things contribute to the plot (the clock on the wall is actually a bomb! Everybody run!), but often they just amplify the setting or give us insight into a character. 

We can use this same technique in our fiction. Nobody has the patience for pages of description of the heroine’s apartment. But a pile of laundry on the arm of the couch, a couple fast-food bags on the coffee table, and a few toys scattered over the living room floor give us a quick, accurate picture of her personality and lifestyle without any risk of losing your reader.

One of the biggest challenges all writers face is pacing. For television, writers know they have a set number of minutes to fill.  Thanks to commercials, your favorite hourlong drama is actually only about forty-three minutes, so screenwriters don’t have a second to waste. Many scenes that writers, actors, and directors dearly love often wind up on the proverbial cutting room floor because they don’t do enough to advance the story. Sound familiar?

Because of those pesky commercials, show writers know they’ve gotta hook you in, so you’ll endure the two to three-minute breaks touting car dealerships and Coca-Cola and stick around to find out what happens next. Our chapters need to be the same way. Ending them with a question, an uncertainty, or a bit of suspense keeps your readers turning pages turning late into the night.

Anyone who’s ever watched a procedural or drama knows the last ten minutes or so of the episode are the most suspenseful. This is another pacing cue we can take. If your black moment happens in the middle of the novel, you may have a pacing problem. Similarly, if the most suspenseful scene doesn’t happen until the next-to-last page, you may not have time to bring things to a satisfactory resolution. Unless, of course, you include those three dreaded words: To Be Continued… 

My favorite shows, and I suspect I’m not alone here, are shows that seamlessly integrate high drama, suspense, and humor. The best shows will make you laugh and cry all in the same hour. The amount of humor and lightness, of course, depends on the overall tone of your book. A gritty drama like Chicago P. D. may only have a moment or two of wry humor, whereas a more lighthearted show like the dear departed Castle will draw several laughs during the episode. (Even after all this time, even the thought of Castle’s bulletproof Writer vest still makes me giggle). 

So let’s talk TV. What tricks have you gleaned from watching TV, or are eager to try? Have any television characters inspired characters in your books? What canceled show do you miss the most? What new fall show are you most eager to check out? What returning show are you counting the minutes to watch again? I’d love to keep the conversation going in the comments!

Leave a comment today for an opportunity to win a Castle mug from the Castle Store. Winner announced in the Weekend Edition.




 Amanda Wen is an award-winning writer of contemporary inspirational romance. A first place winner in the 2017 Great Expectations Contest, she also placed first in the 2016 AFCW First Impressions Contest and the 2017 Great Beginnings Contest. Professional affiliations include the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and Romance Writers of America (RWA). In addition to her writing, Amanda maintains an active and rewarding career as a freelance cellist. She lives in the Midwest with her husband and their three adorable Wenlets.