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This is the City and other TV quotes!

In pursuing the internet about TV show intro’s, the little voice over in front of the beginning of shows, like, “These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.” … “Hoping his next leap…will be the leap home.” … “There’s a signpost up ahead.” … “When they met, it was murder.” (come on now you can figure that one out) … “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!” I came across a real gem I had forgotten.

I always liked, “There are eight million stories in the naked city, this one of them.” That may be the shortest, even shorter than, “Like sands through the hourglass, so go the Days of our Life,” by one word. Even so, it speaks volumes, I thought of similar intro of my own for my stories, “There are 7 billion stories in our naked world, this is one of them.” If I break it down, there far more stories than that. Everyone has several stories to tell, several stories they live. Several fictitious stories rattling around in their brain, how they wished this had turned out or that should have gone like this. So, might be that there are like 47 billion stories in the world.

Have you ever wondered, just what is that person’s story? You see a couple fighting at a restaurant and wonder what their deal is? Or kids making out at the mall and your mind gets all nasty and think, “get a room.” You hear about someone running a charity being arrested for embezzlement and wonder, why? I do, all the time, I want to know the why of things.

Often, I wondered why people we see in the news, have done the dumbassed things they have done that got them in such deep doo-doo. Why did people we read about or see stories about, on the news, do such an idiotic thing? I mean the last thing they wanted was an interview on national news and have the host asking, “Why did you do such a stupid thing?” or “Did you do this terrible, disgusting, appalling dead? Are you that big a jerk?” I’m not even talking about murder, though yeah that too, but why would a mother lock her infant in car while she runs in to get groceries. Why would a minister have an affair with a married member of his congregation and think they could get away with killing their respective spouses? You can think of a thousand things you have seen in the news, that just makes no sense for a person to do. Of course, some of their ventures give me such good story ideas, I can’t help but say thanks for the stupidity.

But I digress, whatever were we talking about, oh yeah, intros. “Laws are made by men, carried out by men, and men are imperfect. Richard Kimble ponders his fate as he looks at the world, and sees only darkness. Forced to hide in lonely desperation, to change his identity, to toil at many jobs, while searching for the one-armed man.” That is not quite, but nearly, the definition of a writer, for the writer should become each character. He must see the world as his creations do. He must keep each character acting as they would act. There always must be a one-armed man or an equivalent. There’s something out there the cast must find, a person, a destination, the gold, or maybe something or someone hunts them.

A writer must understand his characters. I find nothing more annoying, in a story than a person to do something, out of character and do so without purpose. Well, that and unanswered question, like the first season of Lost, where did the polar bear come from anyway? Any season of lost, who were those bad guys in the other outrigger, where did they come from, why were they shooting at our heroes? They never answered that one, and about a hundred other questions. Lost was a show that could have benefited from an intro, and outros, and a few voice-overs in each episode to keep all the plot points straight for us.

That would bring us to Soap, it was filled with long introductions that brought us up to speed on what happened in the preceding weeks. An occasional well placed (and loquacious) voice-over thought the story to keep us up to date with the overwrought plot points, and often, an outro hinting at what’s about to happen. In honesty, the thing I remember most about the show, the doorbell or telephone rings and turning to his employer with a look of irritation, the butler asked, “Did you want me to get that?” That and laughing so hard I missed a few lines here and there.

So, just what is the point? Words in stories are important. But the words should serve a purpose. In writing or reading, an occasional trip to left field is fine. But as a writer, I want to always keep the story in mind.

That reminds me, I should be writing...


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