WORK:Use of Detail To Support theme

Perhaps the very best place to study the use of Detail to Support Theme is Series Television. Since I am so very much an sf/f writer, I tend to watch, enjoy and write for sf/f television.

One show I've been watching since it's inception is 7-Days, which is based on a 'vehicle' very similar to the TV show Quantum Leap.

Elsewhere I've discussed the use of 'vehicle' in fiction generation. It's a difficult notion for beginning writers to get into their heads, but reading my review column in conjunction with the essays posted here in this workshop will seat that notion deep into the subconscious where it can become useful to your imagination. This will be especially useful to those who wish to break into the Romance field. But oddly enough it's even more applicable to those who are aiming for Mainstream or Mystery fields.

7-Days is formulated around the "vehicle element" of time-travel. In this case the "excuse" is that scientists developed a time-travel vessel from a power source and schematics found in the Roswell Crash. The "fatal flaw" (like kryptonite to Superman) is that they can only go back 7 days, and the steering is so difficult only one man can live to land the vessel. They also have alien bodies preserved in their cellar.

That's the "vehicle" -- it sets up a recurring formula and is clearly explained in a couple of sentences over some spiffy graphics at the beginning of each show. Even a viewer who has never seen the show before can get a grip on "what's happening" just by listening to that voice-over explaining the 'vehicle' that carries the show's plot.

If you take a show such as 7-Days and study a number of episodes -- measure the length of each scene, the number of characters, the amount of dialogue each character gets, and graph the action-development -- that is if you sit with pad in hand and OUTLINE each show as you watch it, you will find that each show is absolutely identical to all the other shows.

It's only the superficial decoration that changes episode to episode.

Most TV shows of this type -- formulaic action shows -- have no substance behind them, and thus barely last 3 seasons before people get bored.

Certain shows -- increasingly those using sf/f as part of their "vehicle" formula add two elements to the mix. Relationship (which requires extensive characterization), and story-arc.

7-Days has some good developing Relationships that affect the direction of plot-developments but it has very little story-arc (it is network TV, not sci-fi channel, and therefore must resemble other network shows or be cancelled).

But every once in a while, 7-Days does an episode that does something very few network shows or genre-fiction of any sort ever do. It directly addresses the premise behind its "vehicle."

What is the premise behind a vehicle? Well, take the Romance genre for example. The premise behind the vehicle that carries all romance novels is "Love Conquers All." And in modern Romance it has come to include in "Love," potent physical attraction.

The premise behind the typical time-travel TV show (not novels which are deeper and more thoughtful) is that not only can you go back in time and change events -- but that there are circumstances where you SHOULD.

7-Days has challenged that premise a few times, usually on religious or spiritual grounds. The characters have been shown to worry about the spiritual ramifications of changing the past, even to save lives.

As I pointed out in my April 2001 review column which focuses on Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Void" and how Captain Janeway applies what I call the "Roddenbery Theme" to solve the problem of being trapped in a spacial version of a "Sargasso Sea" -- Star Trek often addresses the theme of "The Needs of the Many Outweigh The Needs of the Few or the One."

In astrology, that is a 1st House/ 7th House conflict. I recommend studying astrology to learn to master the art of believable conflicts derived from themes that are comprehensible to large numbers of people.

7-Days takes that theme and works with it in every episode by making it the prevailing philosophy of the Chrononaut, Frank Parker. He has stated on many occasions, and shows us in every episode that his main approach to problem solving is to take one individual at a time and deal with what is best for that individual -- and not to worry at all about "the many" -- because "the many" is God's problem, not his.

The plots of 7-Days explicate that theme repeatedly -- when Parker successfully focuses on that one single individual (yes, this echoes the themes of Quantum Leap ) then events arrange themselves to be satisfying to the general viewer's sense of how the world "ought" to be.

In the 7-Days episode first aired February 21, 2001, a Chrononaut they've never heard of (played by the actor who plays The Doctor on Star Trek: Voyager ) appears and says he's from 7 years in the future not 7 days, and that he's come back to assassinate a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is going to start WW III.

They believe this strange Chrononaut and Frank Parker is assigned to be the sharp-shooter who takes the Prize winner down.

We see him break out in a sweat as he has the victim in his rifle's sights -- and then he just can't squeeze the trigger. He just can't.

The back-up team takes the victim down -- and then suddenly a shower of bullets mows down everyone around the chosen victim.

Parker is captured by the police, and the Agency "disavows all knowledge" etc -- and "they" are going to pin the massacre on Frank who never fired a shot. He does not betray any classified secrets to the FBI agents who question him.

Parker concludes the strange Chrononaut from 7 years in the future is actually starting the WWIII he says he came to stop. Parker escapes, makes his way back to the Agency, enlists help, breaks his superiors out of detention, and they launch the time-travel machine back 7-Days so Parker can stop the assassination.

He does, and in the ensuing action when he's attacked by the strange Chrononaut, he sets a fire that he expects will burn him up along with the strange Chrononaut. It doesn't.

Now for the supporting details that bespeak the THEME which hardly shows in that action-outline I've just given you.

Frank Parker has an eidetic memory -- one of the qualifications for Chrononaut. He was raised as "a good Catholic boy" -- and so knows his Bible.

When they set out on the mission to assassinate the Prize winner, Parker's best friend offers to give him a silver lighter that was his Grandfather's. It has an inscription from the Bible on it -- from Psalms. The inscription is about letting God be the judge. It is relevant to the inner anguish he knows Parker is feeling, but will not admit -- Parker is not an assassin. The only people who have died at his hands have been actively trying to kill him. He never tries to kill them in return -- he just tries to avoid getting killed and if that causes a death, he mourns only a short while. His conscience is clear. He hands the lighter back to his friend, saying, "You keep it."

Right after Parker fails to pull the trigger, he finds his best friend dead -- shot through the forehead and body. He takes the lighter and puts it in his breast pocket.

When the police are trying to move him to safety from a mob-attack on the assassin of the Peace Prize Winner (a Rudy-like scene in a corridor), Parker takes a bullet in the heart. But the bullet is stopped by the silver lighter (a miracle?). He wakes from being stunned in time to grab the keys to his handcuffs and escape.

To get back to the agency with the police after him, he stops at his ex-wife's house and has a conversation with his son -- a fatherly responsibility conversation.

Analyzing the strange Chrononaut's "evidence" that there's a WWIII that has to be stopped, Parker recognizes Biblical quotes used to support the strange Chrononaut's thesis. The quote is about lightning and fire from Revelations. He suspects the man of being a religious fanatic starting a WWIII for his own twisted reasons.

Thus he enlists the aid of his friends to launch a mission back 7-Days in time. He gets away in time in a hail of bullets, by a miracle and the staunch life-sacrificing efforts of his friends.

At the assassination scene, he stops the strange Chrononaut by using that SILVER LIGHTER to start an explosive fire that burns the man up -- with every reason to expect he, himself would also burn in the explosion.

Lightning and fire erupt from the sky, crash of thunder and a deluge of water pours down and puts the fire out before Frank is burned to death -- he's hardly even scorched. Parker is saved by a miracle. (well, it impresses him even if not us)

Just to be sure you haven't missed the point, the writers added a dialog tag to explicate the theme. He asks Olga ( another scientist character), "Do you believe in God?" She says, "Yes," in an "of course" tone. He asks, "How about the Devil?" She doesn't answer.

So the theme might be taken to be, "If we really are changing TIME, our meddling can't go too far wrong because God is still in charge. Probably."

Notice how the SILVER LIGHTER and Biblical Quotes are used to support the ACTION of "being saved by a miracle." And "do the right thing by individuals and let the 'Good of the Many' be taken care of by God."

The envelope theme of the entire series, the premise underlying the vehicle, and the specific theme of this episode, all support each other coherently.

That's why I call this TV Series a "work of art." It has artistic integrity.

Put that quality into your work, and you will be commercially successful.

LL&P