Blacklist in Season 3 is Back –
Serial Fiction at its Best
If there’s a commercial TV episodic show I want my own serial novel, Queen, to embody in its own way, in terms of fun to follow, it’s from one of my favorite’s : Blacklist.
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Blacklist in Season 3 is Back –
Serial Fiction at its Best
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January 10, 2016
Related Categories : Thrillers – Serial Fiction – TV – Books
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Intro
I’ll post some links below to some of my posts regarding short fiction, especially serials, but here, I just want to acknowledge how great it was see one of my favorite TV shows, including on PBS, Masterpiece, and BBCAmerica – NBC’s Blacklist.
With its only true competitor in my view, Justified, gone to the archives etc, it was doubly good to see Blacklist come back with the punch and verve and jump shots and thrills I saw from Season One.
This is equally felt by both the reviewer of an article from EW, Jodi Walker who says, “Did you find as much hope for the future of The Blacklist in this episode as I did?” AND by the main sentiment in the comment thread, as in this example, “FINALLY – this episode reminded me why I watch this show.”
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Serial Fiction on TV and in Digital Books
Doing research for folks doing serial fiction in digital form, the most common thing I’ve heard to-date, as at First Draught Podcasts (Oct 2015 podcast), is, follow what’s happening on TV.
And it’s true.
Endings of episodes can be a finish of a significant arc, mid-action, or even the unknown.
But there’s rarely an artificially forced cliffhanger, and even quite frequently, rarely a conclusion to a specific thread or crime, except as a thread in the overall story for the season. When those aren’t true, a show has a hard time getting a second season, I think.
And though there are clear differences between TV and digital books, with more obvious visuals in the former and more opportunity for deep interior pov in the latter, story demands remain incredibly similar.
That gives me great encouragement in my own 37 episode books in Queen, the Serial Novel. (smiles)
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Developing Powerful Recognizable Characters
A last feature I strongly recognized in this week’s episode of Blacklist I want very much to happen in my own work is, the presence, now, in Season 3 of the show, of powerfully identifiable characters through out.
Besides Red and Liz, there’s Tom and Cooper and Ressler and Dembe and Navabi and now even Aram.
It makes the show powerful across segments with characters we care about.
Hopefully, with my previous thriller (2014), One Night in the Hill Country, plus two shorts in Kindle Worlds from Joe Konrath and Ann Voss Peterson, and a prequel short (2013) where my main character Samantha Lacroix met all six of the young cousins (Dirty Sixth Street, Austin), I’ve luckily begun the process of doing something similar.
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Final Thoughts
Though obviously my story lines and characters are very different from those in Blacklist, I’ve begun to see qualities in this fabulous TV show that give me hope I’m on the right road creating my own world of characters and stories, with their own distinctive pluses inside the world of books.
Who knows, one day these characters may find their way to a small or large screen too.
Such are the dreams of most creative writers. (smiles)
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These four books below all feature Samantha Lacroix, lead character in Queen, the Serial Novel :
Please click book cover for product page on Amazon
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Please click book cover for product page on Amazon
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Related posts:
Jump-Cuts : A Style for Short Chapters and Point of View Shifts
New Fiction in a New Kindle World – Codename: Chandler
My Joe Konrath, Jack Daniels, Kindle Worlds Short Story – An Unforeseen-Conventional Morning
Queen : New thriller in progress – Deepening Point of View, part 1
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