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I wrote a science-fiction screenplay, entitled True Blood, right around the same time that Charlaine Harris would’ve been writing the first book of The Southern Vampire Mysteries – these are the books that, eventually, became the TV series True Blood. (I mention that as nothing more than coincidence – I just found it funny the way two similar things can occur on different sides of the world. I emailed Charlaine about it, and we got to talking, and are now collaborating together on a science-fiction vampire opera featuring zombie gerbils.) I wanted to sub True Blood to a comp a couple of years ago, so I took it out with…
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Films, television series, and books ultimately come down to the same thing: the written story. Something that is beginning to annoy me in storytelling – particularly in film and television – is the use of flashbacks. To the best of my knowledge, JJ Abrams’ television series Lost popularised the use of flashbacks to introduce backstory. Lost has an ensemble cast of characters. In the two seasons I watched (before the constant baiting and switching turned me off), each episode would focus on somebody different. Throughout that episode, we’d get flashbacks about the character’s life before they got on the island. A younger, much-less cynical version of me enjoyed this –…