Challenge,  On Writing

Some Interesting Plotting

August 28, 2024 /

Watching the Old Magnum…

For an hour or so each night, to relax, Kris and I watch television, and for some reason we got going on the old Magnum shows. We’ll stop when we find other shows or some network television returns. But tonight we had worked our way through season seven, which was supposed to be the last season. And I wanted to watch that show ender.

He’s a ghost through most of the show and at the end walks into the clouds. Really well done with John Denver music.

Then they decided to have a season eight because of the ratings and the money and had to get him back out of the clouds. So we watched the opening of that first show in the tacked-on season to see how the writers did it. Pretty obvious and tacked on, just like the entire season.

But Magnum walking off into the clouds had to be one of the best show enders of all time before it was ruined by the decision to have just one more season. Sort of like that ending show of Mash and then suddenly saying, “Never mind, the war is still going. Put the tents back up.”

Sometimes good writing just needs to be left alone and not ruined by greed.

But as I have been talking about in a few workshops lately, writers learning to just write and then leave it alone is difficult at best.

So tomorrow Kris and I will watch the full 1st episode of the tacked-on season to see what they really did, but no matter what, it will not or was not as good as that last episode of season seven, the original show-ender.

Heinlein had it correct is so many ways for so many forms of telling stories. Write. Finish what your write. Never Rewrite. Put it on the market. Leave it on the market.

8 Comments

  • Emilia

    August 28, 2024 at 1:34 am

    I think one problem I’ve had with writing openings is pancking that I haven’t done enough depth, going back and tacking on more text from the critical part of the brain. I’m trying to leave the openings alone more and trusting the feeling that the 400 words is enough.

    • dwsmith

      August 28, 2024 at 2:19 am

      Emilia, no rules so don’t put them on yourself. Sometimes it takes 400 words to start, sometimes 4,000. Do what the story needs.

      • Emilia

        August 28, 2024 at 10:51 am

        I’m still learning to how to tell what the story needs. I did get the funniest feedback when I “cooked my way to the story”.

  • Mark Kuhn

    August 28, 2024 at 4:55 am

    And then the other side of that coin is when a show, getting great ratings, is cancelled for no reason. I’m looking at you, CBS, for cancelling “So Help Me Todd”.

    And then there’s the whole debacle of a dumpster fire that “X-Files” became.

    Sorry. I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

  • Kerridwen Mangala McNamara

    August 28, 2024 at 4:01 pm

    I need to share this… like you say, Dean, it’s hard not to go back and second-guess yourself sometimes…

    I have a friend who is getting her copyrights back from the small publisher she went with to get started. She’s grown since then… wants to rewrite then and re-release… (I loved them as they are…)

  • Brad D. Sibbersen

    August 30, 2024 at 7:58 am

    My head canon has always been that Magnum Season 8 is just the fever dream he has as he is finally dying/crossing over. That Season 7 finale was indeed perfect and should have been let be. (I feel the same way about Supernatural, which ended with Season 5 as far as I’m concerned. Perfect ending.)