Breaking Bad, Doctor Who, and the Mystery of Originality

Like many people, I came to Breaking Bad late, and then overcompensated by binge-watching the entire series over several weeks, culminating in a self-imposed Twitter and Facebook ban while I frantically sought to catch up to the finale without getting spoiled. (By the way, the complete series comes out on DVD and blu-ray today.)

I’m not going to analyze the ending of the show, though I highly recommend the following reads for that: Grantland, the Onion AV Club, the New Yorker, and the Cockamamie Theories blog.

What intrigued me from a writer’s standpoint was the The Washington Post’s description of the show as “completely original.” Critic Hank Steuver writes, “In a hyper-media era in which so much is derivative of something else, we sometimes lose sight of the value of the completely original epic. Breaking Bad may have drawn from the greatest tools of dramatic tragedy, but it was not based on or adapted from anything that came before…”

This article sent me into a tailspin. Was it really true? Was it even possible? Had showrunner/creator Vince Gilligan come up with something 100% original?

Doctor Who celebrated its 50th anniversary on 11/23

Likewise, an article by Jill Lepore in the November 11th issue of the New Yorker stated, “Doctor Who is the most original science-fiction television series ever made.”

But surely the show’s creator, Sydney Newman, was inspired by art, history, or media that came before, just like the rest of us. Right?

As a writer, I tend to over-concern myself with the question of originality. I worry I’ll never come up with anything that hasn’t already been done.

And then I remember that isn’t the point.

Austin Kleon’s blog-post-turned book, “Steal Like an Artist” theorizes that there’s nothing new under the sun. As writers and creators, we constantly refer to that which came before, and there’s nothing wrong with that; Kleon believes, “You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.”

I was curious what strange and wondrous works of art had influenced Vince Gilligan when he created Breaking Bad (about a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a meth kingpin), so I dug around online. Here’s what I discovered:

1) The logline Mr. Gilligan used to pitch the project was “Turning Mr. Chips into Scarface.”
2) The concept of using an RV to cook meth sprung from a news story and a joke with a fellow writer
3) Walt’s wife, Skyler, was described to actress Anna Gunn early on as “Carmela Soprano, but in on the crime.”
4) The finale episode, titled “Felina,” was influenced by and even partially based on the song El Paso.
5) Walt and Jesse’s last moments were inspired by a scene in “The Searchers.”

Knowing that such a wide and varied list of influences (Westerns! The Sopranos!  Music!  Film!) were thrown into the mix makes me love Breaking Bad even more.

As for Doctor Who, a British institution that concerns the fantastical adventures of a do-good time-traveler, the New Yorker article confirms that a bizarre mixture of influences went into the program’s creation. They include:

1) HG Wells
2) The Day the Earth Stood Still
3) “Sherlock Holmes with a Female Watson” (Which explains why The Doctor is joined by a young lady companion; it should be noted that this is also the premise of the CBS show Elementary, though you'd never the confuse the two shows!)
4) World War II and specifically Nazis (Which become Daleks, the Doctor’s long-running enemies.)

The above examples help prove that by enhancing, altering, combining, and changing the things we love, we turn them into new and precious compounds, as conceived through our personal lenses and experiences.

Writers, take heart: No one else sees the world quite like you do, and no matter what “mashup” you bring to the table, it will be unique.

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Sarah Skilton’s upcoming Young Adult mystery, HIGH AND DRY (April 15, 2014) -- about a high school soccer player scrambling to clear his name after being framed and blackmailed -- was partially inspired by the films In a Lonely Place and Brick, the TV series Veronica Mars, the book The Long Goodbye, two Broadway musicals, and more…

Demystifying Writing

One of the greatest mysteries I've struggled with as a writer is the mystery of my own darned writing process. How do snatches of conversation, fleeting glimpses of characters, and vague themes find their way to the page? How do the pages stack up? Panic: How on earth did I manage to write and publish an entire book? Is it even possible to do it again?

When I romanticize the writing process, thinking of it as something mystical and beyond me, I end up shuffling around the house, nursing endless cups of coffee, wondering things: When will these characters come to life? When will my random ideas cohere? Am are writing two different books -- or three? Or one? Are my plot problems even fixable? Will the solutions come to me in a dream, or if I walk around the block, or if I take another shower?

Then I wonder, at the end of the day, why the pages are not stacking up. And at the end of the day I'm paralyzed by self-doubt. Having Not Written.

As I am now deep in the writing of my second novel, staring down the barrel of a deadline, I've come to realize something. The only way I get any real writing done is when I stop being mystified by it. I have to understand my most productive work habits and take advantage of them. Mostly, I have to sit down at the desk and just get the work done. Instead of wondering how it's all going to happen, I have to make it happen.

I used to agonize over whether to bang out a whole draft and then revise (at the risk of scrapping hundreds of pages or entire characters), or whether I should outline carefully and write more slowly, revising as I go. I've come to accept that I'm neither a panster nor a plotter. I'm something in between: a puzzler.

My novel-in-progress. (Yep, that's Sponge Bob's eye).

Being a puzzler is like having a handful of puzzle pieces when I begin a project. Unfortunately they're not always the most useful pieces. I might have some sky pieces that don't quite fit, and part of a frame, and one corner, and somebody's eye. But the pieces intrigue me. I write a little, think, fix, brainstorm, write more. Before I know it, I have more pieces to move around: more sky, another corner, the second eye, and whoa, a dog.

And so I've found a middle ground in my writing process, where I draft in bursts of up to thirty pages (over several days). Then I go back and take stock, get information I need, brainstorm more, solve problems, and push the manuscript forward into another thirty-page burst.

Instead of sprinting to the end, I look more carefully at what I have after each writing burst. I go more deeply into scenes. I look for underutilized characters, overlooked objects that could become clues or plot twists. Does a character say "no" when someone asks him an important question or extends an invitation? If I make him say "yes" instead, might that propel me into the next thirty pages? Have I made things too easy for my characters? How can they work harder to get what they want? I also try to check in with my characters' emotions. Are they having any? Will their emotional responses propel the plot forward? Oh look, there's another piece of the puzzle, snapping together. Nice.

It's a tedious process at times. I am a fast writer at heart, and I know I'm capable of banging out up to twenty pages in a day. I want to bang out twenty pages in a day. But when I write recklessly, those pages may not all serve the story, and I may eventually hit a dead end. The slower, puzzling process -- which seems to work better for my plot-intensive mysteries -- means I may only have four or five pages at the end of a day. Yet they are better quality pages, and they set me up for more to come.

I recently reread one of my favorite books on writing craft, and I think it's particularly useful for puzzler-types. This slender but wise book is by Ron Carlson, a favorite writer of mine, and it's called Ron Carlson Writes a Story. It walks you through how he wrote one of his acclaimed short stories ("The Governor's Ball") -- what was going through his mind, how he thought through plot problems, how he dealt with uncertainty. It's also about he avoids distractions and "stays in the room." Reading this guide is like looking over his shoulder as he writes, and it makes me feel less alone in the process.

If you are working on a writing project or planning one, I highly recommend it.

What's your creative process like? Do you have a metaphor or image that explains your process? (Construction? Running? Cooking?) 

Do you have writing or other creative goals in 2013? How will you meet those goals?

Diana Renn grew up in Seattle and now lives outside of Boston with her husband and young son. TOKYO HEIST (Viking/Penguin, published June 2012) is her first novel, and she is hard at work on the next one, which is also a YA mystery.