Psych: This time it’s NOT personal
Posted by William Rabkin on January 7, 2009
Someone asked me on another forum what the hardest thing was about writing my first Psych novel, A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read. I figure I might as well answer here, too.
The really tough part of the first Psych book was coming up with a story. And that was strange for me, because I’ve done zillions of mystery stories over the years. I’ve got a graveyard of fictional corpses that fills entire city blocks. But Psych made me rethink everything I know about crafting a story.
Usually when I’m trying to come up with a new episode for a series, I start with the show’s central character. Almost every good detective hero I’ve written about is driven by some kind of obsession. Dr. Mark Sloan is compelled to solve murders because he sees crime the same way he sees illness and he’s sworn to the Hippocratic Oath. Monk desperately has to put the world back into order or he’ll go mad. Nero Wolfe needs to prove he’s smarter than everyone else around. So when I’m thinking about a new episode, I ask myself what kind of crime and what kind of criminal will compel my hero to act. What kind of plot can I use to explore the inner life of the detective.
But Shawn Spencer isn’t driven to solve crimes. He isn’t pursued by psychological demons. He does it because… it’s fun.
There’s just not a lot to explore there…
So I first went to the bag of tricks all TV writers reach into when we can’t figure out how to give our stories some emotional weight. Shawn’s dad is kidnapped. He discovers he’s got a long-lost brother who’s accused of murder. His buddy from ‘Nam is in trouble.
These are what we big-time TV writing professionals call “crap.”
Then I realized I needed to stop thinking about the way I go about developing stories and start figuring out what would work for Psych. One of the show’s great charms is that Shawn doesn’t have any great emotional need to solve these crimes. He’s not driven. He just kind of ambles through the stories.
That word was my breakthrough. Ambles. Because when I think of ambling, I think of Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty ambling through their parody of Hope and Crosby’s Road pictures in an old SCTV sketch. And that led me to the real Hope and Crosby and the real Road pictures, and the way their characters would be inside the story and at the same time outside commenting on it.
That became my starting point for Shawn. Yes, he’d be investigating the crimes, but at the same time he’d be watching the investigation like a jaded viewer. It wouldn’t be enough for him to find the solution to the crime — he would need to find an entertaining solution. He would build theories based not on logic or evidence, but on maximum narrative pleasure. And he’d be right.
Once I had that, everything else fell into place.
Well, maybe not everything, but that’s another post…
jack henry said
you know i have often wondered if the novelization of a TV follows a TV format, or a three act, or what. i know a play is vastly different from a movie script and i am told a TV script is different still. would be an interesting format to play in.
btw this is jack henry that you met at the MFA residency in PS…
Lee Goldberg said
His book isn’t a novelization (ie a script turned into a book) but an original novel based on the TV series (ie an original story using the characters and franchise of PSYCH).
An episodic TV script is written in a four-act structure. I suspect he was following that structure in his book, but I’m not certain. I find that I tend to think story in a three or four-act structure whether I am writing a script or a book. (I suspect Bill, knowing him as I do, does too. We’ve been telling stories that way for so long that it’s probably how we are creatively wired now.) I think it’s especially important to do that in a TV tie-in…because you aren’t just trying to capture the voices of the characters, and the story-telling style of the show, but also the elusive “feel”…and that has a lot do to with the narrative flow and conflicts inherent in the four act structure that those stories are told in. Does that make sense?
Lee
Christine said
I just finished your book and loved it. There were so many hilarious parts where I stopped, found someone to read a passage to and then realized the joke was layered too complicatedly (I deem that a real word, if it is not one) to explain out of context. I would have never connected the Road pictures to this book, but can completely see the influence now. Thanks for a very enjoyable read. I can’t wait to read the next one!