Feeling a little lost on blogging or story ideas?
Enjoy a marathon of your favorite television shows.
TV is a great place to get ideas for your writing. For an example of this, I will take you through my own thoughts based on the Mind Games episode of Numbers — a great police drama — that led to eight prompts.
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First, I look at the shows concept.
Numbers is a great show to make you think. While it no longer on the air, it is still one of my favorite cop drama’s where they solve a crime in less than one hour. As one of our previously interviewed writers, Sue Coletta mentions in her blog posts The CSI Effect: Are Cop Shows Brainwashing Us? , this is not exactly how it is done in real life.
Found at boston.com and National Institute of Justice
Since reading Sue’s post, every time I watch a police show, I think of this. Which leads to:
Writing Prompt #1: Do writers have a responsibility to ensure their readers are able to seperate fact from fiction? If so, how should they go about doing this?
However, this is fiction. In this one Charles Epps — played by David Krumholtz, a genius mathematician works with his FBI agent brother, Don — played by Rob Morrow — to solve crimes.
Now, numbers is not my strong suit. However, I realize that they play an important role in our lives which this show demonstrates in a creative way.
Writing Prompt #2: How do numbers play a role in your job and/ot life?
Writing Prompt #3: How important is mathematics in education?
Every time I watch an episode of this show again I come up with many great ideas for blog posts, articles, or even stories.
I will admit that I kinda have a crush on the character of Dr. Larry Fleinhardt — that brain is fascinating. Therefore, most of my ideas are based on his intriguing views.
Second, I look at the episodes info.
Mind Games (Season 2, Episode 17) loosely deals with the concept of science vs. the unknown, in this case, a psychic.
Quote found at Shakespeare Quick Quotes
Don and his team are working with a psychic to solve the murder cases of three young girls, illigals from Mexico. Charley is not happy with this as he sees physics as frauds.
Writing Prompt #4: Should police departments utilize psychic?
This also lead us to the question.
Writing Prompt #5: Does lack of scientific evidence mean that something isn’t real?
Writing Prompt #6: Law enforcement using a psychic or even a psychic detective division makes for a nice paranormal novel — yes, it has been done before but you can make it your own.
Last, I listen for one or more quotable quote(s),
Quote heard on Numbers: Mind Games
Larry’s viewpoint is clear when he attempts to open Dr. Charles Epps’ mind to the possibilities of psychic phenomena.
“To hold to one assumption, and exclude any and all contradictory data– that isn’t science.
That’s politics.” ~Dr. Larry Fleinhardt, played by Peter MacNicol
This one quote gave me a few great ideas. Let’s look at two of them that can spark great debate.
Writing Prompt #7: Should we keep politics out of science?
Writing Prompt #8: How open minded should a scientist be?
Are These Writing Ideas Helpful
As you can see above, I was able to come up with several great ideas for writing just by watching one television show.
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To be honest, I am not sure if all that thinking led to anything useful for me. However, I have found myself wishes I could remember a quote or idea from a recently watched television show that would fit perfectly — or could be tweaked — for a post I was working on. So, I now write them all down and try to keep them organized in a Google Spreadsheet.
Of course, I do have the opportunity of sharing these prompts with others that may be able to use them.
Are these ideas helpful to you? Let me know in the form below.
Writers Clan 