Would everyone in the room who is addicted to reality television raise their hand.
*Raises hand*
If you are a reality television watcher like myself you love to watch the train wrecks as they happen. As a writer, reality TV for me is the ultimate idea generator. In the past I’ve watched:
- The Millionaire Matchmaker
- Flipping Out
- How Clean is Your House
- Hell’s Kitchen
- Project Runway
- So You Think You Can Dance
- Real Housewives of [Fill in the City – Atlanta, Orange County, New Jersey, you get the drift]
- American Idol
- Punk’d
- The Biggest Loser
- Moment of Truth (OMG, the word work train wreck is not good enough for this one…)
- Trading Spouses
- Nanny 911
- Tabitha’s Salon Takeover (Luv this show!)
I’m leaving out classics like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich (the real who’s my baby-daddy show). To be honest, I couldn’t get into Survivor or Dancing with the Stars. I tried, but it wasn’t entertaining to me. I guess they didn’t have enough of that hot mess factor I was looking for. 😀
So what have these shows taught me? That if I can’t think of unique characters for my books, then these places are filled to the hilt with ideas for me to tap, flip in a bowl, and slap in pan to sizzle into something interesting. Take the chef from Hell’s Kitchen for example, he is a potty mouth chef from England. He treats the other chefs like crap, but I love to watch this show. (As well as the F Word on the BBC. Another BBC America addict here.) With all those personalities trying to cook a risotto properly there’s bound to be a scene hiding in there somewhere to twist with a paranormal idea. Either with a loud mouth contestant or one who seems to have poor fashion sense.
So grab that remote folks and pull out that research paper. You can find plenty of what-if scenarios to utilize in your manuscript.