Wednesday, May 06, 2015

The Adjacent Grimm


Reminiscing about these shows and when I started watching them, it reminded me that I had been hoping to write some sample episodes and apply as a writer.


The problem was that I was more interested in writing for "Grimm" than any other show, and the strongest ideas I had were for Grimm episodes. That makes total sense, but wasn't practical. The prevailing wisdom is that you need to send scripts for other shows.

In the end it didn't matter. When that was going on I was in the middle of the comic book, which kept me busy through October, when I started writing Family Blood (the screenplay, not the book).

That's been okay. I'm still more interested in writing movies than series, and I feel good about publishing the books. I really hadn't seen that happening three years ago. However, I have been thinking about creativity a lot lately, and there is something kind of interesting about the episodes I had in mind.

One was going to be centered around something that looked like a vampire attack. The initial suspicion would fall upon a bat-like Wesen, but it would really be a lamprey. For the other idea, there would be a Grimm who wasn't aware of his background so thought he was seeing demons and attacking them. Nick would come to the aid of one very meek Wesen who was terrified of him, but then by the end of the episode the victim would tell Nick he was a good man, and it would be a moment.

Shortly after I thought of that, we got a bat-like Wesen, the Murciélago. Halfway into the next season, the lamprey-like Lebensauger appeared. No one got exsanguinated that time, because Ryan was not comfortable with his abilities, but that happened later, toward the end of season 3. At that time, we were getting to know Trubel, a new Grimm who had not been raised with any information about her heritage, and yes, it had led to some institutionalization and crime.

Also, Nick has helped plenty of crime victims who have been freaked out by him by now.

This is in no way to suggest copying was going on. I never wrote anything on those episodes - I only thought of them. It's like when I was in high school I had this idea of dinosaurs being loose in the modern world, because some unhatched eggs were revived. Then, when Crichton's method was DNA in the blood of mosquitoes trapped in amber, that seemed so brilliant - way better than my idea. And maybe the point is just to get the dinosaurs there, but that idea was electrifying. (And the movie was pretty exciting.)

In addition to remembering that, I am able to see it in a different light after reading Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You, which led me to Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson.

What they have talked about was "the adjacent possible". There is the field of existing knowledge, and then all around that is next steps - things that we have enough information to figure out, but haven't figured out yet. One metaphor that was used is that for every door you open, there are more doors beyond that.

Those books were focusing more on inventions and technology, but stories work like that too. Once you have Wesen as a thing, then you can look at all of the different types of animals out there and imagine new ones. Once you have Grimms you can have different levels of adjustment to it.

The Murciélago story had a lot of heart in it. I like what they did with it. Having one Grimm go nuts and be hauled away to an insane asylum can be one story, but it can be a better story to have a protégée for Nick, plus then there's someone to keep Josh alive. Some plot twists eliminate some possibilities, but they keep opening up more.

That's just been something that's been fun to remember. Every now and then someone will say that there are really only three stories, or seven, or thirty-six. Even if you agree that's true on one level, that doesn't begin to describe the rich variety that can entail.

Creativity is a beautiful thing.

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