Well, not really.  But I must confess I learned a lot about writing from seasons 1 & 2 of the award winning television show, Grey’s Anatomy.  Not about script writing, either.  But about how to hook an audience, how to reveal character, how to write memorable dialogue, and how to leave an audience wanting more.

How to hook an audience:

Introduce your main characters not at their best.  The series begins with the heroine, Meredith Grey, waking up after a wild night out on the town. ( The first minute of this video, until Meredith disappears upstairs, illustrates this point, but if you watch a little more you will see how several characters are revealed beautifully and succinctly.)

Then, about ten minutes into the episode, we find out Derek is her boss.  She wants to maintain a professional relationship, he wants to keep it personal.  Now we’ve got to continue to watch to find out if she sucuumbs or if she resists.  Same principle applies in writing novels–grab the reader with a great hook on the first page.  Jump into the middle of a situation, reveal a character’s weakness, start with an embarrassing situation that just gets worse.

Revealing character is another skill vital to the writer and one that I learned from watching Grey’s.  If you watched the whole of the video above, you have solid character concepts for all four interns and Dr. Bailey.  Her nickname, “the Nazi,” sums her up beautifully!  What these five characters do and say in a miminal amount of time creates their characters vividly in the audience’s mind.  I strive to pack that much info into concise dialogue or description.

Even though I have an ear for dialogue (having worked in the theatre most of my life), Grey’s showed me that dialogue isn’t just words the characters say–it is an art form.  The following scene is my very favorite in the whole of the Grey’s Anatomy series, because the use of language and dialogue is mesmerizing:

I can watch that scene over and over.  The rhythm of the language almost makes it poetry.  People don’t talk like that nowadays–but they should.  And when they do, it reveals so much about their characters.  That is what dialogue is supposed to do–reveal the characters to the audience.  When we craft those words so that the reader can hear the intonation, the inflection, the way the character’s brow arches when he says a certain phrase, then we have done our job.

What you also need to do as a writer is to always leave the reader wanting more.  Make the hook at the end of each chapter so tantalizing that the reader has to turn that page NOW to see what happens.  Grey’s Anatomy did that in spades at the end of Season 1.

Just when you thought the HEA was in sight–everything changes.  And you CANNOT put that book down until you know everything’s going to be all right.

I’ve enjoyed sharing my favorite and most inspirational clips from Grey’s Anatomy.  In my opinion, the writing in Seasons 1 & 2 was stellar and I go back from time to time for a refresher course.  We can learn the craft of writing from any number of sources.  Keep your eyes open; you never know when or where the your next best tip on writing will come from.

Do you have television shows or movies whose writing has inspired you? Changed your style?  Made the light bulb go off about something you never really got before?  If so, please share a comment!