My good friend Bob Cochran (below) is the co-creator and Executive Producer of the hit international series, "24." An interview with Bob will be one of the features of the website that will tie in with my forthcoming book, "Your Writing Coach," but in the meantime, here (from an interview in worldscreen.com) are his observations and those of his writing partner, Joel Surnow, on the importance of pace in today's writing:
SURNOW: You're always impacted by the fact that people have hundreds of choices on TV--how do you poke your nose out above the pack? That's why we have those '24' moments, those outrageous moments that happen over the course of the show that hopefully get people talking. Jack Bauer kills people in cold blood--I think that kind of storytelling is exactly what you have to do in today's marketplace.
COCHRAN: You do get the feeling that all television shows, or most of them, are more fast-paced now than they used to be. Those things pervade the industry as a whole and they get in our DNA as you're writing or producing. I don't think it's a conscious reaction to what's going on, but you certainly can't afford to bore anybody and you'd better get on with the story pretty quickly and you'd better come up with twists and turns of whatever kind that keep people watching. We don't say to ourselves, there are a lot of two-minute episodes on cell phones and iPods out there, we have to compete with that. But it enters into the way things are done in a more subtle way.
