There is a weakness in writing mystery/heisty plotarc in television that lies not inherent to the medium, per se, but rather in the nature of its production.
When you write a mystery novel, you have the chance to in either outline or in draft to beat on the plot, to make sure that you've left a breadcrumb trail of clues that is deft enough not to telegraph events (even to your savvy and intelligent readers) while still leaving the setup there so that you surprise your audience without shocking them (often, much can be done without specific Clues but with thematic rendering/characterisation of a character -- but that setup had better be there so you're dropping an ice cube down their shirt, not dropping them into a freezing lake). And in a film, you usually have a script that's been beaten on a lot before you ever cast actors. And depending on your budget, if you need to refilm shit, you can do that too. In television...
Well, in television, the timeframe is such that if you want to pull that shit off, I am going to say that you have to have your plotarc not just outlined in your head but written when you pitch the show. At a minimum, you absolutely have to have all of your structure in place before you start production. Because if you don't have it done upfront, you had better be a goddamned prescient genius who doesn't need to rework anything ever: you'll never have the chance to rework things, the pace on filming and post-production is just too damned fast.
Except no one's that much of a prescient genius.
I think he did work out his plot. In his head and only in his head, and he played it so goddamned close to his chest it was embedded under his fucking skin. And he doesn't think he's been that overly-subtle because he hasn't figured out that no writer can ever make that call on their own.
And that leaves me a lot less likely to trust him in general, tbh, because he knows enough to be dangerous and not enough to know what the hell he's doing. He's, god. He's got some strength and promise as a writer but he doesn't appear yet to have figured out the backend of structuring/writing plot. Which... yeah. I mean that shit's seriously hard. But the fact that I understand where and what he's struggling with doesn't make me trust him.
I wish I could be less media-savvy, sometimes. I can't turn it off and I can only sometimes make myself not care. And I pretty much can't make myself not care when the writing's sharp and promising, in some places.
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When you write a mystery novel, you have the chance to in either outline or in draft to beat on the plot, to make sure that you've left a breadcrumb trail of clues that is deft enough not to telegraph events (even to your savvy and intelligent readers) while still leaving the setup there so that you surprise your audience without shocking them (often, much can be done without specific Clues but with thematic rendering/characterisation of a character -- but that setup had better be there so you're dropping an ice cube down their shirt, not dropping them into a freezing lake). And in a film, you usually have a script that's been beaten on a lot before you ever cast actors. And depending on your budget, if you need to refilm shit, you can do that too. In television...
Well, in television, the timeframe is such that if you want to pull that shit off, I am going to say that you have to have your plotarc not just outlined in your head but written when you pitch the show. At a minimum, you absolutely have to have all of your structure in place before you start production. Because if you don't have it done upfront, you had better be a goddamned prescient genius who doesn't need to rework anything ever: you'll never have the chance to rework things, the pace on filming and post-production is just too damned fast.
Except no one's that much of a prescient genius.
I think he did work out his plot. In his head and only in his head, and he played it so goddamned close to his chest it was embedded under his fucking skin. And he doesn't think he's been that overly-subtle because he hasn't figured out that no writer can ever make that call on their own.
And that leaves me a lot less likely to trust him in general, tbh, because he knows enough to be dangerous and not enough to know what the hell he's doing. He's, god. He's got some strength and promise as a writer but he doesn't appear yet to have figured out the backend of structuring/writing plot. Which... yeah. I mean that shit's seriously hard. But the fact that I understand where and what he's struggling with doesn't make me trust him.
I wish I could be less media-savvy, sometimes. I can't turn it off and I can only sometimes make myself not care. And I pretty much can't make myself not care when the writing's sharp and promising, in some places.