The television made a great backdrop for my flowers.

Watching television can also improve your writing. Try these exercises while viewing a favorite show.

1.Whose story is being told? Does it stay with one point of view?

2.Close your eyes and listen to the dialogue--can you tell which character is speaking or do they sound alike?

3.Can you identify the arc of the story--the conflict, the complication, the solve--and when it happens? Long running shows fall into a set patterns. Genre fiction, such as mysteries and romance, also have predicable formulas.

4.Lastly, why do you watch your favorite show? Probably for the same reason someone would read your novel--interesting characters that you care about.

Doorways into the past

Recently I read a book published in 1909. David P. Abbot's straightforward language was modern. His "Behind the Scenes with the Mediums" exposed tricks I had seen on television shows about psychic swindles. Except for a few word choices, the book could have been published anytime in the last thirty years. Yet the book I had in my hands had thick, stiff, cream-colored pages held together with strong threads, a constant reminder that these words came from the past. Near the end of his book David lamented about not finding an authentic medium. But at seventy-five he said that he would soon know what laid beyond death. Now Mr. Abbott, long dead, has spoken to me through his book in a way I doubt reading a modern reprint or by electronic means would have been possible.