What Orphan Black Taught Me About Revising

I’ve been binge-watching some awesome shows this summer with my husband, and the compelling storylines and characters in these shows have made me think about my own writing. Which is one of the wonders of art: the way you can connect it to different creative forms.

So I’m doing a short writing series on the blog this summer focused on what some of my favorite shows have shown me about writing.

First up: Orphan Black. We recently started watching this Canadian show. Or devouring, I should say. For those who haven’t yet watched–and you really should–it’s a science-fiction show involving a woman who discovers she’s a clone.

Between episodes, I’ve been writing and revising a couple of short stories. It has often been wonderful and exhilarating to immerse myself in the words and learn about the characters. But sometimes it sucks. Sometimes I’m writing or revising and I realize that the words aren’t right, the sentences are clunky, or something’s wobbly in the very story structure. And it’s frustrating and disheartening and I wonder what the heck I’m doing, why I’ve chosen to write when clearly I’m so very far from perfect.

But then I think of Orphan Black. Because Orphan Black, upon close look, is not perfect either–at least not yet, or not in certain scenes. I’m only halfway through the first season and the mystery is still unraveling but when I think about some of the minor characters in isolation, one seems inconsistent and one seems a little one-dimensional. But you know what? I love the pants off this show. I love it for its addictive cliffhangers, its surprising humor and explosive sex scenes, and most of all the incredible acting on the part of Tatiana Maslany, who plays a multitude of clone-characters on the show so convincingly you forget you’re watching the same actress over and over.

It reminds me that the art we love, the art that moves us, isn’t necessarily perfect all the time. But maybe loving art isn’t about watching or reading something that’s devoid of bad. Maybe it’s about enjoying a book or show that has an abundance of good. Stories are like people, I think. They’re never perfect, they are flawed in small and sometimes large ways, but you can love them anyway.

This has made me focus my revising not on trying to reach some perfect ideal, but identifying, capturing, and increasing what’s working, what’s enjoyable or moving.

What about you, my fellow writers, readers, and watchers: what imperfect shows, books, or works of art do you love?