Music

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, you're listening to Ratchet and Respectable with Dimitria

El Lucas.

Hello, hello, hello! How are you? Is it good to be back with you this week?

I have a confession. I've been watching Trash Television again. I stopped watching reality

TV after I was on a reality TV show. Reality TV is incredibly produced and scripted. It's

really difficult for me to watch reality TV because I know that people are adhering

to a script and doing takes of their conversations. But I'm in screenwriting school, which I've

talked about a little bit before. My most recent class was about pacing. How do you keep

a viewer entertained and wanting to know what happens next? It's essentially the difference

between when you're watching a show and it goes to commercial and you wait through the

commercial versus you're watching a show and it goes to commercial and you flip the channel.

I was talking to one of my friends who's a screenwriter and he was like, you know, if you

really want to learn pacing, reality TV is really, really good at it. I was very skeptical

and I was like, I'm trying to do scripted. Like, why would I be watching reality TV? He was

like, you watch Real Housewives of Atlanta, you watch Love and Hip Hop, right? Okay. And

he was like, when does all the action start? There's always a brawl at the very end of

the episode and you're like, oh my God, I can't believe what happened. And then you tune

in next week to see what happens. He was like, you always know like in the last 10 minutes

of the episode, something crazy is going to happen. That is pacing and structure. And

I was like, oh, I refused to watch Love and Hip Hop in Real Housewives of Atlanta.

So we settled on me watching my 600 pound life and 90 day fiance. I start watching for

...