Composition notebook

Aaron Sorkin, the Top 40 pop-song writer’s TV writer:

“Nobody’s getting killed off on an Aaron Sorkin show, no information is going to be withheld, and every episode is going to be a self-contained, organic whole. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he is absolutely uninterested in the idea of an episode of television in which nothing happens. As he said recently, in relation to his own method of television writing, “To resolve a melody, you have to end on either the tonic or the dominant. Try humming ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ right now, but leave off ‘snow.’ You’ll feel like you need to sneeze.” This is a cute joke, but it’s also the fundamental disconnect between Sorkin and the Chase School of Dramatic Anti-Climax. Serial television today is built around avoiding the sneeze. Aaron Sorkin is the episodic television writer par excellence in the post-episodic age.”

From LARB