Damon Lindelof, writer for Lost (which we love) interviews Tim Kring, writer and creator of the new hit show Heroes (which we also happen to love).
Damon Lindelof: How does it feel to be leaving the relative safety of a self-contained crime drama [Crossing Jordan] (Jordan finds body, Jordan solves murder) to enter the fun world of serialization... in which many of the questions you pose will not be answered for many, many episodes? You had always wanted to take Jordan more in this direction, but were forced to abandon it by the network powers that be... is it sweet that the same network is now embracing stories with much longer arcs?
Tim Kring: It's very exciting to challenge myself in a new way after being confined by a "closed-ended" type of storytelling. Having had a long career though, I've gotten used to trying to reinvent myself over and over again. The strange thing is that I find myself coming full circle sometimes. When I first started writing TV movies, I was known as the "horror" guy, then the "thriller" guy, then the "teen comedy" guy, etc. But in reality, having just written a new episode of HEROES, the muscles used in facing a blank page are remarkably similar no matter what genre you're in. I still struggle over crafting a scene one line at a time.
And I still look for truth and reality in every emotion. Where it is really a different animal is in the writers' room — the breaking of the stories. It has to be much more diligently planned out because every beat of the story has a domino effect. Pulling one thread can really make the whole house of cards come crashing down.
It is certainly "interesting" (read "sweet") that the network is now embracing the very type of storytelling that was off limits less than two years ago.
