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How much of your office furniture would you like to put at risk for this one: Name the seven muses and what they rule over.

Aww, skip it. Folks can’t even remember who the current president is, according to Jay Leno’s man on the street interviews. So here it is.

Thanks to Wikipedia for this list:

Calliope was chief of the muses and muse of epic or heroic poetry.

Clio was the muse of history.

Erato was the muse of love or erotic poetry, lyrics, and marriage songs.

Euterpe was the muse of music and lyric poetry.

Melpomene was the muse of tragedy.

Polyhymnia was the muse of sacred song, oratory, lyric, singing and rhetoric.

Terpsichore was the muse of dance.

Thalia was the muse of comedy and bucolic poetry.

Urania was the muse of astronomy.

One thing that bugs me is the trend in screenwriting over the past 10 years is to start a movie or TV episode off with an intense, confusing scene, then cut it off at a critical point, flash up words to the effect of: “Six months ago…” and take two-thirds of the TV episode or movie to get the viewer back to that point.

Sure, the first couple times I saw something structured like that, it seemed clever. But it’s getting overused lately and folks are failing to see the very real pitfall of that writing style: it gives away a lot of the sources for suspense, and the deeper that “catcher” moment comes in a file, the more it ruins things.

After all, after an intense opening where the main character’s life looks to be in mortal danger, one thing you know beyond doubt is that the character will survive at least to that point. Meaning that any conflicts earlier in the movie or episode are, in effect, meaningless, because you know that THAT SCENE hasn’t happened quite yet. Therefore, no need to worry about the consequences of what might happen in between because we know they’ll survive at least until that moment.

It’s that kind of self-spoiling writing that makes me want to toss modern office furniture at dumb writers as they drive under freeway overpasses.

OK, not really, but you get the point. A character’s survival should be in doubt at all times if you’re going to create a sense of suspense at all.