Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/26580
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I've really enjoyed the CW's show _The Flash_ ever since it came out, but they recently did something that kind of feels like a mistake on the writers' part.

For those unfamiliar with the show, Barry Allen, the titular Flash, is a superhero whose powers include the (somewhat hard-to-control) ability to travel through time. He recently had an experience in which, for the first time in the series, he briefly ended up a few months in the future, and witnessed a catastrophic event taking place. Now he wants to stop it.

This is where the writers did something very clever, but also kind of dumb: while in the future, he observed a news report playing on a TV screen in a store window, with an anchor talking about something and various other headlines scrolling along in a news ticker at the bottom of the screen. Now he knows things that are going to happen in the next few months, and he thinks that if he can change some of them, he might be able to head off the disaster.

This is clever, as it gives the viewers a bit of a "teaser" look at what's in store later on in the season. But it also seems a bit odd, because _every one of those headlines was about something The Flash would be involved in in some way._ Barry lives in a major city. Surely there are other newsworthy events going on that have nothing at all to do with him, right? But no one on the news broadcast was talking about them!

That makes me wonder. Are there any techniques to be aware of to avoid this pitfall? How would I write a character who is genuinely influential and important to the world around him, without it coming across like he's the _only_ interesting person in the world and everything else revolves around his actions?

Original score: 3