I also do feel like this content has value for a writer, and I’m not just saying that to justify the hours of it I’ve consumed. Here are three lessons that storytellers can learn from reality TV, arguably better than from any other television genre.

#1: How to introduce and manage a large cast of characters.

Competition reality shows are especially good for this. They kind of do the opposite of what you’d consider conventional storytelling wisdom in this regard. Most fiction starts with 1-2 characters, then gradually adds more as needed, spacing them out so the reader’s not overwhelmed by the litany of names and descriptions. In a competition show, the cast is largest on day 1, and gradually shrinks down from there week-by-week.

The especially tricky thing is: they still want the viewer to be at least a little sad about those early eliminations, but without ignoring the characters who are going to stay around until the end. This means being very selective with how they distribute the limited screen time. They’re also very good about identifying a few distinctive traits that viewers associate with each contestant—you might not remember contestant names until a few episodes in, but you remember that they’re the one who only cooks vegan food.

Another thing you’ll notice is that, often, the people who go the furthest don’t get a ton of screen time in the early episodes. Eventually, you learn more about these individuals than the rest; in storytelling lingo, they become more three-dimensional characters on-screen. You don’t get all of that from the start, though. They’re introduced with the same glimpses and highlighted key traits as the rest.

Some types of stories require you to do this same thing. Example genres where you might see this include military fiction, apocalypse or disaster stories, or slasher horror. If you want a high body count, and want those deaths to mean something, then you have to work with a large cast early on and quickly make the reader care about the people you plan to off. Studying the early episodes of competition reality shows can teach you techniques to do this effectively. In a story with a large cast, the competition show’s winner is analogous to your protagonist. They’re there the whole time, so while you do want to show the most of their personality and life overall, you don’t need to rush it. There are times it’s more effective to build up the other characters first, while the protagonist’s growth simmers along in the background.

#2: How real people talk.

Yes, reality TV dialogue is often prompted, curated, and heavily edited. It’s not as “real” as an overheard conversation IRL, and the balance between scripted and off-the-cuff dialogue varies depending on the show and format. On the plus side, though, you can intently listen to, study, or even transcribe reality TV conversations without even the slightest risk of being creepy.

And what reality TV dialogue does very well is preserve the messiness of real-world communication but packaged for an audience’s consumption. There are false starts, interruptions, non sequiturs, and miscommunications. People talk over each other. They contradict themselves. Sometimes they lie, or don’t say what they really mean, or talk around details they don’t want to state overtly. Adding a touch of that messiness to dialogue in fiction can help it feel like real people talking for your readers.

Reality TV can be a valuable tool for authenticity in other ways, too. It can give you a peek into a profession, niche, or community you want to use in a story but don’t know much about. If you’re writing a story about fashion designers, or storage unit auctions, or crab fishing, or tattooing, or flipping houses, or any of the plethora of niches that have reality TV shows about them by this point, watching some episodes can help you capture how the characters think and talk about their craft.

#3: How to make just about anything a conflict.

A lot of the things that happen on-screen during reality shows are pretty mundane, and don’t seem like the makings of compelling television. What makes these everyday activities interesting is how the characters engage with it and each other. This is how reality TV show producers imbue each scene with energy and tension that make the viewer want to keep watching.

Reality TV excels at turning everyday activities into tension bombs. A group of friends goes out for dinner and, by the end of it, they’re throwing drinks and screaming across the parking lot; that could be the arc of a literary fiction story just as easily as a reality TV episode. A chef cooking the perfect omelette doesn’t sound exciting, but it is when you add a ticking clock and high stakes.

The way reality TV conflicts are constructed mirrors how they’re often built in a story. Some of the tension arises out of the situation itself, but a lot of the energy driving each episode is developed through editing—how the “confessional” interjections are interspersed between the scenes, when commercial breaks create cliffhangers, which interactions between characters make it into the episode and which end up on the cutting room floor, and so on.

In fiction, tension is built not just by what happens in the plot, but also through your selective use of flashback, internal monologue, and other devices to establish the emotional context and history between the characters. Studying how reality TV shows arrange these pieces to build a satisfying arc into each episode can be very helpful in refining your approach to conflict in your fiction.

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I took part in workshops at both events, and between those and the panels I filled up a quarter of a notebook with awesome tips and ideas to improve my writing. Here are some of the highlights that especially resonated with me (and will hopefully be useful for other folks looking for writing tips!)

Tip 1: Start filling a “poison cabinet” to reference when you need to add conflict to a scene or story.

This tip came from Timons Esaias during the Confluence workshop The Muddle in the Middle. A “poison cabinet” is a place to store toxic or hurtful words that could enhance conflict in dialogue between your characters. These could be things said to you, things you’ve said, or things you overhear. Once your poison cabinet is stocked, you can dip into it when you need to ramp up the tension between characters in a conversation. As Timons said, “If anything or anybody hurts you, get paid for it.”

This is an especially great tip for folks who sometimes struggle to be mean to their characters (or just struggle to be mean in general). Another great source of poison cabinet inventory Timons suggested was to read self-help books—but stop before they get to the “help” part. The early chapters of those books, when they’re explaining the toxicity or problem they want to address, can be a great place to mine for bad things that your characters can say or do to each other.

Tip 2:  A high emotional payoff requires high stakes, so find those “emotional buttons” you can push for readers.

This is another tip from the Muddle in the Middle workshop. We’ve all probably read at least one story that’s a struggle to get through—not because it’s poorly written, but because it hits hard at one of our emotional trigger points. These are the kinds of stories that you might start choking up just thinking or talking about. Or maybe it’s something from real life that you haven’t seen yet in fiction but is equally adept at pushing that button.

For me personally, this is any time an animal is suffering or dies. It’s harder for me to read a cat, dog, horse, etc. suffering and dying than human characters going through the same (which maybe says more about my own psychology than anything, but that’s a subject for another post). The point is, my characters pretty much always save cats because I can’t bear the thought of them doing anything else—but that’s a big emotional button that I could press and haven’t.

One comment Gregory Frost made in the workshop was that you need to demand sacrifice from your characters. All the great heroes in literature suffer, and that suffering justifies the story for the reader because it raises the stakes. This can also mean demanding sacrifice from the writer—being willing to kill off that character you love when the story demands it, or letting your cats go un-saved.

Tip 3: Embrace the imperfections of your characters.

Jumping to the Wildcat Lit Fest, the fiction workshop led by Dave Newman started by thinking of some mistakes and the chain of events and consequences that would follow from them. This struck me as a great exercise, either to find a new story idea or to amp up the tension and drive the plot in a longer work like a novel.

Real people make mistakes. We sometimes act before we think, or say things we know we shouldn’t, or have insecurities that make us say or do things that don’t make sense from the outside. These flaws and foibles are a big part of what make us unique, and giving these same imperfections to a character can help them feel more authentic on the page.

This relates to the tips above, too. A real person might fling some choice lines from your poison cabinet at someone they love out of pain, anger, or other pesky emotions. They might get defensive when they’re criticized, or take someone else’s words the wrong way. Or they might suffer, not because of what other people do, but because of internal struggles—characters, like people, can feel things like imposter syndrome, social anxiety, or envy towards people that have the success they want. These are all things that can add extra tension and conflict to relationships in your stories, giving them that authenticity and emotional impact that makes readers feel like they relate to the character and want to keep reading the story.

Tip 4: When dropping info you’ve invented or researched, keep the character central.

One great quote that I wrote down from the Confluence panel on research for sci-fi and fantasy is that “the art of science fiction is 90% the art of sugar coating the info dumps.” Frederic Durbin gave advice on how to do that: keep the character central. This can apply more broadly to other forms of description, too, but especially when you’re dumping info on the world, technology, magic system, or other details, don’t let yourself go on longer than a page without interjecting some character into it. If you do, shift back to them or find a way to insert them.

As a corollary: make sure you’re only including details that it makes sense for your viewpoint character to notice and comment on. If they’re seeing a technology for the first time, for example, it makes sense they’ll spend some time staring at it and wondering about it—but if they use it every day, they’re not going to explain it in that kind of detail.

Another great tip: the characters don’t always need to know how things work in your world. Think about your real life. Do you really understand how a microwave heats up food? Could you explain to someone exactly how the internet works? The same concept is going to apply in a sci-fi or fantasy world. The characters can understand how to use something, or even how to repair it and its more advanced functions, without knowing the full details of what makes it tick. Whether the details are researched or invented, presenting them from the character’s viewpoint can help them be more digestible for a reader.

Tip 5: Use both big and small conflicts and desires to propel your narrative.

This was a recurring theme across the workshops at both Confluence and the Wildcat Lit Fest. Yes, you need a central conflict in a story, and yes characters should have a main motivation that drives them—those are Fiction Writing 101 kind of concepts.

But don’t stop at this big-picture. Small conflicts and wants also generate forward momentum at a scene level. For example, a character’s “big want” might be to, say, become a famous actor, but that’s going to take a while and lots of steps to get to. Along the way, they’re going to have smaller wants driving their action: to eat a really good cheese sandwich for lunch; to catch their bus to LA on time; to get a callback from their first casting audition.

Those small wants are also potential points for paragraph-level conflict, character development, and plot movement. Maybe they’ve heard about a great grilled cheese restaurant they’re going to go on a quest for, and encounter other characters or things that drive the story along the way. Or you can put obstacles between them and these small desires—what could make them miss their bus? What could go wrong at that audition that stops them from getting a callback?

Especially in longer works like a novel, you can’t just rely on the one central conflict on every page of the story. It’s going to be in the background of every scene, sure, but it can start to feel repetitive and shallow if that’s the only thing giving the story energy. Adding in smaller conflicts ratchets up the tension at the paragraph and scene level, giving the story more depth and dimension.

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