The writing is generally bad. The plots are predictable. The characters are cliche. But I still watch. Before people on social media broadcasted their weekend Netflix binges, Lifetime movie binges were in my life. Weekends of endless movies of murder and betrayal and odd medical diagnoses we all know don’t exist. Doctors that care too much for their patients and boyfriends that love their sweet, adoring girlfriends wayyy too soon and way too much. Of course, they usually end up murdering them, but that’s the predictable part.

But after all of this, why do I continue to watch? After all, I am drawn to Indie films and documentaries, and my writing tends to be on the “dark” side (do I’ve been told). So then why does a usually sinister, sarcastic, and demented writer such as myself watch this crap? Because it’s more of a story to be ingested instead of a work of art to be analyzed.

Once you get past the corniness and cliche, it’s addicting. It’s human. And it’s a story. Usually a predictable one, but a story. Which is one of the things that drew me to writing in the first place. My earliest memories are of reading and writing. Visiting the Carnegie Library in McKeesport, Pennsylvania on my regular Saturday visit and gathering up the library’s limit of ten books, angry that I couldn’t slip a few more by the librarian. I couldn’t wait to get home and devour them. And I did. Every week. I loved the story, and still do.

Of course now, as a writer, I try to bring a little more to my writing than just “the story”, but sometimes I do question myself on this. After all, simple storytellers exist, or else Lifetime movies wouldn’t be a thing. And at least these writers are working and making a buck at it. People like a good story. James Patterson will never be Edgar Allen Poe, but he is damn well making a boatload more than Poe ever imagined, and still telling a story.

So the next time you are watching a corny Lifetime movie or some other flick that someone ridicules you for, remind them that people like this stuff. Remind them that sometimes simple is good and we often think too much. Remind them that people are making money doing this. And remind them that sometimes it’s just for the love of the story, after all.

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