Sometimes, I find characters aren’t always complete. There can always be something missing and I can’t pinpoint it, even after I search my character sketches. Then suddenly I find that one nugget that will tell me that I’ve stumbled on an idea. Writers watch and observe things. Sometimes an idea will come from television. Sometimes it comes from the worst kind of television. A lot of Kitty was already created before Burn Notice came to the small screen, but she is very similar to Fiona Glen Anne, but there was still something missing. I found the rest of Kitty from a most unlikely source, a real life Mob Wife.
Let me state this on the record, I am not much of a fan of the Realty TV genre. Have I watched some? Sure, I am guilty just like everyone else. I was a big fan of Gene Simmon’s show, one because, I considered myself part of the Kiss Army in the seventies and two because Gene and his family were very amusing to me. Other than that, there have been very few reality shows that have caught my attention, except one, but even this show turned me off after a while. The show was Mob Wives. I stumbled on it one night and I thought hey this looks kind of interesting. Was it, for a while and it was different, but as I watched this show through it’s first season and a little into the second, I began to realize that this show like every other Realty show was a train wreck waiting to happen. Why did I stick with it? One mob wife caught my attention more than any other and no it wasn’t Sammy The Bull’s daughter. 
It was Drita D’Avanzo. The first time I saw this woman, she seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t figure out why. Certainly, she was not anyone I ever met, or looked like anyone I knew. Then one night, I am watching an episode and she gets into this feisty fight with one of the other Mob Wives and it dawned on me, who this woman reminded me of. My female lead from Third Eye, Kitty Lange. She was feisty like Kitty and she wouldn’t take any guff from anyone and most of all, she’s brutally honest even if it starts a war. Since I turned Third Eye from a movie into a television series, I have added elements of Drita into Kitty that help complete the character. One of the first things I did was I made her a bit of a Kickboxer. I have a future episode in my head, where Kitty ventures into the world of UFC. Of course it will revolve around a case.
The important tip here, is if you’re stuck, on you’re character don’t give up, keep trying to find those missing nuggets, as I have learned they can sometimes come out of the strangest places and that can also mean Realty TV.
The Script is the thing 