I would like to report that I’m doing a lot of writing, or least a lot of reading. Instead, I can only report that I’ve been doing a lot of Olympics watching. In other words, slacking.

But I can’t say that time is entirely wasted. First, it’s only on every two years (living in Colorado with all our winter sports, I love me some winter Olympics, too.) Second, it’s super fun to watch. Third, there is so much drama inherent in the Olympics. And drama is the quintessence of fiction.

Alfred Hitchcock famously said that drama is life with the dull bits left out. The NBC Olympics coverage is the television personification of that statement. I have a feeling there are lots of dull bits when you’re actually there watching the Olympics in person. There’s probably a ton of down time between events, races, or matches where you’re sitting around waiting for the next thing to start. Heck, even the Olympic swimmers manage to look bored, if jittery, while “backstage” queuing for their races.

But when you watch the Olympic coverage on television, you get to go from exciting bit to exciting bit. The tension and excitement build as the commentators paint a picture of athletes struggling through personal tragedies, fighting to come back from injuries, or going nose to nose with their rival to make it to THIS MOMENT that YOU are lucky enough to watch (albeit on a screen and with a time delay) so that you can say you saw Michael Phelps become the most-decorated Olympian to date, or that you watched the Fab Five live up to their collective gymnastic destinies. With the cameras stuck right in the athletes faces, you don’t miss one moment of the fist-pumping, tear-jerking action.

NBC is an expert storyteller. Night after night, Scheherazade-style, it delivers a series of tales that suck you in quickly, give you just enough of the back-story of the hero or heroine to make you care about them, then thrust you right into the main conflict. Will your heroes be victorious? Or will you watch them crumble in defeat? Add the visually-pleasing splashes of primary colors against the setting of state-of-the-art venues in a bustling city, and the eye-candy of all those fit bodies in motion, and you’ve got a winning combination. And NBC’s pacing is superb to boot, throwing in just enough commercials to give you a breather from all that drama.

Therefore, I say again that watching the Olympics is not time wasted, as long as I can translate the lessons learned into my current work-in-progress. Which I’m going to go do … at the next commercial break.