I'm a former writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and have written episodes for shows including: Angel, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Ellen, The O.C., Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dinosaurs, Andy Barker PI and others. I am currently under a development deal with NBC/Universal television while working as Co-Executive Producer on Battlestar Galactica. My blog is intended to help new writers tackle the job of writing those all-important spec scripts. I can't read your work, get you an agent, or get you hired. But I can give you solid, time-tested script-writing advice! And then there's lunch.

Jane on 01.18.06 @ 04:02 PM PST [link]
 
 

Sometimes you think you're being perfectly clear, and you're not. I once wrote a line for an episode of Buffy, for the character of Xander. If I recall how it went, Xander was using whimsical phrasing to convey that he thought someone was crazy. It went something like this:

XANDER
Spike may have gone to the land of the twirly hand gesture next to the temple, but he was right...

No, really. I thought it was clear. The mental image of someone using their index finger to make a swirling motion next to their forehead to signify crazy is so unambiguous that I was certain everyone would be amused by the idea of a character describing the gesture rather than making it. Ha! Hilarious. No one commented on the joke and I assumed it was golden. And then we were on stage, shooting the scene, and it suddenly became clear to me that no one had the slightest clue what I was going for.

The problem, as I'm sure you've figured out, resides mostly in the word "temple." The notion of forehead-corner just isn't the first meaning of the word that comes to mind. And "twirly hand gesture" is pretty vague as well. The sentence that seemed to me to call up a clear and familiar gesture, seemed to most other people to call to mind someone waving their arms around next to a synagogue. Which they found strange, but not so strange that they called me on it.

I think in the moment we ended up playing the incomprehensibility of the line. Xander says it, everyone stares at him and he makes the gesture -- Buffyphiles will recall if that's what ended up happening , I'm sure. It's not exactly the joke I intended, which was supposed to be swift and smooth, but it works fine. The point of the story is that moment of realization: I'd written a joke that was totally opaque, and no one pointed it out because they had no reason to even think there was a disconnect. This is why, when you ask your friends to give you notes, you have to ask them questions, not just take what they give you. "Did you get this line? What do you think it means?" -- those are valuable questions that will help you make sure you're accomplishing what you think you're accomplishing.

Lunch: clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. I can't resist a bread bowl. You can eat it!


Jane on 07.19.08 @ 12:20 PM PST [link]
 
 

So, have you watched it yet? I'm talking about Joss Whedon's "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog". It's hilarious and you really should go watch at once.

Check out the joke in the first segment, the one about "Bait and Switch." This is a brilliant joke. Go watch it and then think about it for a bit. Figure out how it works and then construct your own jokes using the same principles. Genius!

Lunch: tostada


Jane on 07.16.08 @ 11:02 PM PST [link]
 
 

I was in a situation recently where I had to create an original character for a series of scenes. Great. I gave him some interesting character traits and wrote some dialogue that reflected those traits and I was happy with the result. Then all the scenes had to be made drastically shorter. Instead of being a character with a dozen lines, this guy now had half that many. And suddenly, he didn't pop any more. There was no sense of a character there anymore, just a person who said things.

The problem was that what can read as character complexity over lots of lines can just read as random noise in the short run. If you need a character to pop in just a few lines, it's going to be hard to make them display the interesting apparent contradictions that give a character depth. I would recommend that you pick a nice simple description: optimist, trouble-maker, peace-maker, crank, blowhard, naif. Now you've got a way to focus their few lines and the audience has a hope of getting a sense of their core nature. If you ever get to come back to the character for a more extended scene, you can give them planes and angles then.

And it's not as if you're doomed to stereotype, either. You can write an interesting, even surprising, optimist. I know you can! And, of course, you can pick a trait that's unexpected for the context. An innercity innocent or a plucky hell-denizen may have only one salient characteristic, but it's an unexpected one given their situation.

Lunch: sushi at Echigo. Oh boy, I love that warm rice.


Jane on 07.11.08 @ 08:47 PM PST [link]
 
 

I've written on this topic before, but since it's a revelation I keep having, it seems like it's worth talking about again. There is tremendous value in writing out your stories in prose form before you begin writing. Write the A-story straight through and then do the same for all B-stories or even runners. It's easy to grow enchanted with the transitions and themic connections between your stories and fail to notice that something within one of the stories isn't working until you write it out as if it were going to be played straight through.

There's another reason to do this, that I'm just now realizing, and it has to do with the nature of prose versus script or even outline-style writing. When you're telling a prose story, you have to be very explicit about the subtextual stuff that won't be explicit in what is seen and heard. I'm talking about sentences like "this is the moment in which our hero realizes that he's been unfair," or "with this event, we sense that the tide of the war is turning." These are the things that sometimes seem unimportant in a script because they're relegated to the sometimes-ignored stage directions, or because they're such an evident presence that they never have to be said at all. But they loom large in prose story-telling of the type I'm talking about and they keep you focused on the most important part of script-writing: the sense of WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO TELL THIS STORY.

The big turns, the realizations, the take-away emotional impact of the story are contained in all that unspoken stuff that makes up the bulk of a prose-style story document, but which remains discreetly behind the curtains in the script. Tracking it is crucial, but it can be elusive. There's no cure for that as good as writing it the heck down. In order.

THEN, of course, rearrange what you've done into a standard outline, with all the scenes in the actual order they'll appear in the script and with some thought given to transitions. You don't get to skip that step.

Lunch: cheese, olive pate, avocado and one of those tiny loaves of French bread


Jane on 07.05.08 @ 03:22 PM PST [link]
 
 

Hello all. Apologies for my absence. I was in Vancouver for the Battlestar Galactica wrap party, and have been very hard at work since then on continuing Battlestar work -- to the extent that it makes one question the definition of "wrap party." I haven't had time to come up with blogable topics, but I do continue to read the mail. So this is a brief dip into the mail bag.

Thanks to Gentle Reader Kori in West Hollywood, who writes in praise of Battlestar both in the general and the particular. Thank you, Kori!

And congratulations to Gentle Reader Ernie of New Jersey, who is having success with his spec pilot! Good work, Ernie, and thank you!

And a huge thank you to Pat in England, whom I met years ago at a Buffy convention in London, and who now sends me the coolest bit of Ringo memorabilia in tribute to my recent Ringo near-encounter. Wow -- that's fantastic. Thank you so much, Pat!

Lunch: a huge submarine sandwich with three kinds of hard-to-identify meat. And two cookies.


Jane on 07.02.08 @ 06:38 PM PST [link]
 
 

Today, I received some hot inside info on the Warner Bros Writing Workshop from Jack Gilbert, this blog's man on the inside. He wanted me to tell all of you that everyone there is looking forward to your submissions, and then he added a whole bunch of good news. Take it, Jack!

Under the first year of Chris Mack's leadership, an astonishing 7 of last year's 12 participants got staffed, by far the best result ever.

And we hope to do at least as well this time around. To that end, your gentle readers need to know that the deadline has been moved up to give us a little more time to plow through the stacks of submissions (almost 1,000 last year). So the packets need to be postmarked by July 25.

You can tell them that we'll spot great writing whatever series they submit with, and that they shouldn't worry if their specs have similar elements to aired episodes, or if their story choices turned out to be different than where the series eventually landed. We're just looking for the very best writers we can find.

Let's count the good news. First, that's a really amazing placement statistic. Second, although the adjusted deadline gives you less time, you've got some warning, and I have to say the total number of submissions is less than I'd thought -- they have almost as many participants as the ABC/Disney program and far less competition.

Finally, I love that they're going out of the way to clarify that their standard is writing quality, not clairvoyance. We all know how hard it is to aim a spec script at a moving target, and this program is letting you off the hook for errors of anticipation. I think that's an excellent policy.

So start polishing those scripts and aim really high -- it doesn't have to be as good as what's on television. It has to be better.

You can do it!

Lunch: a chopped antipasto salad. But the pepperoncini were left whole and stemmed. A flaw in an otherwise fine attempt.


Jane on 06.26.08 @ 10:54 PM PST [link]
 
 

Gentle Reader Victoria in England writes in with a great observation about bad writing. Ooh good, I love complaints about bad writing. Here's what she's talking about:

One thing that particularly stands out is when a scene calls for a lot of exposition, and the writer has obviously chosen to write one long paragraph of dialogue and then randomly dish out sentences to different characters. It ends up sounding as though the characters are delivering a presentation to each other, having agreed in advance what they are going to say.

She goes on to ask about how to avoid this problem as writer. Well, first allow me to blush. Because before I got this letter, I'd've been far too ready to actually recommend this technique as a clever way to break up long bits of exposition delivered by a single character. Farm it out around the room and you can disguise it, I'd've said. But, of course, Victoria is right. Doing this runs the risk of exactly what she's talking about -- it sounds like one of those grade school performances in which each child's been assigned a different line of the poem to read out loud.

The problem is a tricky one and the best solution is probably to avoid getting into this situation at all -- parse the exposition out over more scenes, or let characters (and the audience) be less-well informend -- they'll pick it up as they go, which is often more interesting anyway.

But let's suppose there's no choice. Five people know a bunch of stuff and a sixth guy walks in and you simply have to have a big explain-o-fest.

Well, you can try using this as an opportunity to highlight your characters. Got someone impatient? Have them interrupt the explanation and take it over. Got two characters who don't like each other? Have them compete to be the one to deliver the information -- talking over each other. Got a natural leader? Show the others automatically deferring to her to sum up the info. This kind of thing can be big and overt, or you can just subtly use stage directions to indicate some pointed looks and eye-rolls that will let your reader see how the scene would be played.

I would also consider giving the characters different opinions on what happened. I don't just mean different opinions on what do next, but different interpretations of what they already know. Like this:

JULIAN
Then the alien started talking about how we're all gonna die--

HEATHER
Wait-- it wasn't a threat. It was a warning. Wasn't it?

JULIAN
It was a threat.

You can also have the characters learn new information in the process of relating it, instead of preparing them with all of it in advance:

KELLY
If we don't get the sprinkler system back on line, the whole place is gonna go up!

SHEILA
At least it'll only take out the one building.

MARGARET
(looking up from computer)
You're wrong. Their system's been hit, too. The whole neighborhood could go.

All you have to do is hold back some little bit for them to find and it becomes a much better scene.

The first step is realizing you have a problem scene. Thanks to Victoria for pointing it out!

Lunch: chopped salad with warm chicken (And many thanks to Anthony in Oregon who sends along a delicious-looking recipe for a spinach-strawberry salad with a much more appealing dressing than the one I've been dealing with here. Thanks, Anthony!)


Jane on 06.24.08 @ 06:11 PM PST [link]