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03/11/2006: Pointing at What Hurts


It's so cold here! Well, not really cold. But L.A. cold. I walked to a neaby mall yesterday without a jacket in hand, and had to take a cab home because it was too cold to walk back -- seriously, it was like six blocks and it was unthinkable. Sometimes you're halfway through an enterprise when you realize it's gone badly off track.

The same thing may be happening to you. You've analyzed produced episodes. You've found a story that seems to fit the show's prototype while genuinely saying something new. You've selected your act breaks. You've broken the story into scenes. And now you're writing dialogue, actually watching the show take shape beneath your hands. At this point something starts to happen...

You start to hate your story. Really hate it. Just thinking about it makes your face burn with shame. This is normal. You can get through it. The first step is to try to articulate what's feeling wrong about it.

Here's a list of things that might be wrong. Does your script feel…

- Banal? An unemotional story that's not about anything?
- Soapy? So full of event and reaction that it's slipping into melodrama?
- Talky? Speechifying and banter with no drive?
- Calculated? So precisely engineered that it's lost all spontaneity?
- Jokey? All quips and no heart?

Once you figure out what feels off, you can start deciding if you're experiencing panic with a cause or panic without a cause. Either way, it'll be okay. This is one of the wonderful things about spec writing -- this episode will not be shoved in front of cameras in a week. You've got time to figure out what's going on. Think about what feels wrong, and then, soon, we'll talk about how to fix it. Or whether to start over entirely, which isn't as bad as it sounds.

P.S. And if you aren't hating your story? Well then. Never mind. Good for you.

Lunch: hot 'n' sour soup made from a packet, with noodles added on a whim. Zesty and starchy both!