Hi all! I had the chance to go to a fun and interesting event last night: a party for women televison writers. Since each staff typically only has one or two women writers (although this is changing), it's not often that we all get a chance to really connect in big groups like this. And the fact that staffing season is just getting underway guaranteed a lively night. We were bombarding each other with questions about pilots we'd read, meetings we'd taken, staff openings we'd heard about, the reputations of various potential bosses... Great stuff. I saw some old friends and met some impressive people I hadn't had a chance to meet before. Also, there were these mini grilled cheese sandwiches. Fantastic. I had five.

It was fun being in an environment both social and writerly. It reminded me of why I like writing on a staff. So, (awkward transition), this might be a good time to address a question that someone asked me a while back about how the process of writing on a staff differs from writing a spec. Specifically, about the outlining part of the process: how much goes on, and of what kind. I've said some of this stuff before, but there's also new material in here. Check it out.

In theory, there shouldn't be much difference in this aspect of the job. You start on a whiteboard, or notebook, or index cards, and you get your story in order. You figure out the theme, the basic events, the big turns in the story. The A story, the B story. What the act breaks are, and then what all the scenes are. This is the "break." It can take, literally, weeks – more time than it takes to write the script. When it's done, the story is "broken." The process of the break is one that is almost always executed by the entire staff together, under the direction of the show runner. If you're writing a spec, this is obviously accomplished by you alone (with input from friends and colleagues) – a harder process, but purer. You get to tell exactly the story you want. You simply have to do it more carefully, since there's no one there to say, "Gee, we tried telling a story like this once on Nash Bridges, and that third act break never really popped…"

Anyway, now you start creating documents. The first is the famous "beat sheet." This is, of course, a preliminary form of an outline. It simply tells you the location of each scene and the briefest version of the events in that scene. This is a chance to re-evaluate the breaking of the story. Problems that were invisible during the breaking might become evident here, so changes might have to be made to the story. On an actual staff, this will sometimes involve putting everyone back to work on a rebreak.

The difference between a "beat sheet" and an "outline" is one of degree. Personally, I often find it hard to generate a genuine beat sheet because I think of lines and jokes and details and I write them in there so I won't forget them. I end up with something in between the two stages. But a real outline is long, many many pages. Mine come out somewhere between 9 and 14 pages for an hour episode. Some shows seem to lend themselves to shorter ones, some to longer ones. Gilmore Girls outlines are incredibly long and detailed, with whole runs of dialogue spelled out.

Writing the outline, of course, gives you another chance to find problems with the breaking of the story. Sometimes you start completely over at this stage. Plus, on a real staff, this is the point at which the studio and the network start having real input. So that can change everything. All the writers -- back into the room for a rebreak!

On an actual staff, there is often not enough time to create a full outline. This is because of all that time spent breaking and re-breaking, of course. So, one often has to write from the beat sheet. Honestly, I always kind of like this, because it leaves me a little more wiggle room in the writing to change my idea of how a scene lays out as I write it. With a long outline, you sometimes feel like the actual writing process is reduced to reformatting.

So now you take the outline and write the script. This part can actually be done in a weekend if you have to. But, here's the kicker: once you turn in the script, there can often be another rebreak! So all of that rebreaking earlier was meaningless! In theory, all of it represented some type of progress, but sometimes that's simply not the case. I think the best measure of the quality of a staff/show runner is the ability to solve story problems early in the process. Here's where you, the spec writer, gain your biggest advantage. That time thing again. You can take the time to fix problems in an unrushed way, whereas the staff writers have the looming blade of the production schedule.

(By the way, there's another interesting thing that happens as production nears. When the production people are scheduling the actual shooting of the scenes, they have to create a short description of each scene, for all the people involved in production to have at hand. This generates a new document called a "one-liner." It lists the location and the briefest version of the events in the scene. In other words, they recreate the beat sheet, which they have never seen. I find this amusing.)

To sum it all up: I like little grilled cheese sandwiches.

Lunch: A chicken stir-fry thing I made using something I bought in Tobago called "wet green seasoning." Unique.

Jane on 04.30.06 @ 11:51 AM PST [link]

One of the first shows I worked on was a sitcom called Monty. It didn't last for very long, although the cast included Henry Winkler, David Schwimmer and a very teenaged David Krumholtz. The show runner was the brilliant Marc Lawrence, who was extremely patient and kind with a certain green young writer. He also completely startled me by disagreeing with what I, at the time, thought was one of the unbreakable tenets of comedy writing. You've probably been taught to end joke lines "on the funniest word." Marc preferred lines that continued past the joke. Here's an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, taken from a "Jake in Progress" script, because that's what I have at hand:

MARK
(to Jake, re: Adrian) Geez, when did this guy become such a prude?

JAKE
(absently) 1992. (then) See that girl over there?

And the conversation continues on, now about the girl at the next table. See the effect that you get? "1992" is where the laugh falls. But the line goes past it. This takes the pressure off the joke, allows it to be "thrown away," tossed out casually by the actor. As a result, the whole exchange feels more confident, less rim-shotty, less desperate. Even when it is just being read, not performed.

Here's another example adapted from the same script:

ADRIAN
But I thought things were going great with you two.

JAKE
They are! We go to the movies, and we talk, and she’s really cute and funny...

ADRIAN
You want her.

JAKE
Like Robin wants Batman. But she’s so happy that we’re taking things slow.

Here, the joke breaks on "Batman," but the line continues, driving us back into plot. Notice how even, frankly, a fairly cheap joke like this one feels better this way, when it isn't left hanging out there in the spotlight.

If you're writing an hour spec, instead of a half-hour, the same thing applies. Even more so, since very jokey humor is probably going to feel wrong in an hour, but thrown-away humor might feel just right. Here's an example from an episode of Angel in which Cordelia realizes she needs to cleanse her new apartment to get rid of a certain ghost.

CORDELIA
This is easy! Little old lady ghost. Probably hanging around 'cause she thinks she left the iron on. Let's get us a nice cleansing spell and do this thing!

It would've been easy to end the line with "left the iron on." But it would've felt jokier.

You can't, and shouldn't, do this with every joke in your script. But if you have a joke in your spec that's always bothered you because it feels too ba-dum-dumpy, try shooting past it a little bit. See how that feels.

Lunch: Scrambled eggs with salsa and canned diced chilies. Humble and homey.

Jane on 04.29.06 @ 12:43 PM PST [link]

Well, everyone, first of all I should tell you that Tobago was swell. The water was warm, the fish were spectacular, the food was starchy and delicious. Go there at once, have a wonderful time!

The best moment came as I was snorkeling along, peering though my beloved prescription swim mask, when something came into view through the murky water in front of me. It was getting clearer as I drew closer. Soon, I made out a collection of dark objects, hovering there in close formation. Twenty of them, each about four inches long. They looked more like a squadron of one-man space fighters than you can possibly imagine. They moved off – backwards -- in perfect unison, still in their formation, as I approached. And I saw that they were squids. Caribbean Reef Squids, actually. As they hovered off, I could almost hear the hum of their tiny impulse engines. Simply perfect.

I cannot imagine describing these guys to anyone without employing the analogy of the little space squadron. It's how I saw them in that moment, and it's the only way I can convey what they looked like. This made me think. I was already aware that I used analogy in writing all the time, so I did a little search work with my old Buffy files to see how I used it. Interesting...

Sometimes it's the basis for a joke. Here's a line from the Doublemeat Palace episode of Buffy, in which Buffy struggles to come with a positive spin on the orientation film she just watched about the fast food joint's signature beef-and-chicken burger.

BUFFY
The cow and chicken coming together even though they never met... It was like Sleepless in
Seattle if Tom and Meg were, like, minced.

There's almost always humor in someone making a link between things that have one small point of similarity. Here's Willow, describing the Sunnydale High marching band. They march, she observes…

WILLOW
(not listening to
herself)
Like an army. With music instead of bullets and usually no one dies.

Here's an exchange between two characters in "End of Days" as they improvised medical supplies to treat injured comrades:

ANDREW
I liked the real bandages better. This bed sheet is awfully festive.

ANYA
I know. They're all gonna look like mortally wounded Easter baskets.

There's something I love about the unexpected point of comparison. The incongruity of an apt-but-unlikely comparison is often naturally quite funny. Of course, it doesn't have to be. It can be character-y, like this line from "After Life," that compares time to physical space.

TARA
I like sunrise better when I'm getting up early than when I'm staying up late, you know? It's like I'm seeing it from the wrong side.

It can even be sad, like this line from the same episode when a Demon taunts Buffy:

DEMON
You're the one who's barely here. Set on this earth like a bubble. You won't even disturb the air when you go.

I want to point out that I located each of these examples by opening my old Buffy files and simply searching for the word "like." I was surprised to discover at least one example in every script I tried. I use this structure all the time and I find it quite powerful. Comparisons, like pictures, are worth a thousand words. They're part of how we understand the world, by conceptualizing things in terms of other things. Why do so many of us pepper our speech with "like"? I think it's because we're actually struggling in that moment to find the next word, the one that really will literally tell our listeners what something is "like."

Think about how your characters are understanding their world, and you'll find analogies. When you show those analogies to the readers, you're letting them into the characters' heads. Knowing that I saw the squids as tiny space fighters may tell you as much about me as it does about the squids, right? Powerful stuff.

Lunch: Asian noodle soup made with something I've just discovered recently: noodle-shaped tofu. It's good!
Jane on 04.28.06 @ 09:40 PM PST [link]

Hi Everyone! Sorry for the long silence. The hotel at which I stayed on vacation had one internet terminal for everyone to share. I didn't feel I could justify spec script tips under such circumstances. Also, there was important snorkeling that I had to get done. Know what's cute? Carribean reef squids are cute.

Apparently, while I was gone, the trades announced my new deal. So I guess it's official and I can tell you all about it now. It's a two year development deal with NBC/Universal television. I'm very excited about it, and cannot wait to start work!

I'm exhausted from travel right now, but actual writing discussion will happen again soon. I promise!

Lunch (not today's lunch, but a recent lunch): "Crab 'n' dumplin," a traditional Tobago treat… huge sections of crab stewed in the shell in a kind of green curry sauce, served with pale and doughy flatbread. It's sold from beach-side stands. Hot and green and intense and very messy. Wow. Magnificent.

Jane on 04.27.06 @ 09:25 PM PST [link]

... that I'm heading out of town for a week starting tomorrow. I don't know if I'll be able to post at all while I'm gone. Can't wait to talk to you all again when I return!
Jane on 04.19.06 @ 07:07 PM PST [link]

Hang on, everyone. I'm about to take an unpopular position. I'm going to advocate analyzing comedy. This is, in general, thought to be a very bad idea. Even dangerous. Once you start trying to figure out why something is funny, the reasoning goes, you lose the sense of whether it is or not. The enterprise is, at best, fruitless, and at worst, a path to the numbing loss of comedy sensation.

Well, it's true that once you start taking apart a joke to learn how it works, you do lose track of your natural unselfconscious sense of what's funny. The sensation of it is unmistakable. And, to me, very familiar. Before I was a comedy writer I was a student of Linguistics. We had to talk about language all the time, asking ourselves questions about which utterances were a part of our own natural idiolect and which ones weren't. Even a few minutes of this kind of thinking tended to lead to blunted judgments about what one could or could not say. I have heard this referred to as "Scanting Out," the name coming from the result of trying to figure out when one would naturally use the word "scant." Would you naturally produce the utterance: "His entrance was greeted with scant applause"? "I had scant time to prepare"? How about "there was scant butter in the storehouse"? Or "She gathered her scant dress around her"? Or "He was a man of scant talent"? Or "Any loss of water will reduce the supply to scant"? Hmm… lose your sense of it yet?

And still, we do not stop analyzing language. It's valuable and worth the effort. I think joke analysis can also be worth more than a scant effort. (See… the instinct is back again. It bounces back!)

I would love, someday, to create a Field Guide to Jokes. A real inventory of types of funny with lists of examples. Much of the skill that makes a good joke writer is clearly subconscious, but that doesn't mean it can't be sharpened. And for those of you who are new to joke writing, I think this kind of guide might help you a lot, giving you a mental check-list of possible funny approaches to a moment.

So let's start.

One of the entries in the Field Guide would have to do with taking cliches and altering them, usually by simply reversing the intent. For example, when Buffy was battling an especially ugly monster she once said: "A face even a mother could hate." And I vividly remember Joss pitching that in another script someone should say, "And the fun never starts." In another, I riffed off the old Wonder Bread slogan "Builds strong bodies eight ways" to describe a weapon that "Kills strong bodies three ways." This one was less successful since no one but me remembered the old Wonder Bread slogan. They can't all be winners. The headline of this entry, a punnish play off a title, is one that I simply cannot believe we never used.

It's a fun type of joke. Breezy, a little dry, kind of smart. You might want to play around with it. If you've got a character who needs a wry observation on what's going on around them, this might be the joke type for you.

Lunch: Took the leftover chicken, tomato and eggplant from yesterday's Mediterranean Salad, and heated it up with a bit of spaghetti sauce. Ate it with pita bread. Nothing wrong with that.

Jane on 04.19.06 @ 02:01 PM PST [link]

I got to do the most interesting thing yesterday. I got to attend the recording session of an animated show. It was wonderful! And fast! The lines of dialogue are all numbered in an animated script. So the director would tell the actors: "All right, lines 52 to 67, let's begin." Then she might interrupt at any point: "Let's hear that one again, with more contempt. Thank you." or "A bit of a smile on that one." and, "I need grunting here. One for getting punched and one for hitting the wall. Like this: Unnngh, ooof." And the actors, without taking a moment to think, would give her contempt, or joviality, or rich deep grunting. A few hours and the dialogue is all recorded! I've never seen anything like it. A thing of beauty. And the grunting was hilarious. ("Now we need the sound of you grunting while landing on a fire escape...")

By the way, the grunts each got their own number too, just like the lines of spoken dialogue. The numbers are added after the script has been written and revised, so the writer never has to actually worry about them. This is similar to many of the elements that you have noticed in produced scripts for live-action shows, like the cast list and the set list. Sometimes over-eager spec script writers will include these with their spec, either because they assume they're required, or because they want the reader to have the impression that this script might possibly have been produced. Don't do it! It looks amateurish, and no one is fooled.

As long as we're in the area, another little trick that can backfire on a spec writer is self-conscious mentions of events from other episodes. This was something I remember doing in a Seinfeld spec... I made sure that the characters spoke about things that had already happened on the show, in order to show off my knowledge of the show. Oh! How I cringe now. I fear it was totally transparent. Use the script to show off writing skills and nothing else.

Well, that was embarrassing.

Lunch: The "Mediterranean Salad" from Jack Sprat's. This is a little restaurant on Pico here in Los Angeles. The best part of Jack Sprat's is the plate of small pale homemade soft pretzels that sits on every table. Fleshy knots of salt and starch -- delightful.
Jane on 04.18.06 @ 06:50 PM PST [link]

Have you read "A Martian Wouldn't Say That"? It's a hilarious collection of memos from television executives to television writers, and some responses going the other direction, too. Many of these, obviously, are from the earlier years of television, in which these communications presumably actually involved "memos." Anyway, it is sooo funny. Trust me. You will actually fall over laughing, so consider a helmet.

One of the great exchanges in the book has to do with an executive's surprise that there is no clue in a character's dialogue that that character is black. The writer replies that this was an intentional choice. The exec's reply: "Well then, how will the audience know?"

I'm reminded of this exchange sometimes when I read scripts that attempt to capture the voice of a character with a particular background... ethnic, national or even, say, vocational. The spec script versions of Spike or Giles (from Buffy) are sometimes positively stuffed full of "bint"s and "bloke"s. And every word out of a soldier's mouth is an acronym or a "yessir." And the Southerner spouts folksy sayings about grits and drops "y'all"s like magnolia leaves. It's as if the writer is asking "how will the audience know?" Well, they know Giles is English because he sounds English. No matter what he's saying. That's how an accent works. You don't have to try very hard to convince your reader that he sounds English.

You have to, to this extent anyway, trust your readers to know the voices of the characters that you're specing. Let them do the work of "hearing" the character's background; don't try to do it for them. If you push it, you'll end up with a sort of parody of their speech that'll pull the reader right out of the script.

As in most things, follow the lead of the produced scripts. Use any specialized vocab no more often than the show does.

Sometimes I really think the trick of the spec script is to show off without looking like you're showing off. Sometimes I really think the trick of success in general is the same.

Lunch: a very nice "Buffalo Chicken Salad" from the Cheesecake Factory. Actual pieces of fried chicken in the salad kept it from being too healthy.
Jane on 04.18.06 @ 12:05 AM PST [link]

Well, it's time to open the ol' mailbag again. Nic from Germany has a question about the spacing between action lines and character lines in a script – is it single or double. Oh! I love an easy question. The answer is whatever the produced example scripts do. As always, the point with technical execution stuff is not so much to do things right or wrong, but to do them the way the show does them. Get those produced examples! Nic—you were looking for Gilmore Girls scripts, right? Check out scriptcity.net for these.

If you simply cannot get produced examples of the show you want to spec? Well, if you're using Final Draft, you've probably noticed that it has built-in templates conforming to the styles of many existing shows. These will help you get those little technical things right. If you're still at sea? Well, I guess you can use the format of another show – most hours have a very similar format. But if this is really the situation you're in, you might want to consider specing another show. It's just too hard to get it right without produced scripts – and I'm not just talking about formatting details; there are so many other elements you can only get from produced scripts. You might think recorded episodes are good enough examples, but they're really not.

There's also a fantastic letter from Ryan in Canada. He wants to know how a Canadian might get work in the US TV industry. Well, Tracey Forbes was a Buffy writer who moved from Canada to take the Buffy job, and the way she got in always seemed very smart to me. She worked in Canadian TV first, got established there, then had her agent, armed with produced Canadian scripts and a strong US spec script, look for work for her here. It didn't even take that long – it's not like you'll have to spend ten more winters huddled over the meager warmth of your LA dream. I think getting set up there first is more likely to pan out than to try to go from zero to Hollywood. I want to be clear here, that I'm not thinking of this as a disadvantage, but rather as an option that the rest of us don't have -- an extra way in.

Also, as I tell everyone, check out the ABC Fellowship. It might be a good option for you. Good luck to you, Ryan!

(By the way, this is probably a good place to mention that I'm not an expert on stuff like this… just a humble scribe with opinions on spec writing -- ask everyone you can, Ryan. Maybe someone will have a better answer.)

A big wave and thank you to the other writers, including Jen, whom I met at the Serenity premiere. Hellooo!

Lunch: boysenberry yogurt and "reverse" Pocky -- chocolate cookie on the outside, chocolate goo inside.
Jane on 04.16.06 @ 02:59 PM PST [link]

I recently learned something amusing about the scripts for the animated daytime show "The Batman." Some lines look like this:

BRUCE
I'm late for the opera.

And some lines look like this:

BATMAN
Looking for me, Joker?

It's an interesting case of the clothes making the man. If the batsuit is on, bye-bye Bruce. It makes me curious about what would happen in a scene in which Bruce actually puts on the suit, while uttering dialogue at various stages in the process.

You probably don't have anything that peculiar in your produced example scripts, but study how they do their character names anyway. For each character, note if they're labeled with their first name or their last name or both. Make sure you do whatever the show's writers do. Is it House? Dr. House? Doctor House? Probably not. That looks weird.

This may seem insultingly trivial, and I apologize for that, but it is easy to forget to check something like this. You've been looking at the pages of your spec for so long, a character name is the kind of thing you don't even SEE after a while.

And while you're at it, double-check the spelling of all the names. I once read a Star Trek: The Next Generation spec in which Geordi was misspelled as Jordi, Riker was misspelled as Ryker and Q was misspelled... well, let's just marvel at the fact that Q was misspelled. When I pointed it out to the writer, he wasn't overly concerned. After all, he reasoned, if the show bought the script, THEY'D know the right spellings.

Make the effort. Getting these things right will not be noticed. But getting them wrong will be.

Lunch: a cheeseburger meal from the McDonald's drive-thru, eaten while sitting in heavy traffic. The fries were especially salty and delicious and the Coke seemed unusually fizzy.

Jane on 04.15.06 @ 09:01 PM PST [link]

So, that spec. Is it still too long? I bet it is. Don't you hate all those dumb bits that use up space? Like, sometimes you have to deal with all the social pleasantries that occur when a character enters or leaves a scene. I bet you don't want a quarter of a page of your script eaten up with:

SOME GUY
Hey there, Guy!

SOME OTHER GUY
Hey. It's been a while.

Or

YET ANOTHER GUY
Well, then, I guess I'll be seeing you around...

It's sooo boring and it takes up such valuable real estate. And if you cut it, you end up with the kind of thing that used to drive my best friend Margit crazy when we were both ten years old and she'd scream at the TV: "Don't just hang up! Say good-bye! How do you know the other person's done talking??"

Here's what I do all the time. I write:

GUY enters. He and the gang AD LIB hellos.

Look at that. Neat and quick. Perfect for a spec where you need every inch of space to show off your shiny shiny skills. You can also do it for good-byes. And for stuff like a reaction to a performance. Sometimes you can even tell the reader exactly what's being said, but at a great economy of space. This would look like this:

The gang AD LIBS REACTIONS: "That's great!" "You're amazing!" "How'd you think of that?!" etc.

Don't take it too far. Although it's tempting, isn't it?

He AD LIBS a fiery speech that motivates a turn in the other guy's emotional state.

If only.

Lunch: Vietnamese food eaten with the great Jeff Greenstein. I had pho, the traditional vietnamese soup. I dolled it up with fresh herbs and lemon and siracha. Mmm.
Jane on 04.14.06 @ 09:33 PM PST [link]

Hey, it's Wednesday night. Wednesday night is when a new America's Next Top Model episode suddenly appears on my Tivo. Whee! Isn't that, increasingly, the way television seems to occur? With Tivo, and with DVDs, and with episodes available for download onto one's microwave oven or whatever, we're finally getting that programming on demand thing that I've been demanding since I was thirteen and couldn't get home from dance class before Soap was half-over.

When a broadcast schedule becomes irrelevant enough, it will disappear. And when it does, it will take with it the most common problem with television scripts, both of the spec and professional variety. Namely: they come in too long.

When shows don't have to fit into a neat little grid, they won't have to be tucked into their little Procrustean beds at night. But until then, the page count of your spec script is very important. Look at the produced scripts of the show you're writing. You can get away with a spec script that's a few pages longer than these, but I wouldn't recommend anything more than that. It will start feeling long to the reader, and atypical of the show. And that's the last thing you want.

You've probably been startled at how much your story has expanded. This is almost certainly your problem, not the reverse. So you have to cut.

You've probably got good instincts about the first things that have to go. Beginnings of scenes, the middle of long speeches, trivial greetings between characters, jokes that are funny but that don't move the story forward. They may be hard to cut, but it's clear they have to go. And there are the little things, too. Streamlining the wording just a little bit might pull up a page; nudging a compound word onto one line with a slight margin adjustment might get rid of that orphan on page 50.

But sometimes you do all that stuff, and it's still too long. Too often, writers look at the choice: cut story or cut character, and they choose to cut character. Story is the skeleton of the episode, they reason. It can't be removed because it holds it up, gives it a shape. Character stuff is flesh. Reducible in many ways and not strictly necessary. Hmm. If you follow this reasoning, you're going to end up with the spec script equivalent of a top model. Skin and bones with no meat. A lightweight of a script.

Look at your story. Is there a chunk that can go? Can you lose one whole misdiagnosis from your House spec? Can someone have one little piece of information earlier that moves the story ahead faster? After all, what do you remember from your favorite episode? The time House thought it was syphilis? Or the time he kissed Sela Ward?

Story is important, but it's only important because it's the stuff that happens to your characters. A ticking clock is meaningless in a room with no one in it.

Lunch: In 'N' Out burger. My God.
Jane on 04.12.06 @ 07:19 PM PST [link]

Hi! You're at the end of a scene, or the end of an act. And your hero has something to say. Do not let him say it twice. Just because you see it done, doesn't mean you have to do it.

HERO
I certainly hope so, my friend. I certainly hope so.

Really. Don't do it.

Lunch: turkey lunchmeat and sauerkraut rolled in cabbage leaves.
Jane on 04.11.06 @ 11:41 PM PST [link]

I had a delightful afternoon of Scrabble yesterday with my friends Kim and Michelle and Jeff. Little dogs playing at our feet, tiles clicking softly... Fantastic. I've known Kim and Michelle since we were all in the Disney Writers' Fellowship together. It was that kind of bonding experience, and I cannot recommend it highly enough (It's now the ABC Writing Fellowship). In addition to meeting people who will be your friends for life, you also get good practical writing advice and the thrill of seeing doors open that would have been hard to even approach otherwise.

As part of the fellowship, we television fellows (as opposed to the feature fellows – we were recruited in two camps), wrote a series of comedy spec scripts under the guidance of Disney executives. Comedy scripts only, because Disney was only producing comedies back then. We also were required to attend at least one sitcom taping per week. This began as a treat, and quickly became a chore. Our chaperoning executive actually pulled us out of the audience at Blossom one week because the Joey Lawrence fans were making a high-pitched sound of delight that was causing us physical harm.

There was also a strong recommendation that the execs made to us. They told us to hold our own little mini table reads at home, using the other fellows as actors, so that we could hear our specs. Nothing fancy, just a group of people with scripts on their laps. Having this kind of read is a suggestion you will probably hear from others as well.

I would exercise caution.

Homemade table reads are great if you're writing a feature or a pilot or a play. If you've created the characters, I mean. You can learn a lot about what makes dialogue sound natural. You'll also realize how very, very, long a chunk of dialogue is when it's read out loud. You'll probably end up cutting words out of every line you've written.

But even then, there is a downside. If your friends are not actors, they may butcher what you've written. And then their awkward line readings are in your head!

And if you're dealing with a spec script for an existing show, you've got even bigger problems. One of your most precious aides in this whole process is your ability to "hear" your actors reading your lines. You want to be able to "hear" Hugh Laurie or Edward James Olmos or Jamie Pressly when you read your script. And the one time that I GUARANTEE that will not happen is when your friend Missy is reading the role of Dr. House.

So be careful. Unless you've got Hugh coming over anyway, and he's able to lend a hand, you might end up doing yourself more harm than good. Many would disagree with me, of course. If you try it and it works for you, then that's great. But I rely so heavily on my little metaphorical inner "ear," that I keep far away from anything that will get between it and me. (I also like my literal inner ear. It keeps me from falling down.)

Lunch: chips and dips and wasabi peas eaten while Scrabbling!

Jane on 04.10.06 @ 01:05 PM PST [link]

Many years ago, I read a friend's spec feature script. It was a murder mystery, a classic who-dunnit. In the script, there was an obvious suspect. He was shifty, clearly hiding something, and the clues all pointed to him. And then there was his brother. Clean and above suspicion -- I think he might've been a senator. But he shared a blood type with his brother (this was significant in crime-solving many years ago), and they also shared an agenda that overlapped on many interesting points, some of the same enemies, that kind of thing.

My friend the writer knew that clever readers/viewers would be looking for a twist. He knew they'd know that Brother Shifty didn't do it. That they'd suspect Senator Brother. So he tricked 'em! The end of the screenplay revealed that it was Brother Shifty all along!

Thud.

We all have to deal with the fact that audiences are onto us. They anticipate most of our tricks. The only response to this is either to play a different game, stop writing who-dunnits, or to make fancier tricks. The untwisting of a twist is not gonna get it done. Because no one is going to enjoy being told that the killer was the guy standing over the body with the bloody knife.

What my friend needed to do, of course, was come up with another option. Recently, the other option of choice has been confidante/best friend/lover of the investigator, the one person they trust. But audiences have caught onto that one, too. If my hero beds a new girlfriend during the course of his investigation, I pretty much assume she's the killer. If he gets crucial advice from a brother cop who's been tracking this killer for years, well, then, it's the cop.

If he has a new girlfriend AND a brother cop? Well then, now it's getting interesting. But whatever he does, the writer can't look backwards at Brother Shifty or Senator Brother. He needs to keep pushing ahead. Maybe even by twisting the twist again: It's the investigator himself, rendered unable to remember his own act! (Seen it)

It's a terrible game, really, since in order to be shocking, each new step forward pushes credibility that little bit farther.

Keep track of what a savvy audience is going to anticipate. They 've been watching TV shows (or, for YOUR audience, reading spec scripts) for a long time now. They've seen a lot of twists. Not just in who-dunnits, either. In all kinds of stories. They know that if the heroine of your sitcom kisses a guy she just met in a bar, that it's going to turn out to be her new boss and/or her roommate's boyfriend. They know that if she meets a great guy on the phone that he won't look like what she pictured when she meets him in person. Think about what they've seen before, anticipate it, and then shoot past it. And good luck. This is hard business, surfing the anticipation curve.

Lunch: a ground turkey with fennel seeds thing I found in the South Beach Cook Book. Really good!

Jane on 04.08.06 @ 06:39 PM PST [link]

Had a great lunch today with friend-of-the-blog Maggie. So much fun! Much talk and analysis of my fave show, Battlestar Galactica. I came to the party late but have lately been much immersed in DVD viewing and the wonderful world of iTunes downloads. What a great show! It's been a long time since I've seen a show that does such a good job of crafting plot developments that defy prediction without feeling arbitrary. It's a tricky line to walk. But it's vital. If an audience gets ahead of the story, they can get very bored.

This is also true in the micro as well as the macro. Wanna see how? Here is possible scene transition. For the sake of the example, let's say this is an excerpt from an episode of, say, Taxi. We start at the end of a scene as Elaine is confiding in someone (probably Alex):

ELAINE
And here's the worst part! I agreed to go out with Louie!
CUT TO:
INT. RESTAURANT
Elaine looks on in horror as Louie blows his nose into a cloth napkin.

Now here is a better scene transition:

ELAINE
And here's the worst part! You'll never believe who I agreed to go out with!
CUT TO:
INT. RESTAUTANT
Elaine looks on in horror as Louie blows his nose into a cloth napkin.

See the difference? The second option is better. The reveal of Louie as her date is funnier when it's done as part of the cut. This is because it's a bigger swipe at the viewer's expectations. In the first version they go into the restaurant scene knowing something about what they're going to see. It's simply not as funny.

Try, as much as is possible, not to tell the viewers what they're about to see. Unless you're lying to them. Look at your scene transitions. I bet you can find some that you can arrange so that the cut into the next scene becomes a revelation, not just a what-happens-next.

Lunch: Sushi at Echigo on Santa Monica. Tiny morsels brought one-by-one on clouds of warm rice.
Jane on 04.07.06 @ 10:40 PM PST [link]

I've had a couple chances this week to talk or get together with ex-colleagues from various shows. I had a wonderful lunch with Andrew Green from Jake in Progress, and a great dinner with Rich Hatem and Doris Egan from Tru Calling. These little reunions always remind me of how each writers' room is a little culture unto itself. What is valued in that room may be very different than what is valued in another room. Some rooms are free-wheeling, with writers talk-thinking their way into an idea about a story. Others are quiet and thoughtful, where the succinctly-presented idea is more likely to shine. Some rooms are always all on a diet together. Other rooms are food snob rooms (oh, let's not go to a chain restaurant, we might die of shame). Still others are filled with Build-a-Burger menus and pizza boxes.

And, always, rooms get some degree of their own vocabulary. Usually, something gets named after a writer. A joke run using repeated words might be named after a writer who favors that form, for example. Punny writing has been called "Espensonian," which just makes giggle with delight. That kind of thing is inevitable as you get to know the writing preferences of people you spend long hours with. Sometimes the vocabulary is more ornate, requiring the kind of analysis used to explain Cockney rhyming slang. Conceptual meetings at Buffy were called Onions. [State of the Union -> State of the Onion -> Onion.]

And then there is "funneling." This was a term we came up with on a sitcom I worked on very early in my career. It has turned out to be so useful that I have never forgotten it. It describes a writing technique that is used so often, to such good effect, that I'm a little surprised I've never heard of anyone else coming up with a name for it. Well, actually, I suppose they might have. Maybe there's totally a well-known name for this, but I've never heard it. Here's the technique.

Remember when we talked about intercutting between two scenes that are happening simultaneously? The hypothetical example had to with breaking up an unusually long party scene by repeatedly cutting away to another scene. Obviously, this technique is used all the time, even when neither scene was too long. You can use it to emphasize the irony of a certain two events occurring at the same time, for example. (While she was plotting his murder, he was planning her birthday party!! That kind of thing).

Anyway, there you are, cutting back and forth between two scenes, letting them comment on each other, both of them driving toward their respective blows. Many times you want a sense of acceleration here. So you start with longer chunks of each scene between each transition back to the other scene. Then with shorter pieces. Often ending with BOOM – the blow to one scene and then, BAM, the blow to the other scene. That is what we named funneling.

Sometimes the eventual tip of the funnel will be a collision between the two scenes. If one scene has been of someone in danger and the other has been of the people trying to rescue them, the funnel will end with the arrival of the rescuers. That's a dramatic funnel. A comedic funnel will more likely end with something like two characters separately reaching decisions that we, the viewers, know will escalate their conflict. (Blow to scene one: Wife: "I'm going to demand my equal part of this marriage!" Blow to scene two: Husband: "I think I WILL buy that car without asking her advice!")

You do not always have to do this. There are many examples, among my Buffy scripts, for instance, of intercut scenes which had no funneling pattern. But if you have scenes in which you would like to call the viewers' attention to either an alignment or a contrast at the end of the scenes, add a funnel to your writing toolbox.

Lunch: beef and vegetables cooked shabu-shabu style -- immersed in boiling water at the table. Yummy yummy.

Jane on 04.06.06 @ 03:36 PM PST [link]

I just found out that someone I know is specing an Entourage. Interesting. I had not even considered this as an option. Those of you who are looking for half-hours to spec are probably finding the number of appropriate shows to be pretty small. Earl. Office. Two Men and Half a Baby (as I once called it by accident), and not much else. Entourage might be a good thing to add to the mix. It's not perfect, since a lot of people don't know the show and aren't going to jump to read it, but in a way, the obscurity makes it even classier to have as your second or third script... it makes you seem sophisticated.

Lunch: reheated eggplant casserole. Even better as lunch than as last night's dinner. And there's still some left for tomorrow's breakfast.
Jane on 04.05.06 @ 11:14 PM PST [link]

I have a dentist appointment today. Just a cleaning. But I find this stuff very stressful. It's the combination of discomfort and boredom that's so awful, I think. I sit/lie there, with my hands clasped over my tummy, gradually tensing up until I realize that I'm jamming my joined fists downward as if trying to heimlich the hygienist right out of my mouth. Then I effortfully relax and start it all over again. Bleahh. But, it is also my favorite day. Because it's the day that is the farthest apart from the next time I have to go in. Making a problem into a virtue, that's what I'm going for here.

Which, oh so neatly, brings us to another question from a friend of the blog. This is from the charming Tracy Berna again. The question is about a specific show, but I bet a lot of you will find her frustration very recognizable. The problem she's facing is probably one you will face at some point. She is working on a "My Name is Earl" spec and she asks:

"I came up with one possible past sin to have Earl make up for, but
I'm not sure who to make the wronged party, and here's why: 'Earl'
is a show that regularly and liberally employs guest characters. BUT!
You say that you shouldn't use guest characters in specs! So what
rule do I follow? The rule of the show's conventions, or the no-guests-
in-specs rule? Huh? HUH? Answer THAT!"

I will!

First off, let me point out that it's not a "no-guests" rule, but rather a "don't-build-the-whole-spec-around-a-guest" rule. But even so, Tracy has a valid dilemma here. What should she do?

Well, I can tell you what I would do. I would make the wronged person a character the audience already knows. Like, his ex-wife, his brother, his ex-mother-in-law, his ex-wife's new husband, or some other regular or recurring character. Maybe Earl doesn't even know who the wronged party is ,at first. He knows he did something wrong and goes looking for the victim, and the trail leads him right around to home again. Lots of good fodder for karmic thoughts there, all built-in.

Not only does this solution allow you to work solely with voices that you already know, but it also will tend to lead to richer emotional areas. Remember, you're trying to write the Best Earl Ever. Part of that is digging slightly deeper than the show does except in its very best episodes. Dealing with a dynamic that already exists gives you a head start on finding that depth.

A variation on this, is to have the wronged party indeed be a guest character, but one who is connected to an already existing character. Earl knows he wronged a certain woman. He's searching for her. Then he discovers his bother's new girlfriend is that very woman. At this point the woman is almost irrelevant. It's a brother-versus-brother story. Voices we know! A dynamic we care about!

(Forgive me if I'm mangling the show and its relationships, I watch, but not religiously. The larger point is still valid.)

The only other solution I can think of, if you really need to create a brand new character, is to make them "audible" by supplying imaginary casting. "Earl confronts TINA, a sweet little Betty White type older lady." or "Earl finds himself face-to-face with the big, blustering JERRY, think Chris Farley." It's not ideal, but at least the viewers know those voices, those personalities. It's even better if, say, Jerry reminds Earl of his own brother, and the show ends up being about him saying things to Jerry that he wishes he could say to Randy. Now we're back in the relationships we care about again!

A friend of mine once wrote a brilliant Frasier spec in which Daphne started dating a man who was just like Niles. This was a guest-character spec that was acceptable because the guest character's lines were all written in Niles' voice. The only problem with the spec? Right about the time she finished it, the episode of Frasier aired in which Daphne dated a man who was just like Niles. The spec was instantly obsolete, but she had the satisfaction of knowing she was certainly thinking just like the employed writers on the show. I like to think she sat back down to write again with increased confidence.

Problems become virtues. My dentist appointment looms. Soon it will be over.

Lunch: I used spices that were bought for me in Turkey to make a spicy chicken-and-yogurt dish.
Jane on 04.04.06 @ 01:21 PM PST [link]

Do you all know who Drew Greenberg is? He worked with me at Buffy and is now staffed on "Dexter," a new Showtime series. A great writer and a pretty slick dresser, too. I asked Drew to read yesterday's post about the temporal confines of Staffing Season to make sure it was all correct and complete. Drew weighed in with two important pieces of info. Take it, Drew:

Drew: "Two teeny things: (a) on rare (very rare, I suspect) occasions, staffing might continue into June, especially for low-level writers. Probably not too far into June, but a wee bit... And (b), for the sake of detail... if staffing is April and May into June, I usually consider agenting season to be January and February into March. Of course, I agree with you that a spec is done when it's done, and people shouldn't let dates force them to rush and finish something, but I always feel that if you're looking for an agent, that's the sweet spot to get them -- any earlier, they're busy with development season and the holidays, and, also, might forget about you when staffing comes around; any later, they're knee-deep in staffing and can't help you."

Thanks, Drew! (Isn't he great, Ladies and Gentlemen?)

So, if you need a deadline for your spec and you don't have an agent yet, well, New Year's Day sounds like a pretty good deadline to me.

And I recall now that Drew is right about the sometimes very late staffing of the lowest level writers too. Sometimes the staff writer is even hired after everyone else has started working, which is horrible, because then you have to walk into a room that is already a functioning machine. On the other hand, a very low level writer is allowed to (and encouraged to) sit silent for a long time, so there's no pressure to jump in and start being brilliant all at once.

Lunch: cold cuts and cheese and pickles off a deli tray
Jane on 04.03.06 @ 08:15 PM PST [link]

Hi all! I was at a bachelorette party this weekend in Vegas! Whoo! Fun! Vegas seems to be THE destination for events of this type. You can count veils in Vegas the way you might count out-of-state license plate anywhere else. Between the brides and the bachelorettes, there's enough white netting in that town to supply the Japanese fishing industry. Someone in our group actually was counting the veils. I think I heard the number seventeen. We're heading into spring. June is at our throats again.

Which leads us to today's question from Tracy Berna, a friend of the blog with her own wonderful, chaotic blog. Check it out at Left Turn at Albuquerque. She asks:


"When the hell is 'staffing season'? I'm never really sure when it
is or how the whole hiring cycle operates, except you're supposed to
have a spec ready at some nebulous time during the spring. Is there
more than one time a year when having a spec ready is apropos?"

A great question. The approximate answer is that staffing season is, hmm, sort of mid April to late May, with the job actually commencing on June first. But, of course, this is all subject to various factors, including:

1. Higher level writers are hired before lower ones. So depending on your level of experience, you're going to have a completely different season than another writer.

2. Mid-season shows sometimes (but not always) start production later than fall shows. They may staff later than other shows. Even months later. If you aren't staffed for fall, you are "waiting for mid-season."

3. Some shows (for example, many cable shows) are on a different schedule. A friend of mine was recently staffed on a Showtime show and has been reporting to work for several weeks already!

4. It seems obvious that a new show can't staff until the network has actually looked at the completed pilot and ordered additional episodes, so the moment of the announcement should mark the beginning of the staffing season. But sometimes a network orders additional scripts (as opposed to episodes), before they officially order the show. Or they otherwise have infused the show runner with enough confidence to go about reading specs and meeting with writers. So the season can start early.

5. Shows that are already established and know they're continuing, might staff VERY early, holding meetings before the previous year's staff has even finished their work, so that they show runner will have next year's staff (if they're making changes), figured out before their hiatal vacation starts. This also allows them access to high-level writers before the feeding frenzy starts. For the writer, of course, this can present a problem. The writer has to decide whether or not to accept the offer from the continuing show long before they know which pilots will be picked up.

6. Sometimes people get fired. And have to be replaced. You can scoop up an off-season job this way.

So when should your spec be ready? Well, you should always have one ready. And you should feel free to work on each spec as long as you want, making it perfect, so rushing to get something ready by a certain date may not make a lot of sense.

Also, unless you already have an agent, the first thing you're going to do with that spec is to try to find one. Guess when agents are so swamped that they will often simply refuse to read anymore? Right before staffing season. You're better off being a little off-schedule, if you ask me.

Write your specs until they're done. Then they're done.

A simple question. A long non-answer. Sorry 'bout that.

Lunch: A veggie sandwich from the Quiznos in the Luxor Las Vegas food court. They accidently gave me a side salad without charging me for it, and when I tried to pay for it they wouldn't let me and seemed a little angry that I was making a big deal out of it, like I was harping on their mistake. The sandwich was very nice. Toasting makes a huge difference. And the avocado spread is key.
Jane on 04.02.06 @ 11:47 PM PST [link]