JaneEspenson.com

My parents got a new puppy this week. She’s a teeny baby Bichon Frise whom they have named Zia. Can you believe these are the same people who came up with “Jane”? I suspect I’d’ve had a different life if I was named Zia Espenson. Not better, but different. Names can be like pins that attach us to our lives.

Or, sometimes, they make things realer. When nothing got named “zero,” people started thinking about numbers in a different way. Nothing became something.

A similar interesting thing happens when you’re breaking a story and you give a name to each act of your script. I find it to be totally helpful. At the very least, it makes you more aware of the overall shape of the story. Here’s an example of how you might label the acts of a spec script.

ACT ONE: The building storm
ACT TWO: Self-deception adds to the trouble
ACT THREE: We strike back
ACT FOUR: Double-cross!
ACT FIVE: We win!

Or whatever. These are for demonstration purposes only.

Label the acts with whatever you feel best describes the thrust of the story in that act. I find that once I’ve settled on these names, I’m far better able to tell if a given scene is doing what I need it to do. If I have to let go of one of these guide ropes to reach for a scene, then I know I’m in danger of losing my way.

Lunch: a nice tongue sandwich. Loosen up! Try it!

WorldCon made me get all theoretical and big-picture-y. That can be fun, but it isn’t always helpful if you’re sitting at home with your fingers on the keys, looking for advice you can put to work right away. So, how about we go back to talking about something more practical?

Let’s suppose you’re “breaking” the story for your drama spec script. You’re in the early stages, thinking up the basic spine of the story, and looking for the act breaks – looking for the places where the story turns. So you come up with a nice exciting event for the end of the teaser, and other ones for the three or four breaks that follow — all the places where the story will continue after commercials.

Let’s say that the act breaks you come up with are compelling and suspenseful. What could possibly go wrong?

They could be duplicates, is what. Sometimes it’s very easy to end up with two act breaks that are way too similar to each other. If you end act one with your detectives at a dead-end, you shouldn’t end act three with another dead end. Or if an act ends with character one betraying character two, then it’s best to avoid using a subsequent betrayal of c2 by c1 as another act break in the same episode.

This trap is so easy to fall into that I’ve been on staffs where no one notices that we’ve broken a story with this flaw for a strikingly long time. Then finally, someone points it out, and we all slap our foreheads in comical unison. Sometimes, it doesn’t even get fixed. You can probably find produced episodes that do exactly this. Maybe it even works, if the two scenes are purposeful echoes of each other, or if the second of the two breaks is presented as existing at an order of magnitude greater than the first. But unless things work out just right, and you can bury the similarity, you’re taking a risk of turning in a script that feels circular and repetitive.

In an extreme case of repeated act breaks, you can look at the story for an episode and realize that nothing would really change if you removed, say, act three. This is a very bad sign. Test your story against this property before you begin writing dialogue. If you’ve got an act that lifts out like part of a sectional sofa, then something’s gone badly wrong. Change it now. Everything is easier to change in the pre-outline stage. And if no one sees you slap your forehead, does it really hurt?

Lunch: no new lunch since last entry

Today is special because my favorite book, Prisoner of Trebekistan, will be released one week from today. If you’ve been hesitating because you didn’t want to pre-order and then have to wait for the book to arrive, then this is your time to strike!

Lunch: egg salad and chocolate pie (two separate items)

Hi! I’m back from WorldCon. Wow, that was fun! It’s a convention that focuses a lot on books, as opposed to comic books and games. This seems to lead to a more grown up and more female collection of attendees than at some other cons. The whole thing had a wonderful feel to it.

The Hugo Award ceremony went well. I got through my part of it, so I was already reeling with relief when I had the pleasure of seeing Serenity get the Drama Long Form award. How wonderful! It was a great night indeed.

I also participated in quite a few more panels, which was a lot of fun. In fact, several times throughout the weekend, I had mini-epiphanies (I call them piphanies) about what it is that I do for a living. Here is a thought you might enjoy. Or disagree with. Or both.

There is a big division in the nature of television shows. We talk about shows that are character-driven and shows that are story-driven. King of the Hill, to pick a show more or less at random, is character-driven. Law and Order is story-driven. Other shows exist somewhere along the scale.

But what if there’s a third division? It seems to me that the shows which we are most liable to call “Sci Fi” are often driven by something that is neither character nor story. The Twilight Zone, original Star Trek and Trek:TNG, the Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, maybe even a show like Quantum Leap… I would contend that these are (drum roll) idea-driven.

You know what I mean? I would even include some of the earliest monster-of-the-week Buffy episodes in this category — the ones with the strongest metaphorical underpinnings. Like episodes of The Twilight Zone, they function as sorts of little parables, with a point to make about the world. A point made by an idea-based show might be something like: racism is random, human obsession creates a barrier as strong as any wall, greed eats away the soul, vanity makes you ugly. There’s a moral to these shows, as in a fable.

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of people out there who declare “I don’t like Sci Fi” and “I don’t like Fantasy”? Have you ever questioned them on what they mean… do they mean that they don’t like Frankenstein, Brave New World, 1984, A Handmaid’s Tale, Harry Potter? They don’t like Star Wars? Indiana Jones? ET? Splash? Big? Lord of the Rings? Sliding Doors? The Natural? Field of Dreams? Heaven can Wait? Defending your Life? The Incredibles? Batman? They don’t like Buffy? Quantum Leap? Charmed? Medium? Bewitched? Sabrina? Lost?

Usually they’ll admit that they, in fact, like a great many of those things. They just don’t put some of those works in the category of things they dislike. I’m starting to wonder if what best characterizes what they don’t like is the category of idea-driven works.

The types of stories written by Ray Bradbury, the types of filmed stories presented by Rod Serling… these appealed to me as child even without the presence of characters I knew and was already rooting for. I loved the fact that each of them was a neat little package with an idea inside. But others dislike this. Maybe it feels artificial to them, like a little puppet show that they suddenly realize is there not to entertain but to educate. It’s about vegetables! It’s a trap!

They may, in fact, have learned, from the example of the Trek shows, that the sight of spacecraft is a warning signal that ideas may soon follow. I’ve heard from a number of people who were pleasantly surprised to discover that Battlestar Galactica was about people. I think they were afraid it was about ideas. (Which is not to say it is idea-less, but I wouldn’t say it is idea-driven. It is character-driven.)

What does this mean for you, the humble and earnest writer of spec scripts? Figure out the category of the show you are specing and make sure the episode you write is of the correct type. And if you are writing an idea-driven spec pilot, be aware that you are battling some strong headwinds. If you are twisting story and character in order to create a sort of parable, you may be letting an idea drive your spec. Watch out for this, my friends. I love ideas, you love ideas, but something there is that does not love an idea. They simply are not in fashion in the television world right now.

Lunch: A hot meatball sub from Togos, delivered by mistake in place of a turkey sandwich, but cherished nonetheless.

Greetings from WorldCon! I’m in Anaheim, gentle readers, where I’m appearing on panels and mingling with other SciFi fans and – get this – presenting the Hugo Award for best Short-Form Dramatic Presentation. I will get to open the envelope on stage and everything. I’m nervous about it, but I think it’s one of those things, like rewriting, that after it’s over, you’re glad you did it.

I got to share a dais today with the great Melinda Snodgrass. She’s the writer with the best claim to fame that I ever heard of. She wrote a wonderful, classic episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “The Measure of a Man.” It was about a challenge to the sentience of Data, the android character and it was one of my all time favorites. And here’s the kicker. It was a spec script. This is the only case I have ever heard of in which a spec script was purchased and produced. Now that’s impressive. Kinda makes you want to polish that spec a little more, doesn’t it? You know, just in case it falls into the right hands?

I can think of one other case that was similar to this. Steve De Knight got hired onto the Buffy staff on the basis of a Buffy spec. Unheard of! You never even submit a spec of a show to that show, right? Well, in fact, he didn’t. It was submitted to Angel. But Joss loved the script so well that he grabbed De Knight for Buffy. I never got to read the script myself, but I understand that it was about Xander and Buffy and how they are affected when Buffy loses her Slayer powers and Xander gets them.

Melinda and Steve did the same thing with their specs. They both took strong, well-established characters that were central to the show, and they put them through a trauma that drove at heart of how that character is defined. What does it mean for an android — this android — to be sentient? What does it mean for Buffy to be the Slayer? These questions are big pointy hooks. Throw them into the ocean and drag them around on the bottom for a while and you’re going to dredge up some stuff.

If you can find an idea for a spec that cuts as close to the heart of a show as those two did, you’ll be on your way to winning the show-biz lottery like they did.

Lunch: seared ahi tuna salad

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