JaneEspenson.com

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.

I love Scrabble. Love it! Best game ever invented except it has too many “i”s. Nine? That’s outrageous. Seriously. Nine “i”s. It’s like a bad joke. Nine.

I even loved Scrabble when I was a little kid and was terrible at it. I’d beg my parents to play, and they’d win by ludicrous margins, and I’d want to play again immediately. My one frustration was that they, trying to help me improve, would sometimes point out possible plays for me. “But now I can’t play THAT one!” I would howl. It was illegitimate because I hadn’t thought of it myself.

This attitude of self-defeating independence stuck with me. I couldn’t title an essay, or name a pet, if someone else came up with the brainstorm. I even suspect this is one reason I don’t like ordering the same entree as someone else at the table.

This trait hurt me, early in my career. If friends suggested lines in scripts I was writing, or even if co-workers pitched jokes to me informally, I couldn’t use them. It felt like cheating. (In the rewrite room of course, jokes come from everywhere, but that’s understood.)

If you share this trait, you will do well to get over it. Writing is collaborative. Even spec writing. Have your friends read what you’re writing. If they suggest the perfect line, then take it. Take it and run. Consider it another skill, the skill of being able to RECOGNIZE the right line.

Lunch: Enchildas Verduras from Mexicali, on Ventura up in Studio City. I have spoken to you before of their sauce.

NOTE: I’m headed to New York City tomorrow morning! I will be back on Wednesday. I may not be able to blog while I’m gone. Talk to you soon!

I had the most delightful lunch today with friend-of-the-blog Maggie from the bootstrap-productions blog . How exciting to be just starting the journey! And, from my point of view, there’s this interesting thing that happens, like when you’re showing the new foreign-exchange student around the high school, where you start seeing everything with new eyes. Hollywood looks like HOLLYWOOD again.

But then, I’ve had that feeling for a while now, because of this blog. It’s totally envigorating to look at the process of writing from the beginning again. You start thinking consciously about things that have become entirely subconscious.

Like jokes. Jokes have different functions. Some are hammers. Just old-fashioned put-downs used against other characters. And almost all of them are flashlights trained on the character that says them. You learn something about a character every time you laugh at something they say.

And a few jokes… A few jokes are explosives. They hit every one in the room. They change the way all the OTHER characters look at something. They turn the story. This is the most difficult kind of joke I can imagine.

Remember on Sex and the City where the women were talking about a baby boy with an unpleasant demeanor? One of them (Samantha) finally said: “Maybe he’s just an asshole.” I have heard so many people remember and comment on that line. It was written by the wonderful Alexa Junge, by the way. In that line, she didn’t just shock us with using that kind of language to discuss a baby. Instead, she hit on something we’d all observed but that no one had said out loud before: babies are not equal. Other people are allowed to have bad qualities, why not babies? And, as I remember the moment, you can SEE that insight hit all of the other characters.

Usually jokes are not bendable to this purpose. When Radar announced that Col. Blake’s plane was shot down, the line affected all the characters. That moment was so big and so tragic that it obviously would have been impossible to do that with a joke. But when it IS possible to bring emotional impact and humor together, it’s magic.

On Friends, there was a moment when fighting between the friends became intense and Phoebe shouted “Stop! Look what we’re doing to Chandler!” And we then saw that Chandler was capering frantically, like a little boy trying to get his parents to stop fighting. Funny and heartbreaking. The moment hit the audience and it hit the characters and it still managed to play as a joke. Fantastic.

I bet we could find moments like this from All in the Family, Cheers, Taxi and Frasier. And I bet it wouldn’t even take us that long to remember them. Those are the moments you remember.

If you’re writing a comedy spec, and you want to try for the highest degree of difficulty… wow. Good for you.

Lunch: Eggs and mimosas and sherbet and good company.

I know that I haven’t made it especially easy to contact me about this blog. So I’m blown away by the great notes that have made their way to me. Thanks to Pat in Texas who sent me a note on a beautiful post card, and included information on her lunch! I love it! I also got a sweet note from Jesse Jackson. But I think it’s not THAT Jesse Jackson. And a great card from Ken in Virginia, who groks my love of scifi as well as of Jane Austin! Thanks to all of you!

The most inspiring letter was from Alicia in Australia who started watching Buffy when she was eight (!) and is going to start studying film-making next year. She thinks she’s not a writer, but her letter sounds exactly like a person talking, so I suspect she’d be great at dialogue.

So, let’s talk a little about dialogue! You know what your character is FEELING, but you don’t want them to just say it out loud, right? So how do you let your audience KNOW what they’re feeling? You can’t rely on acting to do this — not in a spec script! Somehow you have to do it on the page. Well, I’m going to show you a little trick. Credit Freud for this one.

Here’s a tiny little bit from a Buffy script of mine. Buffy has finally decided to let her boyfriend, Riley, know just how strong she is. They spar, and she throws him across the room. She hurries to him and they have this exchange:

BUFFY
Are you hurt?

RILEY
I… I’m… I don’t think so.

The trick here is having someone START to say something, then change their mind. Riley started to say “I’m…” something. “Okay,” probably. Or “fine.” That’s what you normally say. When he changes his answer to “I don’t think so,” he has decided not to commit to being fine. We know he IS hurt, even if not physically injured.

In that case, a character started to speak, then realized what they were going to say was a lie, and took it back. The reverse works too, in which a character starts to let the truth spill out, then stops herself.

I wrote an Angel script in which Cordy mourns the life she used to have as the Alpha girl of Sunnydale High. At one point she’s looking around at a beautiful apartment and she says:

CORDELIA
I… I used to have this. I was…

She decides not to finish the thought, and just trails off there. Someone else speaks, and Cordy never comes back to what she was, but we’ve heard enough to know that she’s thinking about her change of circumstances as a change in what she “was,” as a genuine change in identity.

I love this trick. It’s easy and efficient. It reveals character without a bunch of words. Give it a try! But only use it when a character is REALIZING something, because that’s when they’re distracted, when their censor is not engaged, when things can slip out.

Lunch: Chicken and waffles at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. Wonderful as always.

Hi all! I’m heading out of town for a long weekend, so starting tomorrow the blogging will be slow for a little bit here. But know that I am thinking of you all. Special thanks to friend-of-the-blog Maggie for her continuing feedback on these humble posts. It is so helpful when I know what people need to know.

In that same flavor, another-friend-of-the-blog has registered a very interesting question. Take it, friend!

Friend: “When I first started writing, I pretty much only wrote what I wanted to write. Meaning, I wasn’t thinking of my portfolio much. Just concentrating on learning (still am). Now that I’m taking a more business-y look at my writing, especially as I read the pilots for this season, I notice what holes are in my portfolio. Now, obviously I wouldn’t write a Supernatural spec to get on Grey’s. But, I was wondering if it would be odd… if I were to write a Desperate Housewives where one of the women has to be in the hospital for the entire episode? Like a B or C story, if you will. But something that would showcase my medical range? Is this good business sense or is this the over-thinking of a neurotic writer?”

Fantastic question. One that really made me stop and think. She is referring to the fact that you never write a spec of the show that you are hoping to be hired on — let’s call it the “target show.” (Note that you may not have a target show. That’s cool, too.) Showrunners don’t read specs of their own shows for a number of reasons, some legal, some practical. That means that if you are targetting a specific show, you might want to get clever about it — think about what OTHER show will best allow you to demonstrate the skills that the target show will be looking for.

I bet the showrunner at House is given a lot of Grey’s episodes to read as specs, and vice versa. They’re an obvious pairing. And what do you want to bet the Commander in Chief showrunner read a heck of a lot of West Wing specs? But our friend is suggesting a way to mix this up. And it’s pretty interesting — giving a not-already-built-in spin to your spec to make it more deliciously appealing to the target show.

My inclination is that this is a pretty good idea, but one with a lot of possible pitfalls.

1. This should only be attempted if the show being spun isn’t twisted out of recognition in order to acheive the desired effect. I’m not a regular Housewives viewer, so I’m not certain if they would do a medical subplot. It certainly sounds possible, but this is a huge concern. If your spec House suddenly features Dr. House whispering to a ghost, then you’ve got a problem.

2. This depends on the assumption that Grey’s showrunner is actually looking for an ability to write medical stuff. They may not care. Shows with technical content have advisors. The ability to write characters is almost certainly a higher priority. But, of course, a person can do both…

3. Finally, story should come from character. Setting artificial requirements on the setting or subject matter of a story may make it harder to come up with a truly emotional story.

But if you’re satisified that what you’ve come up with is an emotional, non-distorted spec that shows off skills your target showrunner values, then I see no reason not to try it.

Lunch: Thai papaya salad. Spicy and tart!

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