JaneEspenson.com

Oh, Gentle Readers, we are very lucky today. Meet Friend-of-the-blog Lisa Klink, a brilliant and accomplished television writer. (Check out her credits on imdb). Lisa forever has my envy because she worked inside the world of a couple of the Star Trek series, while I sniffed around the outside. Anyway, Lisa read yesterday’s post and now she leaps, superhero-like, to the rescue. Lisa writes:

In your blog, you wondered if anyone could help out newbie writers with questions like how to get an assistant job. My blog addresses a lot of that stuff – plus what the writers’ room is like, what to expect from an agent, etc. Feel free to throw any folk with those types of questions my way.

Wow. How perfect is that? Her blog is here: lisaklink.com/blog1. Please check it out! I myself just lost a lovely chunk of time reading and learning there.

This is probably also a good time to mention the blogs of a couple other incredibly smart and accomplished writers: Ken Levine and Doris Egan. Learning from — and being totally charmed by — resources like these are part of how you (yes, you, Gentle Reader), are going to succeed in this business.

Lunch: veggie sandwich on rye, extra avocado

I get asked some questions, Gentle Readers, that, sadly, I don’t have answers for. Right now I’m looking at letters from “Maggie” in Westlake Village, from Jane in Los Angeles, David in Puyallup, Washington, Ellen in Vancouver, Matthew in Pennsylvania, and others. They’re asking excellent questions about where to find produced Battlestar scripts and how to get started in writing if you’re not a US citizen and therefore can’t enter some of the competitions. Or they want to know about how to get writers’ assistant jobs. Or how to get their scripts into the hands of showrunners. Oof. Um… In general, I dunno.

I write about writing. I can also give a sort of generalized advice about getting into the business that boils down to: write specs, enter contests, take classes, join writers’ groups, meet people, consider moving to LA, look for jobs that put you near to the writers’ room, and write more specs. The only part of this that I feel confident enough to tell you how to do is the “write specs” part. I have no idea how writers’ assistants get their jobs or what opportunities there may be for writers in Canada. And, as much as I want to help, I’m not sure I want to become the clearing house for this sort of information. If someone does want to take on this job, I will happily post a link to their site.

I don’t fault anyone for writing in with these questions — they’re great questions and you’re smart to ask them — they’re just beyond the scope of what I do.

And while I’m going through the mail bag…

Many thanks to Sara in Richmond, CA, for an article about computer usage’s influence on standard language — really fascinating. Another hearty “thank you” to Teri J. who sent me a copy of her book. And a “you’re welcome” to Friend-of-the-Blog Eric Loya here in Los Angeles — my favorite book store clerk. And to Jennette in Indianapolis who also has a book coming out — how wonderful is it that so many of you who write me have either written a book, or just won a contest or made a short film or otherwise have accomplished so much! I’m constantly impressed by you, Gentle Readers!

Keep writing — I read all the letters even though I can’t always find an answer worthy of blogging. It’s not you, it’s me.

Lunch: salad and a cup of alphabet soup — I scooped it myself so it was almost all alphabet and very little soup.

I’ve got two fun sites for you today, Gentle Readers! There is this one, and then there is this other one.

These are both useful sites for coming up with character names. What I like about these sites as opposed to other sites or books I’ve seen is that they can help you find the right name for a character that reflects the character’s age. This can be really useful for giving a script authenticity and for helping readers remember and visualize the characters.

The first site allows you to enter a birth year and it gives the most popular (U.S.) boy and girl given names for that year. Got characters born in 1975? Hmm… looks like Michael and Jennifer are good choices that will, consciously or subconsciously, evoke the right age for your reader. 1999? Jake and Emily. 1901? Good ol’ John and Mary are leading the pack.

The second site is more visually exciting, and I recommend you play with it for fun if nothing else. And check out the blog, too — was Placenta really once a common girl’s name? Find out in the blog. Perfectly fascinating. This site graphically displays given names charted against years and allows a user to display, say, all boys given names starting with “An” over all the years. (Watch “Angel” surge in 2003.) This site is a good one for finding names that never were in the top ten, but which enjoyed prior and interesting popularity, or for exploring other subtleties. Want to make sure no one forgets your “Molly” is old? Spell it “Mollie.” She just aged in front of your eyes.

Want to name a whole pack of old biddies? Try “Jane,” “Mary,” and “Lillian”. No wait, that was me and my friends in the late seventies — we were anachronistic, another interesting trait you can play with when you name a character. Our names suggest we might’ve been out of step with our era. Us? Heaven forfend.

Lunch: spaghetti with marina and artichoke hearts

Gentle Reader and friend-of-friend-of-the-blog Chris in Los Angeles writes in with a wonderful technical question. She (or he) says:

How would you format a montage of still photos with voiceover? Should I write in the location of each picture on the Scene Heading Line? Or can I put some kind of overall “Montage” note and then describe what’s in each picture, one by one? If that’s the case, what should I put on the scene heading line?

First off, let me just say that this is the kind of stuff that drives newer writers nuts, because they’re worried about doing it wrong, about breaking a rule. The fact is, however, that when you’re faced with an unusual situation, the best way to do it is just to be as clear as possible for the reader and not worry too much about rules. This means, of course, that different writers would tackle this situation in different ways, and none of them would be correct or incorrect.

Now, I assume you’re not talking about panning across a mantelpiece and showing us the photos there, because then I don’t think you’d be asking about the scene heading and using the word ‘montage’. But anyway, just for completeness, if it was the mantelpiece thing, it would probably go like this (please forgive any indentation oddness):

INT. LIVING ROOM

But you’re not asking about that. You’re asking about a genuine montage, right, Chris? A location-less series of still shots, like in a Ken Burns documentary? That’s more unusual, and I can imagine it being done in a couple different ways. Here is one way that I might use:

A STILL PHOTO

And on from there. But it’s totally flexible. That one action line where I list a lot of photos in a row? You could break those each out into its own shot line if you wanted to. It’s all about whatever you think best conveys what you’re picturing. Play around with it.

Notice that whether you use the “scene heading” or “shot” or even “action” designation for the bits of prose is entirely up to you. The reader won’t be able to tell which they are, anyway.

All the standard rules of script formatting assume you’re going to be doing the standard script thing, having action and dialogue set within a series of locations. When you deviate from that formula, you can deviate from the formatting rules — you can start a scene without either an “Int” or an “Ext”. You can blur the distinction between scenes and shots and description. The categories are supposed to help you. When they stop helping you, find another way. As always, the key is to make your choices clear and confident.

Lunch: that heirloom tomato salad again. Lovely.

Friend-of-the-Blog Debbie in San Francisco has just informed me of another impending deadline. August 20th is the deadline to submit a spec pilot to the slamdance teleplay competition. So if you have one all ready to go, I’d suggest you slap it into the mail.

I didn’t know much about this competition until this year, when I found myself working on a writing staff alongside a previous winner who has nothing but good things to say about his experience.

The Grand Prize Winner gets cash and some sort of interaction with the good people at Fox 21 — some of whom I know and can vouch for. This is a legit deal and I encourage you all to submit your scripts.

Lunch: delicious sandwiches crafted by Mrs. Ron Moore, who took care of feeding the Battlestar Galactica writers during an impressively productive writers’ retreat. Thank you, Mrs. Ron!

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