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More news from the front! Remember the friend-of-the-blog who is currently reading stacks of spec scripts as he sets about staffing a show? Well he’s moved on from reading crushingly unemotional specs of The Office to reading spec pilots instead. And you should perk up at what he’s found, gentle readers, since once again your work is improving by comparison with underperforming professionals!

The problem this time? Voiceovers. Now, a voiceover can sometimes be a stylish choice, often used to good effect in stories where you want to feature an unreliable character whose internal monologue doesn’t actually match the events around him or her. And of course, there have been many successful and/or well-written shows with voiceovers: Sex and the City, Wonder Years, and Arrested Development, for example. But it takes a very specific situation or a very light hand to do it well.

The problem, of course, is that it can be a tempting way to avoid the inherit limiting feature of what we do. We are not novelists; we have chosen to work in a branch of fiction which takes an external, not an internal, look at characters. We get the tricky but rewarding task of giving viewers/readers clues that allow them to infer inner motivations, rather than making them explicit. We’re just brimmin’ with subtext and that’s on purpose. Voiceovers often make it too tempting to just make the subtext into text. Which makes for a very boring and obvious read.

But let’s imagine that you’ve managed to do it well. You’ve used a light touch, some ironic touches, a bit of magic, and you’ve employed a voiceover effectively in your spec. But you’re going to be sending that script out into an environment that, for whatever reason, seems to be unusually full of voiced-over scripts right now. Our friend-of-the-blog reports that the concentration of them is as at an all-time high; he’s finding one-third of the scripts he’s reading have voiceovers. It’s not going to be easy to make your use of the device stand out in that talky crowd. So think hard about it.

Writing your script without voiceover may seem dauntingly difficult, but that’s actually a good sign. Every time you up the degree of difficulty, you’re giving yourself a chance to show off. And the scripts that show off best get the jobs.

Lunch: instant noodle soup with added hot sauce, followed by an apple

In response to a recent question about where to acquire produced scripts for The Office, an observant friend-of-the-blog directs us to dailyscript.com, where I understand you can actually have scripts emailed to you in the pdf format. Oh, technology today. It’s like we’re all living at EPCOT.

Once you have a few produced examples, you can start examining them minutely. I mean, really minutely. If I were sitting down to write a spec Office, I think the first thing I would do is try to figure out how the show balances the Michael Scott stories against the Jim-and-Pam stories. Is one more likely than the other to drive events, to result in act-break moments? Do they always comment on each other? Influence each other? Which character is more likely to undergo change during the episode? Is Michael really the lead character, or is it Jim-and-Pam? I would want to go through every script and every logline until I understood the typical skeleton of the typical episode. Only then would I start trying to find stories that fit together, that grow out of the show’s genetic material, but which also strike a little deeper than just an average ep.

Then get some 30 Rock scripts. Repeat.

Lunch: veggie dumplings, stuffed eggplant and some sort of lovely chicken dish at City Wok, a restaurant right here in the shadow of Universal Studios “City Walk” attraction. Clever and yummy!

Clams revisited! Clams, remember, are jokes that have grown detestable through overuse. You know the ones. Ones like “did I say that out loud?” Gahh!

But there’s a certain kind of joke that’s related to a clam, and yet it doesn’t get old. That’s because it has little slots in it into which new material can be inserted. Let’s call it a clamshell. (Thanks to friend-of-the-blog Erin for the terminology assist.)

I’m sure there are many of these out there, but tonight I’m just presenting the first documented clamshell that has captured my attention. Remember these lines?

You smell like aftershave and taco meat. (Blades of Glory)
You smell like beef and cheese. (Elf)
You smell like sweet red plums and grilled cheese sandwiches. (The Wedding Planner)
You smell like old people and soap. (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

Fascinating, isn’t it? It’s permafresh!

Lunch: I might just smell like pizza and a peanut-butter cup

CORRECTION: The above quote is from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the newer movie, not Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the Gene Wilder version. Apologies!

Very sad news about Kurt Vonnegut. Slaughterhouse Five is a personal fave. Sigh.

Friend-of-the-blog Jeff directs us to this interesting artifact, a list of Vonnegut’s Eight Rules of Writing Fiction, from Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), p. 9-10:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. — Kurt Vonnegut

These are fascinating, and they can be applied, obviously, to script writing as well as to prose. (Well, except maybe rule 4 — some of your sentences are stage directions, which are a part of different conversation than the one occurring in the fictional world.)

Rule 8 is making me think a bit, and not just about the cockroaches. I assume he meant that readers should be able to imagine a satisfying ending, not that that they would be able to anticipate the exact ending you’re giving them. Don’t you think?

Rule 5, “Start as close to the end as possible,” is genius. Remember when I talked about taking the events that happen late in your script and using them instead as a starting place? Remember when I talked about cutting into scenes after the main action of the scene has begun and joining them in progress? I had never thought of these as part of the same impulse, but they are. They’re part of starting near the end. Beginnings are often boring, endings are not.

And yet there are things we never wanted to see end.

Lunch: salad and some of a jelly doughnut

Interesting. Recently (March 30), I observed that writing teams are always composed of two, and only two, writers. But then I got a note from a Friend-of-the-Blog, saying:

Believe it or not, there may have been a three-partner writing team on the original staff of “Everybody Hates Chris.” I knew one of the original writers for that show… and he mentioned one of the teams had three people. I know it’s rare, but I guess it can happen…

Well slap my flank and call me Bessie. Who knew? I have to say, though, that this is very rare indeed. And it gives me the image of trying to navigate the streets in a vehicle that’s three cars wide. How do you steer it? How do you park it? How do you keep it from splitting into three cars that want to go different directions? The metaphor might be breaking down, but I think you get the point.

While we’re in the area, here’s more on teams. It’s not usual for a writer to be part of a team that writes features, while also pursuing a solo TV writing career. Entering into a partnership doesn’t have to mean that you’re partnered for every aspect of your career. So feel free to seek out writers you’re compatible with. Just make sure you’re very happy with the shape of the car that results.

Also, a big thank you to the lovely people of Equality Now and the Browncoats who were involved in my trip to WonderCon. They sent me a deeply appreciated gift of exotic spices which I am currently sprinkling on everything in my home. Thank you!

Lunch: cafeteria sushi. Oh, the cold chewy rice. Sigh.

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