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A supplemental post today, Gentle Readers, because I don’t like to have a day in which there is a new post, but no actual writing advice. So here we go…

Sometimes you have to rewrite a scene quickly and under pressure. Certainly, when you’re on staff and your episode is being produced, you will have to do this. But even as a spec writer with a contest deadline looming, you sometimes have to do this if you’ve suddenly realized that a scene isn’t working. The best way to approach fast and stressy work is to make your job easy. That means limiting yourself to one goal: a scene that fulfills its function in the story. Notice that preserving a line that you really love, or keeping a certain character in the scene, or retaining a really cool transition into the next scene… these are additional goals. They might feel like they’re making it easier, since they represent work that’s already been done, but they really aren’t. They’re splitting your focus.

It’s usually fastest to throw everything out, start with a bare slug line and think about the absolute minimum that the scene needs to accomplish in the story. Get that down. Now you can embroider and embellish… hey, maybe you can even fit in that line you wanted to save after all, but that’s only a consideration after the scene is working.

This method also helps combat scene-spread, the tendency of scenes to expand during re-writing. A scene written this way will be short and to-the-point, which is probably — almost certainly — exactly what you need anyway.

Lunch: pulled pork, beans, beets, corn. Like a picnic!

Did you know that authors rarely do book tours anymore? It’s true. Unless you’re a huge draw as a freestanding celebrity, those tours just don’t sell enough books to pay for the travel costs. So now there are internet tours, where you promote your book by “appearing on” various websites. Of course, this is all a way to announce my up-coming internet book tour to promote Serenity Found, the newest book edited by me, about Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity universe.

So, for those of you who want to follow the tour, here is the schedule:

Oct. 19: FireflyTalk.com

I will make a second appearance on SpaceWesterns.com to discuss the book.

Did you catch the important bit? Guest Judge in a Limerick Contest! Seriously, that makes me just about as happy as anything could.

So mark your calendars, Gentle Readers. If you can take that much more of me — there I’ll be!

Lunch: pasta eaten during stress — no memory of actual ingredients or flavors

Greetings from Beautiful Vancouver, Gentle Readers. I’m up here because they’re shooting an episode of Battlestar Galactica that I wrote. It’s all very exciting and a little bit cold. Anyway, my time is limited, so I decided to invite in a guest speaker. Friend-of-the-blog Marcia is very experienced as a Writers’ Assistant, and I decided to go to her with the question that so many of you keep asking me about pursuing that job. Take it, Marcia:

So, Jane tells me you want to be a writers’ assistant. I’d beg you not to, what with all of you being my competition, but if you can’t be dissuaded… then let’s talk. I’m sure your first question is, “How do I get a job as a writers’ assistant?” Good question. But before that, let me ask you one. Do you really know what the job entails, what you’re getting yourself into? Being a writers’ assistant kinda stinks. It’s the worst job ever. I’ll give you the top three reasons why:

1. Make sure your typing skills are honed. This may seem obvious, but new writers’ assistants are frequently shocked by the fast pace of a writers room. Nothing will get you fired faster than an inability to keep up, causing notes to be incomplete and basically useless to the writers. That includes being adept at spelling and punctuation. Often, the writers assistant’s computer is connected to a large TV monitor so the writers can see what you’re doing, and nothing distracts them more than your errors.
[NOTE FROM JANE: THE TV MONITOR IS NOT GENERALLY USED IN THE WRITERS’ ROOMS OF DRAMAS.]

2. Study up. Be an expert at one of the two most popular scriptwriting software programs, Final Draft and Movie Magic. I have found Final Draft to be the most common, but Movie Magic would be number 2. If you’re already a pro at one, it wouldn’t hurt to have a cursory knowledge of the other, if only to be able to convincingly lie when you’re asked in an interview. Also study up on MAC and PC operating systems. The computer in the writers’ room tends to be whichever the show runner prefers, so be prepared to use both. [NOTE FROM JANE: MOST OF THE SHOWS I’VE BEEN ON HAVE USED THE WRITERS’ ASSISTANT AS DE FACTO TECH SUPPORT, EXPECTING THEM FIX ANY COMPUTER PROBLEM THAT CROPS UP.]

You’re probably saying, “I get it. I hear you. It’s not all cake and ice cream. But I already know I’m sure. I want this. How do I get the job?”

Since I know act breaks, I think that’s a good place to end for today. More from Marcia next time!

Lunch: Mmm… it’s the catering truck at the set! I love the catering truck! Lamb and coconut cream pie.

Holy cow, Gentle Readers, I was just looking through my current stack of letters-to-answer when I pulled out a nice long one that I don’t recall reading before. To my embarrassment, I see that it’s dated October 20, 2006. The hell? How’d that happen? So apologies, Adam in West Hollywood, and thanks for the letter!

Adam is (was) debating whether to write a half-hour or an hour-long spec. He was tempted to try specing a multi-camera half-hour to bring some diversity to his portfolio, but he wasn’t sure he’d like the process of actually working on such a show. He described a scene he’d seen in a “Behind the Scenes” feature on a Friends DVD in which the writers had to fix a joke during the taping when it failed to get a laugh:

So there was this tight, feverish little knot of writers pitching out jokes like hot little coals no one could hold for too long […] as the crowd watched from ten feet away…

Adam asks if I’ve ever been expected to pop out jokes under the gun like that. The answer is that yes, I’ve been part of those awful feverish huddles in front of a waiting audience, although I’ve never felt that I’ve done much good there. The ability to find a new joke under pressure that way is a particular and prized skill that half-hour multi-camera writers are supposed to have, although the degrees of actual skill vary wildly. Also keep in mind that, in that huddle, you’re trying to get a fresh take on a moment that you’ve already been staring at for a whole week. If you’re flushing with the excitement of the challenge, go into sitcom work. If you’re feeling what Adam calls “big dragging icicle chills,” then it’s probably not the job for you.

And given that, Adam, I’d say you don’t need a half-hour multi-camera spec script. Write shows that are like the shows you want to write, if you get what I mean. If you’d like to write a spec for an existing show that mixes comedy and drama, try Ugly Betty — it’ll show off your joke skills without pushing you toward a tense and sweaty career.

Lunch: Chicken Caesar Salad. The croutons they used were clearly intended to be used as turkey stuffing, as they tasted strongly of sage — very odd mixture of flavors

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

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