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Psst. Gather ’round. I have insider info for all of you, Gentle Readers. I’ve received a letter from Jack Gilbert, who is in charge of the reading of the submissions to the Warner Bros. Television Writers Workshop, and he has information about the changes to the program that go into effect this year.

He writes:

Even though the program has had a lot of success in the past (both of last year’s writing Emmy winners – Greg Garcia and Terrence Winter were Workshop alums), the changing TV landscape called for a new chapter of the Workshop.

Now everyone (not just the sitcom folks) will come out with a completed new spec. The mix of the smaller class (something like 7 drama and 3 sitcom writers) is an experiment, but will not only allow for a better writers’ room simulation, but will permit Chris and the other execs overseeing the program to concentrate on placing this select number of participants.

Ooh. Interesting. It sounds like the program has become more accessible monetarily, but more selective creatively. Obviously the smaller class size makes it a harder “get,” but the resulting improvement in the amount of attention and likelihood of being placed on a staff makes it much more likely to actually launch your writing career. I think it’s a positive change. You know you’re good, right? You wouldn’t be pursuing this if you didn’t. Therefore, anything that rewards you for being good is exactly what you want.

I’m interested to learn that Jack is in charge of the reading of submissions. I’d love to hear his reaction to what he’s seeing — namely, what are the big mistakes that he’s seeing over and over. I’m going to write back to Jack and ask, and I will report the results back to you, Gentle Readers. Due to the reduction in size, the target for this program has gotten smaller. The only response is to improve our aim.

Lunch: Miceli’s restaurant near Universal. I had the 1/2 spaghetti, 1/2 ravioli. Nice meets lovely.

I have received a lovely letter from Gentle Reader Eurie in Studio City. It includes a recipe for a Vanilla Frappuccino, which is an unexpected bonus! She writes asking about humorous or otherwise personalized stage directions. Eurie:

My all time favorite script line of Buffy is from “Innocence” when Joss… writes something to the effect of “The bastard actually winks at her.” […] Do you recommend this level of spunky personality in writing our spec pilots to help our work stand out? Or is this an indulgence extended to established writers?”

This one has an easy answer. Yes! I recommend this kind of writing. Absolutely. Feel free to put personality and opinion in your stage directions. It makes you sound confident and it helps the reader keep track of what you’re intending them to take away from the script at any given point.

However, as long as we’re in the neighborhood, there is one thing that you will find in the stage directions of produced episodes that you shouldn’t adopt. I’m talking about hyper-specific instructions on set design or visual effects or props. I’m talking about stage directions like: “I’m seeing the room as having a claustrophobic feel, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a small room. Let’s just make sure that it’s laid out to have a cramped feeling.” You’ll see things like this all the time, but it’s not appropriate for a spec, for the obvious reason that material with this level of specificity is intended to provide guidance to actual production people, which you don’t have.

But jokes? Personality? Attitude? Yes… do that, please!

Lunch: quiche and Tater Tots

Gentle Reader Samantha in Los Angeles asks a terrific question I’ve never contemplated before! Samantha:

I just started looking at some produced The Office scripts and comparing them to what was finally broadcast. I’ve noticed that many scenes are moved around in editing, even from one act to another. My question is whether I should write to emulate the script of the finished product in terms of technical issues like how many talking heads per act, or how the B story is interwoven with the A story.

Oooh. Fascinating. (By the way, for those of you unfamiliar with The Office scripts, when Samantha refers to “talking heads,” she is referring to the interview-like segments of the show.) This kind of divergence between the script and the show is not uncommon. A lot of writing actually happens in the editing room when something doesn’t work (either because of the writing, the performance, the direction, or for length), and the script has to be restructured out of footage that already exists.

I’m going to surprise myself a bit with my answer here. You know, Gentle Readers, that I’m all about the script, much more than the broadcast. But in this instance, I have to recommend emulating the final product. There are a couple reasons for this.

First off, the broadcast version is what the ultimate readers of your spec are going to be most familiar with. You’re going to appear to be a better chameleon if you’ve captured that tone and pacing.

Second, and more importantly, the broadcast version is, of necessity, tighter. Early cuts of a show rarely come in short, they’re almost always too long, so the changes usually reflect a paring down of the material. And pared-down is good — the story becomes more focused, the weakest jokes are lost, and the page count of your spec decreases, making it a more appealing read. You end up with script-concentrate, which is delicious. It’s hard to miss stuff you never knew existed.

Of course, sometimes something genuinely valuable is lost in the process. A sweet little character moment simply takes too long and gets cut, or a clever dovetailing of the A and B stories goes away because it’s the only thing that CAN go away that doesn’t touch the logic of the events. You’re going to have to decide if making your personal spec The Office look like the broadcast version is going to cost you something in terms of depth. As you cut, be very wary of that, since you’ve got to give your script that little special sparkle that makes it better than an average episode, and that sparkle ALWAYS resides in the little character moments that are not essential to plot.

If you really can’t decide, try opening a new file and just playing with a cut-and-restructure that reflects something more like the broadcast structure. Then you can actually look at both versions side by side without having committed to anything and pick the one that works best.

Lunch: vegetable and chicken stir-fry with lots of garlic

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

Jon from Minneapolis writes in to propose my favorite type of discussion — a little exploration of joke-types. Ooh! Fun! Thank you, Jon!

Here are two jokes that he suggests form a category. In the first one, from the movie Hot Fuzz, the small town’s chief of police is talking to the newly transplanted Nick Angel:

Chief (serious): Well, there’s one thing your predecessor had that you’ll never have.
Nick: Oh? What’s that?
Chief: A great bushy beard.

The second one comes from Victor/Victoria, in which a nightclub owner is giving instructions to a private investigator:

Owner: Now, I need you to be extremely careful.
Investigator: I always am.
Owner: That stool is very unstable.
Investigator: What? (The stool collapses and he falls.)

It wouldn’t have immediately occurred to me that these are examples of the same joke structure, but I think Jon is right. I’d also add this exchange from Ghostbusters which I think is a gem of economically-applied funny:

Dr Ray Stantz: Where do these stairs go?
Dr. Peter Venkman: They go up.

These all involve a specific and extreme kind of undercutting of expectation by suddenly going very literal. They are, in fact, the same kind of joke as the horrible classic children’s jokes about why firemen wear red suspenders and why chickens transverse-navigate motorways. In these jokes, you’re misled into thinking that you’re going to be given actual information on some topic, when in fact you’re going to be told something very literal and irrelevant to the larger matter.

This kind of joke naturally has a childish feeling to it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used in sophisticated comedies. For example, a character who specifically employs this type of humor in an attempt to cheer up his colleagues in a fraught moment could be endearing and even heart-breaking. And, as Gentle Reader Jon points out in his letter, it is a powerful way to give a jolt to an otherwise gravely cliched exchange. We know that undercutting is important for keeping a script light; this kind of extreme undercutting, when used carefully, can help.

Lunch: the sourdough something-or-other at Jack in the Box. It was loaded with tomato slices and was shockingly good.

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