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As I do periodically, I recently checked in with an agent to find out which established shows were currently being recommended as specs. I expected to hear that Grey’s Anatomy and House were still strong in hours, and that The Office was still the current hot half-hour. I also thought I might hear that Heroes and 20 Rock specs *might* be starting to slip onto the scene.

Other than that thing about The Office, though, which *is* still apparently *the* half-hour to have, my predictions were wrong. For the first time since I’ve been asking the question, I was told that the agent wasn’t recommending *any* established shows at all! Spec pilots, as well as original plays and short film scripts were *all* that she recommended for young writers putting together their collection of samples.

Wow. That’s kind of earth-shaking — causing me to scatter emphasis-asterisks like snowflakes. Or maybe it’s just taken me this long to listen to what agents have been edging toward over the last several years. I seriously expected to hear that, with the current healthy array of quality dramas, specs for established shows were rebounding. But apparently not.

Personally, I think this is a shame. So much stuff goes into writing a good original pilot that isn’t really relevant to whether or not a writer will be good on a staff. And, conversely, original material tells a reader nothing about a writer’s ability to capture an established voice. AND, spec features and plays don’t even tell the reader about the writer’s fluency with the limitations of television writing. So I sigh. But I pass the information along to you, gentle readers. And I will continue, as I have been, trying to post hints that will help you in the writing of these original pieces.

Lunch: corned beef hash, poached eggs, home fries

Recently I’ve been asked questions – in a few different letters and emails – that I think all boil down to the same thing. “How can I think funny?”

We’ve all met people who are effortlessly, automatically funny. Fearless in front of strangers, they tell stories, they do voices, they jump to their feet and do ‘bits’. When one of their jokes lands, they instantly follow it up, expanding it into a routine. When one of their jokes flops, they become a whirlwind of self-deprecation that’s even funnier than if the whole thing had succeeded. I love these people (even though they’re exhausting).

Comedy writers’ rooms are packed with these men and women (more men than women still, but that’ll change). I once heard that Martin Short literally could not leave the writers’ room (this must’ve been at SCTV or SNL) until he got a laugh, so that he could leave on the laugh. Geez.

I think a lot of this comic ability has to do with childhood environment. Crowded houses where attention is doled out to the funniest child, those are the comedian factories of our world.

But what about the rest of us? I myself am an only child from a quiet stable household where attention was not punchline-dependent. I did watch a lot of television comedy, and developed the ability to be funny “on the page” from observing what worked for me as an audience member. So I had that.

Being funny on the page can be enough, thank goodness, but being able to “pitch” your jokes well in the room is also part of the comedy writer’s job, and I wasn’t very good at it. I was most comfortable working out a joke on paper for a while, massaging the wording… not blurting it out as it was forming in my head.

Now, I’ve never gotten *really* good at blurting – I’m still fairly quiet in the room – but I will tell you what helped a lot. I took an acting class where we did improv. It was terrifying, but it did help. I had no time to overwork the joke, I *had to* just go with it. I already had a little bit of confidence that I could be funny given a trained actor to say the lines. I gained confidence in my ability to be funny with my own voicebox. It also is really good for teaching you to look at the world with an eye for comic potential — for “seeing things funny.” I can’t praise the experience enough.

Start with other beginners, learn the rules, and give it a go. Maybe it’s never too late to have a survival-of-the-funniest childhood!

Lunch: quesadilla, a coke, and something wonderful called a “buckeye” from Big Sugar Bakeshop… like a high-class Reeses peanut butter cup.

Ooh. I love it when I learn something from you, gentle readers! A very interesting letter has arrived from Betsy in Los Angeles. She’s asking about that weird dividing line between TV comedy writers and drama writers. Her father was a TV writer, and she supplies us with this info:

“When my father was working (60s-80s), there was no strong distinction between being a comedy writer or a dramatic writer. Many of his friends would write a Mary Tyler Moore episode one week, then a Streets of San Francisco, and so forth. Nowadays it seems a writer has to classify themselves as strictly one or the other… or do they?”

First reaction: Oooh. That sounds amazing. How much would I love writing a MTM and then a Streets of SF? Much.

I had no idea there was such mobility then. When I entered the business in the early 90s, the line was pretty strict. You really were one or the other, comedy or drama, although I’m sure there were ambidextrous exceptions. I was specifically warned against making the switch because it would require “starting over.”

When I was a kid, I once heard an opera singer being interviewed about his “realization” that he was, in fact, not a baritone, but actually a bass. He had to learn everything over again. I was, and am, a bit puzzled by that. What do you have to learn to, um, sing lower? I guess there’s technical singy stuff I just don’t know. Anyway, TV writing was like that — changing over was treated as if you were starting a new career.

But now, I’m happy to tell you, Betsy, that things seem to be going back to being like they were during your dad’s career, with more and more comedy writers finding their way onto the staffs of dramas, and with shows like Ugly Betty further blurring the distinction anyway.

Betsy herself has a preference for comedy, but is wondering about whether to try her hand at a drama spec, maybe something in a procedural, which would, of course, be at quite the other end of the continuum.

Yes. Do it. Comedy is coughing up blood right now anyway, so you probably would need to explore drama even if it didn’t interest you to some degree. And I personally think demonstrating versatility is worth something in its own right.

My only warning is that you have to be careful of trying so hard to be *different than comedy* that you end up with something purposefully dry and characterless. A Law and Order spec, for example, can have that feel, and might fail to convey your strengths. I would recommend something like Heroes or House or a spec pilot of your own devising, that will allow you to show off some drama skills while still getting a script that benefits from your ability to write comedy.

Good luck, Betsy! Sounds like you’re off to a good start!

Lunch: A “Fat Burger” from “Fat Burger.”

First off, I am told that some of you out there are finding yourself in the gratifying but agonizing position of being finalists in the ABC Writing Fellowships, and being forced to wait over the holiday to find out if you’ve actually made it in or not. Well, congratulations-slash-courage! I’m rooting for all of you! You’re one step closer to making it in!

Which — sort of — leads us to a question from Reader Kris, who asks about something I rarely talk about, which is the Next Step. Kris asks, “Say you’ve got the perfect spec, you’ve got a great agent/manager, now comes the interview with the show runner/EP…what do you say or do to get the writing gig on their staff?”

This hypothetical young writer has got a great agent/manager?! Wow. That’s actually the much harder step right now. But let’s go with it.

The first thing is not to overstress. If your material made the show runner want to bring you in, then he or she is already impressed. Often these meetings are simply to make sure you show up wearing pants. A show runner doesn’t want a disruptive personality in the room, a person with a crazy vibe or a non-stop talker, someone with a confrontational attitude — that kind of stuff. So just show up on time and be sane. That’s most of it.

You’ll also be asked how you got into TV writing, so you might want to practice your story. You’ll have to tell it your whole career, so it pays to have it nice and shiny anyway. If you have an interesting background, this could be your chance to bring it up.

You can also help by knowing the show and knowing the show runner’s work history. Mention what you like about the show. Don’t mention what you don’t like. If it’s a terrible show and you’re asked what you like about it, it’s not a trick question. Find something to like. Something about the writing, not the acting, casting or costume design. (By the way, only ONCE in my career at one of these meetings, have I been asked to name something I *didn’t* like about a pilot. It was this last season, and my mind went totally blank.)

Reread your own spec before you go into the meeting, too, because it’ll probably be discussed, and you might be asked about choices you made. If you’re given advice about changes to make to it, thank them and say you’ll change it, even if you disagree and aren’t going to do any such thing.

If it’s a comedy meeting, it can help to be funny but it isn’t necessary. It’s better to be not funny while NOT attempting a joke than to be not funny while attempting one. They’ve seen your joke-writing in your spec, so it’s not like you’re coming in cold.

Don’t sell yourself too hard. The job you’re going for is “staff writer,” so the show runner doesn’t need to hear about what your vision for his show is, although you can certainly weigh in with opinions *if asked*. But in general, just be alert, friendly, and, remember, pants-wearing.

And if you don’t get the job? That’s often a matter of budget-failure, not you-failure. Shows staff from the top down — hiring the top-level producers, then lower and lower… it’s very common these days for a show simply not to staff at the lowest levels because they’ve spent all their money. So don’t assume you did anything wrong. In fact, you probably just impressed someone who will remember you next time ’round.

Also, THANK YOU, gentle readers, for your holiday greetings! Thanks to Claire for the hieroglyph card, which I’m still translating, to Lilia for the book, to Ingrid for the candy… to everyone for your cards! Gosh, guys, you’re the best!!

Have a happy and safe New Year’s Eve!

Lunch: Very bad fried chicken strips at DuPars (a genuinely retro, not self-consciously retro, diner). They were followed by gooseberry pie, so all was well.

Hello, Gentle Readers! I’ve been shamefully absent recently, as a fierce writing schedule and the holiday left me unable to blog. But I have returned. And I’ve got a good one for you today.

I was talking with a producer of feature films the other day who was raving about a script she had just read. She commented, with some surprise, on the fact that she wasn’t just enjoying the movie that the script could become, but that she was actually enjoying the script in and of itself. Scripts, she pointed out, aren’t usually the most satisfying form of written literature.

But they can be. A spec script is the only kind of script in the whole world that is ultimately intended for a READER, not a VIEWER. If you can make it read like a short story, with a sense of flow, of narrative verve, you’re going to positively delight your readers. One way to do this is to try to give the script a sense of a conventional flow of sentences, allowing them to bridge over the different tiny units that make up a script. Here’s what I’m talking about. Let’s suppose you’re writing the last action line in a scene. Try adding a little bridge into the next scene. Like this. (Keep in mind that these entries aren’t good at depicting script format.)

—

She closes the book, looking troubled. And then suddenly we’re in…

INT. HOSPITAL

—

See how that worked? You can also do something similar to lead from action into dialogue. Like this:

Davis SMACKS the club into his hand as he says:

DAVIS
You’re a very unlucky man

—

Another good place to do this kind of thing could be at the end of an act:

And before we’re even sure what we’re seeing, we:

CUT TO BLACK.
END OF ACT ONE

—

You can still obey all the conventions of script writing, while sort of laying standard sentence structures on top to produce sentences that would almost read uninterrupted if all the choppy script formatting stuff were taken away.

You don’t have to do this all the time. You don’t want the script to read as if you’re so new to the script form that you’re simply over-elaborating. Just throw this technique in here and there to give the script some readability.

For some reason, this technique also seems to convey confidence. There’s something about it that suggests the writer is loose and relaxed. That also will impress a reader. Which is a very good thing.

Lunch: A piece of homemade pumpkin pie. Mmmm.

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