JaneEspenson.com

Hello all. Apologies for my absence. I was in Vancouver for the Battlestar Galactica wrap party, and have been very hard at work since then on continuing Battlestar work — to the extent that it makes one question the definition of “wrap party.” I haven’t had time to come up with blogable topics, but I do continue to read the mail. So this is a brief dip into the mail bag.

Thanks to Gentle Reader Kori in West Hollywood, who writes in praise of Battlestar both in the general and the particular. Thank you, Kori!

And congratulations to Gentle Reader Ernie of New Jersey, who is having success with his spec pilot! Good work, Ernie, and thank you!

And a huge thank you to Pat in England, whom I met years ago at a Buffy convention in London, and who now sends me the coolest bit of Ringo memorabilia in tribute to my recent Ringo near-encounter. Wow — that’s fantastic. Thank you so much, Pat!

Lunch: a huge submarine sandwich with three kinds of hard-to-identify meat. And two cookies.

Today, I received some hot inside info on the Warner Bros Writing Workshop from Jack Gilbert, this blog’s man on the inside. He wanted me to tell all of you that everyone there is looking forward to your submissions, and then he added a whole bunch of good news. Take it, Jack!

Under the first year of Chris Mack’s leadership, an astonishing 7 of last year’s 12 participants got staffed, by far the best result ever.

You can tell them that we’ll spot great writing whatever series they submit with, and that they shouldn’t worry if their specs have similar elements to aired episodes, or if their story choices turned out to be different than where the series eventually landed. We’re just looking for the very best writers we can find.

Let’s count the good news. First, that’s a really amazing placement statistic. Second, although the adjusted deadline gives you less time, you’ve got some warning, and I have to say the total number of submissions is less than I’d thought — they have almost as many participants as the ABC/Disney program and far less competition.

Finally, I love that they’re going out of the way to clarify that their standard is writing quality, not clairvoyance. We all know how hard it is to aim a spec script at a moving target, and this program is letting you off the hook for errors of anticipation. I think that’s an excellent policy.

So start polishing those scripts and aim really high — it doesn’t have to be as good as what’s on television. It has to be better.

You can do it!

Lunch: a chopped antipasto salad. But the pepperoncini were left whole and stemmed. A flaw in an otherwise fine attempt.

Gentle Reader Victoria in England writes in with a great observation about bad writing. Ooh good, I love complaints about bad writing. Here’s what she’s talking about:

One thing that particularly stands out is when a scene calls for a lot of exposition, and the writer has obviously chosen to write one long paragraph of dialogue and then randomly dish out sentences to different characters. It ends up sounding as though the characters are delivering a presentation to each other, having agreed in advance what they are going to say.

She goes on to ask about how to avoid this problem as writer. Well, first allow me to blush. Because before I got this letter, I’d’ve been far too ready to actually recommend this technique as a clever way to break up long bits of exposition delivered by a single character. Farm it out around the room and you can disguise it, I’d’ve said. But, of course, Victoria is right. Doing this runs the risk of exactly what she’s talking about — it sounds like one of those grade school performances in which each child’s been assigned a different line of the poem to read out loud.

The problem is a tricky one and the best solution is probably to avoid getting into this situation at all — parse the exposition out over more scenes, or let characters (and the audience) be less-well informend — they’ll pick it up as they go, which is often more interesting anyway.

But let’s suppose there’s no choice. Five people know a bunch of stuff and a sixth guy walks in and you simply have to have a big explain-o-fest.

Well, you can try using this as an opportunity to highlight your characters. Got someone impatient? Have them interrupt the explanation and take it over. Got two characters who don’t like each other? Have them compete to be the one to deliver the information — talking over each other. Got a natural leader? Show the others automatically deferring to her to sum up the info. This kind of thing can be big and overt, or you can just subtly use stage directions to indicate some pointed looks and eye-rolls that will let your reader see how the scene would be played.

I would also consider giving the characters different opinions on what happened. I don’t just mean different opinions on what do next, but different interpretations of what they already know. Like this:

JULIAN
Then the alien started talking about how we’re all gonna die–

HEATHER
Wait– it wasn’t a threat. It was a warning. Wasn’t it?

JULIAN
It was a threat.

You can also have the characters learn new information in the process of relating it, instead of preparing them with all of it in advance:

KELLY
If we don’t get the sprinkler system back on line, the whole place is gonna go up!

SHEILA
At least it’ll only take out the one building.

MARGARET
(looking up from computer)
You’re wrong. Their system’s been hit, too. The whole neighborhood could go.

All you have to do is hold back some little bit for them to find and it becomes a much better scene.

The first step is realizing you have a problem scene. Thanks to Victoria for pointing it out!

Lunch: chopped salad with warm chicken (And many thanks to Anthony in Oregon who sends along a delicious-looking recipe for a spinach-strawberry salad with a much more appealing dressing than the one I’ve been dealing with here. Thanks, Anthony!)

Michael in Hollywood writes in with a concern. He’s having a hard time finding sample produced scripts. I’ve written a lot about the importance of having these if you’re going to write a spec of an existing show. They give you the show’s exact format and answer loads of questions such as, as Michael points out, whether they slug the characters’ dialogue with their first or last names.

They also help you figure out the structure and pacing of your script because you can compare those things apples-to-apples if you’ve got script pages to spread out.

But I am hearing from you and others, Michael, that these scripts are getting harder to find. They are, after all, the property of the studios, and apparently they are cracking down on their release. If I were you, though, I’d still make an effort to find them. Look on Ebay, for example. You might also try some of those Hollywood book shops like Book City. Since you live in Hollywood, you can even go in person and look at their selection. Also, living in Hollywood, you have access to the group Scriptwriter’s Network, which maintains their own library of such scripts that you can look at if you join. I just spoke to that group last weekend and can recommend them not just as a source of scripts but also for writing help, networking and all sorts of useful things.

In other mail news, to Terry in Kentucky: I’m sorry, but I don’t have contact info for Ringo or his assistant. But I love that you asked.

And a big “Thanks” to Elizabeth in Texas who loved my most recent Battlestar episode — glad you liked it!

Lunch: left-over potato salad from a party

I recently answered one of two questions sent in by Gentle Reader Amy in Colorado. Here is her other, equally good, question:

Your recent posts about being up in Vancouver made me wonder — how does that work? When the writing staff and the production are in two separate locations, I mean. How do you keep in touch with each other; how do you have production meetings; where are other members of the production team located (i.e.: the show runner, other producers, etc.) Are the logistics a small nightmare, or does it work pretty smoothly in this virtual world of ours? My partner and I have written a pilot that is set in Colorado, and in a perfect world, it would be shot here. [In CO.] So I have wondered what that would mean…

Great question. First off, you might find that if your pilot were produced, Colorado would look a lot like Canada. Scenes from Smallville often featured snowy mountains looming over the Kansas plains, remember. There’s no reason to think that your fictional location will match your actual one. At least the snowy mountains would make sense for you.

But to answer the bulk of the question, each writer/producer makes the trip to Canada when their episode is being shot. The production pays for first-class airline tickets (I am told that this is a WGA-required perk and I applaud it heartily), and puts you up in a nice hotel with a little kitchen in the room. The general plan is to fly up the day before the production meeting, which takes place a couple of days before shooting starts. You attend the meeting and do rewrites up there (they install you in a little office).

The production meeting consists of the writer/producer, director, and all the different departments that will be involved in shooting the show: set decoration and extras casting and props and locations and wardrobe, etc. There are about twenty people in the meeting. All of these people work in Vancouver and are there in person. Not included in this meeting are cast members and people involved in post-production (editing), which is done in Los Angeles. A high-level producer often listens in on the meeting over speaker phone, but often says nothing.

As writer/producer, you look at props and tour the sets and look at the wardrobe for the episode and all that stuff. It’s fun to say, “Let’s not use that towel for the towel scene. Let’s use that towel.” You huddle with the director and have lots of talks with them about the script — answering their questions and explaining your intent.

If enough of the cast is available, there will also be a table read, in which your script is read through (very quickly in our case) by the cast, so you can hear it out loud.

Notice that every step will probably require you to tinker with your script a bit — to simplify a sequence or adjust a line or more.

Once shooting starts, the writer/producer sits on set near the director and watches. You get to fix problems and explain things to the actors and make changes to the script on the fly. This can be nerve-wracking, but it can also save a lot of wasted film if you’re there to settle a question or correct a misperception. Or mispronunciation.

When I was up there recently, I was producing two episodes in a row. That meant that I was often running across the Vancouver lot from the soundstage to the office to do rewrites or polishes or attend meetings about the next episode during lighting set-up delays on this episode. There’s nothing like the adrenaline of that. Fun! (Not sarcastic. It’s actually a blast.)

Sometimes you might stay for the whole shoot, other times, especially with an experienced director, you might only stay a few days into the shooting schedule. An episode takes 7 or 8 working days to shoot. If you stay the whole time, of course, you run into the next writer who’s already flown up for the production meeting on their episode, which will start shooting the day after yours wraps. And on and on it rolls.

During this time you are not in the writers’ room, which remains in Los Angeles, full of whichever writers are available. If there’s a crucial discussion, you may be included on speaker phone. Often, you will keep the other writers informed by email about any changes that you’re making to your episode during filming that may impact future stories, and they do the same in return: warning you to adjust a line, perhaps, that might be contradicted by something they just came up with for a later story.

The show runner will generally be with the staff, not on the set, unless it’s his or her episode or if there’s some crisis there that they need to deal with.

When you’re in LA, the writers’ room feels like the beating heart of the show. But when you’re on the stages, the immediacy and energy of filming feels primary. It’s certainly easier when a trip to the stages doesn’t involve a plane trip, as was the case at Buffy, where the stages were right there, but it is made as easy as possible by the people who book the flights and arrange the rooms and drivers to shuttle you to the set from the hotel every day. And there’s something very pure, I find, about being in Vancouver for a shoot — there are literally no distractions. Often, during shooting, the van picks you up at 7 AM or earlier, and takes you back to the hotel at 8PM at which point you might need to rewrite some scene that shoots later in the week, and then it’s off to bed because the van’s coming even earlier tomorrow. I always end up totally immersed in the episode, which would be harder to achieve in LA with all the distractions of home. (Some writers, I’m told, spend their small amounts of free time in the lively hotel bar, which is constantly full of movie stars shooting in Vancouver and lodged — always — in that hotel, but I value sleep too much to really participate.)

It’s not ideal, having to leave the room several times during a season, but it can be made to work very smoothly.

Lunch: Cup O’ Noodles

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