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So, gentle readers. I finally did it. I finally read The Da Vinci Code. Also known as The Big Book of Act Breaks. Look at it for great examples of exactly when to interrupt the action in order to require your audience to keep going. He pulls you through the story as if you’d gotten a race horse tangled in your hair clips. Whoosh.

The writing style, however, is beyond clunky. For one thing, no character ever looks at anything without being reminded of something else. People are constantly looking out windows, at paintings, at books, and at other people, while being reminded of past trips, childhood experiences, historical events and random old relationships. Can’t someone just look at a thing and see a thing, please? Or have a memory without some physical prompt? Sigh. Just a thing I noticed.

Anyway, I was interested to find that there is a good lesson for script writers in the pages of the book. There are a couple scenes in the book that are set in a classroom (in flashback, prompted, I believe, by looking at something-or-other). Our hero is laying out some facts for the reader, through the device of having a dialogue with students in his class. I find these scenes to be most problematic. The students always ask exactly the right question to prompt his next statement so that the points role out of him in the optimal order without requiring him to spout blocks of unbroken text. This doesn’t feel particularly spontaneous. The students function as cue cards and are about as cardboardy.

But here’s where I grow gentle with Mr. Brown. The truth is, this kind of scene is one of the hardest you’ll ever have to write. I’ve seen subtler writers than this one fail at it. I’ve failed at it myself. It’s hard not to. There’s even a moment in Aaron Sorkin’s special “Isaac and Ishmael” West Wing episode that has always bothered me for exactly this reason.

You remember this episode? It was the bottle episode produced very quickly, soon after 9/11, in which students asked questions of our regular characters about the nature of terrorism. Here is the exchange that bumps me:

STUDENT
You know a lot about terrorism?

SAM
I dabble.

STUDENT
What are you struck by most?

SAM
Its 100% failure rate.

The “dabble” exchange is great. I love Sorkin for moments like that. But look at the next question. “What are you struck by most?” is a very, very strange question. The asker has no reason to think Sam has an answer to it, after all. Or that the answer will be important. It’s a question asked only as the quickest possible way to get to the next point. It might, in fact, be the quickest and most elegant way out of a bad situation. It’s just a weird question, is all. The problem, I assert, is not with Sorkin, but with the nature of this kind of scene.

In a scene with lots of real characters in it – regular, recurring or even guest characters – you avoid this problem. Because even when some lines are there to set up other lines, they can still be laden with character. But in the type of Q-and-A scene I’m talking about, a number of speakers don’t have (or need or want) characters. They are there to be devices, not people. And that makes them ridiculously hard to write. You need them to be good little devices, and so they tend to sound like good little devices.

If you’ve got a ton of exposition in your spec for some reason, I would recommend finding ways to get it out without a Q-and-A scene involving a number of questioners without characters. These scenes are just too hard. Look for ways to get your established characters to pull info out of each other instead.

Lunch: shabu-shabu. Beef and veggies cooked in boiling water right on the table top. So good!

Are you all aware of the cartoon caption contest that appears in every issue of The New Yorker? It’s a pretty good way for you aspiring comedy writers to practice your punchline writing skills.

And every now and then, Bob Mankoff, the magazine’s Cartoon Editor, sends out an email to participants in which he gives more details on the entries received for a given cartoon. This is the REAL reason to enter the contest — to get those emails. I find them fascinating.

What he does is set out what he calls the the “major categories” of caption entries for a given cartoon. These are what TV writers would call “joke areas.”

In this case, the cartoon was of a pirate ship. The ship’s flag is a traditional Jolly Roger only with a happy face in the place of the skull. Think about the caption you might have submitted.

Here are the joke areas that were mined, with representative jokes for each area, as reported by Bob Mankoff. (I hope, Mr. Mankoff, that you won’t object to these being reprinted here for educational purposes.)

Jolly Roger
“Certainly it’s jolly. My concern is that it’s seen as cloying.”
“A bit TOO jolly if ye asks me!”
“Aye, matey. ‘Tis proud we are to be sailin’ under the flag of the Jolly Melvin.”

Yo Ho Ho
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of milk!!”
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of fun!”
“Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum daiquiris!”

Wal-Mart
“I wonder if Wal-Mart has good ‘burial at sea’ benefits?”
“Now that we’re with Wal-Mart, we just pillage mom-and-pop stores.”
“Avast, ye Wal-Mart shoppers.”

Flogging
“In between floggings he’s quite a cutup.”
“I don’t mind the floggings, but I wish he wouldn’t call us ‘associates.'”

Pillaging
“Then, once they heave alongside, we’re all supposed to yell: ‘Just kidding!'”
“Gone are the days of pillaging. Now all we do is tickle people.”

Mixed Messages
“I feel ambiguous.”
“He’s cruel, but fun.”
“New rule: Everybody dies happy.”

===

I find this to be about as clear a dissection of possible joke areas as I’ve ever seen. Thanks, Mr. Mankoff!

Which category did your caption fall under? Did you only think of one of the possible joke areas? Or did you jump around as you worked on it? Jumping is a good sign.

A room full of comedy writers does the same thing this email does, in a way. Someone seizes on a joke area, and then other pitches accumulate that represent the same area, and then someone else pitches a joke from a different area, and then people start piling into that area. This is one reason that comedy is written by such large groups of people — to find all the areas.

As a solo spec writer, it’s important to take the time to think of areas you haven’t found yet. Don’t just look for new ways to craft a joke around “Wal-Mart,” in other words. Instead, think of other points the joke could be making.

Lunch: onion rings and a root beer from Bob’s Big Boy

Hi all! This is a brief supplemental post to remind everyone that I am recommending an amazing book called Prisoner of Trebekistan. It’s coming out next month and is available for pre-order now. I have read it, and although I don’t want to give too much away, I think I can promise that those of you who enjoy this site will have reason to feel affection for this book. Pulse-pounding game play! Jeopardy backstage secrets! Funniness! Baboons!

Click on the book cover in the “Jane Recommends” box at the top left of the site to be taken to the appropriate Amazon page.

In other promotional news, you might be interested to read about this very blog in today’s LA Times. A very nice piece. You are all involved in this blogging transaction with me, gentle readers, so congrats to us all!

Lunch: It’s, like, midnight… no lunch since the last time I wrote. I can only do so much.

One more word about Little Miss Sunshine, if you will indulge me, gentle readers. The movie is as good an example as you’re likely to find of cutting out of a scene at the earliest possible moment. The INSTANT that a scene has done its job, we’re moving on. And the implied sentiment of “you don’t really need to see what happens next” is funny in itself.

I was going to praise this dynamic as an unimpeachable positive. Who wouldn’t want to write a script full of scenes that march along in this swift and entertaining manner? But then I realized there is another type of aesthetic. Does The Office cut out of scenes at the earliest possible moment? Or does it wait up for agonizingly funny awkward pauses and horribly diverting endless embarrassments? Albert Brooks movies also can live in those moments that never end, and that get funnier the longer they hang there.

The first kind is funny because it suggests what happened in the missing moments, and you laugh at the way the situation has led to an inevitable and universal moment that we all understand without seeing it. It’s the funny of understanding — a conspiratorial wink at the audience. The second kind, the late cut, is funny — I think — because it tends to be about the utter relentlessness of human nature. The hapless tourist just keeps arguing with the unmoved casino boss. Michael Scott won’t give up his determination to make an employee concede a point. It’s less of a wink and more of a pointing-at, I’d say. A “look at this guy not giving up” kind of funny. At any rate, that’s my first guess. Feel free to discuss this among yourselves.

I’m reminded of the rule about jokes. Tell a joke once, it’s funny. Twice, it’s not funny. Eight times… it gets funny again. (The oft-cited example of this is the Simpsons bit in which Sideshow Bob steps on a very long sequence of rakes.) Could it be that the rules of cutting out early versus cutting late follow a similar pattern? Short good, long good… medium bad. Hmm?

At any rate, if you’re writing a spec of an existing show, do whatever your show does. Pay close attention to the moments in which their scenes end – do they end with everyone exiting and one character left alone to settle back into their chair? Or with everyone still up on their feet? With the sense that something is about to happen, or the sense that it just has? With a focus on inevitabity of the outcome? Or on the nature of the character in the situation? Emulate!

If you’re writing your own spec pilot, you get to find and apply your own style here. Which aesthetic speaks to you? I’m a early cutter outer myself. But your mileage may vary.

Lunch: Half a pastrami sandwich and a cucumber salad from Art’s Deli.

I recently received an extremely cool book in the mail. Alex Epstein, of the fine “Complications Ensue” blog, has sent me a copy of his book “Crafty TV Writing.” I’ve been waiting to tell y’all about it until after I finished reading the whole thing, but my schedule has conspired against me. So, although I haven’t finished it yet, I’m going to tell you right now that there’s a lot of really valuable stuff in there. Alex covers some of the same joke types, in fact, that I’ve discussed here.

So far, my favorite bit of advice in there is this:

“It takes many bad jokes to find a good one.”

Mm. I nod and murmur “how true.” One of the tricks to spec writing is to keep trying to beat your own jokes. You have the luxury of time, remember. It’s okay to work on a joke — shorten it, rethink it, reverse it, try a whole different joke area… until you find the approach you like best.

Thanks for the book, Alex!

Lunch: the Tomato-Basil Spaghettini from California Pizza Kitchen. Get it with the added goat cheese.

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