JaneEspenson.com

Remember when everyone was saying “my bad”? It had a brief popularity, totally blowing the equivalent form “mea culpa” right off the charts. Now I hear neither much. I suspect that self-blame is just out of fashion.

And yet I should note the fact that I let the closing date for the ABC writers’ fellowship slip past us uncommented-upon. My culpa, seriously. Especially since I got a big packet of blog-letters delivered to me today, some of which are from people asking pressing questions about their fellowship submissions – how to compose the bio, and that sort of thing. Oops. The mail is collected for me and sent to me in batches, so there can be a substantial time-lag. Sorry about that. I hope you all feel happy and comfortable with what you ended up submitting. Besides, I have no inside knowledge of what the ABC people look for in a bio: diversity, I guess, so I hope everyone stressed the things that make you different, culturally and otherwise. Ever been in jail? Mention it. It’s different and it’ll go better than if they find out later.

I also hope everyone took the day off after dropping their scripts into the mail. Because the day after *that* should be devoted to starting the next spec script! Yay! A new show to pick, a new world to learn, new voices to master!

In fact, one of the letters asks a great question about selecting the show to spec next. Austen from New York has written a spec “The Shield”. She has been told that she should have “two spec scripts that complement each other and one ‘wild card’ script.” Good advice.

So now she wants to know how to pick a script to “complement” the Shield. It’s tempting to think about a show that is “opposite” to the Shield and come up with… what? “Reba”? But the fact is that what you want is opposite, but not too opposite. She’s going to want a drama.

She asks if it should it be network instead of cable? Or a show that draws more female audience members, like Grey’s or Medium?

Yeah. Pretty much, Austen. There aren’t a ton of specable options right now, and I think you’ve done a good job of pointing at two choices. Grey’s Anatomy and Medium would both complement the Shield. “Veronica Mars” would provide even more contrast, but I’m being told that it’s still considered a bit out of the mainstream. It could work as your “wild card” spec.

Speaking of which, that wild card could be anything from Veronica to a mainstream show like House to something SciFi like Battlestar to something bizarre like a novelty Bonanza or Columbo spec or a spec pilot or whatever.

Austen asks a further question. Given that she is a woman writer, should she be conscious of the fact that her spec is for a show as aggressive as The Shield – a show that is assumed to be very masculine? Strangely, no. For a town that is in some ways very hidebound and traditional and sexist, I have found no resistance to women writers on even the most violent and male-dominated shows. Although women are still under-represented, it looks to me like we’re under-represented in a very even-handed way. This is just my Jane’s-eye view. Stats could show me to be wrong. Mea Badda.

But I do know for sure that lots of women writers have spec “Shields” or “Sopranos.” And lots of men wrote “Gilmore Girls” and “Buffy” specs. Which is good. Of course, that also means it doesn’t really set you apart. You can’t sell yourself as the girl-who-writes-tough-specs. Maybe a lot of us had the same idea.

So everyone out there, boy or girl, slip on a skirt and write some Grey’s Anatomy. You’re going to want something to contrast with your cop shows.

Lunch: cherry yogurt, granola and coke-with-grenadine.

I’m a member of the Television Academy, so I get to vote for the Emmys, which is pretty cool. This year I was interested to learn that the process was going to be internet-driven for the first time. Yesterday was the due date for nominations, so the previous night as I logged onto the super-secret internet site, I was filled with feelings of entertainment-based power. But, I quickly realized, the internet only provided a location on which the academy had posted all the shows and episodes which were eligible for nomination. The actual ballot itself was still a fill-in-the-bubble paper dealy which had to be in the offices of the accounting company by 5PM yesterday! Yeeps!

So I spent my afternoon, yesterday – literally my whole afternoon – driving downtown, parking, walking to the correct building, turning in my ballot and driving home. Hours, this took, gentle readers. Traffic, confusion, lots of walking… The guard in the building had a sort of harried look as he escorted me to the correct elevator. I asked him if he was seeing a lot of people walking in with yellow envelopes today. “Don’t *even* ask,” he said wearily. Well, apparently I wasn’t the only writer in town who misunderstood the rules.

Sometimes we misunderstand them. And sometimes we break them on purpose. You’ve probably been told not to “do the director’s job” when you write a scene. You already know that you shouldn’t specify a bunch of shots. And you’ve probably also been told not to tell the actors every time you want them rub their eyes or scratch their nose or take a sip of something. You should let them do their own scratching. And yet, there is a situation where specifying this kind of thing can be very useful. Especially in a spec script. Because, of course, you don’t have to worry about ticking off the actors. You’re writing for readers, not in order to be produced. No actors at all. So, you can feel free to *use* those little actions to control the pacing of your dialogue.

Here’s what I mean:

GUY
Someday, I swear, I just have this feeling that something transformative and wonderful is going to happen to me.

Guy takes a sip of his coffee, thoughtful.

GUY (cont’d)
Or something transformative, anyway.

See that? I was able to give the reader something like the same effect you’d get with (beat) or (then), but with a little more style, a little more sense of the length and quality of the pause. A little more help with the visuals.

And even better, if you can capture a distinctive action that’s associated with an established character, you help give your script that authentic feeling. A Buffy scene feels even more like Buffy with a little “Giles pauses to clean his glasses” in it. And everyone loves a bit of “Adama looks sharply up from his desk,” or “Michael glances uncertainly toward the camera.” I know I do.

Lunch: I bought a jar of a sort of lentil-based stew at a Persian market. Tried it over tofu noodles. Yummy!

I have received a most interesting letter from Joe in San Jose. After telling a charming story about how he discovered the Buffy program, he asks why The Da Vinci Code sucks. Well, I seem to be the person who has neither read nor seen it, so I don’t have an opinion. Sorry, Joe. Loved the charming story!

I’m not done with that letter yet, though. It has aligned with some email correspondence I had today, to combine into a thought. In the email, an aspiring writer friend was talking about how she has had a very good experience with television. She watches the shows her friends recommend to her, and then she discovers she loves them. She is left with a view of television as a landscape cluttered with humor, intelligence and quality.

That’s when I had my thought. Here is my thought, and it is mine: It’s important to watch not just the good, but the bad. I suggested that she watch a bad show at once.

I shouldn’t be envied because I managed to avoid the evident pain of The Da Vinci Code, but censured for not wanting to go watch it to figure out something about screenwriting from seeing what failed. (And I suspect I should read the book too, to learn how to create a page-turny runaway best seller.)

If you want to learn how to sew a garment, it might be good to look at a poorly-made one, so you can see the exposed seams and figure out how it goes together, and also so you can see what mistakes to avoid. Watch a little bad TV. Watch for the mistakes, and observe the effects they have.

One common mistake is insufficient motivation. A character does a thing and you wonder why. There’s usually some sort of lip service made to why they did it, and since everyone else on the show is buying it, it can just slip past you. I mean, they clearly did it, so there’s no point asking if they *would*, right? They *did* it! See how you have to kind of force yourself to see these things? Anyway, once you start looking for it, you see it a lot. And you get better about making sure your own characters are doing things for reasons.

Look for weak act breaks, stereotyped guest characters, lame comebacks and familiar put-downs, stories that resolve too neatly, stories that peter out, logical jumps that don’t make sense, inconsistent attitudes across scenes, stilted language and old jokes. Notice the effect they have on the show as a whole. Maybe noodle around with how to fix or avoid them.

Try reading some of the excellent recaps on Television Without Pity, too. They have a brutal way of cutting to the heart of a script-writing mistake that can be very helpful to those of you wanting to get into the habit of watching critically. And, on occasion, a bit painful to those of us already on the other side of the process. But, seriously, it’s good stuff.

Mostly, when you watch, watch quality. But now and then, dip your toes into the other end of the pool. There are lessons swimming around in there.

Lunch: spaghetti with cheese sauce, a family recipe. Fantastic. Like fondue on your pasta.

I was bopping around on Amazon yesterday, and I came across something funny that I thought you would enjoy, gentle readers. I was looking at the “how to write” books and I came across one on comedy writing. “Interesting,” I thought. “I wonder if this fellow discusses some of the same joke types that I have discussed on my blog.” But before I could even determine that, I came across this part of the Amazon page:

What do customers ultimately buy after viewing items like this?

38% buy
The System: How to Get Laid Today! by Roy Valentine $11.69

38% buy
How to Succeed with Women by Ron Louis $10.37

12% buy
NLP The New Technology of Achievement (New on CD) by Charles Faulkner $12.97

7% buy the item featured on this page:
Comedy Writing Secrets by Melvin Helitzer

5% buy
The Guide to Picking Up Girls by Gabe Fischbarg $9.60

Well! If nothing else, this certainly tells me something about the sorts of people that are interested in learning about comedy writing. You’re clearly fascinated by the technology of achievement! Good for you!

Lunch: Pre-packaged Indian “beans masala” over scrambled eggs. Fun new taste combo.

More mail! Carole from Attleboro writes with kind words and a couple of interesting questions. Thanks, Carole! She asks why I don’t often use examples from Arrested Development in my joke discussions. Well, let’s take care of that right now. I was just thinking of one of their particularly genius jokes yesterday, and it made me laugh out loud. Just sitting in my living room, laughing out loud like a crazy person.

Remember this one? Tobias was speaking proudly, early in an episode, about how he was both a licensed analyst and a therapist. He combined the two words in what sounded like an-AHL-rap-ist. It was a funny character moment, not really a joke. Then, as I recall, much later in that episode, we saw his business card and realized that his new title was spelled “analrapist.” Holy cow. This joke works like one of those hidden picture things. It’s there right in front of you the whole time, but you don’t see it until… you see it. Fantastic! What you end up laughing at is partly your own blindness in not having worked out the spelling immediately. And you can laugh as Tobias’s own blindness for not seeing what he’d done. AND you can laugh at the reaction of the person reading the card (Buster, so it was hilarious). It has layers of funny as far down as you can dig.

This is a great illustration of joke deployment strategy. Whoever came up with this must have noticed that this word could be logically formed from common job descriptions. This writer might have even noticed this years earlier when looking though the yellow pages for professional help, I don’t know. But then came the challenging part, working out how to use this comic observation for maximal funny. Because, you know, there is more than one way this joke could’ve been told. The card could’ve been the first thing we saw, for example, and then had the title explained, which would have been funny, too. Or, the first person to hear him say the title could’ve noticed the problem and asked him to spell it, getting the funny out right away, but without the visual component. Or Tobias could’ve delivered the whole joke himself “I was going to call myself an analrapist, but then I noticed…”. None of these are as funny as the actual deployment on the show. Letting the audience sit with that information and then revealing the card…

If you have a joke that’s not quite working, or even if it is, consider how you’re laying it out. There are always other ways to deliver the humor. Would it work better reversed, or as a call-back, or as a visual reveal? Should the funny be split over two people or should one character deliver the set-up and the punchline? Once something is funny, it’s very tempting to stamp it “done.” But, just as with weaponry in a war, deployment can affect how efficiently you slay ’em.

Clarification: I remember Buster reading the card. It’s possible this was in a later episode… I’m not sure who the first reader of the card was. But it worked. It worked great.

Lunch: tofu pups and health-food sauerkraut. Get regular sauerkraut. This “healthy” kind has the texture of applesauce. Bleah.

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