JaneEspenson.com

Hello again, Gentle Readers. Were you worried about me? So sorry to disappear for so long. I’m up here in Vancouver where they’re shooting my latest Battlestar episode. It’s crazy and hectic and wonderful. I’ll be back to talk to you all again when I’m out from under!

A blog letter just arrived in one of those little packets you get from the post office when their equipment mangles a letter. This envelope inside is missing about a third of itself, resulting in a letter that’s missing its corners, although not in that cool Battlestar Galactica way. Luckily for Gentle Reader Maryanne in [town name torn away], Australia, very little of the actual content of the letter was obscured.

Maryanne writes to ask:

Obviously, costumes are chosen by costume designers, rather than writers. But if the costume is actually mentioned in the script (like, for example, Riley’s “clown pants” in The Yoko Factor.), how much specific description would the writer give in [word torn away, assume “the”] script?

Well, I don’t have a copy of Doug’s script for The Yoko Factor. I’ve found one on line, but I can’t tell if it’s the actual script or a transcript. At any rate, the line of stage description that I found reads: “Riley pulls a pair of hideous multi-colored weight lifter pants from the knapsack,” which sounds about right. That’s the degree of detail you’d generally give.

Wardrobe description, by the way, was something I found very confusing as I set out to write my very first scripts. I knew that clothing was part of what defined characters, but once I started describing the characters clothes, I felt like I needed to do it for every scene in order to be consistent. So I went overboard. I recently read a script by a new writer who had clearly fallen into the same line of thought, telling the reader what everyone was wearing in every scene. That’s not only unnecessary, but it’s distracting, since it makes the reader think that these details are going to be important, raising expectations that don’t pay off.

Mention clothes when you first introduce someone, if it’s important to the character (“She’s the sort of young woman who insists on dressing like a teen-aged boy, right now in tennis shoes, jeans and a hoodie.”), and when something significant is happening with the clothes (“His suit is rumpled and a pair of women’s underwear dangles from his pocket.”), and when they help define a supporting character (“Men in white coats enter through both doors simultaneously.”)

Beyond that, if you assume your characters are dressed appropriately, given their characters and their surroundings, your readers will assume the same and it’ll be fine to leave everything unspecified.

And if, like Riley’s pants, you need to describe some oddity, do it clearly and succinctly, and don’t feel like you can’t convey an attitude about it, as “hideous” does in the example.

Hope that helps, Maryanne from mystery town!

Lunch: cup o’ noodles, fig newtons

I love it when people write in with concerns I never would’ve thought of. We all know the frustration of having some question that everyone else seems to know the answer to, so it’s never even discussed in the books.

Gentle Reader Carrie writes in with one of those questions. She asks:

After reading about copyrights regarding song lyrics not long ago, I got to wondering if there might be any copyrights associated with place names? For instance, let’s say San Francisco. Is there process I would need to go through to use a certain place in a script, or would it be okay to just plunk a story down in the middle of any given town?

Plunk! Plunk away! You can set your show anywhere you want, without fear of legal problems. From San Francisco to the Pope’s bedroom, you can use it all without fear.

Your main concern about setting should have to do with (imaginary, for a spec script) shooting expense. I mean that if you had a big exterior shot in which your actors have to interact with some big iconic piece of the landscape that cannot be recreated on a soundstage, that you might have a problem. For example, if your script called for your hero to blast through the canals of Venice on a jet ski, well, that sounds a bit pricey and it might be off-putting to a reader looking to see if you can write to a TV-sized budget.

The only other setting problem I can think of regarding locations is that U.S. network television has been traditionally wary of shows set overseas, but I’m not sure that should stop you from writing a London-set spec pilot (or wherever), if you’ve got a seriously brilliant idea. Just be aware of the bias because, again, it might, might, make a reader peg you as unsophisticated in terms of the preferences of the market.

Lunch: avocado, lettuce, tomato on olive bread. Too much mayo, but good.

Gentle Reader Julie in New Jersey writes in to ask about show bibles. She wants to know how they’re organized, what exactly is in them, whether they’re ever published for the general public, whether they’re updated as the show continues, etc. These are all great questions.

My impression is that this varies. Not all shows have bibles, and when they do, they can look very different. There is no standard format. In fact, there is no standard function.

Once, years ago, I got my hand on a copy of the “Frasier” show bible, and it was a wonderful and meticulous document that was scrupulously maintained to reflect everything known about the characters and their history. If something was established on air — the name of Frasier’s mother, Niles’ favorite professor, Martin’s favorite bar, it was reflected in the bible which then served as a resource for the writers to keep everything consistent. I remember with particular delight a list of Maris’ food allergies that must have been fifty items long.

That’s the only bible I’ve seen that worked that way, though. (It may be a half-hour vs. hour distinction.) The other ones I’ve come across (and there have only been a couple) have generally been sales documents used to help a television network or studio understand a new show, and are sometimes given to new writers as they join the staff, for the same reason. They discuss the characters, especially their back stories, and the world of the show. In the sales document version, essentially a much-expanded pitch, there may be a discussion of plot lines projected into the future of the show, perhaps in the “season one will be about…” form. But since shows often take off in unexpected directions, this kind of feature is quickly outdated and irrelevant. It’s possible that a bible may contain some firecracker of information about the way the creator envisions the eventual end of the series, but since everything is subject to change, that firecracker may be a dud. Especially if the fuse was lit many years earlier.

I haven’t seen this kind of bible get updated as a show continues. This means that they often contain information about the characters or their world that has been changed by subsequent scripts and is no longer valid.

Often, shows rely on their writers’ assistants or script coordinators to be walking bibles, in that they’re often tasked with remembering or researching questions like, “What did we name our lead character’s childhood pet hamster?” or “How much time passed between episodes two and three?”

Julie asks if show bibles contain “rules” for how that particular series’ universe operates. Yes, this is one of the things a bible can contain. I haven’t looked at it for a while, but I remember that the Battlestar bible has lots of detailed explanation for how the ship itself operates, including the function of various features of the hangar deck, and a discussion of the technical language used by the pilots, and even a neat little essay on why it’s not plausible for anyone to abscond with a viper.

As you’ve probably gathered, show bibles sound really cool — and they can be — but they just aren’t as important as you might think to the daily life of the staff. The truth is that once you’re living inside a show, you’re swimming as fast as you can from one island to the next, and there is neither the time nor the need to record decisions that have been made (these are in the scripts), or that are in the process of being made (these are in the notes taken in the room as the writers work).

I don’t know for certain of any show bibles that have been published the way that scripts are sometimes collected and published. If anyone has done this, it would probably be one of the Trek series. Let me run to Amazon… Yes, it looks like a version of the Voyager bible is included in the “Star Trek Voyager Companion.” You might want to look at that, Julie and other interested parties, to run your eyes across one of these in the flesh.

If I receive any emails from my friends on various shows saying that what I’ve written here doesn’t reflect the role of a bible on their show, I will let you know.

Lunch: avocado, lettuce and tomato on olive bread. The olive bread tends to dominate.

When is a clam born? How many times do you need to have heard a joke before it becomes too familiar to be used? I’ve thought of this question a couple times recently. Once was after I wrote my post of April First in which I jokingly used the phrase “I don’t roll that way.” Hmm… there’s almost certainly a whiff of clamminess there. I’ve heard people saying that a lot recently, and it’s always in quotes, never a genuine use of the phrase. That’s a bad sign, when the genuine uses disappear.

But what about this one? The other night, Stephen Colbert referred to his new Peabody Award as “…the turducken of awards,” because it’s “…like an Oscar wrapped in an Emmy inside a Pulitzer”. The word “turducken” immediately set off my clamometer. There was a time when no sitcom Thanksgiving episode was ready to air until a turducken joke had been included. But this metaphorical usage? What of that?

I did a quick search for “the turducken of” and found references to “the turducken of cycling,” “the turducken of monsters,” “the turducken of flea markets,” of cheese and politics and spy gadgetry and air travel. But the results were in the hundreds, not the thousands. And many of them referred specifically to Colbert’s usage. My verdict: not a clam. Not yet.

In fact, this specific trick, taking something hilarious that’s been overused in its literal sense, and retricking it out in a metaphorical sense, may be an excellent device for reviving worn-out jokes. Sure, the Thigh-master is a dead joke. But if a character was relating seeing an older woman “working the pool boy like he was a Thigh-master,” well then, ahem… that might be new territory.

You’re generally better off with references that are fresh all the way through, but if your perfect metaphorical reference is to something slightly less-than-fresh, you might just get away with it anyway.

A quick note to Gentle Reader Samiva — I got your note and I hope you found my recent posts about comic book scripts helpful!

Lunch: bean and cheese burrito from Poquito Mas. Doused with a combo of Red Rooster and Green Tabasco hot sauces. Spicy!

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