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.

You know how sometimes kids are running around in a store or a restaurant or the DMV, squealing and touching people and everyone is smiling at them and thinking they’re so cute, but there’s one lady sitting alone who stares at them, blank and unsmiling, until she suddenly breaks out a frown that sends them hurtling back to their parents, silent and ashen with fear?

I am that lady.

Now the thing is, you know me. You know I’m a sweetheart, always with a song in my heart, a dance on my hips and candy in my purse. But I can only be pushed so far. And, truly, is there any sound as chilling as the laughter of children? (I’m sure *yours* are delightful, by the way. Totally the exception. I hear good things.) You might assume that I don’t have a lot of opportunity to have conversations with little ones. And yet, I can tell when children’s dialogue has been written thoughtlessly.

Writing for kids is really hard. Especially if you aren’t around them a lot. And it’s really tempting to write kids to sound like other television kids. This leads to (at least) two common choices:

The “and stuff” choice. This style of kids writing looks like this:

KID
And, and, and then? And then? I saw the monster and I ranned and ranned and then there was a lady and I fell down and stuff.

This child is an idiot! This style is marked by run-on sentences, grammatical errors and little tags like “and stuff” or “or sumpthin’.” You’ve got to be really careful with these things. Your readers are going to know that this character is a child. You don’t have to hit them over the head with exaggerated child-speak.

The opposite choice is the “little adult” choice. This style looks like this (taken from an actual script for a show that will go unnamed):

PUNKY
(to the dog)
Well, Brandon, we gotta trust somebody sometime.

Most usually the “little adult” style is used as a comedy device, in which case it’s not the writer mistakenly thinking that’s how kids talk, but the writer looking to get character-based humor out of the idea that *this* child talks this way. This style is obviously hugely popular and has been used in lots of successful shows. I’m not slamming these writers. I’m simply encouraging you to be aware that by now this is not the… freshest choice.

By the way, if the child also extorts money out of an adult, it’s extra funny.

Man, I am cranky today.

If your spec HAS TO have a child character in it, I’d advise you to keep the part small and simple, and try to aim down the middle, on the intelligence and self-awareness scale. Make him or her sound as much like a real child as you can, but keep in mind that the character description is going to do a lot of that work for you.

Lunch: dim sum

Know what I love? Terminology! I love that there are words for things like finials and processes like foxing. When I was in Hawaii, in a region with lots of sharp volcanic gravel called “tephra,” there was nothing I liked more than throwing that word around: “Oh, I slipped on the tephra,” “Did you cut yourself on the tephra?,” “The camera hasn’t worked right since I dropped it on the tephra”…

Television writing is a garden of terminology. One lovely concept that we haven’t talked about yet is “teeing up a joke.” It just means “setting up a joke,” actually. You can tee a joke up a lot or a little. Here is an example of a classically teed-up joke from an old episode of Boy Meets World that I found on line. (I looked because I had a memory of this being a show that did a lot of very clear and obvious teeing up.) The teacher has just asked the student if there’s any topic he wants to talk about:

CORY
Yes, actually there is a pressing social matter, which I feel equipped to discuss with confidence and alacrity.

MR. FEENY
Well then, you have the floor, Mr. Matthews.

CORY
Nah, that used me up.

The words “equipped,” “confidence” and especially “alacrity” were chosen specifically to set a certain mood that is then punctured by the punchline.

As you can probably tell, it’s really hard to tee a joke up very far without the audience getting ahead of you (without “tipping the joke” — more terminology!). That’s why this is not a great joke. First off, as the viewer/reader, you’re suspicious because Cory’s “alacrity” line doesn’t have a laugh in it. So you know his next line probably will. Already you’re on the look-out. And, even if you have no idea what the character of Cory Matthews was like, you know something’s up when you see “alacrity.” It’s tonally out of line with the entire rest of the show. The only question at that point is *how* the ball will be hit off the tee.

It can be done more subtly, of course. There was a joke in an episode of Ellen once that had a frakkin’ enormous tee, but that managed not to tip the joke. Anne Heche guest-starred as Karen, who was Ellen’s girlfriend Laurie’s ex-girlfriend (think it though). We had already established that she was enjoying making Ellen jealous of the old relationship. This is, as best I can remember, how she described an event that happened when she was with Laurie:

KAREN
One day, I came home, and I found that she had filled the house with candles. Hundreds of them. It was beautiful. And there was a note that said, “one day, all these flames will burn themselves out… except the one in my heart.”
(beat)
And then we did it.

This punchline is more likely to catch you off-guard since there’s nothing out of character or otherwise unlikely about the tee-up. It fits Karen’s agenda, in that it’s designed to make Ellen jealous, so you aren’t tipped off to the fact that a further drop is coming.

So tee ’em up, but be careful. Assume a clever reader. If there’s a straight-and-earnest line in your comedy, especially one that’s a bit out of character, doesn’t fit the show, doesn’t fit the moment… they’re gonna see the tee.

Lunch: I fried tortillas into crispy chips that I tossed into my scrambled-eggs-and-salsa.

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.

Okay, I just checked out “My Super Sweet 16,” the show about real teens and their ornate parent-funded coronations. My God! The waste of money! The waste of energies! Imagine if those kids put that kind of effort into their college applications, into their creative pursuits, into reading and learning! And the whole enterprise is counterproductive. They think they’re making their peers like them, but instead they’re clearly fostering resentment.

It’s one of those counterintuitive things. What you think makes you likable makes you unlikable. What you think makes you funny makes you unfunny. Which brings us looping around to an important principle relating to the nature of comedy. I was prompted to notice this principle, which I will unveil in a moment, by a question that came in the mail from Jerome in Chicago. He’s looking for techniques like the one I discussed on April 29, (about writing past the punchline,) techniques that work well for using humor in otherwise dramatic spec episodes. I hope you read the previous post, Jerome, about settling for the soft joke, it’s another good trick to creating humor without creating “jokiness.”

Well, Jerome’s note got me thinking. What is the ESSENTIAL difference between comedy-comedy and dramatic-comedy? And what I came up with startled me! It’s crazy, but here it is:

DRAMATIC CHARACTERS ARE INTENTIONALLY FUNNY. COMEDIC CHARACTERS ARE UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY.

Isn’t that interesting? And counterintuitive? I never noticed it before, but it’s really true. Did everyone else already notice this? The more comedic the character, the less they (successfully) crack (funny) jokes.

Michael on The Office, is a comedic character. He is not usually trying to be funny. And when he does try, he isn’t. Which is an unintended result, and thus… funny. House, on the other hand, is a dramatic character. When he is funny, it’s because he is making a dry observation about something, and he intends it to be funny. The more a character cracks intentional jokes, the less “jokey” a show feels. Wild!

Now, this isn’t a strict half-hour vs. hour distinction. M*A*S*H is one of the most dramatic comedies ever made. Full of intentional humor — Hawkeye cracks jokes constantly, and comes across as war-bruised as a result. While an hour like Boston Legal can be packed with sincere nutjobs — packed with them! As a result, BL ends up feeling, at times, more broadly comedic than the comedy.

Even within the same show, you can see the difference clearly. Some half-hour shows, like Taxi, Bob Newhart or Seinfeld, have a character at the center who is more serious, sane and grounded than the characters around them. They don’t tend to get themselves stuck in bathtubs as often as the whack-a-doodles surrounding them. So how are these characters made funny? By giving them joking comments about the hijinks around them. Jerry comments to George about how crazy Kramer is – that’s intentional humor, making Jerry a more serious character. For me, Phoebe on Friends was at her best when she would suddenly manifest an unexpected awareness of the world that would allow her to make a joke about someone else’s behavior before she would slip back into her own bubble. Joey, the other oblivious, broadly comedic character on that show, rarely made the same jump… UNTIL HE HAD HIS OWN SHOW. Then, suddenly, when required to have depth, to be more serious, he was making jokes like the great one from the pilot where he poked fun at his sister, pointing out that you don’t often hear “the argument *for* teen pregnancy.” With that line he became a different, more serious guy. (Show didn’t work, but in that moment, I had hope.)

Conversely, sometimes hour dramas have one comedic character, or a series of comedic subplots. Again, these are things that happen, funny circumstances unintended by the characters, or ludicrous sincere behavior by those characters, while the supposedly more serious parts of the show are the parts with characters making witty observations. Baltar is unintentionally funny. Adama, making a wry comment about Baltar, is intentionally funny. A combo that works together to bring the house down. (Have I mentioned I love this show?)

Have I over-explained it enough? Sorry. I’m actually just working this through in my head. So how can you use this surprising fact? Use it to modulate the tone of your spec.

Want a character to seem smart… even serious? Make his first line intentionally funny. When Parker was introduced in a Buffy episode, we had to make it instantly clear that she could consider this guy worthy of her. So the first thing he did was ask Buffy if she had any hobbies….

PARKER
…You know, like solving crosswords or spitting off the world’s tallest buildings.

He’s making a joke. So we accept him as intelligent, grounded, not ridiculous and jokey. A serious candidate for Buffy’s affection.

But a character like Principal Snyder says:

SNYDER
Call me Snyder. Just a last name. Like Barbarino.

It is a similarly ludicrous thing to say. But he is sincere, not joking. And therefore the line is jokier. Perfect for a thoroughly comedic character.

Want a really complex character? Mix the two. Jason Bateman’s character on Arrested Development had both kinds of jokes. He was simultaneously appalled by his own family, and just as appalling himself. He could function as a serious character, making aware asides in one scene, and then be the oblivious boob in another. Frasier was a similarly complex character who used both types of funny. Complex and wonderful. High degree of difficulty, that one.

So, to sum it up for Jerome. Give jokes to your dramatic characters, and sincerity to your comedic ones, and you won’t go far wrong tonally. That’s it!

Lunch: Green Corn Tamales at El Cholo on Wilshire with my parents. Sweet and terrific!

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