JaneEspenson.com

One of the first shows I worked on was a sitcom called Monty. It didn’t last for very long, although the cast included Henry Winkler, David Schwimmer and a very teenaged David Krumholtz. The show runner was the brilliant Marc Lawrence, who was extremely patient and kind with a certain green young writer. He also completely startled me by disagreeing with what I, at the time, thought was one of the unbreakable tenets of comedy writing. You’ve probably been taught to end joke lines “on the funniest word.” Marc preferred lines that continued past the joke. Here’s an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about, taken from a “Jake in Progress” script, because that’s what I have at hand:

MARK
(to Jake, re: Adrian) Geez, when did this guy become such a prude?

JAKE
(absently) 1992. (then) See that girl over there?

And the conversation continues on, now about the girl at the next table. See the effect that you get? “1992” is where the laugh falls. But the line goes past it. This takes the pressure off the joke, allows it to be “thrown away,” tossed out casually by the actor. As a result, the whole exchange feels more confident, less rim-shotty, less desperate. Even when it is just being read, not performed.

Here’s another example adapted from the same script:

ADRIAN
But I thought things were going great with you two.

JAKE
They are! We go to the movies, and we talk, and she’s really cute and funny…

ADRIAN
You want her.

JAKE
Like Robin wants Batman. But she’s so happy that we’re taking things slow.

Here, the joke breaks on “Batman,” but the line continues, driving us back into plot. Notice how even, frankly, a fairly cheap joke like this one feels better this way, when it isn’t left hanging out there in the spotlight.

If you’re writing an hour spec, instead of a half-hour, the same thing applies. Even more so, since very jokey humor is probably going to feel wrong in an hour, but thrown-away humor might feel just right. Here’s an example from an episode of Angel in which Cordelia realizes she needs to cleanse her new apartment to get rid of a certain ghost.

CORDELIA
This is easy! Little old lady ghost. Probably hanging around ’cause she thinks she left the iron on. Let’s get us a nice cleansing spell and do this thing!

It would’ve been easy to end the line with “left the iron on.” But it would’ve felt jokier.

You can’t, and shouldn’t, do this with every joke in your script. But if you have a joke in your spec that’s always bothered you because it feels too ba-dum-dumpy, try shooting past it a little bit. See how that feels.

Lunch: Scrambled eggs with salsa and canned diced chilies. Humble and homey.

Hang on, everyone. I’m about to take an unpopular position. I’m going to advocate analyzing comedy. This is, in general, thought to be a very bad idea. Even dangerous. Once you start trying to figure out why something is funny, the reasoning goes, you lose the sense of whether it is or not. The enterprise is, at best, fruitless, and at worst, a path to the numbing loss of comedy sensation.

Well, it’s true that once you start taking apart a joke to learn how it works, you do lose track of your natural unselfconscious sense of what’s funny. The sensation of it is unmistakable. And, to me, very familiar. Before I was a comedy writer I was a student of Linguistics. We had to talk about language all the time, asking ourselves questions about which utterances were a part of our own natural idiolect and which ones weren’t. Even a few minutes of this kind of thinking tended to lead to blunted judgments about what one could or could not say. I have heard this referred to as “Scanting Out,” the name coming from the result of trying to figure out when one would naturally use the word “scant.” Would you naturally produce the utterance: “His entrance was greeted with scant applause”? “I had scant time to prepare”? How about “there was scant butter in the storehouse”? Or “She gathered her scant dress around her”? Or “He was a man of scant talent”? Or “Any loss of water will reduce the supply to scant”? Hmm… lose your sense of it yet?

And still, we do not stop analyzing language. It’s valuable and worth the effort. I think joke analysis can also be worth more than a scant effort. (See… the instinct is back again. It bounces back!)

I would love, someday, to create a Field Guide to Jokes. A real inventory of types of funny with lists of examples. Much of the skill that makes a good joke writer is clearly subconscious, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be sharpened. And for those of you who are new to joke writing, I think this kind of guide might help you a lot, giving you a mental check-list of possible funny approaches to a moment.

So let’s start.

One of the entries in the Field Guide would have to do with taking cliches and altering them, usually by simply reversing the intent. For example, when Buffy was battling an especially ugly monster she once said: “A face even a mother could hate.” And I vividly remember Joss pitching that in another script someone should say, “And the fun never starts.” In another, I riffed off the old Wonder Bread slogan “Builds strong bodies eight ways” to describe a weapon that “Kills strong bodies three ways.” This one was less successful since no one but me remembered the old Wonder Bread slogan. They can’t all be winners. The headline of this entry, a punnish play off a title, is one that I simply cannot believe we never used.

It’s a fun type of joke. Breezy, a little dry, kind of smart. You might want to play around with it. If you’ve got a character who needs a wry observation on what’s going on around them, this might be the joke type for you.

Lunch: Took the leftover chicken, tomato and eggplant from yesterday’s Mediterranean Salad, and heated it up with a bit of spaghetti sauce. Ate it with pita bread. Nothing wrong with that.

I had a delightful afternoon of Scrabble yesterday with my friends Kim and Michelle and Jeff. Little dogs playing at our feet, tiles clicking softly… Fantastic. I’ve known Kim and Michelle since we were all in the Disney Writers’ Fellowship together. It was that kind of bonding experience, and I cannot recommend it highly enough (It’s now the ABC Writing Fellowship). In addition to meeting people who will be your friends for life, you also get good practical writing advice and the thrill of seeing doors open that would have been hard to even approach otherwise.

As part of the fellowship, we television fellows (as opposed to the feature fellows – we were recruited in two camps), wrote a series of comedy spec scripts under the guidance of Disney executives. Comedy scripts only, because Disney was only producing comedies back then. We also were required to attend at least one sitcom taping per week. This began as a treat, and quickly became a chore. Our chaperoning executive actually pulled us out of the audience at Blossom one week because the Joey Lawrence fans were making a high-pitched sound of delight that was causing us physical harm.

There was also a strong recommendation that the execs made to us. They told us to hold our own little mini table reads at home, using the other fellows as actors, so that we could hear our specs. Nothing fancy, just a group of people with scripts on their laps. Having this kind of read is a suggestion you will probably hear from others as well.

I would exercise caution.

Homemade table reads are great if you’re writing a feature or a pilot or a play. If you’ve created the characters, I mean. You can learn a lot about what makes dialogue sound natural. You’ll also realize how very, very, long a chunk of dialogue is when it’s read out loud. You’ll probably end up cutting words out of every line you’ve written.

But even then, there is a downside. If your friends are not actors, they may butcher what you’ve written. And then their awkward line readings are in your head!

And if you’re dealing with a spec script for an existing show, you’ve got even bigger problems. One of your most precious aides in this whole process is your ability to “hear” your actors reading your lines. You want to be able to “hear” Hugh Laurie or Edward James Olmos or Jamie Pressly when you read your script. And the one time that I GUARANTEE that will not happen is when your friend Missy is reading the role of Dr. House.

So be careful. Unless you’ve got Hugh coming over anyway, and he’s able to lend a hand, you might end up doing yourself more harm than good. Many would disagree with me, of course. If you try it and it works for you, then that’s great. But I rely so heavily on my little metaphorical inner “ear,” that I keep far away from anything that will get between it and me. (I also like my literal inner ear. It keeps me from falling down.)

Lunch: chips and dips and wasabi peas eaten while Scrabbling!

I had a meeting yesterday. A certain building on a certain lot at a certain time. I realized, as I drove through the lot, that I was approaching a building with some very bad memories in it. I kept approaching, thinking maybe my meeting would turn out to be in the building just in front of, or just beyond, the Building of Bad Memories. It wasn’t.

I walked into the building and started up the stairs toward our old writers’ room. I remembered how my heart used to sink as I climbed these very stairs. Sometimes I would even stop halfway up the stairs, bracing myself to continue. I worked here for a whole season a long time ago, when I was a young comedy writer on an ill-fated sitcom. It was a terrible, terrible job. It’s hard to hold onto your sense of your worth as a writer when you are told, every day, that it’s possible you’re mistaken about that very thing.

The writers’ room is a disused conference room now, the space near the walls stacked with boxes of printer paper. But there was still a table (the same table?). I sat down and thought about how far I’ve come. I actively treasured the sensation of sitting in that room without feeling sick and scared.

I remember wondering, that year, if it would ever get any better. I couldn’t know for sure that it would. But I never seriously thought about quitting the job or quitting the business. I really do heart TV and I just sensed that someday it would heart me back.

But if that job had been my FIRST job, I wouldn’t’ve made it. The first writers room in which I participated (other than Trek, at which I was just pitching), was at Dinosaurs, while I was still in the Disney Fellowship. Bob Young ran that room. He was relaxed, encouraging, hilarious and efficient. There was no sense of panic or blame. He trusted and respected his writers. Perhaps it helped that the show had already been cancelled and we were simply writing and shooting the last few episodes, but I don’t think that was it. I just think some show runners are better than others at creating an environment where writers do their best work.

If you get hired on a show, and discover you’re in Hell, take heart. There are other shows. They’re better. And, as much as possible, try to fill your free time with activities that remind you of how good you are. Join a writers’ group where others will read and praise you. Surround yourself with friends. (I sometimes think my friends Kim and Michelle pulled me through that year with the sheer strength of their personalities. Thanks, guys.) And write a sparkling new spec that’ll help get you that better job next season.

All right, this has been a long break from the nuts-and-bolts of spec writing. Next post will be all about what to do when your outline leads you astray. Real practical stuff.

Lunch: Assorted sushi. A spicy tuna hand roll was particularly wonderful.

There’s a funny book called “Artistic Differences” by Charlie Hauck, which is a novelized account of working as a television comedy writer. I read it years ago and I remember enjoying it a great deal. It spins out into fantasy toward the end, but the stuff early on is gripping in its truthfulness.

I don’t seem to own a copy any more, and I can’t find excerpts on line, but I seem to remember a certain list in the book. It was a list of signs that you’re working on a bad sitcom. I might have this quote slightly wrong, but I remember that the gist of one of the listed signs was “You’re on a bad sitcom if characters use the word ‘bingo’ to mean ‘yes.'”

Well, yes. No one is going to laugh, hearing someone say “bingo” instead of “yes,” or “you got it.” It’s not a joke. And it doesn’t help define a character except to suggest a certain flippancy which most sitcom characters have built-in anyway. And it’s not novel. We’ve all heard it before. AND YET…

I’m not sure I’ve ever worked on a sitcom in which someone HASN’T used “bingo” in exactly this way, at least in some stage of some draft.

Here’s how that happens. When a roomful of writers is punching up a script, they’re looking for any way to put a comedic twist on every line they can. And the little humorless “yes” is unlikely to escape untwisted. We all know it’s not a big laugh, but the “bingo” seems to add… hmm… flavor, you know? And ever since I read that list, I’ve cringed when I’ve seen it make its way into the script. It feels so cheap now. So limp and exhausted and “written.”

As you’re going through your own spec script, watch out for these little temptations. Bingo and its friends. A room full of exhausted writers trying to wring every chuckle out of tomorrow’s run-through may end up with “bingo.” And I don’t blame them one bit. But if you find yourself putting in tired old twists like this, dig a little deeper, see if you can find something new. Your spec is a sparkly thing, treat it well.

Lunch: Mm. Thai food. Sticky rice and pad thai and tofu salad and basil chicken and thai ice tea. Now that everyone has peanut allergies, should we worry about the future of Thai food? I wonder.

« Older Entries

Newer Entries »