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I’ve had two letters recently asking me about the new five act drama structure that’s popping up more and more often. People are wondering if it’s here to stay and how, or if, it affects writers of specs. Great questions!

Well, I first encountered the five-act structure at Tru Calling, which actually changed over from four acts to five. And then at The Inside, there was also a five-act mandate. The pilot I’m writing right now? Five acts. It’s the thing. Half-hour comedies are also being affected. They used to be two acts or sometimes three. Now some are four!

The change is being driven by the networks, who want, I assume, the additional commercial break. But it is affecting more than commerce. It’s actually changing the shows. And it will change your spec. Here’s why:

The act breaks are the most important moments in your show. They are the moments of suspense that bring you back, and the moments at which revelations and decisions change the direction of a story. Adding an act break is like adding a new joint between your wrist and your elbow.

You can, if you want, think of one of the act breaks under this new structure as a sort of pseudo act-break. The second act break used to be the biggest, most important break, coming as it did, at the geometric center of the show. But now it’s more likely to be the third act break that really makes the big story turn. And the second act break may become less prominent — an exciting moment along the way, but not a big story pivot. A moment that under the old system wouldn’t really have deserved the musical swell and the fade out.

Of course, we aren’t always happy with how that pseudo break looks once we’ve written it. As a result, I do believe that shows are actually getting bendier. We’re putting in more turns to accommodate more commercial breaks. How weird is that? Now, shorter acts with more turns can be a fine thing. Stories move faster and shock more often. Of course, they may not feel as deep. We replace the slow deep-water turns of the big fish with the sharp surface jitters of the waterbug. This makes it sound like I don’t like the new system, but actually my personal internal jury is still out. It’s just different, that’s all. Like that new arm joint. Hard to control… but there’s a new place for pretty bracelets!

If you’re writing a spec for an existing show, follow whatever it’s doing in its most recent episodes. And pay attention to the breaks as you study the produced eps. Is one of them a pseudo-break? Or does the story turn at every juncture?

And if you’re writing a spec pilot — well, I’d go for the modern five-act look. It shows you’ve been paying attention to the latest trends. And try to sneak the depth in anyway.

Lunch: The “dynamite roll” at a local sushi joint. Awfully goopy for sushi.

I’m more invested, this year, in the new television season than I have been in recent years. I’m hopeful about a number of shows, and I feel like I’m in the market for a new favorite scripted drama. I hope I reflect America in this way.

I’ll be really interested to see which shows click instantly with audiences. Some shows really do seem to just lock in right away. They don’t always stay locked in, but a strong start guarantees that they at least are given a chance to get going, to find their voice.

Now, let’s imagine that, say, Shark or Heroes or whatever, is a hit. Should you start writing a spec for it? Kira from Santa Monica wrote me a letter with, essentially, this question in it. She has been told not to write a spec for any show in its first season, and yet she points out that some shows, like Lost and Desperate Housewives, are so quickly hits that there doesn’t seem to be any reason to wait.

Hmm. A good and timely question. I’d say it wouldn’t hurt to sit up and pay attention when an instant hit is annointed. Start looking around for produced scripts to study, and read recaps and do all that good research. But if it was me, I’d probably wait until that first season was at the very least half over — probably even entirely over — before I started actually writing. This isn’t so much because the show might disappear, as it is that most shows are still in flux during season one. It’s still finding its tone, and figuring out which kinds of episodes serve it best. Heck, it could still be firing and hiring actors and changing all its locations around and all kinds of things — “Ellen” even changed its title after season one! (Remember, it was “These Friends of Mine”?) Anyway, it’s best to let a show settle down, find a rhythm, before you jump in. You don’t want to have to shoot at a moving target.

Also, being a hit isn’t enough to make a show specable. It has to be watched and respected not just by America, but by agents and show runners — the people you want to have read your script. And, besides that, you don’t know if it’s going to *remain* a hit. Some shows quickly fade. Remember Commander-in-Chief? Huge pilot tune-in numbers. But gosh, not a good spec to have now.

More and more, I find myself seeing the wisdom in writing a spec pilot. So many hit shows are serialized, which makes them tough (though not impossible) to spec. And others are such niche fare (Nip/Tuck, The Shield), that it’s hard to know if enough of your readers will really know the show. You’ll want at least one spec of a real, existing show, I think, but beyond that… I really have to say, write a pilot.

I’m writing one myself, right now. Come on. We’ll do it together.

Lunch: Nibbled on a burrito at the Farmer’s Market.

Is there a moment in your spec script in which your main character takes a big decisive action that changes everything? Probably, huh?

If your spec script were being filmed, the actor and director and editor would extend that moment. Music, camera work, acting would all come together, and the audience couldn’t possibly miss that something huge was going on.

But unless you get lucky, and the person reading your spec happens to be listening to a providentially synched-up iPod, you won’t have the advantage of any of that great stuff.

So here’s a great place to use a big obvious stage direction. Something like:

Ralph takes a breath and squares his shoulders. His moment has come.

Or

Tony picks up the shovel and turns slowly to face Marjorie. He knows what he has to do.

Or

Bethany whirls toward the door, her eyes wild. For the first time, she’s acting without thinking, doing the right thing without overanalyzing it.

I know these examples sound a bit over-dramatic, lying here all defenseless and out of context. They may even seem to violate a principle of screenwriting as taught to you by others, in that they essentially tell the reader what to feel. So what? Telling a reader what to feel *is* telling them what to see, because these directions are the equivalent of heroic camera angles and all those filmic tricks. They help a reader understand your story.

And they can have a bit of poetry to them, as well, which gives you a chance to show off your confidence with manipulating prose. And any time you can demonstrate confidence, your perceived competence goes up. Niiiice.

Lunch: focaccia and hummus from California Pizza Kitchen.

WorldCon made me get all theoretical and big-picture-y. That can be fun, but it isn’t always helpful if you’re sitting at home with your fingers on the keys, looking for advice you can put to work right away. So, how about we go back to talking about something more practical?

Let’s suppose you’re “breaking” the story for your drama spec script. You’re in the early stages, thinking up the basic spine of the story, and looking for the act breaks – looking for the places where the story turns. So you come up with a nice exciting event for the end of the teaser, and other ones for the three or four breaks that follow — all the places where the story will continue after commercials.

Let’s say that the act breaks you come up with are compelling and suspenseful. What could possibly go wrong?

They could be duplicates, is what. Sometimes it’s very easy to end up with two act breaks that are way too similar to each other. If you end act one with your detectives at a dead-end, you shouldn’t end act three with another dead end. Or if an act ends with character one betraying character two, then it’s best to avoid using a subsequent betrayal of c2 by c1 as another act break in the same episode.

This trap is so easy to fall into that I’ve been on staffs where no one notices that we’ve broken a story with this flaw for a strikingly long time. Then finally, someone points it out, and we all slap our foreheads in comical unison. Sometimes, it doesn’t even get fixed. You can probably find produced episodes that do exactly this. Maybe it even works, if the two scenes are purposeful echoes of each other, or if the second of the two breaks is presented as existing at an order of magnitude greater than the first. But unless things work out just right, and you can bury the similarity, you’re taking a risk of turning in a script that feels circular and repetitive.

In an extreme case of repeated act breaks, you can look at the story for an episode and realize that nothing would really change if you removed, say, act three. This is a very bad sign. Test your story against this property before you begin writing dialogue. If you’ve got an act that lifts out like part of a sectional sofa, then something’s gone badly wrong. Change it now. Everything is easier to change in the pre-outline stage. And if no one sees you slap your forehead, does it really hurt?

Lunch: no new lunch since last entry

Hi! I’m back from WorldCon. Wow, that was fun! It’s a convention that focuses a lot on books, as opposed to comic books and games. This seems to lead to a more grown up and more female collection of attendees than at some other cons. The whole thing had a wonderful feel to it.

The Hugo Award ceremony went well. I got through my part of it, so I was already reeling with relief when I had the pleasure of seeing Serenity get the Drama Long Form award. How wonderful! It was a great night indeed.

I also participated in quite a few more panels, which was a lot of fun. In fact, several times throughout the weekend, I had mini-epiphanies (I call them piphanies) about what it is that I do for a living. Here is a thought you might enjoy. Or disagree with. Or both.

There is a big division in the nature of television shows. We talk about shows that are character-driven and shows that are story-driven. King of the Hill, to pick a show more or less at random, is character-driven. Law and Order is story-driven. Other shows exist somewhere along the scale.

But what if there’s a third division? It seems to me that the shows which we are most liable to call “Sci Fi” are often driven by something that is neither character nor story. The Twilight Zone, original Star Trek and Trek:TNG, the Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, maybe even a show like Quantum Leap… I would contend that these are (drum roll) idea-driven.

You know what I mean? I would even include some of the earliest monster-of-the-week Buffy episodes in this category — the ones with the strongest metaphorical underpinnings. Like episodes of The Twilight Zone, they function as sorts of little parables, with a point to make about the world. A point made by an idea-based show might be something like: racism is random, human obsession creates a barrier as strong as any wall, greed eats away the soul, vanity makes you ugly. There’s a moral to these shows, as in a fable.

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of people out there who declare “I don’t like Sci Fi” and “I don’t like Fantasy”? Have you ever questioned them on what they mean… do they mean that they don’t like Frankenstein, Brave New World, 1984, A Handmaid’s Tale, Harry Potter? They don’t like Star Wars? Indiana Jones? ET? Splash? Big? Lord of the Rings? Sliding Doors? The Natural? Field of Dreams? Heaven can Wait? Defending your Life? The Incredibles? Batman? They don’t like Buffy? Quantum Leap? Charmed? Medium? Bewitched? Sabrina? Lost?

Usually they’ll admit that they, in fact, like a great many of those things. They just don’t put some of those works in the category of things they dislike. I’m starting to wonder if what best characterizes what they don’t like is the category of idea-driven works.

The types of stories written by Ray Bradbury, the types of filmed stories presented by Rod Serling… these appealed to me as child even without the presence of characters I knew and was already rooting for. I loved the fact that each of them was a neat little package with an idea inside. But others dislike this. Maybe it feels artificial to them, like a little puppet show that they suddenly realize is there not to entertain but to educate. It’s about vegetables! It’s a trap!

They may, in fact, have learned, from the example of the Trek shows, that the sight of spacecraft is a warning signal that ideas may soon follow. I’ve heard from a number of people who were pleasantly surprised to discover that Battlestar Galactica was about people. I think they were afraid it was about ideas. (Which is not to say it is idea-less, but I wouldn’t say it is idea-driven. It is character-driven.)

What does this mean for you, the humble and earnest writer of spec scripts? Figure out the category of the show you are specing and make sure the episode you write is of the correct type. And if you are writing an idea-driven spec pilot, be aware that you are battling some strong headwinds. If you are twisting story and character in order to create a sort of parable, you may be letting an idea drive your spec. Watch out for this, my friends. I love ideas, you love ideas, but something there is that does not love an idea. They simply are not in fashion in the television world right now.

Lunch: A hot meatball sub from Togos, delivered by mistake in place of a turkey sandwich, but cherished nonetheless.

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