JaneEspenson.com

You’ll never guess what I did last night! It was the most fun. I attended one of those bar trivia events, where your little team goes up against all the other little teams. This is the first time I had gone to one of these. What a hoot! My team happened to include two five-time Jeopardy champs, so we did okay. Some of the players were very organized and prepared, and the job of quiz master rotates, so it can be an absorbing pursuit. It’s clearly a subculture.

Hmm. A subculture. Interesting. There are some shows which like episodes that take the regular characters (and the viewers) into a “world.” CSI does this – remember the killings at the Little Persons’ Convention? And at the gathering of (“furry”-type) sexual adventurers? Law and Order SVU does too; I saw one of those recently set in a fictionalized version of Anne Rice fandom, which turned out be packed with sexual adventurers. If you were going to write a spec for a show of this sort, you would do well to think about subcultures before you start plotting your story. (Murder at a bar trivia night… call the episode “Trivial Evidence.” Nice.)

My one caution: don’t choose the world of television fandom. Especially if you yourself are involved in television fandom. It’s just too close to that darn fourth wall – writing about television to get a job writing for television.

In fact, as a general rule, try to keep autobiography out of your specs. I once saw a show runner returning from a pitch session with some freelancers. He was shaking his head. He said he knew he wasn’t going to like the pitch as soon as the writers said “this one’s based on something that happened to us.” Now, this probably seems counterintuitive. Everyone’s been telling you to “write what you know.” And I explicitly told you to draw on your own memories when writing emotional scenes.

Here’s the difference. Use your own emotional truths to create truths for the characters. Not your own diary. I should adjust my instruction: “Try to keep factual autobiography out of your specs. But emotional autobiography is good good stuff.”

If you’re too close to something, it’s too easy to get all wrapped up in “getting it right” instead of in focusing on the emotional impact on your main characters, which is all that really matters. You have to be objective enough to *use* your subject matter instead of *serving* it.

There are exceptions, of course. But I stand by this as a good general precept.

If we all really wrote what we knew, none of us would be writing shows set on spaceships. (Psst… take a look at the “New and Noteworthy” square above.)

Lunch: sushi at the place with the warm rice. Wow.

There is a small white dog who lives with an old lady in my building. The dog’s name is Precious. I think she might be an old lady herself. She never begs for attention — doesn’t want to offend by taking up your personal space — but given the smallest encouragement, she’s all over you. She’s like a respectful but ultimately eager red-carpet correspondent at the Oscars.

Ha! Analogy! I’ve talked before about using analogy in dialog. But a quick search of my own scripts reveals I do it even more in stage directions. It can be a quick and evocative way of conveying exactly the effect you want.

Some of you may have been instructed to avoid flowery and figurative language in stage directions. But even the sparest stage directions have room for analogy.

In produced scripts, these can serve as helpful guidelines to actors and directors about what you’re looking for, like this one from a Buffy episode:

“Dawn concentrates, and very slowly, she lifts one foot… And falls face forward like toppling timber, landing out of frame.”

Or it might be an instruction to an effects person. This fragment is part of a description of a ghostly figure attacking Buffy:

“…two thin arms forming to crush her like a coiling snake”

Or perhaps to an animator. This one is from Animated Buffy:

“Cordy freezes, looks around, like a shark smelling blood.”

But since you’re writing spec scripts, all of your analogies are instructions to a *reader*, helping them quickly and easily picture what you had in mind. The fact that they also color the read with emotion is a bonus. A huge bonus. One that the ultimate viewer of an episode would never know about, but that a reader gets the full effect of. It can be a spec writer’s secret assistant.

“He sits astride her, hunched like a vulture,” does more than accurately describe a posture. It sets a tone for the interaction. “Angel hovers over and behind Griff like a storm cloud,” tells you not just that Angel has snuck up behind someone, but that something big and dark and dangerous is about to happen. In a script I read recently, there was a description of people “eaten away by disease like gypsy moths.” Wow. Talk about setting a tone… tattered, sad, inevitable, unclean, passive, gray… it’s all in there. Accomplished in seven little words.

Don’t overload your script with these, of course. It’ll start to read like a parody of that noir style — “She sashayed into my office like a trolley car with a drunken conductor” — Fun, but not right for your spec Grey’s Anatomy.

Find those non-verbal moments in which you’re going for a specific look or feel, and see if an analogy doesn’t serve you well.

Lunch: Chicken wings from Koo Koo Roo.

Once, when I was very young (27-ish), I was in the Star Trek: TNG offices shortly after a spec script had arrived. The episode was titled “Tangerine,” and it had been accompanied by, get this, a crate of tangerines. Some people in the office were scared of the tangerines, but I ate one. It was lovely.

Now, here I am, years later, and I remember the name of that spec script. Does that mean this was a good technique? I gotta say, I don’t think so. Especially in these security-paranoid days when unsolicited citrus fruits can get you detained without access to counsel. You want your script to be remembered as professional and well-crafted. Not sticky and freedom-endangering.

Sometimes the tangerines aren’t literal. If you break the fourth wall in your spec script, it’s almost certainly going to feel just as gimmicky as if it had arrived with a Harry and David gift box.

You know what it is, I’m sure, to break the fourth wall. That’s any reference that calls attention to the fictional nature of our enterprise. (Or the fictional nature of *The Enterprise* if we’re still in Star Trek land.)

Even if the show you’re specing routinely flirts with the fourth wall (as Boston Legal has done throughout this season), I would warn you against it.

(By the way, what Boston Legal has been doing has been a sort of pseudo-fourth-wall construction, having their characters speak of their lives “as if” they were television characters. The same conceit was used in a joke on the Will and Grace series finale, in which Jack complains about how he and Karen are treated as if they’re “supporting characters on the ‘Will and Grace’ show.”)

A tempting example of breaking a fourth wall in a spec would be to have Lily on How I Met Your Mother make some joke about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, relying on the reader to know that Alyson Hannigan was one of our stars on Buffy. Tempting, but not worth it.

The problem with doing this in a spec, is that you’re working as hard as you can to convince people that they’re reading “the real show, ” or, even better, that the Lily whom you are writing is a real person. You can’t afford to raise the issue of artificiality. I don’t even like it when actual shows break the fourth wall, actually. We’re all trying to seem “real,” so let’s not mess with it.

Fan Mail Update: A big helloooo to Jessica in Lexington, MA! Glad you’re enjoying the blog! And keep your eyes peeled for more Espisodes of television… update coming soon.

Lunch: flatbreads and artichoke spread

Yesterday, I got to go to a Jake in Progress reunion brunch. A quorum of writers got together, ate breakfast meats, drank mimosas, and watched the episodes that have not yet aired. I can report that these eps are really good, folks. I’m very proud of what we did. The truth is, of course, that in order for a show to make it to the air, a zillion tiny things have to go right, and among them is the requirement that a show fit the network’s scheduling needs.

At least, that is currently among the requirements. If the era of downloading continues and grows, schedules may soon become charming antiques. Shows will be made available for downloading directly to your television, and you will design your own viewing schedule. And network programmers will create slates of shows with an eye toward making a distinctive brand, but without the constraints of timeslots and lead-ins and lead-outs. I’m very interested to see if this happens, and, if it does, how it affects what we TV writers do.

Already, the new dynamics are making parts of the spec writer’s life easier. Getting prepared to write a spec used to be a much harder process. I used to have two VCRs going every night, recording every show that I could imagine specing. Then, when I needed to start preparing to write the spec, I would sit down and watch a dozen eps that I had saved up just for this purpose. So much programming, so much labeling! It was quite a process. Now, a weekend of DVD viewing, downloading and on-line transcript/analysis reading can make a Battlestar Galactica expert out of any of us. (All of us, hopefully –what a show!)

All of this brings us to a question sent in by charming blog-reader Christine in San Francisco. She asks:

“Let’s say I want to write a spec for ‘How I Met Your Mother,’ that introduces one of the main character’s parents. Let’s say it’s Lily. There has never been an appearance by a parent on the show, but there may have been references in dialogue to Lily’s childhood or what kind of parents she has. Should I worry about this when writing her mother? If I need to take it into consideration, how would I even go about finding that out without having to cruise every single show-devotee’s website for details?”

Oh. Interesting. Unlike Galactica, ‘Mother’ is a show that doesn’t seem to have downloads available. It isn’t on the list of shows covered by televisionwithoutpity.com. Amazon lists a DVD, but describes it as ‘unavailable.’ A quick bit of Googling doesn’t reveal a wealth of transcripts. Comedies are a bit invisible right now, and they simply aren’t being documented in the way that dramas increasingly are. Christine finds herself in the dark ages here.

But do not fret! The truth is, Chris, that although ideally you would have seen every episode of the show, you don’t actually need to worry too much about any references to Lily’s Mom. This is where you benefit from a couple of truths about spec writing. First off, you aren’t going to be sending the spec to the producers of ‘How I Met You Mother,” but to agents, contest readers, and ultimately, producers of other shows. They are unlikely to know the show that much better than you do. And secondly, even if you’re unlucky enough that your script lands in front of the eyeballs of a reader who remembers a joke about Lily’s mother from some random episode, he or she is unlikely to dismiss a well-written spec on that basis. So you’re almost certainly all right on this account.

(Also, sometimes shows don’t even respect their own history on points like this… there are many examples of inconsistencies within produced shows, so it’s not always seen as a huge transgression.)

However, I will now make my standard facial expression of concern at hearing about a spec that features such a prominent guest character. Guest character specs, as I have spoken of before, are frequently problematic. They take focus off the regular characters, downplaying your ability to capture their voices and interactions. They are also, for some reason, one of the most popular choices for new writers, so your spec ends up competing against other “Lily’s Mom” specs.

So be cautious. But if you’ve got a killer idea, then don’t let my quizzical eyebrow stop you!

About your other question, the problem with public transport in LA isn’t that it’s dirty or ramshackle, but that it tends not to go where you need it to go – at least that’s the impression I’ve received. This remains, I’m afraid, very much a car city. All of you who are contemplating a move to LA should keep this in mind. When I got into the Disney Fellowship, one of the first things I did was sign up for driving lessons, to brush up my skills!

Lunch: My Jake-brunch was my lunch. Bacon, sausages, huge chocolate-chip cookies, mimosas!

Had a lovely lunch at the Farmer’s Market today with Friend-of-the-Blog Maggie. Then I bought exotic fruit (love the cherimoya), and a bag made out of one long zipper. Have you seen these? It looks like a long dog leash. Then you zip and zip and it keeps mostly looking like a leash and then suddenly, it’s a bag! It’s like writing a script. You start with the idea of an episode, but then you get involved in all the little pieces, so you work on them, and work and work…. and suddenly, like magic, the episode stands as a whole.

But what if there are flaws? You’ve been looking at all the little pieces for so long, you probably find your judgment a bit muddy. The whole thing still looks like a leash to you. So, before you turn in your script, it’s a good idea to have a few friends read it. Smart friends with opinions you can trust.

But first, you have to be sure you want to hear their opinions. If you fight every suggestion that’s given to you, if you turn the note session into a vigorous defense of your draft, you will soon notice that your friends start *loving* your work. They don’t have a single note! This doesn’t mean your writing got perfect. It means your friends got tired.

The other classic mistake, of course, is to scrupulously take *every* note, whether you agree with it or not. I actually think this is the worse mistake. At least the first error gets your script rejected for script problems you’re actually responsible for. The second error gets it rejected for suggestions your dumb friends made.

The best way to take notes from a friend is to listen, to say, “uh-huh,” ask a question or two like “do you think you’d like it better if…”, and then move on to the next note. There is no need to tell Friend McFriendstein whether or not you’re going to actually implement the note. Giving your opinion of their opinion extends the conversation, makes them too invested in putting their mark on the script, and it commits you mentally to changes you may later realize aren’t really what you want. You should be in receive mode, not implement mode, at this point. Flip the switch back from “listen” to “do” after the conversation, and after you’ve had time to let it all sink in.

Lunch: tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich at the Farmer’s Market

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