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I got to do the most interesting thing yesterday. I got to attend the recording session of an animated show. It was wonderful! And fast! The lines of dialogue are all numbered in an animated script. So the director would tell the actors: “All right, lines 52 to 67, let’s begin.” Then she might interrupt at any point: “Let’s hear that one again, with more contempt. Thank you.” or “A bit of a smile on that one.” and, “I need grunting here. One for getting punched and one for hitting the wall. Like this: Unnngh, ooof.” And the actors, without taking a moment to think, would give her contempt, or joviality, or rich deep grunting. A few hours and the dialogue is all recorded! I’ve never seen anything like it. A thing of beauty. And the grunting was hilarious. (“Now we need the sound of you grunting while landing on a fire escape…”)

By the way, the grunts each got their own number too, just like the lines of spoken dialogue. The numbers are added after the script has been written and revised, so the writer never has to actually worry about them. This is similar to many of the elements that you have noticed in produced scripts for live-action shows, like the cast list and the set list. Sometimes over-eager spec script writers will include these with their spec, either because they assume they’re required, or because they want the reader to have the impression that this script might possibly have been produced. Don’t do it! It looks amateurish, and no one is fooled.

As long as we’re in the area, another little trick that can backfire on a spec writer is self-conscious mentions of events from other episodes. This was something I remember doing in a Seinfeld spec… I made sure that the characters spoke about things that had already happened on the show, in order to show off my knowledge of the show. Oh! How I cringe now. I fear it was totally transparent. Use the script to show off writing skills and nothing else.

Well, that was embarrassing.

Lunch: The “Mediterranean Salad” from Jack Sprat’s. This is a little restaurant on Pico here in Los Angeles. The best part of Jack Sprat’s is the plate of small pale homemade soft pretzels that sits on every table. Fleshy knots of salt and starch — delightful.

Have you read “A Martian Wouldn’t Say That”? It’s a hilarious collection of memos from television executives to television writers, and some responses going the other direction, too. Many of these, obviously, are from the earlier years of television, in which these communications presumably actually involved “memos.” Anyway, it is sooo funny. Trust me. You will actually fall over laughing, so consider a helmet.

One of the great exchanges in the book has to do with an executive’s surprise that there is no clue in a character’s dialogue that that character is black. The writer replies that this was an intentional choice. The exec’s reply: “Well then, how will the audience know?”

I’m reminded of this exchange sometimes when I read scripts that attempt to capture the voice of a character with a particular background… ethnic, national or even, say, vocational. The spec script versions of Spike or Giles (from Buffy) are sometimes positively stuffed full of “bint”s and “bloke”s. And every word out of a soldier’s mouth is an acronym or a “yessir.” And the Southerner spouts folksy sayings about grits and drops “y’all”s like magnolia leaves. It’s as if the writer is asking “how will the audience know?” Well, they know Giles is English because he sounds English. No matter what he’s saying. That’s how an accent works. You don’t have to try very hard to convince your reader that he sounds English.

You have to, to this extent anyway, trust your readers to know the voices of the characters that you’re specing. Let them do the work of “hearing” the character’s background; don’t try to do it for them. If you push it, you’ll end up with a sort of parody of their speech that’ll pull the reader right out of the script.

As in most things, follow the lead of the produced scripts. Use any specialized vocab no more often than the show does.

Sometimes I really think the trick of the spec script is to show off without looking like you’re showing off. Sometimes I really think the trick of success in general is the same.

Lunch: a very nice “Buffalo Chicken Salad” from the Cheesecake Factory. Actual pieces of fried chicken in the salad kept it from being too healthy.

Well, it’s time to open the ol’ mailbag again. Nic from Germany has a question about the spacing between action lines and character lines in a script – is it single or double. Oh! I love an easy question. The answer is whatever the produced example scripts do. As always, the point with technical execution stuff is not so much to do things right or wrong, but to do them the way the show does them. Get those produced examples! Nic—you were looking for Gilmore Girls scripts, right? Check out scriptcity.net for these.

If you simply cannot get produced examples of the show you want to spec? Well, if you’re using Final Draft, you’ve probably noticed that it has built-in templates conforming to the styles of many existing shows. These will help you get those little technical things right. If you’re still at sea? Well, I guess you can use the format of another show – most hours have a very similar format. But if this is really the situation you’re in, you might want to consider specing another show. It’s just too hard to get it right without produced scripts – and I’m not just talking about formatting details; there are so many other elements you can only get from produced scripts. You might think recorded episodes are good enough examples, but they’re really not.

There’s also a fantastic letter from Ryan in Canada. He wants to know how a Canadian might get work in the US TV industry. Well, Tracey Forbes was a Buffy writer who moved from Canada to take the Buffy job, and the way she got in always seemed very smart to me. She worked in Canadian TV first, got established there, then had her agent, armed with produced Canadian scripts and a strong US spec script, look for work for her here. It didn’t even take that long – it’s not like you’ll have to spend ten more winters huddled over the meager warmth of your LA dream. I think getting set up there first is more likely to pan out than to try to go from zero to Hollywood. I want to be clear here, that I’m not thinking of this as a disadvantage, but rather as an option that the rest of us don’t have — an extra way in.

Also, as I tell everyone, check out the ABC Fellowship. It might be a good option for you. Good luck to you, Ryan!

(By the way, this is probably a good place to mention that I’m not an expert on stuff like this… just a humble scribe with opinions on spec writing — ask everyone you can, Ryan. Maybe someone will have a better answer.)

A big wave and thank you to the other writers, including Jen, whom I met at the Serenity premiere. Hellooo!

Lunch: boysenberry yogurt and “reverse” Pocky — chocolate cookie on the outside, chocolate goo inside.

I recently learned something amusing about the scripts for the animated daytime show “The Batman.” Some lines look like this:

BRUCE
I’m late for the opera.

And some lines look like this:

BATMAN
Looking for me, Joker?

It’s an interesting case of the clothes making the man. If the batsuit is on, bye-bye Bruce. It makes me curious about what would happen in a scene in which Bruce actually puts on the suit, while uttering dialogue at various stages in the process.

You probably don’t have anything that peculiar in your produced example scripts, but study how they do their character names anyway. For each character, note if they’re labeled with their first name or their last name or both. Make sure you do whatever the show’s writers do. Is it House? Dr. House? Doctor House? Probably not. That looks weird.

This may seem insultingly trivial, and I apologize for that, but it is easy to forget to check something like this. You’ve been looking at the pages of your spec for so long, a character name is the kind of thing you don’t even SEE after a while.

And while you’re at it, double-check the spelling of all the names. I once read a Star Trek: The Next Generation spec in which Geordi was misspelled as Jordi, Riker was misspelled as Ryker and Q was misspelled… well, let’s just marvel at the fact that Q was misspelled. When I pointed it out to the writer, he wasn’t overly concerned. After all, he reasoned, if the show bought the script, THEY’D know the right spellings.

Make the effort. Getting these things right will not be noticed. But getting them wrong will be.

Lunch: a cheeseburger meal from the McDonald’s drive-thru, eaten while sitting in heavy traffic. The fries were especially salty and delicious and the Coke seemed unusually fizzy.

So, that spec. Is it still too long? I bet it is. Don’t you hate all those dumb bits that use up space? Like, sometimes you have to deal with all the social pleasantries that occur when a character enters or leaves a scene. I bet you don’t want a quarter of a page of your script eaten up with:

SOME GUY
Hey there, Guy!

SOME OTHER GUY
Hey. It’s been a while.

Or

YET ANOTHER GUY
Well, then, I guess I’ll be seeing you around…

It’s sooo boring and it takes up such valuable real estate. And if you cut it, you end up with the kind of thing that used to drive my best friend Margit crazy when we were both ten years old and she’d scream at the TV: “Don’t just hang up! Say good-bye! How do you know the other person’s done talking??”

Here’s what I do all the time. I write:

GUY enters. He and the gang AD LIB hellos.

Look at that. Neat and quick. Perfect for a spec where you need every inch of space to show off your shiny shiny skills. You can also do it for good-byes. And for stuff like a reaction to a performance. Sometimes you can even tell the reader exactly what’s being said, but at a great economy of space. This would look like this:

The gang AD LIBS REACTIONS: “That’s great!” “You’re amazing!” “How’d you think of that?!” etc.

Don’t take it too far. Although it’s tempting, isn’t it?

He AD LIBS a fiery speech that motivates a turn in the other guy’s emotional state.

If only.

Lunch: Vietnamese food eaten with the great Jeff Greenstein. I had pho, the traditional vietnamese soup. I dolled it up with fresh herbs and lemon and siracha. Mmm.

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