JaneEspenson.com

I’ve had a couple chances this week to talk or get together with ex-colleagues from various shows. I had a wonderful lunch with Andrew Green from Jake in Progress, and a great dinner with Rich Hatem and Doris Egan from Tru Calling. These little reunions always remind me of how each writers’ room is a little culture unto itself. What is valued in that room may be very different than what is valued in another room. Some rooms are free-wheeling, with writers talk-thinking their way into an idea about a story. Others are quiet and thoughtful, where the succinctly-presented idea is more likely to shine. Some rooms are always all on a diet together. Other rooms are food snob rooms (oh, let’s not go to a chain restaurant, we might die of shame). Still others are filled with Build-a-Burger menus and pizza boxes.

And, always, rooms get some degree of their own vocabulary. Usually, something gets named after a writer. A joke run using repeated words might be named after a writer who favors that form, for example. Punny writing has been called “Espensonian,” which just makes giggle with delight. That kind of thing is inevitable as you get to know the writing preferences of people you spend long hours with. Sometimes the vocabulary is more ornate, requiring the kind of analysis used to explain Cockney rhyming slang. Conceptual meetings at Buffy were called Onions. [State of the Union -> State of the Onion -> Onion.]

And then there is “funneling.” This was a term we came up with on a sitcom I worked on very early in my career. It has turned out to be so useful that I have never forgotten it. It describes a writing technique that is used so often, to such good effect, that I’m a little surprised I’ve never heard of anyone else coming up with a name for it. Well, actually, I suppose they might have. Maybe there’s totally a well-known name for this, but I’ve never heard it. Here’s the technique.

Remember when we talked about intercutting between two scenes that are happening simultaneously? The hypothetical example had to with breaking up an unusually long party scene by repeatedly cutting away to another scene. Obviously, this technique is used all the time, even when neither scene was too long. You can use it to emphasize the irony of a certain two events occurring at the same time, for example. (While she was plotting his murder, he was planning her birthday party!! That kind of thing).

Anyway, there you are, cutting back and forth between two scenes, letting them comment on each other, both of them driving toward their respective blows. Many times you want a sense of acceleration here. So you start with longer chunks of each scene between each transition back to the other scene. Then with shorter pieces. Often ending with BOOM – the blow to one scene and then, BAM, the blow to the other scene. That is what we named funneling.

Sometimes the eventual tip of the funnel will be a collision between the two scenes. If one scene has been of someone in danger and the other has been of the people trying to rescue them, the funnel will end with the arrival of the rescuers. That’s a dramatic funnel. A comedic funnel will more likely end with something like two characters separately reaching decisions that we, the viewers, know will escalate their conflict. (Blow to scene one: Wife: “I’m going to demand my equal part of this marriage!” Blow to scene two: Husband: “I think I WILL buy that car without asking her advice!”)

You do not always have to do this. There are many examples, among my Buffy scripts, for instance, of intercut scenes which had no funneling pattern. But if you have scenes in which you would like to call the viewers’ attention to either an alignment or a contrast at the end of the scenes, add a funnel to your writing toolbox.

Lunch: beef and vegetables cooked shabu-shabu style — immersed in boiling water at the table. Yummy yummy.

I just found out that someone I know is specing an Entourage. Interesting. I had not even considered this as an option. Those of you who are looking for half-hours to spec are probably finding the number of appropriate shows to be pretty small. Earl. Office. Two Men and Half a Baby (as I once called it by accident), and not much else. Entourage might be a good thing to add to the mix. It’s not perfect, since a lot of people don’t know the show and aren’t going to jump to read it, but in a way, the obscurity makes it even classier to have as your second or third script… it makes you seem sophisticated.

Lunch: reheated eggplant casserole. Even better as lunch than as last night’s dinner. And there’s still some left for tomorrow’s breakfast.

I have a dentist appointment today. Just a cleaning. But I find this stuff very stressful. It’s the combination of discomfort and boredom that’s so awful, I think. I sit/lie there, with my hands clasped over my tummy, gradually tensing up until I realize that I’m jamming my joined fists downward as if trying to heimlich the hygienist right out of my mouth. Then I effortfully relax and start it all over again. Bleahh. But, it is also my favorite day. Because it’s the day that is the farthest apart from the next time I have to go in. Making a problem into a virtue, that’s what I’m going for here.

Which, oh so neatly, brings us to another question from a friend of the blog. This is from the charming Tracy Berna again. The question is about a specific show, but I bet a lot of you will find her frustration very recognizable. The problem she’s facing is probably one you will face at some point. She is working on a “My Name is Earl” spec and she asks:

“I came up with one possible past sin to have Earl make up for, but
I’m not sure who to make the wronged party, and here’s why: ‘Earl’
is a show that regularly and liberally employs guest characters. BUT!
You say that you shouldn’t use guest characters in specs! So what
rule do I follow? The rule of the show’s conventions, or the no-guests-
in-specs rule? Huh? HUH? Answer THAT!”

I will!

First off, let me point out that it’s not a “no-guests” rule, but rather a “don’t-build-the-whole-spec-around-a-guest” rule. But even so, Tracy has a valid dilemma here. What should she do?

Well, I can tell you what I would do. I would make the wronged person a character the audience already knows. Like, his ex-wife, his brother, his ex-mother-in-law, his ex-wife’s new husband, or some other regular or recurring character. Maybe Earl doesn’t even know who the wronged party is ,at first. He knows he did something wrong and goes looking for the victim, and the trail leads him right around to home again. Lots of good fodder for karmic thoughts there, all built-in.

Not only does this solution allow you to work solely with voices that you already know, but it also will tend to lead to richer emotional areas. Remember, you’re trying to write the Best Earl Ever. Part of that is digging slightly deeper than the show does except in its very best episodes. Dealing with a dynamic that already exists gives you a head start on finding that depth.

A variation on this, is to have the wronged party indeed be a guest character, but one who is connected to an already existing character. Earl knows he wronged a certain woman. He’s searching for her. Then he discovers his bother’s new girlfriend is that very woman. At this point the woman is almost irrelevant. It’s a brother-versus-brother story. Voices we know! A dynamic we care about!

(Forgive me if I’m mangling the show and its relationships, I watch, but not religiously. The larger point is still valid.)

The only other solution I can think of, if you really need to create a brand new character, is to make them “audible” by supplying imaginary casting. “Earl confronts TINA, a sweet little Betty White type older lady.” or “Earl finds himself face-to-face with the big, blustering JERRY, think Chris Farley.” It’s not ideal, but at least the viewers know those voices, those personalities. It’s even better if, say, Jerry reminds Earl of his own brother, and the show ends up being about him saying things to Jerry that he wishes he could say to Randy. Now we’re back in the relationships we care about again!

A friend of mine once wrote a brilliant Frasier spec in which Daphne started dating a man who was just like Niles. This was a guest-character spec that was acceptable because the guest character’s lines were all written in Niles’ voice. The only problem with the spec? Right about the time she finished it, the episode of Frasier aired in which Daphne dated a man who was just like Niles. The spec was instantly obsolete, but she had the satisfaction of knowing she was certainly thinking just like the employed writers on the show. I like to think she sat back down to write again with increased confidence.

Problems become virtues. My dentist appointment looms. Soon it will be over.

Lunch: I used spices that were bought for me in Turkey to make a spicy chicken-and-yogurt dish.

Do you all know who Drew Greenberg is? He worked with me at Buffy and is now staffed on “Dexter,” a new Showtime series. A great writer and a pretty slick dresser, too. I asked Drew to read yesterday’s post about the temporal confines of Staffing Season to make sure it was all correct and complete. Drew weighed in with two important pieces of info. Take it, Drew:

Drew: “Two teeny things: (a) on rare (very rare, I suspect) occasions, staffing might continue into June, especially for low-level writers. Probably not too far into June, but a wee bit… And (b), for the sake of detail… if staffing is April and May into June, I usually consider agenting season to be January and February into March. Of course, I agree with you that a spec is done when it’s done, and people shouldn’t let dates force them to rush and finish something, but I always feel that if you’re looking for an agent, that’s the sweet spot to get them — any earlier, they’re busy with development season and the holidays, and, also, might forget about you when staffing comes around; any later, they’re knee-deep in staffing and can’t help you.”

Thanks, Drew! (Isn’t he great, Ladies and Gentlemen?)

So, if you need a deadline for your spec and you don’t have an agent yet, well, New Year’s Day sounds like a pretty good deadline to me.

And I recall now that Drew is right about the sometimes very late staffing of the lowest level writers too. Sometimes the staff writer is even hired after everyone else has started working, which is horrible, because then you have to walk into a room that is already a functioning machine. On the other hand, a very low level writer is allowed to (and encouraged to) sit silent for a long time, so there’s no pressure to jump in and start being brilliant all at once.

Lunch: cold cuts and cheese and pickles off a deli tray

Hi all! I was at a bachelorette party this weekend in Vegas! Whoo! Fun! Vegas seems to be THE destination for events of this type. You can count veils in Vegas the way you might count out-of-state license plate anywhere else. Between the brides and the bachelorettes, there’s enough white netting in that town to supply the Japanese fishing industry. Someone in our group actually was counting the veils. I think I heard the number seventeen. We’re heading into spring. June is at our throats again.

Which leads us to today’s question from Tracy Berna, a friend of the blog with her own wonderful, chaotic blog. Check it out at Left Turn at Albuquerque. She asks:

“When the hell is ‘staffing season’? I’m never really sure when it
is or how the whole hiring cycle operates, except you’re supposed to
have a spec ready at some nebulous time during the spring. Is there
more than one time a year when having a spec ready is apropos?”

A great question. The approximate answer is that staffing season is, hmm, sort of mid April to late May, with the job actually commencing on June first. But, of course, this is all subject to various factors, including:

1. Higher level writers are hired before lower ones. So depending on your level of experience, you’re going to have a completely different season than another writer.

2. Mid-season shows sometimes (but not always) start production later than fall shows. They may staff later than other shows. Even months later. If you aren’t staffed for fall, you are “waiting for mid-season.”

3. Some shows (for example, many cable shows) are on a different schedule. A friend of mine was recently staffed on a Showtime show and has been reporting to work for several weeks already!

4. It seems obvious that a new show can’t staff until the network has actually looked at the completed pilot and ordered additional episodes, so the moment of the announcement should mark the beginning of the staffing season. But sometimes a network orders additional scripts (as opposed to episodes), before they officially order the show. Or they otherwise have infused the show runner with enough confidence to go about reading specs and meeting with writers. So the season can start early.

5. Shows that are already established and know they’re continuing, might staff VERY early, holding meetings before the previous year’s staff has even finished their work, so that they show runner will have next year’s staff (if they’re making changes), figured out before their hiatal vacation starts. This also allows them access to high-level writers before the feeding frenzy starts. For the writer, of course, this can present a problem. The writer has to decide whether or not to accept the offer from the continuing show long before they know which pilots will be picked up.

6. Sometimes people get fired. And have to be replaced. You can scoop up an off-season job this way.

So when should your spec be ready? Well, you should always have one ready. And you should feel free to work on each spec as long as you want, making it perfect, so rushing to get something ready by a certain date may not make a lot of sense.

Also, unless you already have an agent, the first thing you’re going to do with that spec is to try to find one. Guess when agents are so swamped that they will often simply refuse to read anymore? Right before staffing season. You’re better off being a little off-schedule, if you ask me.

Write your specs until they’re done. Then they’re done.

A simple question. A long non-answer. Sorry ’bout that.

Lunch: A veggie sandwich from the Quiznos in the Luxor Las Vegas food court. They accidently gave me a side salad without charging me for it, and when I tried to pay for it they wouldn’t let me and seemed a little angry that I was making a big deal out of it, like I was harping on their mistake. The sandwich was very nice. Toasting makes a huge difference. And the avocado spread is key.

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