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All right. Time to get all practical again. You’re moving along through your outline, turning your little summaries of scenes into actual scenes. Here’s what part of your outline might look like (for a hypothetical show):

INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
The big party. Lots of guests, fancy decorations. Helene is playing hostess, but her husband Ralph is undermining her efforts by telling everyone the food is tainted. He sparks a panic that has the party in an uproar. Helene confronts Ralph about his lies, adding to the confusion. During the commotion, Jeremy corners Alice and tells her about his affair with Helene. Alice runs off crying into the arms of the caterer. Now in a towering rage, Ralph fires the caterer.

INT. HIGH SCHOOL GYM – NIGHT
Teddy and Sherman meet to talk about their plan to ruin the prom.

It all looks peachy, so you start writing. And you discover that the big living room party scene, which looked like so much fun in outline form, is clocking in at about 12 pages, or 14, or 17, dear god… It feels endless and is clearly far too long. You should’ve realized this was going to be a problem when you wrote the outline, but you had no idea that it was going to expand to this degree.

By the way, this phenomenon, the expanding scene, happens all the time. Even on shows where a half-dozen people have read the outline and signed off on it, the writer will often find themselves looking at a scene that simply will not end, and has too many load-bearing walls in it to just cut it all way back.

Don’t panic. There’s an easy solution. You’re probably ahead of me on this, huh? Nest the gymnasium scene inside the living room scene. In fact, you might be able to cut back and forth between the two scenes several times — this is intercutting. It’s like stepping away from the party for some fresh air a couple times.

Now all you have to do is pick the moments of transition between the scenes. This is crucial. It can’t be obvious that you’re just cutting away from the party because you’re afraid everyone is bored to tears by how long it is. You have to pick a significant moment, just as if this was now the end of a scene. Because, all of a sudden, it is. And it would be even better if you picked a moment that resonates with the moment of the scene you’re cutting into. For example, if you cut away from the party as Ralph leans in to whisper to a guest that “Helene left the pork out all night.” then you can start the Teddy/Sherman scene with Teddy saying something like “The best night ever! That’s what this is gonna be!”

Then, of course, you have to find the right moment to cut back into the party to continue the scene. Maybe you go from Sherman saying “If we really can find that many live turkeys, this place is gonna be chaos!” back to the party where the guests are in turmoil. Finding these moments shouldn’t seem like a chore. This is a big opportunity for you to be clever, to add humor and pace to your script. One of my favorite things is to take a moment that isn’t a joke, and make it a joke via a funny transition.

When scenes are cut together like this, I generally assume that time has elapsed while the chunk of the other scene has been played out. I mean that when we return to the party scene, some time will have passed. I notice that some shows, especially soap operas, don’t seem to play it this way, instead returning to the exact moment that you cut away. I don’t recommend it. It will feel soapy. But, as in almost all else, you should consult your example produced scripts for guidance.

A huge benefit of the “elapsed time” version of this, of course, is that during the time we are in the gymnasium, you can imply that events escalated at the party, without having to show every little step. You can also eliminate having characters tell each other things that the audience already knows. You cut back into the party scene to see Alice’s reaction to the news about Jeremy’s affair without having to listen to him say a bunch of stuff the audience knows. Everything gets tighter, sharper, better.

What started out as a problem zone might actually turn into your favorite part of your spec. And the next time you write an outline, you will find yourself looking for these opportunities in advance.

Lunch: salad to which I added more canned garbanzo beans than they ever give you in a restaurant. Satisfying

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.

Hi, everyone! I’m back from my trip to New York City. Wow, that’s a fun town! I saw three Broadway plays, how cool is that? If you want to see how to create lovable, strange and sympathetic characters with great economy, check out The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Funny and sad and funny again. So many characters drawn so precisely, wonderful little oddballs and overacheivers. You get who they are instantly… and then you learn more. And it has audience participation that doesn’t make you cringe. I loved it.

Something else I did in New York: I took the NBC Studio tour. I wonder if I’m the only working writer/producer out there who still loves to do this kind of thing. I took the Burbank NBC tour again a few years ago, too. It’s the strangest thing; I still love to peek backstage. If I’m early for a meeting on a studio lot, I’m not above wandering past the soundstages for shows I admire, angling for a glimpse of the set. When I took the Burbank tour as a kid, I got to see the original Hollywood Squares grid and the set of CPO Sharkey– that kind of thing sticks with you. Years later, I was kicked off the Frasier set on the Paramount lot by a security guard who didn’t understand that I was writing a Frasier spec and needed to check out how the living room felt. (I can’t recommend this procedure. If you tried this today, you’d be arrested and raise the national security alert level. Back then, I was politely asked to leave the set.)

Anyway, the New York NBC tour is short but rewarding — the SNL stage, the Conan O’Brien stage, the Dateline sets and thank you very much. But what you do see is pretty darn neat. The Conan stage is laughably small. I work in TV and I was shocked. Really, I had high school classrooms that were bigger. Even studio 8H, where SNL lives, is smaller than you expect. The audience sits in a sort of gallery for this one, like spectators in congress. I looked down on the stage, thinking: “Gilda was here, Gilda was here…”

It was great. The tiny little studios were built for radio shows! Studio 8H was built for Arturo Toscanini and the NBC symphony orchestra. Milton Berle! Bob Hope!

Love television!

Lunch: the $4 “snack box” on the airplane home. Surprisingly good. Cookies and cheese and crackers and raisins. It was like a tiny gift basket!

Hi all. Greetings from New York! Sorry for the lack of posting, but I’ve been trotting around town seeing Broadway shows and eating cart-knishes and freezing my butt off. Fun!

I saw Doubt last night — a beautifully written play. My agent tells me that plays work very well as specs, although I’ve never written one myself. For those of you who want to try this, I’m afraid I have no advice other than the pathetically obvious suggestion of seeing and reading as many as you can.

One of the things that Doubt illustrates really well, is how to work flashes of humor into the darkest subject matter without making characters automatically unlikable, or making the work as a whole trivialize what’s going on. When this works best is when the humor comes from a particularly well-observed quirk of character instead of the subject matter. When the nun at the center of Doubt starts her answer to a simple question with “In ancient Sparta…,” the audience laughs. That laugh is a laugh of recognition. We’ve known people like this. For some reason, humans laugh at things they recognize. This is what keeps stand-up comedians in business. Whether you’re writing a play or an episode of Two and a Half Men, look for the humor that comes from character quirks. You’ll get more milage out of it than out of the characters commenting on the crazy events you’ve got swirling around them.

In contrast, characters’ expressions of surprise at the actual events around them usually feel flat anyway, since a reader can’t help but be aware that you, the writer, contrived those events exactly in order to get that reaction. I think this is more the case in reading a script than in seeing a produced version, so, as a spec writer, you have to be extra careful. Go for the character-based jokes instead.

Lunch: A hot knish off a cart, slit open with a meat-stained knife and filled with spicy mustard. Hot. Smooth. Redolent with the smoke of a hundred hotdogs. My my.

I love Scrabble. Love it! Best game ever invented except it has too many “i”s. Nine? That’s outrageous. Seriously. Nine “i”s. It’s like a bad joke. Nine.

I even loved Scrabble when I was a little kid and was terrible at it. I’d beg my parents to play, and they’d win by ludicrous margins, and I’d want to play again immediately. My one frustration was that they, trying to help me improve, would sometimes point out possible plays for me. “But now I can’t play THAT one!” I would howl. It was illegitimate because I hadn’t thought of it myself.

This attitude of self-defeating independence stuck with me. I couldn’t title an essay, or name a pet, if someone else came up with the brainstorm. I even suspect this is one reason I don’t like ordering the same entree as someone else at the table.

This trait hurt me, early in my career. If friends suggested lines in scripts I was writing, or even if co-workers pitched jokes to me informally, I couldn’t use them. It felt like cheating. (In the rewrite room of course, jokes come from everywhere, but that’s understood.)

If you share this trait, you will do well to get over it. Writing is collaborative. Even spec writing. Have your friends read what you’re writing. If they suggest the perfect line, then take it. Take it and run. Consider it another skill, the skill of being able to RECOGNIZE the right line.

Lunch: Enchildas Verduras from Mexicali, on Ventura up in Studio City. I have spoken to you before of their sauce.

NOTE: I’m headed to New York City tomorrow morning! I will be back on Wednesday. I may not be able to blog while I’m gone. Talk to you soon!

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