JaneEspenson.com

Have you noticed the change in the air, that certain feeling that a new season is upon us? That’s right. It’s Pilot Season! Table reads are busting out all over!

A table read is a pre-filming exercise in which the actors sit around a table and read the entire script out loud. Writers and executives listen and use what they have heard to improve the script. When a table read is held before a pilot, it’s usually the first time that the actors have all assembled together, so you’re also looking for how they mesh together as an ensemble.

These events aren’t just called “table reads” out of tradition. There really is a big table at the center of the room. Usually just the actors, director and executive producers are actually seated the table. A wider circle of chairs surrounds the table. Everyone else, including non-exec-prod writers, sit in these chairs. This means that when you become a staff writer, you will spend some time looking directly at the backsides of a cast of actors. This often means you are privileged to an array of thong underpants. Try to stay focused.

Comedies always have table reads. Dramas sometimes do. (Gilmore Girls does. Buffy didn’t.) What I’m going to talk about applies to comedies and the funniest of the dramas. If you’re writing a 24, you don’t have to worry too much about this.

There’s an interesting thing that happens when an episode goes from being an script to being an oral performance: subtler aspects become clear. A joke that seemed hilarious on the page can feel heavy-handed when performed, while a subtler moment that just sort of sat there when read silently, can get a big laugh at the table. This effect gets even more pronounced when the actors get up on their feet on the stage. At Gilmore Girls and at Ellen, those two shows in particular, I was struck by how a subtle actress could take a simple observational moment and make it the biggest laugh at the table or at a run-through, with a tone of voice or a facial expression. When you’re working on a show, it’s worthwhile to remember that sometimes the funniest moments aren’t the hard jokes that shine like diamonds on the page.

But here’s the rub. You, as a young writer just starting out, are not writing a script to be performed. You’re writing a spec. All you have is the page. This is one of the ways in which the spec script system is imperfect. Really subtle emotional writing will be noticed, but really subtle joke writing might very well simply fade into the page. Use those produced scripts you’ve acquired as your guides for how many jokes to have on a page, and for how “jokey” those jokes should be. But if there’s any question in your mind, I would err toward the ha-ha-ha side.

In my opinion, it is probably better to be considered a funny writer who might have to be reined in, than to be considered a writer who will have to be pushed toward the funny.

Note to Nicole in Germany: I lost your address and cannot send you a script. Sorry! Check out scriptcity.net to order a Gilmore Girls in pdf form. You can even get one that I wrote! Thanks for the letter!

Lunch: Spicy noodles with pork from Noodle Planet, a wonderful place near UCLA. Noodle Planet. Even the name is satisfying.

I got travel innoculations today, my friends, plus I had blood taken out. Stuff went in. Stuff came out. I’m woooooozy. So it’s a perfect time to tell you about a writing secret that works goes really well with wooze.

We’ve been talking about getting past that horrible stage where you hate the script you’re writing. It happens. Even to really experienced writers. Sometimes it’s because the story is wrong. But sometimes it’s that the dialogue isn’t coming out sounding like the show you’re specing. And you can’t figure out what’s wrong with it.

Here’s a little trick I use. I take my fingers off the keyboard. I walk away from the computer entirely. I lie down. And I try to hear the character’s voices. And, for once, when I talk about the voice of the character, I really am referencing the actual physical voice of the actor as well.

Try to just imagine them talking about the general concept of the scene you’re working on. Don’t try to make the conversation move from topic to topic the way it will when you write your scene. Instead, let them talk as long as they want, go off on tangents, change their minds, contradict themselves, repeat themselves. You can virtually write a lot of different versions of the conversation this way without having to actually type them.

Once you’ve heard all the characters have to say on the topic, you can start shaping the actual scene.
And somehow — I guess since the process is more about the spoken word than the written word — you end up with lines that sound truer to way the character talks.

This is an advantage you have as a spec writer over a writer of features. You know how your characters/actors sound, so you can “hear” them.

This can also be used really well as you wake up in the morning. (Not as well at night, because you fall asleep and forget it all.) In the morning, especially if you can wake up naturally, not with an alarm, and have time to drift there for a while, try applying this sort of “auditory imagination” to the next scene you’re going to write, or to one that’s giving you trouble. Your brain is free of stress, more open to fun and exploration, more creative when its defenses aren’t up… give it a try!

Now I’m going to watch America’s Next Top Model. Between that and the blood loss and the polio booster… wow. Woozy/creative.

Lunch: half a burrito from Baja Fresh and an enormous OJ from Jamba Juice. Love that Jamba!

I went to my local bookstore/coffee shop today and bought one of their seasonal novelty coffees. The Hazelnut Mocharoon. Seriously, it was called that. But when it was ready, they didn’t put a lid on it. They instead directed me to a selection of self-serve lids. Well, I did the best I could, but I’m no professional. And the only way out of the parking structure was up the steepest exit ramp in L.A. This resulted in half my Mocharoon peeing neatly and very gradually into a velvet-lined sunglasses case that I was very fond of.

But you’ve got real problems. You hate your script. At least it’s a fair assumption that some of you out there have suddenly realized that something feels wrong. Scenes that sounded fine in outline form are flat or awkward or simply unwritable when you try to turn them into dialogue. And it all just seems so pointless…

All right. Let’s talk about the most likely option for why you’re feeling this way. I’d love to say that the most likely option is that you’re panicking about nothing. But I suspect that’s the second most likely option. The actual most likely option is that the script is not ABOUT anything anymore. You probably started out with nice clear small little premise. You know, something like: This episode is about our hero giving up his life’s work and then realizing that his own moral core won’t allow him to do so. Or: This episode is about our heroine rejecting her mother’s advice and later realizing that through that very independence she’s acting just like her mother. Or: This episode is about our couple fearing they’re growing apart and then realizing the time away from each other is strengthening the relationship. Or: whatever you’ve selected as the journey that best makes for a shimmering knockout episode of your show.

The process of turning that simple core notion, the about-ness of the episode, into a series of scenes, can result in its being obscured. Most of the time, just THINKING about the about-ness will suddenly make it clear which scenes have lost focus. Bring the about-ness back to the front of your brain, keep it in mind as you write every scene, and things will suddenly be much easier.

Sometimes, though, you’ll realize that the reason the about-ness went away is because it got lost at an earlier stage of the process. Go back. Don’t try to push ahead. If you need to go back and adjust the outline, well, then, you have to. And do it thoroughly. Don’t cling to anything you’ve already written. In the long run, it’ll be faster starting entirely over, if it results in the RIGHT outline, than it’ll be to keep forging ahead with the wrong one.

I should’ve gone to the counter and asked for help selecting the proper lid for my mocharoon.

Lunch: a tiny rare filet mignon with barely-steamed corn-on-the-cob, sliced heirloom tomatoes and crusty oven-warmed bread. Mm-mm-mm.

It’s so cold here! Well, not really cold. But L.A. cold. I walked to a neaby mall yesterday without a jacket in hand, and had to take a cab home because it was too cold to walk back — seriously, it was like six blocks and it was unthinkable. Sometimes you’re halfway through an enterprise when you realize it’s gone badly off track.

The same thing may be happening to you. You’ve analyzed produced episodes. You’ve found a story that seems to fit the show’s prototype while genuinely saying something new. You’ve selected your act breaks. You’ve broken the story into scenes. And now you’re writing dialogue, actually watching the show take shape beneath your hands. At this point something starts to happen…

You start to hate your story. Really hate it. Just thinking about it makes your face burn with shame. This is normal. You can get through it. The first step is to try to articulate what’s feeling wrong about it.

Here’s a list of things that might be wrong. Does your script feel…

– Banal? An unemotional story that’s not about anything?
– Soapy? So full of event and reaction that it’s slipping into melodrama?
– Talky? Speechifying and banter with no drive?
– Calculated? So precisely engineered that it’s lost all spontaneity?
– Jokey? All quips and no heart?

Once you figure out what feels off, you can start deciding if you’re experiencing panic with a cause or panic without a cause. Either way, it’ll be okay. This is one of the wonderful things about spec writing — this episode will not be shoved in front of cameras in a week. You’ve got time to figure out what’s going on. Think about what feels wrong, and then, soon, we’ll talk about how to fix it. Or whether to start over entirely, which isn’t as bad as it sounds.

P.S. And if you aren’t hating your story? Well then. Never mind. Good for you.

Lunch: hot ‘n’ sour soup made from a packet, with noodles added on a whim. Zesty and starchy both!

You know what’s always bothered me about that story about Solomon? You know, the one where he suggests cutting the disputed baby in half, knowing the true mother would give the child up rather than have that happen? The fake mother who goes along with the verdict. “Oh. That sounds fair. At least I’ll get a half a baby.”

And yet… sometimes cutting the baby in half is exactly the right answer.

Remember the jokes in the Jack Benny radio script archive? Remember how labored they were? We already discussed one example with a set-up that seemed endless.

Here’s another example lifted from the archive:

Jack: How many kids have you got now?
Dennis: Thirteen.
Jack: Thirteen kids?
Dennis: Yup, one for every month in the year.
Jack: Dennis, there are only twelve months in the year.
Dennis: NOW HE TELLS ME.

Okay. So what do those last two lines add to the joke? I submit that if you’re going to laugh at all, you’re going to do it after “one for every month in the year.” The rest is an explanation of the punchline. And sure enough, as audiences got more and more used to broadcast comedy, set-ups got shorter, and post-joke explanations started to fall away. And half a baby was, indeed, better than a whole one.

And yet, that baby can be cut back even further. How many times have you had to sit through a set-up that seems to go on forever:

CLUMSY HUSBAND
Honey, you don’t have to warn me that a Sloppy Joe is “sloppy.” I know the meaning of the word. Besides, I’m not six. I think I can manage to somehow maneuver a sandwich into my mouth without–
(He drops the sandwich onto himself)

And explaining the punchline? That’s actually a mistake I’ve made myself. Here’s an exchange adapted from one of my Buffys:

WILLOW
(to Xander)
I wish Buffy was here.

Buffy enters.

BUFFY
I’m here.

WILLOW
I wish for a million dollars.
(off Xander’s look)
Someday it’ll work.

Looking at this now, I should not have had Willow explain. It was clear enough what she was doing. She did not need to spell it out to Xander.

The people who are going to read your spec are smart and they will get the joke without a lot of set-up or explanation. In fact, more than anything, this lack of these things is what makes a script feel smart.

Lunch: A wonderful Sloppy Joe, which made me start thinking about messy sandwiches and jokes about same.

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