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Holy cow, Gentle Readers, I was just looking through my current stack of letters-to-answer when I pulled out a nice long one that I don’t recall reading before. To my embarrassment, I see that it’s dated October 20, 2006. The hell? How’d that happen? So apologies, Adam in West Hollywood, and thanks for the letter!

Adam is (was) debating whether to write a half-hour or an hour-long spec. He was tempted to try specing a multi-camera half-hour to bring some diversity to his portfolio, but he wasn’t sure he’d like the process of actually working on such a show. He described a scene he’d seen in a “Behind the Scenes” feature on a Friends DVD in which the writers had to fix a joke during the taping when it failed to get a laugh:

So there was this tight, feverish little knot of writers pitching out jokes like hot little coals no one could hold for too long […] as the crowd watched from ten feet away…

Adam asks if I’ve ever been expected to pop out jokes under the gun like that. The answer is that yes, I’ve been part of those awful feverish huddles in front of a waiting audience, although I’ve never felt that I’ve done much good there. The ability to find a new joke under pressure that way is a particular and prized skill that half-hour multi-camera writers are supposed to have, although the degrees of actual skill vary wildly. Also keep in mind that, in that huddle, you’re trying to get a fresh take on a moment that you’ve already been staring at for a whole week. If you’re flushing with the excitement of the challenge, go into sitcom work. If you’re feeling what Adam calls “big dragging icicle chills,” then it’s probably not the job for you.

And given that, Adam, I’d say you don’t need a half-hour multi-camera spec script. Write shows that are like the shows you want to write, if you get what I mean. If you’d like to write a spec for an existing show that mixes comedy and drama, try Ugly Betty — it’ll show off your joke skills without pushing you toward a tense and sweaty career.

Lunch: Chicken Caesar Salad. The croutons they used were clearly intended to be used as turkey stuffing, as they tasted strongly of sage — very odd mixture of flavors

Friend of the blog Jeff has directed my attention to this excellent piece by E. E. Knight on writing blunders. Knight is not specifically talking about television writing here, but much of it translates to our favorite genre.

Several of these entries are very relevant for the writing of stage directions and parantheticals. I was really struck by the admonition against telling us what a character “almost” did. He writes: “‘He almost screamed’ doesn’t tell me what he did do. Did he choke back a scream, bite it off, or did the scream come out as manic laughter?” That’s an extremely good point.

In other entries, he touches on other aspects of indicating a character’s emotional reaction, making sure it’s not overly-amped for the situation or so flatly described that it’s meaningless.

In our natural inclination as screenwriters to fuss over the dialog, we sometimes forget that the stage directions are our opportunity to speak directly to the reader and tell them what the characters are feeling without the biased and unreliable characters getting in the way. Think hard about your characters’ emotions and reactions — think about them as you would if you were an actor who had to play that role. Now make sure that your description does them justice in succinct and precise and creative language.

P.S. Please notice the new link in the “Jane Recommends” box on this page. If you’re not reading this from the actual web page, come on by and take a look!

Lunch: sopes — have you had these? A Mexican dish built around a little corn-flour patty. Yummy.

Oh, Gentle Readers, we are very lucky today. Meet Friend-of-the-blog Lisa Klink, a brilliant and accomplished television writer. (Check out her credits on imdb). Lisa forever has my envy because she worked inside the world of a couple of the Star Trek series, while I sniffed around the outside. Anyway, Lisa read yesterday’s post and now she leaps, superhero-like, to the rescue. Lisa writes:

In your blog, you wondered if anyone could help out newbie writers with questions like how to get an assistant job. My blog addresses a lot of that stuff – plus what the writers’ room is like, what to expect from an agent, etc. Feel free to throw any folk with those types of questions my way.

Wow. How perfect is that? Her blog is here: lisaklink.com/blog1. Please check it out! I myself just lost a lovely chunk of time reading and learning there.

This is probably also a good time to mention the blogs of a couple other incredibly smart and accomplished writers: Ken Levine and Doris Egan. Learning from — and being totally charmed by — resources like these are part of how you (yes, you, Gentle Reader), are going to succeed in this business.

Lunch: veggie sandwich on rye, extra avocado

I get asked some questions, Gentle Readers, that, sadly, I don’t have answers for. Right now I’m looking at letters from “Maggie” in Westlake Village, from Jane in Los Angeles, David in Puyallup, Washington, Ellen in Vancouver, Matthew in Pennsylvania, and others. They’re asking excellent questions about where to find produced Battlestar scripts and how to get started in writing if you’re not a US citizen and therefore can’t enter some of the competitions. Or they want to know about how to get writers’ assistant jobs. Or how to get their scripts into the hands of showrunners. Oof. Um… In general, I dunno.

I write about writing. I can also give a sort of generalized advice about getting into the business that boils down to: write specs, enter contests, take classes, join writers’ groups, meet people, consider moving to LA, look for jobs that put you near to the writers’ room, and write more specs. The only part of this that I feel confident enough to tell you how to do is the “write specs” part. I have no idea how writers’ assistants get their jobs or what opportunities there may be for writers in Canada. And, as much as I want to help, I’m not sure I want to become the clearing house for this sort of information. If someone does want to take on this job, I will happily post a link to their site.

I don’t fault anyone for writing in with these questions — they’re great questions and you’re smart to ask them — they’re just beyond the scope of what I do.

And while I’m going through the mail bag…

Many thanks to Sara in Richmond, CA, for an article about computer usage’s influence on standard language — really fascinating. Another hearty “thank you” to Teri J. who sent me a copy of her book. And a “you’re welcome” to Friend-of-the-Blog Eric Loya here in Los Angeles — my favorite book store clerk. And to Jennette in Indianapolis who also has a book coming out — how wonderful is it that so many of you who write me have either written a book, or just won a contest or made a short film or otherwise have accomplished so much! I’m constantly impressed by you, Gentle Readers!

Keep writing — I read all the letters even though I can’t always find an answer worthy of blogging. It’s not you, it’s me.

Lunch: salad and a cup of alphabet soup — I scooped it myself so it was almost all alphabet and very little soup.

Remember Gentle Reader Lauren in Michigan? She asked a bunch of questions in a recent letter about the day-to-day life of a professional writer. Well, I realize that I left one of her questions unanswered. In addition to wanting to hear what a writer does on a show, she also wanted to know what the writer’s life is like between shows.

Ah, that’s an interesting question. March-ish to May-ish are traditionally when a lot of shows are on hiatus, and writers find themselves without an office to go to until June. If you’re staffed on a show that’s returning for another season, and you know your contract is being renewed and you have no particular pressing ambitions beyond that, you can legitimately behave like a college student over the summer vacation. Take a trip, spend some money, employ your days gathering all that real-life experience that makes your writing better when you return to the room all refreshed. I have done this, and it is, of course, wonderful.

But usually that’s not what happens. Odds are that the last show you were on is not coming back. Or maybe it is, but you’ve been told you’re not being renewed — this is not unusual and is not a career-killer although it feels like it at the time. In those cases, you’re going to want to write new television specs. Maybe you want to expand your career into features, so you need a spec feature, too. Or maybe you want to set your goals higher than the show you’re currently working on, so you need a spec that showcases your skills better than all the produced scripts you’re accumulating. For these reasons or others, you’re likely to spend your break writing new spec scripts.

You need them fairly quickly, too, since these are the calling cards that you will use toward the end of the hiatus to get interviews with any show runners who like what you wrote. And, by the way, since lower level writers are the last ones hired, you will sometimes be interviewed on a Friday for a job that starts on Monday. So you have to be mentally ready to jump back in.

In summary, your vacation will be spent working hard, and just when you find out if you’ve done your work well, it’s over and you’re back in the room.

Unless you aren’t.

It’s not unusual to spend a year here or there, early in your career, “unstaffed.” Guess what you do on your year off? You write spec scripts. You can also do all those other things that help, of course: join writers’ groups, make connections with other aspiring writers, produce short films and put ’em on the internet, get some short stories published, look for writers’ assistant work, take classes from working writers, etc.

Every time you get hired after a hiatus, either a normal or an extended one, it’s like you’re a computer rebooting. You want to make sure you’re also installing updates.

Lunch: beef shabu shabu

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