JaneEspenson.com

So the ABC/Disney submission process is over for another year. Your script is in the mail. That makes today the day you start your next project, right?

When you were writing a spec script for an existing show, I encouraged you to watch as many episodes of the show as you could find. I also suggested that you watch a little bit of the show before a writing session as a way to refresh the “voice” of the show. Well, you can do a similar thing even if you’re not writing a TV spec script. You can even do it if you’re writing a short story or a play.

What I’m suggesting is that you find stories or plays that have the tone and complexity you want yours to have, and use them to make your story or play better. Want your story to feel like it comes from the pages of The New Yorker? Go get a bunch of issues of The New Yorker and study those stories.

It’s okay; I’m not talking about plagiarism — not even plagiarism of style — I’m talking about doing research. No one would expect you to sew a shirt, even an imaginative free-form re-imagining of the concept of a shirt, without at least examining some examples, and perhaps even trying one on and walking around in it. Look at the structure of the stories you like the best, look at how the tone is established, look at how a story can grab a reader with the first sentence, and at how neatly it does or doesn’t tie things up at the end. If it’s been a long time since you’ve written something that isn’t in script format, you’ll have to make decisions about tense and POV, too. Reading other writers’ stories is a good way to understand the effect those choices have.

If you’re going to write a play, making an effort to read and study examples is even more crucial, since few of us already have a stack of plays on our bedside table for leisure reading. The script of a play is probably less familiar to you as a document than a short story or a film script is, so give it some study before you start plotting out what you’re going to do with yours.

I’m still not sure I’m embracing this new model in which TV writing aspirants can use stories and plays as their writing samples, but if you’ve decided to do it, take the time to learn what it looks like when it’s done well, and think about what makes the good ones good.

Lunch: an amazing Indian lunch at a humble Indian restaurant/grocery in Glendale called, I believe, “India Sweets and Spices”. Mixed vegetables, raita, something wonderful made with “snake gourd and potatoes,” pickles, rice, chapati, samosas… wow.

Anyone out there want a couple quick ways to spruce up a script right before you submit it to something? Here are two things you can do quickly that might actually make a noticeable difference.

First, sweeten up those stage directions. They’re your one chance to talk directly to the reader in your own voice, so make sure they’re confident, visual, and evocative without going over-the-top. After you’ve worked on a script for a while, you’ve probably stopped even reading your own stage directions when you reread. Resist that, and give ’em a good looking-at. If anything feels familiar or flat or hesitant, work on it.

FLAT: “John enters. He looks terrible.”
JUST RIGHT: “John enters, looking like a thousand flavors of crap.”
TOO MUCH: “John enters, bearing the cares of his ancestors on his shoulders like a heavy yoke.”

Second, tighten up your dialog. Look for extra sentences that you can pull out, and even just words. If a character says “I haven’t seen her,” consider changing it to “Haven’t seen her.” It’s such a tiny change, but it keeps your lines from looking like the hyper-correct text in learn-to-read books.

That’s it. A simple pass through your script with those two goals in mind can do wonders. The main point here is confidence. Both of these changes will suggest a relaxed, confident writer, and if you can project that, you’re ahead of the game.

Lunch: juice, banana, cookie

We’re getting down to the wire here, gentle ABC/Disney applicants, so it’s time to start thinking about all those last-minute details. Here’s a little checklist:

1. Reread the application details. Do you understand the rules of when the material has to be mailed? Do you have all the required parts of the application ready to go?

2. Have someone else proofread everything you’re sending for typos and missing words.

3. Check your presentation. Does everything look clean and professional? Nice dark print? Good strong brads?

4. Reread that script. Your subconscious mind knows which parts are bothering you. Listen to it. Don’t just keep rereading the bits that you like. Instead, look at the pages that your eyes want to rush over. Don’t be afraid to tackle a large change at the last minute, either. Just make a new file and try something drastic if you want. If it doesn’t work, you’ve still got the other version.

5. Mail it, don’t look back, and start writing your next thing. Something with your own original characters. The best way not to worry about the thing you just wrote is to worry about the thing after that.

Lunch: chicken dumpling soup and a spinach-bagel

Well, for those of you keeping score, I made it to Dallas and back home again. Many thanks to the kind people of Equality Now and all the Browncoats who were so great to me there!

I returned to find an intriguing piece of mail from reader John in Albany. It’s a great piece of mail, too, printed on thick creamy stationary with the kind of law firm letterhead that makes your pulse speed up because it looks like you’re getting sued.

John has (with a writing partner) written a spec half-hour comedy pilot. And he has filmed it. Whoa. He asks: “…are there any real advantages to actually shooting/making the TV pilot?” He adds, “I’ve even heard that this is detrimental because the ‘idea’ is always much better than the execution.”

My first instinct is to point at that last sentence and say, “yup.” One of the things I love about scripts – all scripts – is that they are creatures of perfect potential, always well-acted and well-produced in the reader’s brain. If I set something on an “abandoned pier lying still between the dark sky and darker sea” then that’s what the reader sees, not a redressed hotel loading-dock being splashed from off-screen by my friends who own buckets. Unless you have lots of money and some pretty advanced skills, it’s going to be very hard to make an amateur production good enough to come up to the level of the production that the reader’s brain is able to muster. And quality acting is, of course, even more crucial and hard to find than friends with buckets.

So, in general, I think it’s going to be easier, cheaper and more effective to try to use a script to break into the business than a produced sample. However, we live in strange times. If you have managed to put together something great, John in Albany, well, then let’s see how far you can ride it. Maybe you can submit it to film festivals, or slap it up on YouTube, or have friends link to it on their blogs… If it’s great and people find it, you might create a sensation and be treated like one of those film school phenoms who make a stir now and then. You might have just created a new way to go about this whole crazy endeavor. It’s a long shot, but since you’ve apparently already shot it… why not?! This is a business that is about creativity, and applying creativity to your way in might not always be a bad thing.

Lunch: heirloom tomatoes and burrata from the “nice side” of the Universal Cafeteria. Mm. Love those heirloom tomatoes.

Update from LAX! I’m trying to get to the book signing, gentle readers, but my airplane broke. I won’t be landing in Texas until *after* the scheduled start of the signing… so adjust accordingly! Thank you!

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