JaneEspenson.com

When you came up with the central idea of your spec script, you probably described it to others very succinctly. “House treats an ailing psychiatrist who only allows treatment if she can psychoanalyze House in return.” Or “Michael and Jim spend a day that feels as if they’ve traded lives.” You probably had a tidy little one sentence hook like that.

But then you started work. You broke the story into scenes, figured out act breaks and an arc and a progression of events and a conclusion. You developed a B-story and braided the two stories together so that they influenced or commented on each other. You made sure all the regular characters had some way to participate in the story. You found interesting character moments that taught us something new about the characters without contradicting what we already know. You found dramatic moments and emotional pay-offs.

Now that you’ve got all that done and you might even have a completed draft, you should check to see if that original spark of an idea that made you want to write the script is still there. Is it still clear that this patient is engineering moments with House in order to analyze him? Is the Jim-and-Michael life-trade thing still in the script or is it just reading like Jim’s having a bad day while Michael has a good one? It’s very easy for the original notion to get muddied while you’re working. It’s like an underlying image that’s been traced through so many layers of paper that it’s rendered indistinct.

Sharpen it up. (Or, if a better concept has emerged during the writing, sharpen that one up.) This is a good time to quiz your test readers. Ask them what the basic idea of the story was and see if they got it. You want people to read your script and not just see a bunch of stuff that happens. You want them to see a story that hangs together as a whole, and that little one-sentence notion is the stapler that makes that happen.

Lunch: Burger King’s Whopper Jr. Burger King features tomatoes a lot more than McDonald’s does. Interesting.

When I was first working in sitcoms, I was told about an aging comedy writer who was still working as a freelancer. I was told that he would come into an office and sit down and say, “I got two stories. One, your main guy gets sick and he’s a pain in the ass about it. The other is, everyone’s trapped in a cabin and they have a big fight. Which one do you want?”

I was told that he still occasionally got a sale. I suspect the whole thing was an urban legend.

But those two stories are interesting to contemplate. Why were these the two stories that our fictional man took all over town? And why, for god’s sake, would they still sell?

I don’t think I have to tell you what makes these stories bad, at least in their most traditional form. They’re familiar. And they’re predictable. As soon as someone sneezes and says “I’m not getting sick. I’m NOT!,” we know they’re getting sick. And when they promise to be the best patient ever, we know we’re really in for it. Similarly, we’ve probably all winced more than once when someone on a television show lets a rooftop door fall closed behind them. Frankly, I’m always surprised when it doesn’t lock them up there. (Note that I’m assuming rooftops, and elevators, as cabin-equivalents.)

The stories are also too universal. We’ve all been forced to talk to someone we didn’t want to talk to. We’ve all been sick and we’ve all had to tend to a sick person. There’s nothing about the situation that’s really specific to any one character. In my Frasier spec, I thought hard about what he valued so that I could find a story that poked him where it hurt most. I ended up pricking his professional pride. I found a problem that hurt that character more than it might hurt someone else. But feeling trapped, and feeling sick — those just are not specific.

So why would anyone ever do anything like either of these ideas? Why would they ever sell? Because, at the core, the idea is right. Exactly right. Stress people and they get vulnerable. And vulnerable people open up, which is great stuff. Sickness stresses us. Being forced into prolonged contact with another person stresses us.

Remember Archie and Meathead trapped in the basement? It’s a classic All in the Family episode with moments I remember vividly. I also have very fond memories of Lou Grant and Joe Rossi trapped in — I believe — an actual cabin on Lou Grant. Again, there are moments that hit me very hard in that episode.

So, avoid cabins and elevators and rooftops in your spec. And don’t tell the “I’ll be a great patient” story, either. Find a situation more specific to your character to act as their stressor. But once you find it, use it like those writers did. Get to the vulnerability. Get to the revelations. Get to the emotions.

If any part of the story of the old freelancer is true, I buy that he still made a sale now and then. The way he got to the moment when a character opens up may have been hacky, but if he wrote those moments with sensitivity and insight, well, maybe it was worth it.

Lunch: corn bisque

Sometimes a joke sticks in my mind, and I don’t even know what it’s doing in there, taking up room. The following three-line exchange is from After-MASH, the very failed sitcom sequel to M*A*S*H. This is from memory:

Potter
(admiring Soon-Lee’s dress)
You know, that’s something I really admire about the Orient, the clothing — it gives the women such a look of demure grace.

Potter
They’re good too.

It’s not great. It’s a very standard sit-com joke run, in fact. The first line tees up the joke. It might even have teed it up higher, with talk of silks and fans — my memory is sketchy on this point. It’s a pretty obvious set-up. Then Soon-Lee’s line undercuts it, and then there’s the second little punchline, which is also of a sort I’m sure you’ve seen before.

The thing that has always stuck in my mind so clearly is Soon-Lee’s line. Although I can’t find any evidence of this online, I’m almost certain that I’m correctly remembering the phrase “Junior Sophisticate.” To me, it makes the joke. It’s funny because it’s so precise and so correct. It’s exactly the kind of name that department stores use, and it’s amusing that she would have remembered it and trotted it out so proudly.

To me, the joke is elevated above itself by that phrase. I’m still not sure it’s worth valuable brain-space, but if she’d said “Junior’s department” it wouldn’t have been as good. And if she’d just said “This is from Macy’s,” it would be terrible. It’s a nice counter-example to the “shorter is funnier” rule of thumb.

A lot of time in sitcom rooms is spent finding the perfect words for jokes like this one. Make sure you do the same thing with your specs. Get out the thesaurus, check with friends, whatever. Don’t feel weird about spending time on some tiny bit of phrasing, because if you get it just right, it can stick in someone’s head for years.

Lunch: veggie sandwich, no mayo, despite the fact that the woman making it kept trying to give me a turkey sandwich with mayo

You know that old “show, don’t tell” rule? Well, it can applied in a very specific way that can make jokes stronger and funnier. Look at this joke:

A GUY
He’s the finest man I’ve ever met.

A GUY
Yeah, that’s what I said.

Bleah. It’s just so… bald and defensive and familiar. It feels like an old radio joke. But don’t you think it’s better with this small change?

A GUY
He’s the finest man I’ve ever met.

A GUY
Who will burn in hell forever and ever, praise God.

Doesn’t that feel better? Instead of telling us that he’s got a certain opinion, our Guy is demonstrating that opinion by actively condemning.

Here’s another example. Remember this from the movie Pretty Woman?

Hollister
Mr. Lewis? How’s it going so far?

Edward
Not me. Her.

If Hollister had just said “Yes, sir, I’ll see that you get a good flattering” or something, it wouldn’t have been as funny as him actually doing it. Instead of telling us, he’s showing us.

There are some actions: flattering, condemning, promising, etc, that you do by speaking. Even though they’re not as active as diving through a window as a bomb goes off, they’re still active, they’re still a kind of doing. If you let your characters go ahead and do them, instead of just talking about what they think, you haven’t just made a better joke. You’ve also made a stronger, more active character.

Sometimes rules are actually good.

Lunch: fancy brunch at the Hotel Bel-Air. Sushi, egg tart, strawberry shortcake. Veddy veddy nice.

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