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More news from the front! Remember the friend-of-the-blog who is currently reading stacks of spec scripts as he sets about staffing a show? Well he’s moved on from reading crushingly unemotional specs of The Office to reading spec pilots instead. And you should perk up at what he’s found, gentle readers, since once again your work is improving by comparison with underperforming professionals!

The problem this time? Voiceovers. Now, a voiceover can sometimes be a stylish choice, often used to good effect in stories where you want to feature an unreliable character whose internal monologue doesn’t actually match the events around him or her. And of course, there have been many successful and/or well-written shows with voiceovers: Sex and the City, Wonder Years, and Arrested Development, for example. But it takes a very specific situation or a very light hand to do it well.

The problem, of course, is that it can be a tempting way to avoid the inherit limiting feature of what we do. We are not novelists; we have chosen to work in a branch of fiction which takes an external, not an internal, look at characters. We get the tricky but rewarding task of giving viewers/readers clues that allow them to infer inner motivations, rather than making them explicit. We’re just brimmin’ with subtext and that’s on purpose. Voiceovers often make it too tempting to just make the subtext into text. Which makes for a very boring and obvious read.

But let’s imagine that you’ve managed to do it well. You’ve used a light touch, some ironic touches, a bit of magic, and you’ve employed a voiceover effectively in your spec. But you’re going to be sending that script out into an environment that, for whatever reason, seems to be unusually full of voiced-over scripts right now. Our friend-of-the-blog reports that the concentration of them is as at an all-time high; he’s finding one-third of the scripts he’s reading have voiceovers. It’s not going to be easy to make your use of the device stand out in that talky crowd. So think hard about it.

Writing your script without voiceover may seem dauntingly difficult, but that’s actually a good sign. Every time you up the degree of difficulty, you’re giving yourself a chance to show off. And the scripts that show off best get the jobs.

Lunch: instant noodle soup with added hot sauce, followed by an apple

Is there conflict in your spec script? Yes, of course there is. You might even have a scene of two people disagreeing, arguing, maybe even screaming and throwing punches. Great stuff. But here’s a little trick to make that scene even better:

Imagine that at some point in the scene, you are required to give one of the characters this line:

Fightin’ Guy
Oh my God. Is that what this is really about?

Don’t actually give them the line, just imagine that they had to say it. What would the “that” be? What is the underlying emotion that’s being expressed in the conflict between the two characters? Is there one? It’ll be a much better fight if there is. They don’t have to comment on it explicitly, but if you go into the fight knowing what underlies their animosity – beyond the immediate issue of the script – you’ll find all sorts of tricky little ways to let the audience in on the fact that there’s something deeper going on, without having to actually use the on-the-nose line above.

And remember that the “that” which the fight is “really about,” doesn’t actually have to be a conflict in itself. It can be a denied attraction, or a self-hatred, or a too-long-suppressed secret, or whatever. If you’re writing a spec for an established show, then you can draw on existing dynamics for the “that.” If you’re writing a spec pilot, a fight like this in which the deeper motivation is exposed can be a great way to clue the audience in to a history between two characters — exposition and backstory are always better if fists are flying when they come out.

Deeper! It’s good for pizza and it’s good for scripts.

Lunch: In ‘n’ Out burger, fries, Dr. Pepper

Let’s talk about underwear lines. No, that can’t be right. Here it is. Let’s talk about underlines. You have to be careful with them. Produced scripts usually don’t have a lot of them, possibly because actors don’t like them. (They’re too much like giving an actor a line reading, which actors really don’t like.)

Now, in a spec script, you don’t have to worry about actors, but you do want to look like a produced script. So you probably don’t want to throw too many underlines around all willy-nilly. Besides, underlines can tend to run away with you. Once you start selecting a few words for emphasis, you start measuring every word in the script against that standard. If I underlined “do” in that sentence, how do I not underline “am” in this sentence? (Or, to put it another way, “If I underlined ‘do‘ in that sentence, how do I not underline ‘am‘ in this sentence?”)

Here’s a little trick if you want to make sure something reads as emphasized, but you don’t want to spend an underline: eschew the contraction.

This line can be read with emphasis on the word “got” or “biggest” or “world”:

I’ve got to be the biggest fool in the world.

But this line simply must be read with emphasis on the word “got”:

I have got to be the biggest fool in the world.

Neat, huh? It’s like a sneaky way of giving the virtual actors of your spec script a virtual line reading.

Lunch: quesadilla

I talked this morning with someone who has been reading stacks of half-hour spec scripts in anticipation of hiring a staff. So I used the opportunity to find out what’s going on out there.

The answer? Well, it’s bad news for show-runners, but very good news for you, gentle readers. This show-runner is reading, of course, dozens of “The Office” specs. None of which — none of which! — have any emotional pay-off.

Gasp! (Not a sarcastic gasp. An actual gasp.)

This is the thing I keep saying about having to be better than the average episode of a show. We all know that the very best episodes of The Office are more than simply piles of jokes. Remember, in the episode that Joss directed, when we were expecting Jim to show up at Pam’s art show, but it was Michael instead and he loved her art? Remember the “Booze Cruise” episode where Jim confessed his feelings for Pam to Michael? Those moments of connection, of vulnerability, of hurt, of unexpected nobility… those are the reasons to even sit down and try to tackle a spec “The Office.” If you’re not driving toward a moment like that, you need to start over.

And the fact that specs from professional writers are floating around out there without those moments? That means that there is room for you, gentle readers, room for your excellent specs to catch the eyes of agents, or those people who read for contests, or whomever. Fill the gap.

Lunch: cheddar cheese. And one of those “doughnut cupcakes” from Big Sugar Bakery.

Last night there were localized brush fires around Los Angeles. I turned on the local news to hear a reporter deliver the following line:

Reporter: “The threatened houses are now out of the woods. The woods themselves, however, are still largely on fire.”

Oh my god. I love this. Genius! And I cannot decide on the degree to which she knew how funny these two sentences are. There was a certain halting and dour quality to it, combined with the fact that later in the report she referred to “the worst fire-danger year in recorded history in the last fifty years,” that makes me think it was completely unintentional.

I go back and forth on which is funnier, a character who is genuinely not aware of the humor in what they’re saying, versus one who is. Usually I come down on the side of smart and self-aware. And I adore a smart character who catches himself saying something stupid.

I think it’s the popularity of this combination that has led to this current virulent infestation of “that didn’t come out right.” (I saw it two more times this week, and I wasn’t even watching sitcoms.) Clearly, we need a new way for characters to react to their own ill-considered words. Personally, I favor the silent wince, but physical reactions don’t always work as well in a spec as they do on screen. Maybe just a defiant, chin-up, “Yes, I just said that.”

In other news, maybe you should all wait up on those 30 Rock specs I’ve been urging, until we see how this Alec Baldwin thing shakes out. Geez.

Lunch: soy-based sausage patties, tortillas and avocado

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