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Friend-of-the-blog Danny Strong (you know him as Jonathan on Buffy) has done something very very right. I keep trying to put up links to the news articles, but for some reason they’re not working, so you might have to cut and paste this one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6517683.stm
or this other one:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3id1c3d218198539cb327dc332da76eb60

Or just Google the words “Recount” and “Pollack”. Holy Cow.

How did he make this wonderful thing happen? Spec scripts. In this case, feature specs. Danny wrote several of them. They got him noticed, gained him a good reputation, which led to him writing this project (not a spec) for HBO. Fantastic. That’s exactly how it’s supposed to work.

No one is born with a good reputation. You get there by working. And then reworking. Not just by producing masses of product, but by concentrating on learning how to improve the product.

Congratulations, Danny!

Lunch: chicken cacciatore at the Universal Cafeteria

I love it when I receive a letter with a question I’ve never addressed before. This one comes from Adam in New York. He writes:

What is your take on writing partners/teams? I’m currently working on a spec with two other people. The writing process is a success so far, but will that become a problem when it’s time to shop it to agents/producers, etc?”

Writing as part of a team can be a really smart move. I’ve worked with many teams, and it can be a great way to maximize your value to an employer. Teams split their salary, but they each provide much more than half the work of a single writer, so a good team can be incredibly useful and sought-after.

The ABC/Disney Writing Fellowship allows submissions from teams, and, interestingly, doesn’t even require them to split the stipend.

The main problem that’s generally cited in regard to writing as a team is that if the team ever splits up, both members have to start over with entirely new solo-written specs and build their individual reputations from the bottom-up again. But if a team is solid, it can be a great source of stability and confidence, and it can produce really stellar work. (Although not in half the time. Teams can work better than individuals many times, but they don’t generally work faster. At least, that’s been my observation.)

In fact, the only problem with what you’ve got going, Adam, is that writing teams are made up of two people, not three. Always. You might think that you would provide even more value as a triumvirate, but it’s simply not true. Even if the system could accommodate you, there would be serious concerns: a three-person team would dominate the staff, for example.

So, Adam, I’m afraid what you’ve got on your hands is a Sophie’s Choice. Might I suggest one potato – two potato?

Lunch: chopped salad with warm chicken. Quite good.

Here is a sentence you sometimes hear in a writers’ room: “What if we took that big event in the fourth act and moved it up to the first act?” Here is a sentence you never hear: “What if took our teaser and made it the big conclusion?” Jump-starting the action is almost always better than delaying it. And this is especially true with a spec script, because most of your readers aren’t going to make it past page fifteen unless they’re hooked and hooked good.

Look at the beats as you have them laid out and play around with this idea. You might find that a lot of the early scenes in your episode are there to lay out a series of logical steps to get your characters into position for a big event. Series of logical steps can feel plodding and dull. Try putting the big event earlier and see if you can move those plodding steps into “stuff that happened before the episode started”. Of course, you’ll have to come up with brand-new, even bigger and more exiting stuff to replace the thing you moved up, but if you find it, you can create a real rip-snortin’ episode.

It won’t always work, but when it does it can take a slow fuse and replace it with an explosion. And in a world of busy readers, that can really really help.

Lunch: salad bar and tortilla soup

There is lightbulb in my closet that has needed replacing for – I’m not kidding – two months. Every day I think about taking five minutes and replacing it. But every day, I ask myself what makes today different from yesterday. In other words, “why now?” In the absence of some inciting incident, I seem to be powerless to act. (I might act immediately after the bulb goes out, but once that incitement has passed, I require a new incident.)

When you’re constructing a story for your script, you should assume that your characters are like me. If there’s no reason for your story to happen now, then you risk having it feel to the readers as if there’s no reason for it to happen at all. Make sure there’s an inciting incident, and make sure it’s strong, recent and compelling. Everything will work out much better and everyone will have a well-lit closet.

Lunch: salad bar and what was labeled “split pea soup,” but they must’ve split the peas on the atomic level because there was no particulate matter in it of any kind. It was a uniform green liquid. Hmmm. Can’t say I care for that.

When you’re writing your outline, remember that it’s not a sales document. Once you’re a writer on the staff of a show, the outline is going to be read and evaluated by others. But for right now, for writing a spec, no one but you — unless you want input from friends — is going to see this document. The purpose is not to convince anyone that the story works. The purpose is to figure out IF the story works.

This is your chance to visualize how the written script is going to work. The scenes, the transitions, any stylistic devices you might be using, these will all come to life on your inner screen as you write the outline. Problems that weren’t obvious during the breaking process should start to become clear. This is your chance to find them and fix them early, so pay attention to those bits where you find yourself doing a bit of “hand waving.” I’m talking about those places where you write things like “around this time we realize she loves him…” or “over the course of the next two scenes, his temper cools.” It’s okay if you know how you’re going to accomplish this, but if you’re just putting it off… that’s a warning light.

If you let squishy stuff get through the outline stage, it’s not like you got away with something. Because it’s not gonna be any crisper when you sit down to write the scenes.

Lunch: cheddar cheese on crackers. Bad crackers, very cardboardy. (talk about not crisp)

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