JaneEspenson.com

You know how some shows have one episode with a totally atypical structure? I’m thinking of the Emmy-winning “Three Stories” episode of House which was set in a classroom and consisted of flashbacks to past patients, one of whom turned out to be House himself. I’m also thinking of the “Out of Gas” episode of Firefly and the “Unfinished Business,” episode of Battlestar Galactica, both of which told stories in different timelines simultaneously. Episodes like these are often the most memorable shows of a series. But they’re not typical.

So the question arises: Can your spec be an episode like this? My answer — after some thought and internal debate — is yes.

It’s tricky, because a large part of the point of the specing exercise (spexercise?) is to write an episode that feels like a produced ep. If your spec is different than all or almost all of their produced eps, then you haven’t really accomplished that. But if you execute your spec (spexecute?) properly, then that won’t matter. Because another large part of the point of the exercise is to write an episode that is as good as the very best produced episodes. And playing with structure can allow you to do some very powerful stuff, memorable stuff, stuff to get a script noticed.

Telling a story that plays with time can be a great way to dig deeper into the characters by letting us see them at a time before the series started (as the Firefly and House episodes do), or during a time that the series simply didn’t show us (as the Battlestar one does). Often, in stories like these, we learn something about why a character is the way they are. There is little that is more powerful than that.

You have to be careful, of course. Don’t hang an act break on whether or not your main character is going to be killed in the past for example. And don’t just assume any origin story is worth telling — make it startling and yet oh so illuminating.

The structure should help you tell the story; it shouldn’t be the story.

But if you’ve got a great one of these eps in mind, even if it breaks the rules, I say go for it.

Lunch: a cookie and water from the Universal commissary. A too-late breakfast stole my appetite.

Do you have someone to brainstorm with? Someone who is willing to just idly toss around ideas with you in an unstructured setting without time pressure? Dinner with creative friends talking about stories is probably the closest you’re going to get to simulating the actual writers’ room experience.

I have two close friends I acquired in the ABC/Disney writing fellowship. They were there on the “feature side” of the program while I was on the “TV side”. To this day, they’re my closest friends, willing to play endless games of Scrabble and accompany me on slot-happy Vegas vacations.

They’re also brainstorming fiends. I always try to take the start of an idea to Vegas with me, because I know that by the end of the weekend they’ll have helped me turn it into something real and workable. My friend Kimberlee is an expert at cutting to the heart of a story and asking the hard questions that make me figure out *why* I’m telling the story. It’s like taking an idea to a therapist to figure out its hidden motivations. Having your own personal story doctor is as good as having a medical one. Unless you have literal pneumonia.

If you’ve joined a writers’ group or enrolled in a class, try organizing some after-class dinners. See if you click with any of the other participants. And be generous with your help on their projects too. Don’t hold back on your ideas or make sly suggestions about how they can pay you back with a staff job once their spec pilot is a show. Give your suggestions freely, and take your only pay in the form of the ideas they’ll contribute to your projects. If you can get that kind of dynamic set up, you’ll have a resource you can draw on for years and years.

Lunch: avocado, blue cheese, sourdough roll

Hi! My Battlestar ep is NOT the one airing tomorrow night, despite what I may have said earlier, and in fact still may be saying elsewhere on this page. Please watch tomorrow, of course, but be aware that my ep will be airing NEXT week, on Feb 25.

And because I hate posting entries without any useful tips in them, here’s a useful tip: you know how I’ve complained before about the “dual dialog” function in Final Draft? Well, it’s even worse than I thought. If you’re in revision mode and you make a change in any of your side-by-side dialog, it will stay marked as revised even after you select “clear revisions.” You have to un-dual it, then clear it, then re-dual it again. This actually cost me time recently. Let my pain be your warning.

Lunch: the Chile Pasilla plate at Poquito Mas. You better be hungry — this turned out to be a truckload of food. Seriously, it almost didn’t fit on one tray.

CORRECTION: It is not, of course, “my” Battlestar. It is “our” Battlestar, co-written with my friend and colleague the brilliant Anne Cofell Saunders!

Remember Amanda? She’s the one who sent the great letter I mentioned earlier this week, about landing an agent. Well, I wanted to give you a little bit more of her letter, because it was interesting all the way through. She’s referring to some information I related a while back from my agents about how they’re no longer recommending that writers spec episodes of existing shows.

Amanda: “And you are absolutely right re: original material. The first thing [the new agent] asked me for was anything original: short stories, one acts, pilots, etc. Apparently, the spec scripts are Step 2. After a show runner reads the original stuff THEN they ask for the spec.”

She goes on to mention that this doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule, which is certainly the case. And I will mention again that the ABC/Disney fellowship wants traditional specs of shows currently on the air. But it’s very interesting to hear that more than one of the big agencies is pushing hard for original material. At least once you’re repped by the agency. Remember that Amanda got the agent with a spec of The Office. So hmm.

I know it might seem like I’m grinding this topic into the ground, but it’s crucial to your specing careers, so I’m working hard to give you up to the moment info on this one.

Lunch: Koo Koo Roo — chicken with yams and cucumber salad.

How do you break your stories at home? Do you write out the content and order of the scenes on a whiteboard, in a notebook, or on index cards? For years and years I worked on shows with whiteboards in the writers’ rooms. But recently I’ve found myself in rooms with corkboards and cards. And I have to say I’m starting to get it. The ability to move scenes around effortlessly… well, say, that’s not bad.

But when I’m not in a room with other writers, if I’m breaking the story for a pilot script, for example, I just plot it out on sheets of notebook paper. Unlike a whiteboard, it’s totally portable. My notebook has accompanied me into every restaurant in town. And although you can take your stack of cards with you anywhere, you then can’t see the whole episode at a glance.

Sure, sometimes I have to rewrite the whole thing because I’m making changes and the page is filling with arrows and scribbles, but the process of rewriting it is actually one of the steps in the process that I find most productive. Rewriting the descriptions of scenes is one of the best ways for me to start to *see* them.

Ultimately, do whatever works for you. Don’t get married to any one method because it’s what your teacher, friend or writing idol does.

Lunch: goat cheese salad

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