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This is continuing a thought from the last post. We were talking about character traits that give a character realism and depth by being plausible yet unexpected. This can be more than an observation about making the people you write more interesting. It can also be a mechanism for creating a story. After all, what’s the best way to illustrate a character trait? Through an action. And action is story.

So… think of something that a character in the show you’re specing would not normally do. Something that seems to be out of character. Now, this is slightly different than what I was talking about last time. Those were traits a character had at all times, but which we might not have expected. Now I’m talking about buried traits which are revealed through actions that a character *can* take, but which they wouldn’t do without being forced to dig down to their soul. Find something they have to be pressed to do. Can your good guy, if pressed, kill? Can your bad guy, if pressed, sacrifice? Find those traits that are buried. Now figure out what would have to happen to make them surface. Press them. The sequence of events you come up with might just make a great spec.

Note that, for example, the House arc that just concluded could easily have come about in this way: How do we make House apologize, the writers might have asked, and then have come up with the arc to make it happen. Or, to pick other shows: What would make Spike seek out a soul for himself? What would make Dwight Shrute quit Dunder Mifflin? What would make Mary Richards laugh at a funeral? What would make President Roslyn fix an election? What would make Lyla (of Friday Night Lights) cheat on Jason?

Play around with this for a while. Make Adama betray the fleet. Make Coach Taylor (Friday Night Lights) hit a teenaged player. Make Vanessa Williams comfort Ugly Betty. Make House believe a patient when no one else does. Make good people do bad things, make bad people do good things, make someone do an unexpected thing… and then figure out the path that gets them there. Chances are, it’ll be an interesting story.

Lunch: stuffed jalapenos at Jack in the Box

You know one of the things I totally adore about The Office? Michael Scott is a really good salesman. He is an appalling boss, yes, but several times this year we have seen him sell paper really, really well. Every time it happens, I fall in love with the show all over again.

Michael is the embodiment of the Peter Principle. His competence as a salesman clearly got him promoted into exactly the job he cannot do. If he wasn’t a good salesman, we’d be wondering how he got his job at all. But the fact that Michael’s salesmanship makes logical sense isn’t the reason I love it. The fact that Michael is good at something makes him much realer, and *that* is what I love. Once I realized he could be competent, I wasn’t only more sympathetic toward him, but I also *believed* in him more. He was more like a real person, with lovely layers and contradictions and complexity. Wrinkles.

On The Office, these Michael moments have been lovely but small. However, moments in which unexpected – but plausible – traits are revealed in established characters are often among the most memorable moments in the history of a show. Sometimes, in fact, these moments are enormous, and get accomplished in “special episodes,” like Archie and Mike (“Meathead”) talking while locked in the basement on All In The Family, an episode that revealed a sympathetic, more humane Archie. This would be too heavy, too non-standard, for a spec. But often these moments are just right… they occur in ordinary episodes… the very best ordinary episodes. These are episodes that would have made the most wonderful spec scripts.

For example, the best-loved episode of Mary Tyler Moore is probably the one in which sweet, proper Mary laughs at a funeral. One of my all-time favorite M*A*S*H episodes is the one in which close-fisted Charles secretly makes a generous Christmas donation to the war orphans. The best episode of Lou Grant, in my opinion, is the one in which self-obsessed Rossi supports and listens to a colleague who is recovering from a rape — amazing television. And there was that stunner of a development on Battlestar last season, in which President Roslyn, our closest thing to a moral compass on that amazing show, tried to fix an election. It left me gasping.

Make a spec that does this, that reveals a shocking but believable new aspect to an established character… and you’ve really got something. Reveal the best part of your bad guy, the worst impulse of your hero, the serious side of your comic relief, the silliest moment of your stuffed-shirt or the paper-sellin’ soul of the incompetant boss. Go on, wrinkle ’em up.

Lunch: scrambled eggs with fried tortilla chips and hot sauce in ’em.

When I used to work on multi-camera half-hour shows, there was always a live audience. The audience was “warmed up” (or “alienated”) by a stand-up comic who entertained them and prepared them to do their part in the production. “Laugh when you HEAR the joke…” this person would always tell them, “…not when you GET the joke.” Oy.

I was reminded of that sentiment recently when I was watching television and saw a scene that bugged me. It was a scene of a group of people assembled around a television set, watching a news report on an event they all cared about. It appeared to have been scripted something like this:

REPORTER (ON TV)
…judge found the defendant not guilty, and in so doing concluded the trial that began nearly three long weeks ago.

The crowd watching ERUPTS into cheers and applause.

Really? They waited all the way until the end of that sentence? Really?! Hmm. People tend to react the moment they hear that one crucial piece of information. I think at the very least the line of stage direction here should have been changed to something like…

But we don’t hear much after “not guilty,” because the watching crowd has ERUPTED into cheers and applause.

The same principle applies to one-on-one conversations too.

You could write:

MARIE
I’m leaving you, and there’s nothing you can say to change my mind.

CHARLES
God, no. Wait. Marie– There has to be something…

But isn’t it more interesting and realer like this?

MARIE
I’m leaving you–

CHARLES
God, no.

MARIE
(forging ahead, talking over him)
Listen…

CHARLES
Please, wait…

MARIE
There’s nothing you can say to change my mind…

And this was without my even using dual dialogue, which can be great for this kind of thing, despite the awkwardness of dealing with it in Final Draft. (And my total inability to render at all in this blog.)

My point is to keep in mind that you can let characters react instantly to new news. Don’t feel that script format requires you to let everyone finish their thoughts. Cut ’em off or let people talk over each other. Your scripts will almost instantly gain a feeling of realism and you will be loved and praised.

Lunch: shabu shabu, beef and veggies dipped in boiling water and then swabbed through sauces… mmm.

Let’s talk about split-infinitives. The “rule” is that you’re not supposed to put stuff between the “to” part and the verb part of an infinitive verb. So “…boldly to go…” is fine, and “…to boldly go…” is wrong. “It’s great just to see you” is fine. “It’s great to just see you,” is wrong. Seem arbitrary and strange? Good, because it is.

I’ve been told that this rule has absolutely nothing to do with anything about the way English evolved or is structured, but was imposed on the language by scholars who felt English at its purest should work like Latin, in which the infinitive is a single word and cannot be split anyway. This, one should note, is a very silly reason to mess around with imposing rules on speakers of English.

But, now, here, finally, is the definitive reason to ignore the split-infinitive “rule.” Here’s a joke from a recent episode of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

Jon Stewart
(re: execution)
Wait– you were there?

John Oliver
Well, I didn’t spend Christmas in Baghdad to NOT go to a hanging.

Now, this isn’t a joke because of the split infinitive, exactly. It’s a joke because it presupposes the desirability of going to a hanging. But it is substantially less funny if the infinitive is left unmolested. (If you care why, it’s because this word order makes not-going-to-a-hanging into more of a cohesive little unit, treats it as a THING TO DO. And that’s what allows Oliver to dismiss it as a laughable thing to do, given any alternative.)

This is, of course, not the only example of this. You might have a jovial uncle who talks about how he likes to “go up to the lake to not fish.” Haw.

The point of all this? Tweak your jokes. Look for little rule-defying tricks like this. Be willing to grab the grammar and twist it a little bit to see if some sweet comedy drips out.

Lunch: The “Veggie Max” sandwich from Subway. I think that’s the name of it. It’s got things that look like veggie burger patties in it.

Quiz. What movie is this joke from?

– I trust this will have a soporific effect?

– I don’t know about that, but it sure does make you sleepy.

I’m sure you recognize the joke *form* right away. This is a “Gilligan.” Jokes of this form occurred regularly on Gilligan’s Island. It is a particularly cheap and silly sort of joke. This specific example, however, is actually from “Wit,” the play/movie about a woman dying of cancer. It occurs at a very sad moment in the story.

What I love about this example, and one of the things that I think makes it work in the script, is that the joke is *so* cheap, so simple, such a devalued joke form. When the characters laugh at the joke we realize how desperately they need to laugh. And that they’re partly laughing at themselves, at their need to laugh. It’s giddy; it’s desperate; it’s self-aware; it’s human. Powerful stuff.

It’s another good example of something I mentioned before, about making moments stronger through incongruity… look for that attitude or setting or event… some choice that that cuts against the expected, and exploit that gap in expectation. Break your readers’ hearts through silliness… it’s a surprisingly strong way to go about it.

Lunch: cheddar cheese and tortillas.

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