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Here’s something I’ve seen happen over and over again when I’ve been working on a writing staff. Sometimes a change has to be made that we’re not excited about. Maybe we couldn’t get a location that we wanted, or we have to make a night scene into a day scene to fit the shooting schedule. Or maybe it’s an actual creative note that we don’t all agree with, but that we’ve agreed to do. But whatever it is, imagine that it requires a bit of reworking. So we go back in and rewrite the scene.

Here’s the weird thing. Often, although not always, the scene gets better almost in spite of itself. I mean you *know* it’s not a brilliant note. Sometime you don’t agree with the note at all, in principle. But, the mere process of rewriting sometimes — often — leads to improvements. I think this is simply because everyone knows the script so much better with every pass through it.

I suspect you might find this to be the case with spec writing, too, although it’s certainly harder to set up the right circumstances — you don’t have to worry about locations, shooting schedules or network notes. But at least this should make you, I hope, feel a bit better about diving back into a scene for the dozenth time after you realize on your own that something needs fixing.

Remember, just because writing a scene took some labor, it doesn’t mean that it will *sound* belabored.

Lunch: Fresh-baked mincemeat pie. Fantastic. Traditionally, mincemeat had actual meat or suet in it, but now there is no reason to be afraid. It’s apples and raisins and such, highly spiced. You’d like it just fine.

A simple post in praise of the holiday season. Because of the Peace and Love? Sure, fine. AND because this can be a wonderful time to get some writing done. The spec that started everything for me was the second of the three Star Trek: The Next Generation specs that I wrote. I wrote it over a Christmas break during grad school.

I know that a lot of you are in college. Those of you who have just finished a round of exams and find yourself with a bit of time and some mental ease, might consider doing some writing. Not stressy, gotta-get-it-done writing, but fun writing. I remember working on that Trek spec, pen-on-paper, smiling to myself. I was just playing around with scenes, having fun moving the characters around like hand puppets. Stranded in an airport? Bored in Grandma’s guest room? Looking for an excuse to stay home from caroling in the bitter cold? I recommend writing a spec Heroes — could anything be more festive?

Lunch: Cup o’ Noodles has these great varieties now — I assume these are new? All picante chicken and spicy lime shrimp or whatever. I had one of those. It still benefited from adding lemon juice, but it was an excellent start.

Casting sessions are videotaped. The camera is turned on for the few minutes of each actor’s audition, creating a fascinating video document of the same few lines over and over with a different actor performing them every time. I mentioned casting tapes to an actor friend of mine who startled me by mentioning that actors would be helped by seeing such tapes. I was startled not because I didn’t get the concept. The concept is crystal clear — see what a producer sees and you’ll become better at impressing producers. I was startled because it had never occurred to me that actors wouldn’t have already seen such tapes for exactly that reason.

Similarly, I became much more confident about writing pilot scripts after I started routinely reading, every year, every script that the networks ordered produced as a pilot. I could pretend I was the network, make my own decisions about which scripts “popped,” which ones had the elements that could make them work as a series — and which ones seemed to me to have taken wrong turns, and I could think about all of that when I was writing my own.

In both the casting-tape and pilot-script scenario, there is something incredibly helpful about seeing other peoples’ mistakes. This is an opportunity you don’t often get — you only see the actor who got the role, the pilot that became a show. But wouldn’t it be nice to learn from mistakes without having to be the one who makes the darn things?!

So, after all this time in which I’ve repeatedly urged you all to read produced scripts of a series, I’m going to expand that mandate. Read specs too. If you’re already in Los Angeles, it should be pretty easy to find a group (like The Scriptwriters Network) of writers with specs you can trade and collect, while also getting valuable feedback on your own specs. If you’re elsewhere, you might have to find other spec writers over the net, but I suspect that won’t be hard. Agree to give your suggestions, and to listen to those of others.

Now read the specs and think like a showrunner. Which ones manage to sound like the show and which ones do not? After all this time that I’ve warned against building a spec around a guest character, you’ll be able to actually see the effect that’s created, because I’m pretty sure that *someone* in your circle will have done exactly that. In fact, you will have access to a whole garden of mistakes that you can avoid!

Also, you’ll have a better sense of when your spec is finished, since you’ll have already scouted the competition and you’ll know what you have to be better than.

Lunch: sushi at Echigo — Mmm!

I was at my local coffee shop just now where they’re stocking lots of mugs and coffee kits or whatever, hoping for holiday sales. My eye fell upon a mug that read “Happiness is a Journey not a Destination”. I was filled with sadness/anger. That is too meaningful a sentiment to fall into common usage. I suppose it’s too late, but that is not a thought that I want to see degenerate into meaningless syllables through overuse. I suppose, if it does (or already has), as least it has the virtue of being true, unlike “Everything Happens for a Reason,” which is both untrue and dangerous. Really, have you ever heard a slogan that argues more against the concept of free will? Against any notion of self-determination, ambition or even charity, empathy, compassion? It’s just an inch away from “Nothing I Do Matters” and “Whatever Happens, You Deserved It,” and their neighbor “I Got Mine, You Get Yours.” Geez.

Thinking about world views like these isn’t a bad place to start looking for meaning for your spec scripts. After all, the thing that will make your spec stand out above all the others is that yours is going to MEAN something. What makes Groundhog Day a spectacular movie and not just a fun one is that isn’t really about time loops, it’s about living every day AS IF you had eternity in front of you… in fact, you could argue that Groundhog Day EQUALS Happiness is a Journey.

Your script shouldn’t preach. And it doesn’t have to be about a big principle either. It can be about a small observation. But it needs to be about something, and it would be nice if it was something you really believed. Think about your personal philosophy and the philosophies of the characters you’re writing about. What principles guide Gregory House? (“Compassion Blunts Excellence”? “Distance Lessens Pain”?) What events would bring out or test those guiding principles?

By the time you’re done writing, the meaningful underpinnings may be so subtle that the “about” is almost subconscious. But it’s going to serve you well to have it there.

Lunch: Udon with Mentaiko — do you know this? A hot Japanese noodle soup with a sort of casing full of fish roe in it? Like noodles with caviar. Fantastic.

More and more writers seem to be doing what I do, namely, moving back and forth between writing for hour dramas and writing for half-hour comedies. Maybe this will ultimately result in more similarities between the way the two kinds of shows are written. But for now, there are still some stark differences.

Unlike drama writers, comedy writers spend a lot of time looking at dialogue *together*. This is because comedy staffs do the group-rewrite thing, going through every line of the script over and over as a group, usually while looking at it projected on a monitor in the writers’ room. Lots of time is spent changing jokes, looking for a funnier take on a situation. But I would estimate that just as much time is spent on minor wording tweaks. Usually, this involves removing words, looking for the fastest, tightest version of any line, whether it’s a joke or not.

Tightening lines like that is especially important for comedy, where timing is an integral part of the whole point of the exercise. As a spec writer, you don’t have the — advantage? distraction? — of a whole room full of people chiming in on the best way to tighten a line, so you have to do it on your own. It’s worth making a whole separate pass through your script, just looking for words to cut.

Do you have someone saying: “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”? Does it maybe work better as, “I’ve been sayin’!”? In comedy, faster is almost always better (there are exceptions, but in general, fast = good). Make the cut.

Drama doesn’t rely as crucially on speed, but timing is still important, and lengthy chunks of speech tend to be boring, and intimidating to the eye of the reader. It’s not as important, I would say, in drama, to shorten an eight-word sentence to three words, but it’s really important to shorten a five-sentence speech down to two sentences.

Remember, it’s a sculpture and you’re Michelangelo. Chisel away enough stone and there might be a naked guy inside.

Lunch: poached eggs on a bed of spicy Indian beans

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