JaneEspenson.com

Hi all! I just got an interesting question in a letter from Lilia in Houston! She asks about my writing space: What’s on my desk? And do I listen to music, eat, take breaks etc? Well, this is a fine opportunity to talk about how there’s no magic formula.

My main laptop computer has died, so now I’m using my old back-up laptop, which doesn’t have a wireless card. So I’m umbilically tethered to a dealy in the corner. I am now — and always — lying on my back on the floor in the corner of my living room, head propped up against an ottoman, computer on my raised knees, typing while I built a neat wall of blankets and candy wrappers around me. This, as you might guess, is not ideal. Ideally, I would be wireless, which would mean I could do exactly the same thing, but from over there, on the sofa. Notice that I do not have a desk at home. I like writing when it feels… I guess… like lolling on a bed, writing in a diary or something. Like doing something fun. Offices and desks feel like work. If I feel the urge to be really structured, I will go to the library and work there in the Reference Room, with the long tables and the hushed clicking of all other laptops. (I have a desk at work, of course, but I do the vast majority of my writing elsewhere, almost always at home.)

I take frequent breaks to trundle around on the internet or eat Doritos or watch an episode of The Office, but I never keep the TV or music on once I actually start typing. Voices distract me completely. Sometimes I write early in the morning, sometimes I stay up late writing… I have no real pattern.

So forget all that stuff about having to have a writing schedule, or the discipline to work for long stretches of time, or even about having a comfortable and well-ordered working environment. All you know about the people who make those statements is that *they* require those things. If you’re happy writing on the bus, or writing everything in notebooks before you type it, or writing while blasting rockabilly on your ipod, or writing with small children rampaging around you… do it! If sitting at a desk looking at a neat row of sharpened pencils sets your teeth on edge, go slump in an armchair. Don’t worry about your posture — your mom’s not there!

And, as long as I’m answering a question from a letter, I should let you all know that not every letter that I receive gets an answer here. This usually means that I don’t know the answer, and can’t begin to know how to address the question — although I’m always delighted to have received the question. (I keep the letters I can’t answer, by the way, in case I get some kind of insight later.) Sometimes I don’t know the answer because the question is about a topic I’ve never given enough thought to, and sometimes it’s because the question is beyond the scope of the blog. I try to limit myself to topics that relate to the writing of spec scripts. So bigger questions about getting agents, finding contests, finding work… these are simply things I don’t feel qualified to answer other than pointing at my own past and squeaking helpfully that the Disney (ABC) Writing Fellowship got me started. My expertise, I’m not afraid to tell you, ends at the edge of the page.

So keep writing to me… and if you don’t see an answer appear here — well, I guess it’s kind of like winning “stump the band.”

Lunch: a BLT on toasted rye and a lemonade at Bob’s Big Boy. I don’t think rye is the traditional bread for a BLT, but it was very nice together.

Yowza! ANOTHER “I wish I’d written that” situation. This time, it comes from Friend-of-the-Blog Maggie, who posts this wonderful entry about jumpstarting the creative process. This list is so good I’m going to go do all of these things at once — you’ll find me asleep on a train. Seriously, check it out.

And while you’re there, look at some other entries too. Maggie does a great job of reminding us (well, me, certainly) that the writing process is *fun*, that there’s a reason we have picked this. This is a staggeringly important thing to keep in mind.

And it brings me to something else. I’ve been banging my head against a certain scene in my pilot. It was just too long, featured incidental characters whom we aren’t really invested in, and was so packed full of pipe that it simply couldn’t get much shorter. And of course, attempting to shorten it just meant that I took out all the jokes and character moments, which made all the pipe that much pipier… oh, it was awful. And suddenly, yesterday… brainstorm. The scene disappeared. The same information is now delivered by some of our regular characters in a fast-moving series of intercuts between two separate scenes about emotional manipulation, instead of just about information-imparting. Ahhh. That feels better.

Whenever a scene fights you to that extent, when it simply refuses to get written, take a step back and make sure there isn’t something you can do to get rid of the scene. EVERY scene should have a reason to exist beyond moving the story. And once you find that reason, it won’t just be easier to write — it’ll be fun to write.

Lunch: Leftovers from a delightful meal I called in from Acapulco (the chain restaurant) last night… enchiladas and beans and rice. Mm.

Okay. So now I look a bit silly. I posted an entry, not too long ago, about how it would be shmuck-baity, and therefore bad, to write a spec episode of The Office in which the threat was the closure of the Scranton branch. I made this claim, I believe, on the basis that “taint gonna happen.” And yet, and yet… that was the initial threat in the last episode of the show itself.

This leaves me with two points to make in my own defense:

1. This particular threat was actually removed fairly early in the episode, as the story moved on to what it was really about, which was, as it should be, the characters. The A-story was about Michael’s genuine loyalty to his team, which totally trumped his douchiness in this episode. And the B-story was about whether or not Jim and Pam would be re-united.

And…

2. As I have also pointed out recently, the writers of a show can do things that the writer of a spec cannot. This was one of those episodes that shakes up a show, that changes the status quo. This is a very difficult, and generally discouraged, thing to attempt in a spec of an existing show.

So now I’m only feeling a little bit silly. And totally psyched about Jim and Pam.

Lunch: two hard-boiled eggs, cheese and crackers

So I’m finally watching the pilot of “Friday Night Lights.” Fantastic. There’s some lovely writing in there. There’s a lot of that thing where you’re being forced to make inferences about who people are and how they’re connected without ever being told anything overt, and there’s just enough info so you can get a handle on it without it ever feeling engineered. And overlapping dialogue, I’m always such a sucker for that and never feel like I use it enough. And strong regional voices and funny moments that never feel jokey. I finally had to turn it off. I’ll go back to it later, but right now it’s beating up my self-esteem. Sometimes watching something really good is inspiring. Sometimes it’s paralytic, because you end up staring at your own words and muttering, “Why aren’t you better?”

So, reasoning from this experience, you know what you might find fun and inspirational? Read something bad. Something really bad. It doesn’t have to be in script format — in fact it’s likely not to be. Look for something abominable — there’s loads of it on the web. Read someone’s first try at Simon and Simon fanfic or whatever. Find something really bad and truly roll around it in.

What you’re going to notice are all the things that you do really well. The things you do so well that you don’t even think about them anymore. The mistakes you don’t make — totally on-the-nose dialog, stories with no events in them, characters who are clearly awkward stand-ins for the author of the story. If you’re writing spec scripts, you aren’t sitting at a keyboard for the first time, pushing the notion of fiction around in your brain like an interesting new insect. You’ve either learned, or have always instinctively known, things about writing that others don’t (yet) have access to. It can be very encouraging to remind yourself of all the things you know, all the weapons you have in your arsenal, to look back at the road you’ve traveled to get here.

By the way, it’s possible this is terrible advice. Most teachers point to the inspirational power of great works, not to the power of “at least I didn’t write that.” But sometimes terrible advice might be just what you need!

Lunch: fake veggie pork sausage and fake eggs. I need to buy some real food.

Let’s suppose you’re creating a lead character for your spec pilot. You know you want to give him something to want (a possession, a person, a goal, an accomplishment, a state of mind..). And you know you also want to give him some kind of vulnerability to make him lovable, and to make the audience worry about him.

Well, once you’ve given him that thing to want — hey! — you’ve got vulnerability built in! The fear of not getting it, of getting it and losing it, of not being worthy of it, of having it stolen, of realizing it’s not a worthy goal, of realizing it doesn’t exist, all these are really cool vulnerabilities. And, most importantly, you get to play with what the character has to endure or to risk to go after that thing that they want. Every desire brings vulnerability with it.

So when you’re building that character, don’t just think about the thing they want, but think about how wanting that thing makes them vulnerable. A great example of this is the main character in Ugly Betty. Betty wants a career in publishing, and to get it she’s willing to put herself into a world where she’s open to ridicule every day. Totally vulnerable, totally lovable. Come to think of it, it’s the same formula that makes American Idol such a juggernaut: kids enduring insults and talent limitations in pursuit of a dream! The pain is part of the wanting. The pain IS the wanting.

Now, not every character is as transparent as Betty or Clay Aiken. What House wants is more complicated, since I don’t think he knows what it is that he really wants (peace in the form of loving acceptance, I’d say, but I’m a big softie). But, anyway, the Betty model is a pretty darn useful one.

Lunch: chili with artichoke hearts topped with avocado

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