JaneEspenson.com

Hello, Gentle Readers! I just spent a wonderful weekend on board the Queen Mary, where I was a guest at a convention for Buffy fans and, specifically, fans of James Marsters (Spike). Oh, what fun! Buffy fans are generous and amazing. Plus, the green room for us presenters was the ship’s old boiler room. It was cavernous and dark and musty and full of clanky noises and creepy echoes and ramps that led down into murky shadows and floorless floors. Atmosphere like you wouldn’t believe. I loved it.

One fan asked me whether I preferred writing drama or comedy, and I said I loved them both. Thinking about it now, I realize that was a pretty useless answer. I love them differently. The way a person might love both artichokes and throw pillows, you know?

And it occurs to me that some of you out there may be trying to decide this same question for yourself. So I’m gonna lay out some of the nature of the contrast. Comedy is funny. Ha! No, there’s more!

First off, comedy is a hard, hard world right now. No jobs to be had. And the ones that do exist are being given to all the experienced comedy writers who have development deals; the studio is invested in keeping us working. But this will change, I am convinced — the pendulum will swing and comedy will ride again. Since comedy writing is harder, there is something to be said for having a good solid comedy spec all ready to show off that skill, if you have it.

The working experiences on the two kinds of shows are totally different. Comedy writing is vastly more of a team experience. Every line is evaluated as a group, and most jokes get rewritten. This is true for both single-camera shows (like Earl), and multi-camera shows (like Two and a Half Men). Often, the script that is currently being rewritten is projected on a TV screen in the writers’ room, and the writers all shout out their suggestions for gutting– improving it. When a change meets the approval of the show runner, the writers’ assistant types it into the script.

The comedy room tends to be a loud and riotous place — lots of shouting and laughing. One notable exception I’ve heard about was the Frasier room, which was, by all accounts, quiet and thoughtful.

Drama writing is much more of an individual pursuit, and often the show runner is the only one who changes your lines. Some drama shows don’t even have a writers’ room at all — the writers rarely or never assemble to discuss stories together. House, I understand, works this way. When a change is mandated, the writer goes home (or to her office) and makes the change herself.

You probably already know, at this point, which kind of writing appeals to you more. If you were the class clown, and always found yourself getting funnier when other funny people were around, if you enjoy ‘topping’ someone else’s joke, if you like the verbal by-play, then you are a comedy writer. Now, you might also be a comedy writer if you’re more introspective, and are funny on the page if not in person… that can work too. That’s more like me. But the comedy rooms of Hollywood tend to be more frequently populated by the first type. These kinds of writers often cringe at the thought of the drama writer’s lonely and contemplative life. And they often don’t like the idea that they won’t get to weigh in on their colleagues’ scripts. The collaboration in a comedy room gives the entire staff more of a sense of ownership of *all* the episodes, which is usually lacking in drama.

If you find jokes mysterious, or if you insist on a certain level of taste and respect, then stick with drama, and don’t even bother with a comedy spec. You might be able, though hard work and study, to cobble one together, but it’ll be really hard to follow it up. And you’ll probably find the environment of the room nerve-wracking.

So, which do I like better? Well, I think I like the center of a continuum that slides along from pure procedural drama to really broad jokey comedy. I love watching Law and Order, and I love watching Family Guy. But one is too far to the ‘drama’ side and one is too far to the ‘comedy’ side, for me as a writer. I like the middle: comedies with grounded characters that are willing to let us have an emotion or two, and dramas that show us the world complete with a sense of humor.

And, of course, I like aliens and robots. Everyone likes aliens and robots.

Lunch: A peanut butter cookie and a cappucino from the deli on The Queen Mary.

I love writers’ room terminology. I felt like I was part of a room for the first time when, on Dinosaurs, I said that a certain line “didn’t bump me.” Meaning that I wasn’t bothered by a potential misunderstanding or problem with the line. It was actually heady, like speaking French in France for the first time. Like, “let’s try this out and see if it really works.”

“Handle” is one of my favorite writing terms, and one of the most common. It refers to those words at the beginning of a line of dialogue. Handles include, but aren’t limited to:

Well, Look, Listen, Hey, Oh, Say, Um, Actually, So, Now, I mean, C’mon, Anyway, Yeah, You know, and the name of any character used when speaking to that character.

I hear that some show runners object to handles in general, and will cut all of them out. I heard today about an editor who did the same thing when cutting episodes. But usually, handles are freely employed, with certain limits.

The most common thing to look out for is adjacent use of the same handle. It’s not uncommon for a room filled with comedy writers to look up at the screen and realize that the last four lines of dialogue all started with “Well.” Keep an eye out for this as you write your script. Mix it up.

There is another, more subtle problem with some handles. I just had this pointed out to me today, in fact, and I think it’s so interesting, I have to tell you. Look at this exchange:

CHARACTER ONE
I think I’ve lost weight, don’t you?

CHARACTER TWO
Actually, I think you might’ve found it again.

(Remember, this is demonstration comedy, not actual comedy.)

Certain handles, like “actually” and, sometimes, “well” are used to contradict the previous line. That means that when Character Two starts the line with “actually,” the reader/audience already knows they’re about to hear a contradiction. In the example I’ve given, they know, in fact, that they’re about to hear a slam.

On some shows, you can actually hear a studio audience anticipating a slam. They hear the “actually” and start laughing.

A writer in my room pointed this out today, that “actually” anticipates the turn. He argued that leaving off the handle in this case leads to a sharper, smarter joke, since the audience doesn’t get ahead of it. I agree. Reread the lame demonstration joke without the “actually.” It’s still lame, but isn’t it –fractionally — just a little bit sharper?

Now, some of you may have a different aesthetic. It wouldn’t be crazy to argue that audiences enjoy knowing a joke is on the way. You will have to decide for yourself which kind of writer you are.

But for me, I plan to start cutting “actually.”

Lunch: a pastrami reuben sandwich. Some element of the sandwich was unusually sweet. I have to say, I did not enjoy it.

Hello, Gentle Readers! I have to tell you, I’ve been wracking my tiny brain, trying to come up with more to say about writing using metaphors and analogies. I talked about it a while back, and Ingrid from Germany has asked me to say more on the topic. I haven’t, until now, simply because I couldn’t think of more to say.

What I said so far was that analogies can be useful both in stage directions and in dialogue. In stage directions they allow you to economically and often humorously capture the effect you want. Something like:

As Gloria enters the party, the sea of guests parts for her as if she were an ocean liner.

And in dialogue, they can quickly give a quirky touch to any character, and they allow the audience a peek into the character’s mental process. Here is the sort of thing a character might say, employing a common metaphor:

GUY
It’s like, no matter how high I climb on the career ladder, the only view I get is of the bottom of the next person up.

What more, I wondered, could I possibly say? Ingrid wanted to know, in particular, about how to train oneself to think in terms of metaphor. Hmm. I guess… look at stuff and think about how it’s like other stuff? I was stumped.

But, upon more thought, I remembered that I know a lot more about metaphor and analogy than just that! Notice that in both these examples, something complex is described in terms of something simple and concrete. That’s how metaphor works. Metaphor exists to allow us to conceptualize complex things in a simpler way. The movement of a crowd at a party is complex… so many separate individuals with their own motions. But the image of the ship cutting through the sea is visually simple.

And career advancement being mapped as upward movement, specifically as movement on a ladder? Again, complexity becomes simple, physical, concrete.

If you find yourself wanting to employ metaphor in your writing, and you feel that it’s not coming naturally to you, look for moments where you’re struggling with the complexity of what you want to say. Is there a mapping you can construct such that the complex situation can be understood in terms of a simpler one? If so, it might be a good moment for a metaphor.

Here’s another example. A character talking about how angry they are might easily sound boring if they just say “God! I’m so angry!” You want to know how it FEELS. But how do you do that? Wouldn’t it be clearer if that emotion were somehow understandable as a physical object?

DR. CHARACTER
God! I’m so angry you could see it on a MRI!

Hmm. The notion of anger as a sort of mass inside you. That’s physical, understandable, and a bit quirky.

Metaphors. Making the complex simple. Buy some today.

Lunch: I was home sick today, eating grocery store sushi. Not too bad. Feeling better.

Is there a moment in your spec script in which your main character takes a big decisive action that changes everything? Probably, huh?

If your spec script were being filmed, the actor and director and editor would extend that moment. Music, camera work, acting would all come together, and the audience couldn’t possibly miss that something huge was going on.

But unless you get lucky, and the person reading your spec happens to be listening to a providentially synched-up iPod, you won’t have the advantage of any of that great stuff.

So here’s a great place to use a big obvious stage direction. Something like:

Ralph takes a breath and squares his shoulders. His moment has come.

Or

Tony picks up the shovel and turns slowly to face Marjorie. He knows what he has to do.

Or

Bethany whirls toward the door, her eyes wild. For the first time, she’s acting without thinking, doing the right thing without overanalyzing it.

I know these examples sound a bit over-dramatic, lying here all defenseless and out of context. They may even seem to violate a principle of screenwriting as taught to you by others, in that they essentially tell the reader what to feel. So what? Telling a reader what to feel *is* telling them what to see, because these directions are the equivalent of heroic camera angles and all those filmic tricks. They help a reader understand your story.

And they can have a bit of poetry to them, as well, which gives you a chance to show off your confidence with manipulating prose. And any time you can demonstrate confidence, your perceived competence goes up. Niiiice.

Lunch: focaccia and hummus from California Pizza Kitchen.

Well, well, well. I was doing some housecleaning today, and lookee at what I found. Some of my old spec scripts. My Frasier, my Larry Sanders, and the best of my three Star Trek:TNG scripts. The Trek spec is dated January 15, 1991. Yikes! Can that be right? Holy cow.

Looking through the Trek (titled “Ruling Passions”), I was both gratified and horrified. The dialogue is pretty good, with some humor that made me chuckle, although the lines are way too long. And the ideas are solid — the concept of the episode works. But the script is so darn talky!!

Which leads us to the main problem. (Drumroll…) Nothing happens! The A story is about Data the android being given a guided tour through a set of emotion-building exercises by a hologram of the man who created him. Fun, but full of theorizing about emotions and neural pathways and the role of irrationality in evolution. A story this internal and analytical needs to be put together with an action-packed B story to provide the thrills and chills.

The B story is about Captain Picard and the other bridge officers trying to extract a stranded Vulcan scientist from a small battle-damaged research vessel. They talk, and puzzle, and futz around with this and that, until they finally succeed in beaming the entire small ship into the cargo bay, where it is revealed that it was in fact a disguised Romulan warship! Pretty exciting no? Pretty exciting yes, except that this happens on page 43!! In the middle of an act! The only surprising event in the whole story, and I didn’t even get an act break out of it.

This happened because I did not adequately outline my story. I didn’t have a developed sense, yet, of how many pages it would take to cover the events I had picked. So I wrote things too long in the front part of the script, and rushed them in the back part, and simply popped the act breaks in where the page numbers dictated them. Oh, I blush to think of it.

This would all have been avoided if I had studied produced episodes with more care. I should’ve converted produced episodes back into an approximation of their original outlines. Then I could have made sure my outline had the same amount of “event,” spread out over the same number of scenes.

The bright side is, this script was good enough that I got that magic phone call from Trek that started my career. So as bad as this spec was, structurally, there must’ve been plenty that were worse. Which leaves you, gentle readers, with two options: work hard to perfect your specs, or gamble on the incompetence of others.

Or both. There’s nothing wrong with doing both!

Lunch: A BLT from Johnny Rockets and a chocolate coke. (For our Croatian readers, that’s a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, a traditional and beloved combination. It’s like meat-salad on toast!)

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