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When I decided to try to get onto the staff of a drama — when I set my sights on Buffy — I needed a drama spec. So I wrote a spec NYPD Blue. In it, I had Andy Sipowicz believe in the innocence of a young suspect. “If that boy’s guilty,” he told the lieutenant, “then he’s the best actor since Charles Bronson.” Later on, when Andy was alone with his partner, the partner turned to him and said “Charles Bronson?”

When I got my Buffy meeting, Joss talked with me about this spec. He loved the fact that Bronson was Andy’s yardstick of acting ability. He went on: “I know why you did it,” he said, “but I wish you didn’t have the second reference.” He was right. If I were writing a similar line today, I wouldn’t have the partner call Andy on it. The line was only there to call attention to the joke like a little arrow pointing back at it. It didn’t further the joke.

Watch out for this tendency to want to put arrows like this into your specs. For example, if you have a character say something like: “Half of me is touched and half is sad and the other half wants to kick her ass,” then it’s very tempting to have another character point out the arithmatic mistake. But the joke is almost always better, subtler, funnier, if it goes uncommented-upon. If you think it won’t be clear enough, call attention to it in a stage direction, as in “Marjorie hesitates, but doesn’t point out the arithmatic error.”

A joke that the reader misses will slide past them painlessly, but one that is over-explained, over-talked-about, will drive them nuts.

Lunch: The “Cabbo-Cobbo” salad at Poquito Mas

Hello again! I’m just back from a weekend trip to Las Vegas. It was 113 degrees there! I was outside for less than a minute, but the experience was very similar to being ironed. It was fun to laugh and exclaim and run from the air-conditioned interior of Treasure Island to the air-conditioned interior of the Venetian, but if I’d been outside any longer, the fun would have evaporated, along with all the moisture in my eyeballs.

Fun often depends on the amount of time spent doing something.

Shelah from Studio City writes to talk about the evaporation of her fun. She actually asks another question in the letter, which I will get to in another post, but along the way she makes this observation about what happens as one writes more and more spec scripts, and I just had to comment. She writes:

“… quite frankly, this whole experience has sort of made me lose confidence in my skills. Instead of getting better, I feel I have regressed. When I wrote my Sopranos, I didn’t know all the rules, just the basics, but at least I was having fun. But now, knowing the rules, I am always second guessing myself.”

Raise your hands if you’re with Shelah. Holy cow, that’s a lot of you. I went through this same thing myself. When I wrote my Star Trek: TNG scripts it was like writing Fan Fic. There was an almost guilty pleasure in the doing of it. I can control the characters and make them say whatever I want? I can make anything happen? *Anything*? Whee! It’s like making your Ken dolls kiss each other!

Then you slowly start to realize how much you don’t know. And you second guess yourself. And everything you write starts feeling formulaic and stilted, while your original stuff had this great original chaotic surprising rhythm that you’ve lost.

Well, the horrible truth is, if you’re writing a spec of an existing show, you’re not really being asked to demonstrate an original chaotic rhythm. You’re supposed to capture the existing rhythm of the show. A spec pilot can have more chaos in it, but it still will benefit from learning about structure and act breaks and all that. So some of what was lost was an illusion to begin with. What felt like unrestrained exuberance to you might have looked like an unmade bed to a reader. I’m sure that’s of tremendous comfort. Ah, well. There’s always real Fan Fic if you want to run wild. (If you don’t know about Fan Fic, google it. An interesting subculture or subgenre.)

But can it still be fun, coloring-within-the-lines? Yep. It sure can. When you get more comfortable with the skills and techniques, you stop second guessing yourself because you’re confident in your choices. And then you can have creative fun while still playing by the rules.

Be patient. Everyone goes through this. I think, in fact, that this is the bit of the process that separates the writers from the dreamers. Push through this part, and it’ll all get better. Really. Every script I write has at least a couple scenes in it that make me genuinely joyous.

Lunch: One bite each of every kind of food in the world from “Cravings” buffet at the Mirage. Try the bao.

There’s a radio ad that’s playing a lot these days during my commute and it’s driving me crazy. I bet you can figure out why. Here’s the offensive excerpt. A wife and husband are complaining about how busy they are:

WIFE
… we hardly have time to breathe!

HUSBAND
Oh, don’t worry, honey. I’ve got breathing scheduled for, oh, let’s see… SOME TIME NEXT WEEK!

At this point I grip the steering wheel, clench my teeth, and swear a bit. What’s wrong, of course, is that the joke is already well over by the time he gets to the (shouted) last four words. It’s certainly over by the word “scheduled,” and you could even make the case that the joke is contained entirely in the wife’s line. After all, the funny is limited to the notion of a busy schedule interfering with breathing, which is the whole and sole point of her line. Of course, her line isn’t funny because it’s so familiar it’s almost a cliche. Aaaaarhgh!

Stuff like this is one of the reasons that I’m not opposed to thinking about jokes, to analyzing them. Things like this can be avoided if you notice where the joke breaks — where is the laugh? What is the humorous concept? You can certainly continue a line past that point, but you shouldn’t expect to still get laughs out of the same joke once it’s over.

This excerpt, by the way, is a perfect example of something that has the rhythm of a joke, even though it’s not really a joke… the pause before those final four words, the husband’s feigned hesitation (“let’s see…”), the sudden increase in volume… that’s rhythm stuff. The more you invest in a big shiny rhythm like that, the more you need to have a punch line that pays off. A huge shiny box better have a nice present inside, that’s all I’m saying.

Lunch: roast chicken and yams at the NBC commissary. Good!

This is a bite-sized post, designed to go along with a full-sized working day. I noticed something interesting in the funnies of the LA Times yesterday. Two, count ’em, two references to the movie “Deliverance.” That was 1972, people! 1972! What is it that makes this movie memorable enough that it can be casually referenced in 2006, with a general expectation of having the reference understood?

Shock. Shock is memorable. When you’re coming up with the story for your spec, it wouldn’t hurt if there was a little something extra zingy in it. Sometimes, an attempt to come up with a story that the show could actually produce results in a bland, middle-of-the-road spec. This isn’t very memorable. Remember that you’re trying to write something that looks like the *very best* episodes the show ever does. A hint of shock might be just what you need to put your story over the top.

Lunch: lobster bisque, croque monsieur

Hi! Last time I asked if y’all know why Dr. House is named “House.” Maybe this is common knowledge, and I suppose it’s possible that it’s apocryphal. But here’s what I heard. I heard that “House” is like “Homes,” i.e. “Holmes.” Hee! Isn’t that great?

Those of you writing spec pilots will have to name all your characters. You others will have to name guest characters. It’s worth really spending some time on this. I like to do a little research about names that were popular in certain years. If your character was born in the sixties, he’ll have a different first name, most likely, than someone born in the eighties. It used to be that every inappropriately young wife or girlfriend on television was named “Heather.” But now, Heathers are older than they used to be. Believe it or not, I suspect Hannahs are the vixens now!

And then there are those subliminal names, like House. And I’ve always thought that Detective Stabler on Law and Order: SVU was probably named that to suggest to the audience that, compared to his partner, he was… stabler. (This was true in the very earliest episodes. He got less stable later on.) Then there’s sunny blonde Buffy Summers. The Gilmore family on Gilmore Girls was named after a wealthy family from Los Angeles history. The associations can be personal to you, or used to suggest a personality, or your certain dream casting of the role, or you can simply pick a name that feels “real” to you.

The only thing I would suggest that you avoid is something too overt, like a villain named “Blackheart” or, you know, “Underhand.” And watch out for names that sound too much like they were inspired by other people’s characters. I was once chided (chid?) for naming a rich girl something like “Angelica Cathcart.” It was just too romance novel-y, fakey, and horrible. I cringe.

Sometimes, finding the right name will inspire you. I recently was struggling with a character until I decided she was named Jeremie. Something about that struck me just exactly right, and I saw her much more clearly.

Lunch: It was the first-day lunch at Andy Barker PI, so we were all taken out for a fancy lunch at Arnie Morton’s. I had the steak salad. Lovely.

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