JaneEspenson.com

There was a child in the hair salon this morning. So instead of the normal ennui-athon of Paris fashion show footage, the DVD player had been loaded with episodes of an animated superhero show, for said child’s entertainment. The show was not the one I’ve written for, but I liked it. It was witty, even. I was quite happy, being placidly shorn while I listened.

And then we got to the very last line of the show. It was one of those shows that has to sum everything up at the end with a contemplative voice-over line that begins, “That’s the thing about life…” (By the way, it’s worth googling “that’s the thing about life”. Apparently, there are 932 of them.)

This one went, as near as I can recall:

SUPERHERO
That’s the thing about life. It just keeps going along, and no matter what you do about it, there’s always something that you didn’t know was going to happen.

Actually, I think it had less content than that. It was certainly that what-inducing. And it occurs to me that a lot of scripts, for all different sorts of shows, often for spec pilots, have such a summing-up moment at the end, and that you all should be warned to be very, very careful with it. First off, be very wary of using a narrator voice-over to begin with, but sometimes even a script without one will still have a moment like this in which the theme of the script is explicitly stated. Watch out. It’s a minefield.

If you decide to do this, you really have to earn it. You can’t just look at your story and come up with the vaguest possible aphorism that covers both the A and B stories. Even a great story will fall on its face if it turns out that the whole thing existed as an illustration of “Life is surprising,” or “I wish things were fairer!” And, by the way, it’s totally cheating to make the moral, “Sometimes we can’t explain why things happen,” in the hopes that it will excuse unmotivated events in your script. Nice try. (No really. It actually IS a nice try.)

If you’re going to try to give your readers a moral gift bag, it has to be something worth taking away, something a little surprising, something that connects with what the readers have just seen in a slightly unexpected way. For example, I might be intrigued by a story that ended with two main characters walking away from a big climactic scene while saying:

HERO ONE
I did everything I could to try to help him. I don’t get why he was still angry.

HERO TWO
Maybe ’cause you wouldn’t stop trying to help him.

It’s still a bit heavy-handed. Summing up is a heavy-handed business. But the observation that treating someone, even a victim, AS a victim, doesn’t always breed gratitude — that’s at least not a sentiment you hear every day. It’s a little unusual, a little thoughtful. It’s also not being expressed in a voice-over, which helps it not feel as weighty.

See, that’s the thing about life, sometimes you need more than a vague platitude.

Lunch: A Vietnamese dish — rice noodles and pork and shrimp. Mmm.

Eric in West Hollywood wrote in a very long time ago, with a question that I’m finally getting around to answering. He asks about the act structure for a one-hour drama. Eric:

In your opinion are five acts a blip or a trend? If I’m writing a [spec] pilot, should I write it in four acts? And which act break is the most important?

Ooh, those are great questions. Most hour shows seem to have gone to the five-act structure now, although the show I’m currently working on (Battlestar), is still holding to the older four-act structure. It’s hard to tell, of course, if something is a blip until it blips out, but I think this has the feel of a something more permanent. Networks like commercial breaks and they like a longer opening sequence to hook viewers, and those impulses have created the additional act. (I hear that some shows are even toying with a six-act structure, although I wonder if, in that case, maybe that first act feels a bit like a teaser and that last act like a tag.)

The nice thing for you spec pilot writers is that the transition is still transitioning. You can choose with complete freedom whether to tell your show with four or five acts. I’d suggest that you let your story determine that. Look at how many times it turns, and number your acts accordingly.

As to the most important act break, that’s a very interesting question. I’m going to rephrase it a bit, and ask how the four-act act breaks line up with the five-act act breaks. Traditionally, the end of act one is the moment that defines the main problem of the script — the obstacle the characters face. This should still be the end of act one, certainly not any later. The end of act three in a traditional four-act show is often the “all is lost” act break. I’d suggest that the end of act four plays this role in a five-act show, certainly you don’t want it earlier. So it’s not that you’re tacking on an extra act of set-up at the beginning, nor an extra act of resolve at the end. The new act is made out of the cloth in the middle.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to get more specific than that, because shows differ so much in what they require out of an “act break moment,” so you’ll have to do some exploration of this on your own, by playing with your own story. And remember, it’s all right if the length of your acts varies. Acts early in a script are often longer than later ones. I’ve seen first acts that are over twenty pages long and final acts as short as five or six pages. If the reverse is happening with your script, that’s a bit strange. You might want to have that looked at.

Try, as much as you can, to let the natural shape of your story determine how it fits onto the pages. Let the demands of page-count and the number/placement of acts keep you from formlessness, but don’t let them dictate your story.

P.S. thanks to Loyal Reader Lilia for the fine gift!

Lunch: a “Boston Cream Pie Cupcake” from Big Sugar Bakeshop. I love self-contradictory treats.

If you’re writing a spec pilot or another piece with original characters, remember that your readers don’t necessarily know who the star of the show is. Help them out. Let your main character have the last line in a lot of the scenes. Give her the big jokes, too. Tell the readers more about her expressions and reactions throughout a scene than the other characters. All this stuff will make her seem to sparkle. And you won’t run the risk of having the readers focus mistakenly on some character you kill off in act two.

This might seem obvious, but it’s often the case that a secondary character, because he can be more broadly drawn, has the funnier point of view. It’s easy for that kind of character to get the last word all the time, and to highjack the script. Let them be funny, but make sure the spotlight stays on your star.

Lunch: Something called a “sombrero salad,” but it contained no actual hat.

Clams! Fresh hot clams! Well, not all that fresh, actually. I have it on good authority that no fewer than three of the new pilots for Fall series use “That went well” as a punchline. Nooooo! Have I accomplished nothing?!

I also hereby call clam on these mollusks:

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

And

(sing-song) “Awkward!”

And

“I said, ‘good day, Sir!'”

Really, people, even in real life, don’t use these! They’re past their expiration date and they will make you ill. An excellent rule of thumb is “if you’ve read it, don’t write it; if you’ve heard it, don’t say it.” Adapt it, sure. Or make fun of it if you want — use it ironically. But don’t expect a genuine laugh.

Notice that there are also dramatic dialogue clams, which aren’t really clams, just overused lines. Usually these are lines that characters on screen say so often that they’ve become a sloppy shorthand for actual writing.

I’m talking about lines like “Don’t make me do something I’ll regret,” “I guess my reputation precedes me,” and “Did you really think it would be that easy to get rid of me?” They’re dangerously easy to write because you’ve heard them before. There’s nothing wrong with the sentiments, exactly, it’s just that the words have become calcified into these empty shapes.

And just because wealthy characters are meeting at a high-toned party, it doesn’t mean that they have to have the following exchange:

MATRON
Jeffrey! Finally we meet! Audrey’s told us so much about you!

JEFFREY
Ha Ha. Only good things, I hope.

ME
Bleagh!

Note that the “I said ‘good day!'” clam I list above was very funny the first time it was used (Seinfeld, I believe), because it was actually functioning as a parody of dramatic lines like these. Now, it’s entering its double clamage as it is itself growing hoary within its own function as a parody. Haven’t heard it? Keep your ears open. I have a feeling it’s not done with us yet.

So be careful, as these lines have a nasty tendency to type themselves when you’re not looking.

Lunch: fajitas, made with surprisingly excellent steak

Well, for those of you keeping score, I made it to Dallas and back home again. Many thanks to the kind people of Equality Now and all the Browncoats who were so great to me there!

I returned to find an intriguing piece of mail from reader John in Albany. It’s a great piece of mail, too, printed on thick creamy stationary with the kind of law firm letterhead that makes your pulse speed up because it looks like you’re getting sued.

John has (with a writing partner) written a spec half-hour comedy pilot. And he has filmed it. Whoa. He asks: “…are there any real advantages to actually shooting/making the TV pilot?” He adds, “I’ve even heard that this is detrimental because the ‘idea’ is always much better than the execution.”

My first instinct is to point at that last sentence and say, “yup.” One of the things I love about scripts – all scripts – is that they are creatures of perfect potential, always well-acted and well-produced in the reader’s brain. If I set something on an “abandoned pier lying still between the dark sky and darker sea” then that’s what the reader sees, not a redressed hotel loading-dock being splashed from off-screen by my friends who own buckets. Unless you have lots of money and some pretty advanced skills, it’s going to be very hard to make an amateur production good enough to come up to the level of the production that the reader’s brain is able to muster. And quality acting is, of course, even more crucial and hard to find than friends with buckets.

So, in general, I think it’s going to be easier, cheaper and more effective to try to use a script to break into the business than a produced sample. However, we live in strange times. If you have managed to put together something great, John in Albany, well, then let’s see how far you can ride it. Maybe you can submit it to film festivals, or slap it up on YouTube, or have friends link to it on their blogs… If it’s great and people find it, you might create a sensation and be treated like one of those film school phenoms who make a stir now and then. You might have just created a new way to go about this whole crazy endeavor. It’s a long shot, but since you’ve apparently already shot it… why not?! This is a business that is about creativity, and applying creativity to your way in might not always be a bad thing.

Lunch: heirloom tomatoes and burrata from the “nice side” of the Universal Cafeteria. Mm. Love those heirloom tomatoes.

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