JaneEspenson.com

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 lucky enough recently to get to hear the writers and producers of The Colbert Report talking about what they do. Stone Phillips moderated, asking Stephen (I like to call him ‘Stephen’) and the others questions of his own and some submitted by those of us in the audience. It was absolutely fascinating. The very idea of putting together a new show four days a week is stunning to me. I know how long a half-hour can be.

But anyway, there was an answer to one of the questions that I thought you’d enjoy hearing about, Nation. Stone (I like to call him ‘Stone’) asked about what they look for in a guest. The answer was “someone with a strong opinion.” That, more than issues of subject matter or position on the political spectrum or degree of fame, is what guides their choice. It makes perfect sense. They want a guest who comes on with something to advocate, a position to argue.

It occurred to me that spec scripts are like that. A spec *pilot*, especially, is populated with people we’ve never met before. One of things that’s going to power that script is a good guest-screening policy. No one gets on that page until they’ve got a position to take.

This doesn’t have to apply to Waiter 1 in the restaurant scene, but your major characters are going to work together really well if they’ve got strong clashing opinions and a willingness to let you know about them. Battlestar Galactica is a great example of a show that seems to have an infinity of stories to tell, because every character on there has passionate beliefs, often about things as important as how best to ensure humanity’s survival. Big beliefs, big stakes.

If your spec pilot is feeling pale and wobbly, reconsider your booking policy.

Lunch: cold meat and cheese selection, white wine, fresh-baked cookie. High-class lunch.

I hope you guys enjoyed my Battlestar Galatica if you happened to check it out. Hope you weren’t too traumatized. There was some “Espenson brings the funny” anticipation for this that had me a bit concerned since the ep wasn’t so much, ya know, funny. But I did get to write the line “You’ve got goo in your hair” which I find hilarious in a Cylon context. Anyway, I’m just as proud as a proud thing to have been involved with that show, so… Thank You Ron! Whooo!

All right, back to our business at hand, the business of writing spec scripts. Here is more of what I learned at the round-table discussion at the Writers’ Guild. The question on the table is about the dramatic build of your script. It’s all right, isn’t it, to let the script start out slow, setting things up for a big finish where everything pays off in a big meticulously conceived action/comedy sequence. Right?

Turns out, you’ve got fifteen pages. If you haven’t gripped the agent, executive, or whomever in those fifteen pages, they’re not going to bother finishing the script. There is nothing requiring anyone to whom you send your script to read the *whole* script. So you’ve got to work hard to keep them turning pages. The 15-page cut-off is one person’s yardstick by the way, others will give you more or, often, less — maybe even just the Teaser. It’s not that they don’t want to like your script, they do want to. But if they don’t like it right away, the thing they want more than anything else is to pick up the next one on the stack, hoping that *this* one is the winner. And then there’s one on the stack beneath that…

Now, that isn’t to say you can let everything fall apart in the second half of your script. You still have to bring it on home. But pay special attention to the opening. If you’re writing a spec pilot, consider all the different ways to introduce your characters — if you just start with them waking up in the morning, well, it’s classic, but you might want to see if you can find some other situation, some image, that tells us who they are right off the bat. If you’re writing an existing show, think of all the episodes produced so far — which one had the best opening? Is yours as good as that? As gripping? As tantalizing? Is there any way to start in the middle of some action? Consider playing with the time line of your episode to bring action to the front. If your show has jokes, pay special attention to the early ones, they’re going to set your reader’s expectations for what you’re capable of.

Fifteen pages. Count ’em off and look at ’em. Make ’em sing.

Lunch: leftover cucumber salad and edamame from last night’s sushi dinner. Even better than when they were fresh.

Okay, everyone. Tonight’s episode of Battlestar Galactica is, indeed, mine. I have not, myself, seen the final cut, so we’ll all be watching it together. Hope you enjoy it!

In other news, I got to be part of a roundtable discussion at the Writers’ Guild this morning about spec scripts, and I got some new insights into things I can tell all of you. I’ll be sharing them over the next few posts, but here’s a little one to get us started: original material. Make sure you have something in your portfolio, alongside the specs of existing shows, that is entirely in your own voice. It can be a screenplay, spec pilot or a play. (Some also say short stories will work for this, but I think something in script format is more likely to be useful, myself.) I heard an agent, a show runner and an executive all stress the importance of having something that demonstrates that you can create your own world, your own characters. So take off those shackles and run free through the fields of… um… making stuff up!

Lunch: boneless chicken wings from Johnny Rocket’s. Could’ve been spicier.

Comedy shows (and many dramas, as well) hold “table reads,” in which the writers, producers, directors and executives get to hear the actors read the script out loud. As the writers sit and listen, they make a check mark next to every joke that gets a laugh. (For extra precision, many of us vary the size of the checkmark to reflect the intensity/duration of the laughter.)

Usually, at the end of a table read, every script page has at least one check on it, and many have three or sometimes even more. And the general rule for evaluating a script is usually “more = better.” Check marks are treasured like gold, uncomplicatedly loved and desired. And yet…

A script can be overjoked. A script in which every line strives to earn a laugh is as effective as a football team in which every play is an attempt at a touchdown. You end up with an exhausting, overreaching mess that doesn’t have room to slow down and breathe. And it doesn’t feel like it’s about anything other than its own pace.

Something that I myself have witnessed is a progression that sometimes occurs during the production week of a pilot. Writers are brought in to “punch” the script, to make last moment changes intended to sharpen the script. Invariably, piles of jokes are inserted into the script at this point. And sometimes, the show gets worse as a result. Funnier, perhaps, but more manic, less thoughtful.

It’s worth being careful about this when you’re writing your specs. It’s so imperative that the spec be your very best work, so it’s easy to push. Letting a joke have some breathing room, letting characters have a real moment, letting an emotional moment land for a second before you undercut it, these can all be powerful events in a script. Even if they don’t earn themselves a check mark.

Lunch: Sushi at Echigo. I’ve told you before about how their morsels recline on tiny beds of slightly warm rice. Holy cow.

« Older Entries

Newer Entries »