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I’m more invested, this year, in the new television season than I have been in recent years. I’m hopeful about a number of shows, and I feel like I’m in the market for a new favorite scripted drama. I hope I reflect America in this way.

I’ll be really interested to see which shows click instantly with audiences. Some shows really do seem to just lock in right away. They don’t always stay locked in, but a strong start guarantees that they at least are given a chance to get going, to find their voice.

Now, let’s imagine that, say, Shark or Heroes or whatever, is a hit. Should you start writing a spec for it? Kira from Santa Monica wrote me a letter with, essentially, this question in it. She has been told not to write a spec for any show in its first season, and yet she points out that some shows, like Lost and Desperate Housewives, are so quickly hits that there doesn’t seem to be any reason to wait.

Hmm. A good and timely question. I’d say it wouldn’t hurt to sit up and pay attention when an instant hit is annointed. Start looking around for produced scripts to study, and read recaps and do all that good research. But if it was me, I’d probably wait until that first season was at the very least half over — probably even entirely over — before I started actually writing. This isn’t so much because the show might disappear, as it is that most shows are still in flux during season one. It’s still finding its tone, and figuring out which kinds of episodes serve it best. Heck, it could still be firing and hiring actors and changing all its locations around and all kinds of things — “Ellen” even changed its title after season one! (Remember, it was “These Friends of Mine”?) Anyway, it’s best to let a show settle down, find a rhythm, before you jump in. You don’t want to have to shoot at a moving target.

Also, being a hit isn’t enough to make a show specable. It has to be watched and respected not just by America, but by agents and show runners — the people you want to have read your script. And, besides that, you don’t know if it’s going to *remain* a hit. Some shows quickly fade. Remember Commander-in-Chief? Huge pilot tune-in numbers. But gosh, not a good spec to have now.

More and more, I find myself seeing the wisdom in writing a spec pilot. So many hit shows are serialized, which makes them tough (though not impossible) to spec. And others are such niche fare (Nip/Tuck, The Shield), that it’s hard to know if enough of your readers will really know the show. You’ll want at least one spec of a real, existing show, I think, but beyond that… I really have to say, write a pilot.

I’m writing one myself, right now. Come on. We’ll do it together.

Lunch: Nibbled on a burrito at the Farmer’s Market.

Well, I’ve got some hot news for those of you writing spec pilot scripts. The news comes from Nic in Germany, who has directed my attention to the Fox diversity program. I hadn’t heard about this program before, but it sure looks good to me. And this exerpt from their site makes it clear that the admission standards are likely to include many of you out there:

“The emphasis in our Writer’s Initiative will now be to support the development of original television series ideas by diverse writers, or by non-diverse writers who are writing about inherently diverse themes and/or diverse lead characters. African-American, Latino, Native American and East and South Asian writers are particularly encouraged to apply. You must be at least 18 years old to submit.”

You can read more about the program here. If I were an aspiring writer with a spec pilot, I’d be casting an eye over it right now, looking to emphasize or add “diverse themes.”

In other news, a letter from Heather at Harvard really made me smile. I wrote a line, years ago, for a Buffy episode (“Pangs”), in which a character referred to the fact his grandparents live on a farm just outside Huxley, Iowa. Heather’s grandparents live on a farm outside Huxley. As you can imagine, she was tickled by the line. Hee! How funny is that? I love when stuff like that happens. Notice that this is one of the benefits of specificity — if you give enough details, not only does a situation *feel* realer, but it’s also more evocative for the people who are actually *in* that situation.

Lunch: a potato knish from Junior’s deli. Mmm.

Hi all! I’m visiting my parents and their new puppy this weekend. While Zia the Tiny Fuzzy Bundle slept, we ended up watching two episodes of a British sitcom called “My Hero,” on BBC America. I hadn’t seen the show before, and it was quite by chance that the first episode that was on tonight was the series pilot. The second episode was clearly from a later season. I’m guessing from the hair length of the lead female that it was perhaps two years later.

The show is about a relationship between a normal woman and a superhero. Already I’m smiling. The pilot was nice. Superhero approaches woman and woos her in his goofy naive non-hero guise, charming her, winning her. Then, he loses her when his Superheroism is revealed, and has to convince her that he’s not as “super” as she fears. Simple, sweet, romantic, silly. And it was about something; about recognizing the person you’re meant to be with no matter what the obstacles are. Not Earth-shaking news, but it was relatable as a metaphorical mismatched relationship.

But the later episode was a mess! They’re married now, and have a freaky talking baby that needs to eat more vegetables, so Super-dad brings him alien radioactive veggies, which makes Wife think he’s not concerned enough about the environment, which leads Superdad to enter into wacky proenvironment activities, which all backfire on him until he, out of desperation, is led to move the planet farther from the sun, thereby eliminating global warming. (I know, I know. We shan’t even discuss the science of that.) And that’s not even bringing the B stories into it! Yikes! It felt like there wasn’t an outline, like the writers simply jumped from joke to joke, from scene to scene, without a sense of telling a coherent story. Imagine a chain, zigging or zagging with every link. That’s what the structure felt like. What were the writers saying about environmentalism, the force of public opinion, or the loyalty and support of a spouse? These were all touched on. Picked up, held into the light, and then put back down as the chain linked off in a new direction.

I suspect it wasn’t the writers’ fault. Time pressures, notes, rewrites, and the inevitable empty story well that you can fall into on a show with this kind of premise… I sense all of these were at work. However, as the writer of a spec script, you don’t have those excuses.

When you come up with a story for your spec, try very hard to contain it. Make it about something. Don’t make it about nothing. Don’t make it about everything.

When you describe the story of your spec, try to come up with a single, complete sentence that says what it’s about. A single sentence to ensure simplicity. A complete sentence to ensure coherence. It’ll keep you out of the chain gang.

Lunch: chicken salad sandwich with cranberries mixed in. A nice surprise!

Hi! I’m back from WorldCon. Wow, that was fun! It’s a convention that focuses a lot on books, as opposed to comic books and games. This seems to lead to a more grown up and more female collection of attendees than at some other cons. The whole thing had a wonderful feel to it.

The Hugo Award ceremony went well. I got through my part of it, so I was already reeling with relief when I had the pleasure of seeing Serenity get the Drama Long Form award. How wonderful! It was a great night indeed.

I also participated in quite a few more panels, which was a lot of fun. In fact, several times throughout the weekend, I had mini-epiphanies (I call them piphanies) about what it is that I do for a living. Here is a thought you might enjoy. Or disagree with. Or both.

There is a big division in the nature of television shows. We talk about shows that are character-driven and shows that are story-driven. King of the Hill, to pick a show more or less at random, is character-driven. Law and Order is story-driven. Other shows exist somewhere along the scale.

But what if there’s a third division? It seems to me that the shows which we are most liable to call “Sci Fi” are often driven by something that is neither character nor story. The Twilight Zone, original Star Trek and Trek:TNG, the Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, maybe even a show like Quantum Leap… I would contend that these are (drum roll) idea-driven.

You know what I mean? I would even include some of the earliest monster-of-the-week Buffy episodes in this category — the ones with the strongest metaphorical underpinnings. Like episodes of The Twilight Zone, they function as sorts of little parables, with a point to make about the world. A point made by an idea-based show might be something like: racism is random, human obsession creates a barrier as strong as any wall, greed eats away the soul, vanity makes you ugly. There’s a moral to these shows, as in a fable.

Have you ever noticed that there are a lot of people out there who declare “I don’t like Sci Fi” and “I don’t like Fantasy”? Have you ever questioned them on what they mean… do they mean that they don’t like Frankenstein, Brave New World, 1984, A Handmaid’s Tale, Harry Potter? They don’t like Star Wars? Indiana Jones? ET? Splash? Big? Lord of the Rings? Sliding Doors? The Natural? Field of Dreams? Heaven can Wait? Defending your Life? The Incredibles? Batman? They don’t like Buffy? Quantum Leap? Charmed? Medium? Bewitched? Sabrina? Lost?

Usually they’ll admit that they, in fact, like a great many of those things. They just don’t put some of those works in the category of things they dislike. I’m starting to wonder if what best characterizes what they don’t like is the category of idea-driven works.

The types of stories written by Ray Bradbury, the types of filmed stories presented by Rod Serling… these appealed to me as child even without the presence of characters I knew and was already rooting for. I loved the fact that each of them was a neat little package with an idea inside. But others dislike this. Maybe it feels artificial to them, like a little puppet show that they suddenly realize is there not to entertain but to educate. It’s about vegetables! It’s a trap!

They may, in fact, have learned, from the example of the Trek shows, that the sight of spacecraft is a warning signal that ideas may soon follow. I’ve heard from a number of people who were pleasantly surprised to discover that Battlestar Galactica was about people. I think they were afraid it was about ideas. (Which is not to say it is idea-less, but I wouldn’t say it is idea-driven. It is character-driven.)

What does this mean for you, the humble and earnest writer of spec scripts? Figure out the category of the show you are specing and make sure the episode you write is of the correct type. And if you are writing an idea-driven spec pilot, be aware that you are battling some strong headwinds. If you are twisting story and character in order to create a sort of parable, you may be letting an idea drive your spec. Watch out for this, my friends. I love ideas, you love ideas, but something there is that does not love an idea. They simply are not in fashion in the television world right now.

Lunch: A hot meatball sub from Togos, delivered by mistake in place of a turkey sandwich, but cherished nonetheless.

I work right now in a writers’ room with a lot of really experienced comedy writers. You better believe that I sit there with big ears, listening for comedy crumbs. Here’s what one of them said today.

“It’s all about who’s stupid and who’s lying.”

This is very possibly good advice for life in general, but what he meant was that situations are rendered comically complex by all things that can happen to obscure the clear communication of information.

Kinda stiking, isn’t it? Misunderstandings — Jack thinks Crissy’s pregnant! Deceptions – Lucy puts on a costume to sneak onstage! Someone is stupid and someone is lying. In fact, you’ll find examples in just about any comedy you care to think of. M*A*S*H? Frank Burns is stupid and Hawkeye is lying. Of course, stupidity and deception come in interesting and complex flavors. Self-delusion and pomposity is a sophisticated kind of stupidity. Crafty creativity is a fun sort of lying. Play around, in other words, with ways to keep information away from those who need it.

Interestingly, this suggests that clear communication is the enemy of comedy. Sounds about right. There was a great Kids in the Hall bit once in which two vaudeville comics attempt to do the old Abbott-and-Costello “Who’s on First” routine. But it keeps getting derailed because one of the performers keeps clarifying. “Oh! I see the source of the confusion! I’m referring to the players’ last names, you see.”

Don’t be afraid to populate your spec pilot with fools and liars. You will treasure them.

Lunch: tuna sandwich and lemon creme meringue pie

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