JaneEspenson.com

On Monday morning, gentle readers, I am headed off to a new job. I’m going to be on the staff of the new Andy Richter comedy “Andy Barker, PI.” I’m so excited – the pilot is great and I think it’s going to be a really strong show. The new staff had our first get-to-know-you dinner last night, and I can report that it’s a fun and accomplished group. The new schedule will mean I’m going to be a lot busier all of a sudden, and the blogging frequency may drop a bit – from once a day to once or twice a week, but I’m going to be here as much as I possibly can, my friends.

I’m way behind on addressing all the fine questions that arrive in the mail – I love these! And I wanted to talk about what may be the most delightful one yet. Jenn in L.A. asks “How do you deal with henchmen?” Oh my. Well, I punish them harshly if they fail to protect my mountain lair.

She explains what she means: “Lots of times in Buffy, she’ll come across a cluster of vampires, only one of whom has a speaking role. Still, the rest of these vamps might appear throughout the episode / die in interesting ways. How do you keep them alive on the page without taking up too much space?”

Thanks Jenn! That’s an interesting question. And, I should note, it’s not just relevant to Buffy and similar shows with an action element. Doctors, for example, might have to break some hard news to a gathering of a patient’s family members, and those might also be characters that reappear throughout the episode. This is a very similar situation since, again, it’s likely that only one of the group will have a speaking role. (You have to pay people a lot more to speak – even if it’s only one line – and writers will go to great lengths to keep extra characters from piping up.) For the sake of making me laugh, let’s continue to refer to these silent supporting characters as “henchmen.”

Usually, these kinds of characters don’t really get names, just the barest of labels. Here’s a chunk of stage direction (I believe this was written by the impressive David Fury) from a Buffy episode in which she fights some silent henchmen-types. Note that in this case there was no central speaking villain, just a band of silent equals:

—

BACK ON BUFFY as she is about to engage the Monster. When she hears a SNARL and turns to see ANOTHER ONE on her right.

NEW ANGLE as she takes a step back, sizing up the beasts, when a THIRD MONSTER leaps in behind her. She’s surrounded.

She spins around, catching the third monster in the head with a roundhouse kick. MONSTER #3 is knocked back as MONSTERS #1 and #2 charge her.

—

If you want to give them each visual defining characteristics, these could well have been called “bumpy-headed monster,” “extra-strong monster” and, I dunno, “mangy-furred monster” or something.

In our analogous doctor show, you could imagine something very similar:

—

BACK ON HOUSE as he straightens up from questioning the patient’s DEVASTATED MOTHER. He hears a CLEARED THROAT and turns to see the patient’s ANGRY-LOOKING SISTER on his right.

NEW ANGLE as he takes a step back, sizing up the sister, when a RED-EYED BROTHER steps in behind him. He’s surrounded.

—

At this point, he might dodge through the group to the safety of his office. Buffy’s roundhouse kick is cool, but House has got that bum leg…

Now, as the writer, you can just refer to ANGRY-LOOKING SISTER and RED-EYED BROTHER as being present in any scene in which you need them to be standing around silently. That’s all you need to do to keep them alive on the page. If they had importance to the story, you’d give them names and lines. But since henchmen really are just there to fill up the room, you should spend as little ink as possible on them. Similarly, if the Monsters in the Buffy story stuck around, you’d simply mention in stage directions something like “the three MONSTERS from earlier glare at Buffy from across the crypt.” Nothing more is needed.

Note that you can also fill up scenes with extras just by mentioning: “The deli is moderately busy” or “The halls are full of students.” Silent people are pretty cheap when producing an episode, and even cheaper in a spec.

Lunch: chicken and salsa in scrambled eggs

So, I spoke to the ABC Fellows this morning. A good group – cheerful, engaging, full of good questions. And I did a little intelligence-gathering, too; finding out what specs *they’re* writing so I could run back here and tell all of you. I have to say, there were a couple of surprises. A lot of “Criminal Minds” – that one wasn’t even on my radar. And there was at least one “The Closer.” No “House”s – “Grey’s” seemed to be winning the battle of the medical specs. “Medium” was in there, too. In half-hour, it was “Earl” and “The Office,” just as you might expect.

I got the impression they were feeling the lack of specable shows, just like I think many of you are. I bet lots of them will end up writing spec pilots to round out their portfolios. So I talked a little bit with them about spec pilots. About the importance of finding something for the show to be *about.*

You might feel like it’s already about something. You know, it’s about your childhood on the Bikini Atoll, watching the nuclear testing and wearing a two-piece swimsuit. Well, that suggests some events, but it doesn’t really tell me what the show is about. What is that main character going through? Is this a show about the lessons of adolescence? About feeling different? About losing touch with old friends and finding new ones? About the strength of family? About making a family that isn’t your birth family? About redemption? Self-learning? Reaching out? Looking in? Stuff like that – that’s the heart of the show. Figure that out, and then suddenly the nuclear testing ground isn’t just a pretty setting – it can be an illustration of the show’s real content – maybe a metaphorical symbol of how things can change in an instant, or about how we don’t always recognize destructive forces when we first see them, or simply about emotional outbursts…

Your story is still original. But once it has an emotional heart, it’s also universal, because you found the common ground that every reader can identify with. It might help to practice pitching your pilot idea as if you had to sell it to a network. Don’t just tell the story, but think about how to present it as something identifiable for an audience. I pitched a pilot two years ago that I eventually wrote, although it never made it to the air. Here’s how the pitch began:

“Every teenager is convinced that every adult in the world is lying to him, keeping huge important secrets from him. In my show, that teenager is right.”

I was hoping to hook the listener right there, before they heard about when and where the show was set or what the secrets would turn out to be. I made sure they knew this was a story about teen paranoia, suspicion and alienation… before they knew anything else.

Lunch: big salad with avocado and warm chicken.

Know what I get to do tomorrow morning? I get to go speak to the current crop of ABC Writing Fellows. This is the program that I trumpet constantly, the one that gave me my start (as the Disney Fellowship), and that pays its participants to learn to write for television. Such a good deal.

I won’t have a ton of time to speak to them, and I’m going to have to figure out how to convey the most important advice quickly. It’s an interesting group to tailor advice to; they’ve got their foot in the door, but it’s a very heavy door. A foot-crushingly heavy door. The advice that I give them has to help them not give up any advantage they have gained. It would be a shame to complete the program without having gathered any momentum. It would be like an evolutionary false start — starting to turn your flippers into feet and then sliding back into the ocean.

Well, one thing I know I will tell the fellows is “play nice.” The friends I made in the program are still my best friends. And the very young executives who patted our heads in the Disney hallways included David Kissinger and Jordan Levin, both of whom went on to be powerful forces in the television business. And I’ve already told you about the importance of being nice to assistants. The wheels that roll under Entertainment are made of assistants.

If you, like the fellows, ever find yourself in a position to talk to people who are already doing what you want to do, or who know those people, or who hire those people, or who provide water for those people – go beyond being professional with them. Be genuinely friendly. Ask questions. Make a friend. Don’t hand them a spec, don’t offer to send it to them, but tell them you’re writing one and ask some lovely general questions about what shows they think make a good spec, whether or not they think writing a spec pilot is a good idea. And ask what they like about their jobs… stuff like that.

Maybe this idea — make friends to get ahead — seems completely obvious. Not to everyone. Not to the guy in the airport yesterday whom I heard yelling at the gate agent. “I’m in entertainment!” He declared. “I know you’re holding back some seats!” What a charmer.

So play nice. And remember that having a connection only accomplishes something if you’ve got the scripts to back it up.

Lunch: Thai spicy eggplant

Hi everyone! I’m back from my long holiday weekend. Spent much of the time face-down in the water. Fun! I was snorkeling with the tropical fishes. I got a new mask and a crazy looking swim top that keeps your body heat in. Fantastic, except I was literally swimming in a pink mock turtleneck. It was a very odd feeling at first. Like skiiing in a prom dress or gambling in a bride dress — no wait, I’ve seen that one a lot.

Anyway, I noticed something while snorkeling. If I was in a dense swarm of fish, I didn’t savor each individual as much as if I was in a more sparsely populated area where I could focus on each fish in turn and really study its coloring and actions. Less is more — could it actually be true? Perhaps!

As you’re coming up with stories for your brand new specs, this is the very most important time to look at the examples you’ve collected of produced episodes of the show. You don’t need more story than these episodes have, *even though it might feel like it makes it easier.* Cramming an episode with EVENT makes it feel significant, fast-moving and easy to write, because there’s a lot of do, but it’s going to make the show feel rushed, superficial and too crowded to allow those wonderful single-fish character moments.

Read (or view) the produced episodes you have access to, and try to recreate the outlines that they began as. Pull out the beats of pure A-story. These are the beats that look like this:

1. discover crime victim
2. develop first theory: wife did it
3. wife found dead
4. develop second theory: mother-in-law did it.
5. move in on mother-in-law
6. mother-in-law threatened by real killer
7. real killer fooled as mother-in-law revealed to be hero in disguise

Count them. Don’t count moments of discussing-the-case that turn into personal beats. These are character beats disguised as A-story. Count only the moments that really develop that main spine of a story. The story you’re coming up with for your spec should have NO MORE beats than you’re finding in the produced examples.

(And don’t be overly shy about using a very similar structure for your A story as one that they’ve already used. It’s just structure. Unless you’re specing a show that is about nothing except clever structure, what will make your spec shine is the character stuff and the general elegance of the writing. Structure is just the shape of the glass into which you pour all that stuff.)

If you’re writing a spec pilot, again, too much story is your enemy. Even more so than on a regular spec, because you need room to introduce all those characters! Look at some produced pilots — they can have VERY thin stories indeed. Frasier learns his dad’s going to live with him. Mary Richards gets a job. A brainy new waitress is hired at the bar. A doctor starts work at a new hospital. A cop gets a new partner and misses his old one. Even if you do a pilot that plays as more of a normal-day-in-the-life, the characters are still new to the viewers and will require a bit of time for introductions.

Give yourself character time, is what I’m saying. In other words, slow down and smell the fishes.

Lunch: snack box on the airplane. Cookies, granola bar, cheese, peanut-butter crackers and raisins. Too much sweet, not enough savory.

I’m planning a whirlwind last-minute trip for the 4th of July – just a long weekend, really, but fun. As a result, I got to go buy travel books the other night! Whee! Hey, you know what books I love? Those “100 Places to See…” books. Usually travel guides assume that you already know you want to go to Maui or Peru or Greece or whatever. But those books open it all up, and you end up considering places you’ve never thought of. That how I ended up in Tobago a while back… one of those books said it was the place to go, and it was.

Those books remind me of a great brainstorming technique that my friend Michelle told me about once. It’s called “One Hundred Bad Ideas.” It’s just what it sounds like; you make a list of one hundred bad ideas for a sitcom or a drama or for a House spec or for a movie or a short story. The fact that you’re calling them “bad ideas” frees you up to put down absolutely anything that crosses your mind. After all, they’re *supposed* to be bad. But, truth be told, you don’t really have one hundred bad ideas. Once you’re thinking about your subject, and being free and accepting with all your ideas… some of them are going to be good. Possibly really good.

Do it pretty fast. A quarter hour, maybe, until you run dry. You probably won’t complete the list. You’ll run out of ideas, bad and good, before you reach one hundred. But the fact that you will try as hard as you can to finish it, also means that you’re not settling for the first idea you came up with. This is incredibly valuable. The reason I started my writing career with *two* spec Seinfelds is that I had a better idea when I was halfway through writing the first script. I’d jumped on my first idea too soon.

I actually, right now, have a file on my computer called “100 bad ideas for a sci-fi drama.” It has 52 entries – that’s when I fizzled out. I actually love about fifteen of the ideas on the list, and will probably invest some time in all of those fifteen, playing around to see if they can be turned into something. Most of the ideas are, however, legitimately bad, as they should be. I was going to excerpt the list here, except that I have realized that one’s bad ideas are a very personal thing. We all need to feel free to put down *very bad* ideas without fear that anyone else will ever see them.

Okay, if you insist, here’s one of the more detailed entries: “A person is split into two people, a man and a woman. They need to solve a task together to re-integrate. They hate each other, but must stay together always or lose any chance of becoming one again.”

A wee bit contrived, no? Other entries are much shorter, by the way. “The Monkey’s Paw, the series,” that kind of thing.

So go crazy! Especially if you’ve decided to tackle a spec pilot. Looking for a family sitcom idea? A single-camera half-hour idea? A cop drama with a twist? One of each? Start making lists. You’ll be amazed what you’ve got kicked into the corners of your brain.

Lunch: tofu pups and fresh tomato.

Addendum: Friend-of-the-blog Jeff Greenstein adds this story from art school: “On the first day, my painting teacher told the class, ‘You are about to paint 100 bad paintings. So just go ahead and get ’em out of the way so you can start painting the good ones.'” Nice!

He adds:

“I think of that often when I look at my early spec scripts.”

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