JaneEspenson.com

I have never written for a show without commercial breaks. So when Adam in West Hollywood writes in to ask about structuring episodes of Showtime or HBO shows that air without breaks, I find myself blinking in momentary confusion. He’s finding that he’s having a hard time structuring a spec because he misses the toeholds that act breaks provide. Yes, I would too.

In standard television writing, you rely on those breaks when you’re structuring your story. You generally begin with a sort of grid on your whiteboard or corkboard, with the acts arranged in empty rows or columns before any material is put up there.

I would guess that breaking a show without act breaks probably would be more like breaking a movie. There would be three acts and the breaks would be virtual. We could test this hypothesis by back-forming outlines for episodes of these shows. In fact, this is exactly what you should do, especially if you’re writing a spec episode of a show that already exists. Make a little outline of all the episodes as you watch them, and see if there are story turns at anything like predictable intervals. Then structure your spec to match.

If you’re writing a spec pilot for a show without act breaks, well, I know what I’d do. I’d break it with four acts, since that’s what I’m most familiar with, and then just not indicate the breaks. Either that, or I’d do the same thing I said above — analyze a show that already exists, then use their basic structure for my show. There is no need to reinvent anything here. People write these shows, and we can see what they’ve produced. Analyze the product and you can infer the process.

I’ve heard people say that they can sit down and come up with an outline just by “telling the story straight through,” but I find this hard to imagine. My theory is that these people have internalized some sense of structure that they can apply without conscious thought, but that is still there.

I would always recommend against making an outline without something to structure it. And, obviously, I turn pale at the thought of starting to write without an outline at all.

Lunch: In ‘n’ Out burger

I recently answered one of two questions sent in by Gentle Reader Amy in Colorado. Here is her other, equally good, question:

Your recent posts about being up in Vancouver made me wonder — how does that work? When the writing staff and the production are in two separate locations, I mean. How do you keep in touch with each other; how do you have production meetings; where are other members of the production team located (i.e.: the show runner, other producers, etc.) Are the logistics a small nightmare, or does it work pretty smoothly in this virtual world of ours? My partner and I have written a pilot that is set in Colorado, and in a perfect world, it would be shot here. [In CO.] So I have wondered what that would mean…

Great question. First off, you might find that if your pilot were produced, Colorado would look a lot like Canada. Scenes from Smallville often featured snowy mountains looming over the Kansas plains, remember. There’s no reason to think that your fictional location will match your actual one. At least the snowy mountains would make sense for you.

But to answer the bulk of the question, each writer/producer makes the trip to Canada when their episode is being shot. The production pays for first-class airline tickets (I am told that this is a WGA-required perk and I applaud it heartily), and puts you up in a nice hotel with a little kitchen in the room. The general plan is to fly up the day before the production meeting, which takes place a couple of days before shooting starts. You attend the meeting and do rewrites up there (they install you in a little office).

The production meeting consists of the writer/producer, director, and all the different departments that will be involved in shooting the show: set decoration and extras casting and props and locations and wardrobe, etc. There are about twenty people in the meeting. All of these people work in Vancouver and are there in person. Not included in this meeting are cast members and people involved in post-production (editing), which is done in Los Angeles. A high-level producer often listens in on the meeting over speaker phone, but often says nothing.

As writer/producer, you look at props and tour the sets and look at the wardrobe for the episode and all that stuff. It’s fun to say, “Let’s not use that towel for the towel scene. Let’s use that towel.” You huddle with the director and have lots of talks with them about the script — answering their questions and explaining your intent.

If enough of the cast is available, there will also be a table read, in which your script is read through (very quickly in our case) by the cast, so you can hear it out loud.

Notice that every step will probably require you to tinker with your script a bit — to simplify a sequence or adjust a line or more.

Once shooting starts, the writer/producer sits on set near the director and watches. You get to fix problems and explain things to the actors and make changes to the script on the fly. This can be nerve-wracking, but it can also save a lot of wasted film if you’re there to settle a question or correct a misperception. Or mispronunciation.

When I was up there recently, I was producing two episodes in a row. That meant that I was often running across the Vancouver lot from the soundstage to the office to do rewrites or polishes or attend meetings about the next episode during lighting set-up delays on this episode. There’s nothing like the adrenaline of that. Fun! (Not sarcastic. It’s actually a blast.)

Sometimes you might stay for the whole shoot, other times, especially with an experienced director, you might only stay a few days into the shooting schedule. An episode takes 7 or 8 working days to shoot. If you stay the whole time, of course, you run into the next writer who’s already flown up for the production meeting on their episode, which will start shooting the day after yours wraps. And on and on it rolls.

During this time you are not in the writers’ room, which remains in Los Angeles, full of whichever writers are available. If there’s a crucial discussion, you may be included on speaker phone. Often, you will keep the other writers informed by email about any changes that you’re making to your episode during filming that may impact future stories, and they do the same in return: warning you to adjust a line, perhaps, that might be contradicted by something they just came up with for a later story.

The show runner will generally be with the staff, not on the set, unless it’s his or her episode or if there’s some crisis there that they need to deal with.

When you’re in LA, the writers’ room feels like the beating heart of the show. But when you’re on the stages, the immediacy and energy of filming feels primary. It’s certainly easier when a trip to the stages doesn’t involve a plane trip, as was the case at Buffy, where the stages were right there, but it is made as easy as possible by the people who book the flights and arrange the rooms and drivers to shuttle you to the set from the hotel every day. And there’s something very pure, I find, about being in Vancouver for a shoot — there are literally no distractions. Often, during shooting, the van picks you up at 7 AM or earlier, and takes you back to the hotel at 8PM at which point you might need to rewrite some scene that shoots later in the week, and then it’s off to bed because the van’s coming even earlier tomorrow. I always end up totally immersed in the episode, which would be harder to achieve in LA with all the distractions of home. (Some writers, I’m told, spend their small amounts of free time in the lively hotel bar, which is constantly full of movie stars shooting in Vancouver and lodged — always — in that hotel, but I value sleep too much to really participate.)

It’s not ideal, having to leave the room several times during a season, but it can be made to work very smoothly.

Lunch: Cup O’ Noodles

Gentle Reader Claire in Massachusetts writes in with a great question. She notes that a lot of drama series are launched with two-hour pilots and wants to know if that means it would be a good idea to write a double-long spec pilot.

It is true that this is happening more and more. One reason for this is so a pilot that is never ordered to series can still be aired as a television movie and recoup some of its cost. I suspect we’ll see more and more of this.

Notice that it also allows writers more time to tell a story despite the fact that they have to do so much character-introducing and world-establishing.

And yet, I wouldn’t recommend writing a two-hour spec pilot. Specs are writing samples and when someone is looking to staff a show or even find a new client or select a contest winner, they usually have to read a lot of samples all at once. In their haste, they’re gonna be grabbing the slimmest scripts, not the fattest ones. And this holds true across genres. Even if you’re writing something with a sci-fi flavor (Sci-Fi network loves the two-hour pilots).

Comedies don’t generally have over-long pilots, but they do sometimes have those extra-long episodes. Don’t take that as an excuse to make your Office spec come in at 50 pages. Shorter is better, in comedy specs even more than in drama.

Lunch: egg foo yung from the commissary. It’s never quite as good as you’d hope.

Friend of the blog, the amazing Rob Kutner, one of the writers on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, has written a book called “Apocalypse How.” You can order it here, or, once Book Soup has it on their site, you can also order it there! And you can read about it way over here!

I don’t have my copy in hand yet, but this is sure to be terrific. From the web site: APOCALYPSE HOW is a comprehensive cataclysmic guide that walks you through the Nine Most Likely World-Ending Scenarios, and provides useful and inspiring advice on every aspect of surviving (and thriving!) in the new world to come. Fantastic.

Up here in Vancouver, I’m continuing to enjoy watching my words get spun into gold by this amazing crew and cast. Nothing will convince you you’re brilliant faster then having brilliant actors read your material. Of course, the opposite is true too, which is why I caution you to be very careful about staging amateur table reads. Terrible line-readings will make you think your writing is terrible. And it just isn’t. I think you’re better off listening to imaginary brilliance than real-world awfulness. So turn up those voices in your head and turn down your roommate’s boyfriend’s offer to read the lead in your spec pilot. Unless he’s good, he might just convince you to throw out something that actually works. Remember that there is no line so inspired that it can’t be read painfully badly.

Lunch: cheeseburger, pickles, other wonderful items from the catering truck

I love it when people write in with concerns I never would’ve thought of. We all know the frustration of having some question that everyone else seems to know the answer to, so it’s never even discussed in the books.

Gentle Reader Carrie writes in with one of those questions. She asks:

After reading about copyrights regarding song lyrics not long ago, I got to wondering if there might be any copyrights associated with place names? For instance, let’s say San Francisco. Is there process I would need to go through to use a certain place in a script, or would it be okay to just plunk a story down in the middle of any given town?

Plunk! Plunk away! You can set your show anywhere you want, without fear of legal problems. From San Francisco to the Pope’s bedroom, you can use it all without fear.

Your main concern about setting should have to do with (imaginary, for a spec script) shooting expense. I mean that if you had a big exterior shot in which your actors have to interact with some big iconic piece of the landscape that cannot be recreated on a soundstage, that you might have a problem. For example, if your script called for your hero to blast through the canals of Venice on a jet ski, well, that sounds a bit pricey and it might be off-putting to a reader looking to see if you can write to a TV-sized budget.

The only other setting problem I can think of regarding locations is that U.S. network television has been traditionally wary of shows set overseas, but I’m not sure that should stop you from writing a London-set spec pilot (or wherever), if you’ve got a seriously brilliant idea. Just be aware of the bias because, again, it might, might, make a reader peg you as unsophisticated in terms of the preferences of the market.

Lunch: avocado, lettuce, tomato on olive bread. Too much mayo, but good.

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