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Are scripts visual or auditory? Your spec scripts aren’t going to be read aloud by actors, but they are going to be read by people who are actively evaluating how they would sound if they were. Reading a script is certainly a more ear-based experience than reading a short story or an essay is. I bet if you did one of those brain scans, all the bits of your brain that have to do with hearing would be all squirmy and lit up while you read a script.

And yet, it’s all still just words on a page, and you, as a spec script writer, are in the unique position of being able to use the fact that you KNOW you’re writing exclusively for readers, not viewers, to slip a few treats into the script that wouldn’t be detectable if it were being read out loud. Little non-auditory gifts.

For example, when I wrote a Buffy script with a troll as a major guest character, I wrote all of his lines in all capital letters. It wasn’t really a cue to the actor, who would’ve bellowed beautifully anyway, as much as it was just me having fun on the page for the benefit of a reader.

In another script, Willow had to comment on the fact that there was more than one Buffy. Instead of having her say “two Buffys?” I wrote “two Buffies?” knowing that Joss — the script’s ultimate reader — would enjoy that.

Something I’m dying to do, and I can’t imagine why I haven’t done it already, is to write a British character’s dialogue with all British spellings. I think it would be hilarious on the page:

AMERICAN GUY
Are you insulting my honor?

BRITISH GUY
Your honour? Certainly not.

Personally, I could even see a writer doing something as nonstandard as having a character very meekly say something in a tiny font. Although I’d only do it once in the script. It’s right on the edge of gimmicky, but if a script was really well-written and then had one little whimsical note like that, I’d think it was pretty cocky and cool.

Others will give you different advice on this point, but I say, once your script is great, there’s nothing wrong with playing just a little bit like this. Lightly, lightly.

Lunch: antipasto salad

Nuts! Nuts and bolts! That is, I’m hoping, primarily what you’re here for. Nuts-and-bolts advice about writing scripts. Stuff like this:

If you simply have to give a character a very long chunk of dialogue — if there’s simply no way to shorten it, try breaking it up with parentheticals and stage directions so that it doesn’t sit on the page as one big block.

I mention the nutsy and bolty nature of this advice because I’m looking at a lot of blogmail here that I simply don’t know how to answer. I’m afraid I can’t get you Battlestar scripts or suggest what you can do to get your Battlestar specs to the Battlestar show runners or take your ideas for episodes to my bosses or any of the similar things that I know would be very helpful, but are simply, as we used to say in grad school, “beyond the scope of this work.”

It’s probably time to review the basic premise of the exercise that is getting work as a television writer. Again, my expertise is in the writing, not the getting hired, but here is what I’ve observed. There are two primary ways in. One is by getting recognition through a contest or a fellowship, or by doing well in film school, that kind of thing. Leading with your script and letting your body be pulled after. The other is by moving to Los Angeles and getting work as a production assistant, then a writers’ assistant, and simply working your way into the writers’ room where you can make friends who will read you. This is leading with your body and pulling the scripts behind you. Both ways require that you, at some point, get someone — someone from the ABC/Disney Fellowship, a professor, a boss… someone to read your spec script.

That’s really where my part starts. Not by reading your script. But by making sure that when you hand that script over to that someone – whether at the start or the end of the process – it’s perfect. Clean, spare, elegant, confident, funny where it’s supposed to be, mature and reflective of your sensibility. Sound fun? I think so!

Lunch: roast chicken, broccoli, corn

Gentle Reader Dan in Philadelphia writes in with an excellent question (two of them, actually, but we’ll just tackle one of them today). Dan asks:

“How do you write dialogue for a stuttering mumbling character, such as Matt Saracen from Friday Night Lights? Do you write all the pauses and repeats or do you indicate it in parenthesis?

Does it change if you are writing for a character who always stumbles as opposed to a character who’s just doing it once?”

Ooh. I love this kind of nuts-and-bolts question. Thank you, Dan!

This is, in fact, a rare instance in which I would suggest that a spec script should look somewhat different than a script that’s been written by the show’s actual writing staff. I bet you anything that Matt’s lines in produced scripts are written without any repeats or stumbles. But your task isn’t to supply words to an actor. Your task, as the writer of a spec, is to demonstrate that you can capture a character’s voice. That voice, in this case, involves false starts and backtracks.

So I’d put ’em in, but lightly. If you put in as many of these as the actor does, I think it would get cumbersome and tiring to read. (And I probably wouldn’t write in literal stutters of this t-t-t-type.) But lay some verbal effects in lightly, here and there, especially when the character is stressed. If you want to call attention to it in a specific spot in the story, I wouldn’t do it with a parenthetical, but with a stage direction that calls attention to what you’re already doing with the dialogue. For example:

Matt’s nerves make his normal stumbling speech even more obvious, as he finally raises his eyes and looks at Julie:

MATT
I… I don’t– I don’t want you to go.

And as to whether it makes a difference whether a stutter is habitual with a character or a one-time thing, absolutely! If a character is normally a smooth-talker, and you’ve got them stumbling, you’ve got even more free reign to write in the curlicues when they happen:

HOUSE
But– I mean– Wasn’t– Isn’t the patient… with… you?

Using false starts and hesitations like this is a great way to convey emotion. Nervousness, agitation, gradually dawning awareness… you can get them across very elegantly this way. You’re really letting the reader use their imaginary ears to “hear” your script, which is the point of the exercise. If you relegate the hesitations to a parenthetical, you don’t get this effect at all.

Writing realistic speech of this kind is one of my favorite things. Give it a try and notice how your script starts to have a sound.

Lunch: veggie sandwich. How can avocados be vegetables? They’re so good.

I knew it would happen. I don’t like it, but I knew it would happen. Andy in Los Angeles writes to let me know that he attended a recent “breaking in” seminar at the Writers’ Guild and that agents and execs there said that Internet short films were becoming popular samples in place of spec scripts.

Andy directs me to his short, which is excellent, so I’m going to direct you to it, too, Gentle Readers. It’s called “24: The Interns” and you can find it at “funnyordie.com”. Those of you contemplating this option should check it out. The bar is set pretty high.

You can probably already guess why this is a trend that I dread, since I’ve already nosed around the edge of this topic in a previous post. In my opinion, watching a finished product like this makes it hard for me to tease out the contribution made by the script. It also can be so easily derailed by poor acting, editing or cinematography.

If this appeals to you anyway, give it a try if you have the resources; film school students, go for it. But please don’t panic if you don’t. I still believe that the best way to tell if someone can write a script is to read their scripts, and I suspect most show runners ultimately feel the same way. If you’re an introvert like me, most happy in a quiet room with your fingers on a keyboard, there is still plenty of room for you in the spec-script-writin’ game.

Lunch: Cup o’ Noodles (try the Salsa Picante Chicken flavor.) I buy mine from the little corner store here on the Universal Studios lot. They’ve got the bar code scanner set wrong so that every time I buy it, the computer says it costs over forty-nine thousand dollars. But so far they have never actually demanded the money.

There’s another good option in town, Gentle Readers! I’m hearing good things, from several sources, about the new configuration of the
Warner Bros. Television Writers Workshop. I used to hesitate to recommend this program since it charged money from its participants, but check out the details now – the only cost seems to be the application fee. Well, that just became much more appealing, didn’t it? The deadline is coming up: August 15, so you’ve got a little time to scrape together an application and I recommend that you do so.

They require at least one spec script “based on a primetime network or cable comedy [or drama] series that aired new episodes during the 2006 – 2007 television season”. They also allow you to submit multiple samples and to submit both comedies and dramas. Nice. (By the way, note that, according to that description, a show like The Sopranos, which was ineligible for ABC/Disney, is still kosher for WB.)

The obvious question has already been asked of me, by the way. Amanda in Ithaca wants to know if she can submit the same script to Warner Bros. that she already submitted to ABC/Disney. Well, I hate to go on the record with this in case I’m wrong, but I don’t see anything in the rules of either program to disallow this or that would make a submission or an acceptance to either program a disqualifying factor for the other program. If it was me, I would probably use the same script — whatever I feel is my strongest sample.

The Warner Bros. program is, clearly, more limited than the ABC/Disney Fellowship. It’s shorter in duration, in intensity, and it doesn’t provide a stipend. But it still can provide experience, contacts and bragging rights.

So get to work! Even if you’re going to regift your ABC script, that extra time should be used to polish, tinker and tweak! The nice thing about perfection is that you never quite get there.

Lunch: left over Chicken Piccata from Maria’s

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