JaneEspenson.com

I talked this morning with someone who has been reading stacks of half-hour spec scripts in anticipation of hiring a staff. So I used the opportunity to find out what’s going on out there.

The answer? Well, it’s bad news for show-runners, but very good news for you, gentle readers. This show-runner is reading, of course, dozens of “The Office” specs. None of which — none of which! — have any emotional pay-off.

Gasp! (Not a sarcastic gasp. An actual gasp.)

This is the thing I keep saying about having to be better than the average episode of a show. We all know that the very best episodes of The Office are more than simply piles of jokes. Remember, in the episode that Joss directed, when we were expecting Jim to show up at Pam’s art show, but it was Michael instead and he loved her art? Remember the “Booze Cruise” episode where Jim confessed his feelings for Pam to Michael? Those moments of connection, of vulnerability, of hurt, of unexpected nobility… those are the reasons to even sit down and try to tackle a spec “The Office.” If you’re not driving toward a moment like that, you need to start over.

And the fact that specs from professional writers are floating around out there without those moments? That means that there is room for you, gentle readers, room for your excellent specs to catch the eyes of agents, or those people who read for contests, or whomever. Fill the gap.

Lunch: cheddar cheese. And one of those “doughnut cupcakes” from Big Sugar Bakery.

Writing on the actual staff of a television show is more about talking than it is about actual writing. After all, you only get to write somewhere between one and, at the outside, four episodes a year on any given show. What you do between those writing weeks (and often during them, too), is work as a group breaking and re-breaking the episodes that others will write. That means talking. Pretty much nothing but.

Those of you who are cloistered at home with your spec scripts might benefit from getting used to talking about writing, to discussing story and all the possible directions a story can take. You have to be able to articulate your idea and to listen to contradictory takes on a story without (visible) clenching. You can do this informally with other aspiring writers, or you can join a class or other group. If you have a writing partner then you already have this built in, of course.

If your inclination while working on a story is to grab your laptop and say, “no, no, I can work it out on my own, just give me forty pages and a couple days,” then you’re going to need to adjust to thinking about the creative process as something more open. Let the sunlight fall across those pages, even if your inclination is to gather them to your chest, screeching, “Don’t look! They’re not quite done yet!”

Lunch: hot dog at the Vegas airport. No jalapenos nor sauerkraut were offered, so I tried those dried hot-pepper flakes that one puts on pizza, but they were strangely undetectable.

Clam alert! I’m calling clam on the following construction:

“She’s what you call — how can I put this nicely? — oh yes, a skanky ho.”

And its clam-cousin:

“He’s a thieving bastard, but I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

Both of you. Out of here and into the chowder. Go through your spec scripts, everyone, and toss ’em out. Seriously, I’m done with ’em.

Lunch: stuffed jalapenos from Jack in the Box

Friend-of-the-blog Danny Strong (you know him as Jonathan on Buffy) has done something very very right. I keep trying to put up links to the news articles, but for some reason they’re not working, so you might have to cut and paste this one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6517683.stm
or this other one:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3id1c3d218198539cb327dc332da76eb60

Or just Google the words “Recount” and “Pollack”. Holy Cow.

How did he make this wonderful thing happen? Spec scripts. In this case, feature specs. Danny wrote several of them. They got him noticed, gained him a good reputation, which led to him writing this project (not a spec) for HBO. Fantastic. That’s exactly how it’s supposed to work.

No one is born with a good reputation. You get there by working. And then reworking. Not just by producing masses of product, but by concentrating on learning how to improve the product.

Congratulations, Danny!

Lunch: chicken cacciatore at the Universal Cafeteria

Here is a sentence you sometimes hear in a writers’ room: “What if we took that big event in the fourth act and moved it up to the first act?” Here is a sentence you never hear: “What if took our teaser and made it the big conclusion?” Jump-starting the action is almost always better than delaying it. And this is especially true with a spec script, because most of your readers aren’t going to make it past page fifteen unless they’re hooked and hooked good.

Look at the beats as you have them laid out and play around with this idea. You might find that a lot of the early scenes in your episode are there to lay out a series of logical steps to get your characters into position for a big event. Series of logical steps can feel plodding and dull. Try putting the big event earlier and see if you can move those plodding steps into “stuff that happened before the episode started”. Of course, you’ll have to come up with brand-new, even bigger and more exiting stuff to replace the thing you moved up, but if you find it, you can create a real rip-snortin’ episode.

It won’t always work, but when it does it can take a slow fuse and replace it with an explosion. And in a world of busy readers, that can really really help.

Lunch: salad bar and tortilla soup

« Older Entries

Newer Entries »