JaneEspenson.com

Well, Gentle Readers, today finds me digging around for my sunscreen and comfy shoes, because apparently I’m going to be walkin’ tomorrow. I haven’t talked about the strike yet here, because I really do want this site to be about the scripts, all the time. But if you’re curious, and want to hear more about the issues from people who are more articulate on the subject than I am, I invite you to check out UnitedHollywood.com. And if any of you are in Los Angeles, and want to show support, or just learn more about the issues, please come out and join us. I personally intend to be at (well, just outside of) Universal Studios tomorrow from nine to one, along with other writers from Battlestar, Eureka, CSI and Desperate Housewives — drop by and say “hi.” Or drive by and honk.

Now, of course, I can’t write during the strike (other than this beloved blog), but you guys can certainly keep working on those spec scripts, so let’s see what I can do to help:

I attended an interesting event this week, in which spec writers got to hear actual actors reading their spec pilots. It was very enlightening to hear the words read out loud, and read well. I’ve mentioned before that I think this is a mistake if you’ve written a spec episode of a show that already exists, because it’s so crucial not to have another voice interfering with your inner echo of the actual actor. But for a spec pilot, there’s no reason not to do this, provided you have access to some readers who can do a credible acting job. In fact, I highly recommend it.

One thing you’ll immediately notice is when a line is too long, which is often. You’ll be crossing words out like crazy. You’ll also notice whole pieces of scenes that can be trimmed away. When you read silently to yourself, your eyes tend to speed up over bits that you know well or that bore you or concern you, but hearing it read aloud forces your attention to those parts and makes you address the problems there — often with a big red X through the whole page.

You’ll also notice awkward bits of phrasing, ambiguous lines and logical jumps that can confuse the audience. If your script is funny, you’ll be able to gauge if the laughs fall where you anticipated them.

Give it a try, and don’t forget to ask your performers what they thought. Actors are often the ones who catch inconsistencies in a script, since they are the ones most invested in following the logical progression of the characters. And, of course, get opinions from other writers. Because writers support each other.

See you on the line.

Lunch: beef shabu shabu with lots of those tiny clear noodles

I used a term in the last post that I’m not sure I’ve talked about yet. I mentioned keeping a character “alive” in a scene. You probably figured it out — if a character doesn’t speak for a long time, they disappear from a scene. In general, this is a bad thing. Sure, the marine guarding the door doesn’t have to say anything, but if you bother to have a major character in a scene, they should be kept alive in it.

This is obviously going to be a consideration when you’re actually working on a show, because actors generally hate being treated as set decoration — if they’re in a scene but not in it, they’d often rather be cut. But it’s also important in your spec scripts; a silent character is even more prone to disappear on the page than he is on the screen, given that on screen we can see him.

It’s also, in general, a good idea to give all the important players in a scene a line up near the front of the scene. It’s very distracting to a reader to have someone start speaking in the middle of the scene if the reader wasn’t even aware they were in the room. I know, you mentioned them in the stage direction at the top, but that’s kind of the point: if a character isn’t actually speaking, they’re not really fully present to the reader.

It’ll feel like you’re directing traffic when you start writing to accommodate this. You’re handing out lines based on reasons other than the logic of the situation, which can feel very unnatural. But it is important and is done so automatically by working writers that your script will look more professional for having accomplished it.

Lunch: shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, chicken feet (which I enjoy because they are both delicious and a genuine psychological challenge)

Holy cow, Gentle Readers, I was just looking through my current stack of letters-to-answer when I pulled out a nice long one that I don’t recall reading before. To my embarrassment, I see that it’s dated October 20, 2006. The hell? How’d that happen? So apologies, Adam in West Hollywood, and thanks for the letter!

Adam is (was) debating whether to write a half-hour or an hour-long spec. He was tempted to try specing a multi-camera half-hour to bring some diversity to his portfolio, but he wasn’t sure he’d like the process of actually working on such a show. He described a scene he’d seen in a “Behind the Scenes” feature on a Friends DVD in which the writers had to fix a joke during the taping when it failed to get a laugh:

So there was this tight, feverish little knot of writers pitching out jokes like hot little coals no one could hold for too long […] as the crowd watched from ten feet away…

Adam asks if I’ve ever been expected to pop out jokes under the gun like that. The answer is that yes, I’ve been part of those awful feverish huddles in front of a waiting audience, although I’ve never felt that I’ve done much good there. The ability to find a new joke under pressure that way is a particular and prized skill that half-hour multi-camera writers are supposed to have, although the degrees of actual skill vary wildly. Also keep in mind that, in that huddle, you’re trying to get a fresh take on a moment that you’ve already been staring at for a whole week. If you’re flushing with the excitement of the challenge, go into sitcom work. If you’re feeling what Adam calls “big dragging icicle chills,” then it’s probably not the job for you.

And given that, Adam, I’d say you don’t need a half-hour multi-camera spec script. Write shows that are like the shows you want to write, if you get what I mean. If you’d like to write a spec for an existing show that mixes comedy and drama, try Ugly Betty — it’ll show off your joke skills without pushing you toward a tense and sweaty career.

Lunch: Chicken Caesar Salad. The croutons they used were clearly intended to be used as turkey stuffing, as they tasted strongly of sage — very odd mixture of flavors

Remember Gentle Reader Lauren in Michigan? She asked a bunch of questions in a recent letter about the day-to-day life of a professional writer. Well, I realize that I left one of her questions unanswered. In addition to wanting to hear what a writer does on a show, she also wanted to know what the writer’s life is like between shows.

Ah, that’s an interesting question. March-ish to May-ish are traditionally when a lot of shows are on hiatus, and writers find themselves without an office to go to until June. If you’re staffed on a show that’s returning for another season, and you know your contract is being renewed and you have no particular pressing ambitions beyond that, you can legitimately behave like a college student over the summer vacation. Take a trip, spend some money, employ your days gathering all that real-life experience that makes your writing better when you return to the room all refreshed. I have done this, and it is, of course, wonderful.

But usually that’s not what happens. Odds are that the last show you were on is not coming back. Or maybe it is, but you’ve been told you’re not being renewed — this is not unusual and is not a career-killer although it feels like it at the time. In those cases, you’re going to want to write new television specs. Maybe you want to expand your career into features, so you need a spec feature, too. Or maybe you want to set your goals higher than the show you’re currently working on, so you need a spec that showcases your skills better than all the produced scripts you’re accumulating. For these reasons or others, you’re likely to spend your break writing new spec scripts.

You need them fairly quickly, too, since these are the calling cards that you will use toward the end of the hiatus to get interviews with any show runners who like what you wrote. And, by the way, since lower level writers are the last ones hired, you will sometimes be interviewed on a Friday for a job that starts on Monday. So you have to be mentally ready to jump back in.

In summary, your vacation will be spent working hard, and just when you find out if you’ve done your work well, it’s over and you’re back in the room.

Unless you aren’t.

It’s not unusual to spend a year here or there, early in your career, “unstaffed.” Guess what you do on your year off? You write spec scripts. You can also do all those other things that help, of course: join writers’ groups, make connections with other aspiring writers, produce short films and put ’em on the internet, get some short stories published, look for writers’ assistant work, take classes from working writers, etc.

Every time you get hired after a hiatus, either a normal or an extended one, it’s like you’re a computer rebooting. You want to make sure you’re also installing updates.

Lunch: beef shabu shabu

Clams! Yes, there’s always room for clams. I’m talking of course about old and overused jokes and joke forms, known as clams, which need to be expunged from your spec scripts. It’s shockingly easy to write a clam since you’ve heard it work before and it just lays itself out on the page so easily.

Here’s one that’s currently bothering me. Three people stand together. Two of them (Persons One and Two) want to get away from the other one.

Now, right away, I want to point out that this is not the same joke as the line from “Broadcast News” in which a character off-handedly says: “I’ll meet you at the place near the thing where we went that time.” That’s a joke about two people who know each other so well they share both their reference points and their internal labels for those reference points. The clam joke is about the opposite, two people trying to coordinate through their closeness and not doing it very well.

Both concepts are amusing, but this particular expression of it has simply become overly familiar. It also requires that reality-challenging conceit of the on-looker who doesn’t notice the very obvious strange behavior of his companions. So what should you write if you want to exploit the humor of the three-person situation? Well, instead of a halting bad lie, how about a fast glib one? It’s also been done, of course, but it has the advantage of being constantly made new because of the exact nature of the lie:

Or whatever. That’s really just to give you the idea of a shape of it.

To clamtinue, a recent letter from Gentle Reader Amanda (Hi again, Amanda!) in Eureka, comments on another clam I discussed a while back, the facetious use of “I said good day, sir!” She mentioned that there is an interesting discussion of exactly this clam on line. I poked around and found it here. As you can see, the joke dates back even earlier than I had realized, although it looks at though “Tootsie” might be the first use of it in its current form. Fascinating. Someone needs to do a comprehensive study of the modern American clam. Until then, use your own instincts to smell them out and cut them from your script. This was a great joke in Tootsie, but as you can see from the long list of uses, it’s become distinctly smelly since then.

Lunch: meal #10 at Del Taco (featuring two kinds of soft chicken taco)

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