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Ooh! Brit-ness! Get this, Gentle Readers! I am holding in my hand — well, not really, cuz I’m typing — a letter from the BBC. How cool is that? Doesn’t it seem like it should smell like tea and dry wit? Nice. Anyway, the letter is from Piers Beckley (gotta love it), who runs the BBC writersroom website that I talked about in the February 10th post on this blog. (This is the BBC development program that should be of great interest to those of you for whom a career in the UK makes sense, and which I find especially intriguing because it also includes radio scripts as an option.)

Piers says:

I just thought I’d drop you a line to confirm that there’s no [UK] citizenship requirement — we’re happy to read scripts from people outside the UK.

Yay. He goes on:

One thing that might catch US writers out, though, is that like most producers in the UK, the BBC won’t read specs for series that currently exist — we can only read original pieces.

Notice that this is the exact opposite of the ABC/Disney Fellowship, which cannot legally read original pieces, but only specs for existing series.

A good way to look at this is that anything you write now has a destination. Thanks so much, Piers!

Lunch: Grilled vegetable sandwich. I was disappointed to find out that the vegetables inside were grilled, but the sandwich as a whole was not. I wanted a grilled grilled vegetable sandwich.

How fortuitous! Or is it serendipitous? Perhaps both. Gentle Reader Hilary in Honolulu has sent a letter (thank you, Hilary!) in which she references a comedy bit that has relevance to something we were already talking about. Hilary describes a character (from a British show I’m not familiar with), in this way:

Rowley Birkin sits by the fire, snifter in hand, and tells a story. His speech is so slurred, however, that only tiny fragments of the story emerge, such as “‘don’t point that thing at me,’ she said,” or “three buttocks,” after which he relapses into indistinct speech.

Oh! That’s the same joke as “story fragment” jokes we were talking about on February 25. The reader/listener gets an incomplete part of a scenario and has to fill in the rest.

I don’t suppose there’s much instructional value in this observation except to point out that this is why it’s so often said (falsely, I believe) that “there are only seven jokes.” What writers mean when they say that is that joke types often end up encompassing a lot more different kinds of examples than you notice at first. The general principal that there’s humor in forcing the audience to mentally complete unlikely mental scenarios can be brought to the page in a lot of different forms that are all funny for the exact same reason, no matter how much the execution varies.

By the way, Hilary also mentions that she is making progress in terms of breaking into the business in the UK — she’s got professional interest there and a finalist slot in a competition. Whoo! I hear all the time from readers who are making progress, gaining confidence, creating good work. I couldn’t be prouder!

Go Team!

Lunch: chicken enchiladas, rice, beans

Here’s an exchange I just heard today on an episode of The Wire. It went something like this:

A GUY
I got a little problem.

OTHER GUY
Not uncommon in a man your age.

Fantastic, right? Funny without being unrealistic. But what’s the next line? It’s tempting to feel that the next line has to be a topper, or at least a “very funny” or “f— you” sort of acknowledgement of the joke. But that isn’t what happened. Instead, the first guy acknowledged the joke with a sort of wry grimace and went on to outline what he actually needed from the other guy. And, I swear, the joke was funnier for it, and the scene retained a sense of urgency that might’ve been lost behind a whole string of jokes.

Jokes breed jokes. You want a little comedic head-piece to a scene, and it’s easy to end up with a whole joke run, just because you feel like everyone has to keep responding and one-upping. Great for a sitcom, but if you’re in a drama, consider letting a joke line just stand alone.

Lunch: Vienna sausages, canned oysters, “spicy thai” potato chips, strawberries and a variety of candies

Thank you to Gentle Reader Seanna-Lin in Massachusetts. She’s a novelist who says she has found this humble blog to be helpful. Really? Cool! I’ve never taken on a novel myself and am overwhelmed by those who have. Have you seen one of those things? So many words on a page!

There is also a letter here from Nicholas in Rhode Island. He’s asking about taking on too many spec script projects at once. In a neat turn of phrase he says that he thinks his “back burner is about to collapse.” Hee!

Well, Nicholas, I’ve found that back burners can pretty much take any weight you put on them. It’s the front burners that are shaky. Cue up as many projects-in-waiting as you want. The trick is in determining the number of them that you can actively work on at once. Some people need to work on one at a time or they get distracted and out-of-focus. Others of us find there to be something counter-intuitively calming about being slightly overworked, since it forces us to turn off our censor and go into emergency mode, which can be very helpful. Figure out which kind of person you are and take on projects accordingly.

And then set some priorities. Having a spec pilot seems to be necessary right now, so that might be a good thing to have finished — really finished — before you work on that spec episode of Chuck which is less likely to be immediately useful.

Nicholas also asks a question about breaking the fourth wall in a spec script in an unusual way. He’s thinking of having a character in a spec for an already-existing show make reference to a bit of pop-culture to which the actor playing that character is connected. Did you follow that? Well, strange thing is, I actually did exactly this in one of the first specs I ever wrote. I learned that the actor on the show I was specing had recently performed in a Chekhov play. So I added a bit in which that character specifically talked about that play, gambling that someone reading the spec might understand and be amused by the connection.

In retrospect, it was a mistake. I cannot recommend this approach. It’s going to cause you to make choices in the writing that have nothing to do with what’s organic to the scene, and it’s probably not even going to be noticed or understood. Worse yet, if it is noticed and understood, you’re in danger of appearing cute, instead of honest, in your writing. I understand why it’s tempting (as I was tempted myself, once), but I have to say, “turn away!” Writing the show within the confines of the walls of that show is almost always the right choice.

Nicholas has more good questions, but those will have to wait for another day. For now…

Lunch: a chopped salad with garbanzo beans. I got extra garbanzo beans and I still had them all picked out before I was half-way done.

I recently received such an interesting letter from Gentle Reader Maggie in Brooklyn. She writes to point out another variety for our menagerie of joke-types — a favorite of her and her boyfriend. She says:

We were wondering if there’s a specific writers’ room term for a type of joke that we love. It happens when you cut to a scene and someone is in the middle of wrapping up a story, and the only line you hear gives you very clear, very funny picture of what the rest of the story was about.

She goes on to give some examples. One of them was from that Charles Barkley Super Bowl ad in which we hear him say, out of a cut, “…and that’s why I never eat shrimp.” Another is from “Pirates of the Caribbean” in which we hear Johnny Depp wrapping up a story with “…and then they made me their king.”

Maggie is right that this is certainly a distinct type of joke. I love this joke. I remember particularly taking note of the “shrimp” line when I heard it. I don’t think this kind of joke has been given a particular name, although every room invents some of their own terminology — if a particular show used this kind of bit as a running gag, I’m certain they’d come up with a name for it. Maybe it’s a Fragment Joke, since it’s based on only hearing a fragment of the whole. Note that it’s certainly the same joke if you only hear the start or the middle of a story. If you open a door just long enough to hear, “Now if I was to show you the OTHER buttock…” for example. That’s the same joke.

These jokes are so effective because they make the audience do the work of inferring what they missed. They’re certainly related to jokes like those in the old Bob Newhart routines in which we’d hear one side of a phone call or even an in-person conversation and have to infer what was being said or done. From his Driving Instructor Routine: All right, let’s get up a bit more speed and gradually ease it into second… well, I didn’t want to cover reverse this early….

Any time you can get the audience to do some of the work, you’re getting them invested, and that’s a great thing.

Lunch: Chicken Caesar Salad

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