JaneEspenson.com

Happy Thanksgiving! Are you full of turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes? I know I am. Mmmm. So sleepy. And there’s still pumpkin pie that needs to be eaten! (By the way, the pie is entirely homemade. By this I mean that I mixed the spices and eggs into the canned pumpkin myself instead of buying the pre-mixed kind. So superior.)

So, I was sitting here, slipping quietly into a food coma, and I started randomly thinking about the nature of competitions. Every entrant in the Miss America competition wants to win, right? But do you root for all of them? Do you root for any of them? It’s not enough for someone to want something, or even deserve something. To really make us pull for someone, it helps a lot if they’ve overcome something. If a contestant can weave a compelling tale of childhood tragedy or mild disability, we root for them. We want them to be compensated.

This can tell us writers a lot about how to create characters that audiences root for — a crucial ingredient in populating your spec pilot. Just making a “good” person or a “deserving” person isn’t enough. A person with impeccable morals who has never had them tested isn’t that compelling. I’ve written here before about how Dr. House and Starbuck are both wonderful characters despite not being “likable” in the traditional sense. We understand them, and the tragedies that have led them to be the wonderful prickly souls that they are, and we want them to accomplish their goals as a result.

So give the main character in your spec script something that they want. Absolutely. But also give them a nice juicy obstacle to getting it. The audience will love them.

And allow me to particularly recommend the application of a special case of this — unrequited love, which instantly wins over any reader/viewer with its power. Got a character who’s a hard sell? Having a rough time in the swimsuit competition? Try a little fruitless yearning. Great stuff.

Lunch/Dinner: You know how it goes: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy and an experimental liaison with a broccoli salad that no one liked.

First off, a bit of exciting news. Many of you probably already know this from the Joss forum at fans4writers.com , but in case you didn’t, I’m pleased to announce that there will be a special day of picketing and celebration outside Fox Studios from 10 am to 2 pm on December 7th for fans of Joss Whedon and his shows Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and the up-coming Dollhouse. I’ll be there; Joss will be there… will you? Come join us! And while you’re waiting for the day to get here,buy a pencil, why doncha? I bought 50 boxes myself yesterday, and I plan to keep buying as this thing progresses. Let’s hope this thing wraps up before I’m a pencil pauper.

Now, you know I don’t like it when the faucet of writing advice stops running, so here’s a (very tangentially) strike-related pet peeve of mine. I recall that during the ’88 strike, someone had the idea of taking old Mission Impossible scripts and filming them with a new set of actors. Then, the strike resolved, so they ended up hiring a staff and creating new missions after all. I’m not sure how they thought the original scripts, with all their references to enormous reel-to-reel tape recorders and massive house-sized computers, were going to really work anyway without rewriting — perhaps the original idea was all a ploy to make writers feel unneeded. Anyway, the eventual new scripts reflected up-to-the-minute technology.

Except that they kind of didn’t. I distinctly recall the following line from an episode of the resulting series.

TECH EXPERT: I have a theory about videotape.

His theory was that older images could be recovered after they’d been taped over. Really? It seems to me that that’s either something that’s true or it isn’t. It doesn’t seem to me like something that the tech expert on the Impossible Mission Force would have a wild hunch about.

If someone in your script has to be tentative about asserting something, make sure it’s because that character would actually be tentative, not just because you find yourself at the edges of your own knowledge. It can be very helpful to let the lines blur between the writer and the character — to think of how you would express something as the starting point for how the character would express it, but this can’t be your approach when the character is supposed to possess specific expertise. Besides, I think I’d be more intrigued by what was about to happen if the guy had instead said:

TECH EXPERT: Hang on, guys. Watch this. Here’s the thing you never knew about videotape…

Lunch: the “famous tofu reuben” at Factor’s deli.

I’m back! I hope you all noticed that while I was away, the amazing Pencils For Moguls project swung into motion. This is a chance for you guys to provide a measurable, visible symbol of the thing the striking writers couldn’t readily rally or measure in 1988 — fan support. Buy some pencils! I’m a fan as well as a writer, so I’m going to buy some, too.

Since it’s been a while since I answered a question, I’m going to dig into the mailbag today. Dan in Pennsylvania writes in to ask about a technical difficulty that often occurs when you’re writing a spec of a produced show with highly serialized story lines, like Desperate Housewives or Lost or Heroes. He’s worried that his spec requires that the reader understand the point in the arc at which he’s placing his spec. He asks, “Could one actually write in their spec a ‘Previously on Desperate Housewives’ sequence in order to take care of the exposition.”

I’ve put off answering this question because I don’t have a definitive answer. My instinct is against scripting a ‘previously’ because I’m afraid it’ll look like you don’t know that’s not part of a standard script. It would be great if you didn’t have to provide any set-up at all, actually, if you could make things clear enough in the script itself that even a less-than-informed reader could infer what they need to know from the script itself.

But if you really think the story requires set-up, I would recommend keeping it as brief as possible, a little header across the top of the first page (not the title page). Something like:

Note to readers: This episode follows these events… [list].

But that’s just my instinct. The only people who really know the answer are the ones who read entries for the Disney and Warner’s Brothers programs. The people who run those programs have my email address… so if they want to write in with their opinions, I will report them. In the meantime, good luck, Dan in Pennsylvania. I hope this helps. And buy pencils!

Lunch: nachos and a small Caesar salad at the Rainforest Cafe

WOW. What a turnout today at Universal! Thank you so much, Battlestar fans! Our gate was bustin’ with fans and I hear there were crowds at the other gates as well! Nicely done! And I enjoyed meeting all of you!

I’m going to be hard to pin down on Monday — probably splitting my time between the Universal Barham Gate and the Colfax Gate at CBS Radford where there is going to be a confluence of female genre writers.

Then there is Tuesday, Nov. 20, your last chance to come show your support before the Thanksgiving holiday. This is the big March and Rally on Hollywood Blvd! The plan is to assemble at 1PM at the corner of Hollywood Blvd and Ivar Avenue, with the march beginning at 1:30. This should be something and a half!

I’m about to run out the door for a long-planned weekend trip with my old friends from the Disney writing fellowship, so I’m not going to be posting over the weekend. You’ll have to keep an eye on things for me, okay, Gentle Readers? Keep watching UnitedHollywood.com — I’ve got a feeling this “Pencils for Moguls” campaign is gonna heat up!

Lunch: cheap sushi. Yuck.

Many thanks to the Amazing and Accomplished Ken Levine, whom I’m very proud to call a friend of the blog! Ken actually accomplished the one goal in this business that I most wanted to accomplish: he wrote for M*A*S*H. Ken has been kind enough to put a little piece by me up on his blog as part of the virtual book tour to promote Serenity Found, the book about Firefly/Serenity edited by me.

Thank you, Ken!

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