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08/17/2007: Kaput Down that Keyboard


The ABC/Disney Fellowship and Warner Brothers' Workshop provide places to use your spec scripts for produced shows, and the Slamdance Competition is a place to use your spec pilot scripts. So it starts to seem as though there's no fear of misapplied effort -- all your scripts can be sent somewhere. Except not really.

So what's the sort of television spec writing that has no application? Writing for produced shows that no longer exist. If you have ideas for stories for Firefly or The Sopranos or Wonderfalls, then you might have some fine fanfic, but there is simply nothing else to be done with them that I can think of. Very occasionally, someone will get attention with a clever spec-script re-interpretation of a classic show, but I've never heard of anyone who's been able to do anything with a script for a contemporary defunct show.

I know that some shows have lines of novels that continue after the show is over. I don't know anything about the process the publishers use to produce these books, except that it's completely separate from the production of the (ex-)show itself. I guess you should write to the publishing company if you want more info about writing the novels, but this is a very different sort of writing than I address here.

I know it's hard to let go of a favorite show (trust me, I know), but part of the tv biz is about exactly that. You're entering a career that will stretch out over many years, and many shows. Don't get into the business because you're in love with a particular show. Get into it because you love writing and can imagine finding joy in it even if you aren't hired by your dream show. Then, when the next Buffy, the next Battlestar, comes along, getting to be involved is a glorious bonus. A really really glorious bonus.

Lunch: bomboletta pasta with lobster -- I've never had this variety/shape of pasta before. It's like the wagon-wheel shape before it gets sliced into disks, if you can picture that.