I'm a former writer for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and have written episodes for shows including: Angel, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Ellen, The O.C., Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dinosaurs, Andy Barker PI and others. I am currently under a development deal with NBC/Universal television while working as Co-Executive Producer on Battlestar Galactica. My blog is intended to help new writers tackle the job of writing those all-important spec scripts. I can't read your work, get you an agent, or get you hired. But I can give you solid, time-tested script-writing advice! And then there's lunch.

Jane on 01.18.06 @ 04:02 PM PST [link]
 
 

Friend of the blog, the amazing Rob Kutner, one of the writers on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, has written a book called "Apocalypse How." You can order it here, or, once Book Soup has it on their site, you can also order it there! And you can read about it way over here!

I don't have my copy in hand yet, but this is sure to be terrific. From the web site: APOCALYPSE HOW is a comprehensive cataclysmic guide that walks you through the Nine Most Likely World-Ending Scenarios, and provides useful and inspiring advice on every aspect of surviving (and thriving!) in the new world to come. Fantastic.

Up here in Vancouver, I'm continuing to enjoy watching my words get spun into gold by this amazing crew and cast. Nothing will convince you you're brilliant faster then having brilliant actors read your material. Of course, the opposite is true too, which is why I caution you to be very careful about staging amateur table reads. Terrible line-readings will make you think your writing is terrible. And it just isn't. I think you're better off listening to imaginary brilliance than real-world awfulness. So turn up those voices in your head and turn down your roommate's boyfriend's offer to read the lead in your spec pilot. Unless he's good, he might just convince you to throw out something that actually works. Remember that there is no line so inspired that it can't be read painfully badly.

Lunch: cheeseburger, pickles, other wonderful items from the catering truck


Jane on 05.09.08 @ 07:29 PM PST [link]
 
 

I'm still up here in Vancouver, watching production of my next episode. It's exhausting but fun. One of the things I've been doing is making last-minute cuts to shorten too-long scenes. It's been making me think a lot about how to keep a scene short and focused and strong.

If you're tackling this in your own script, I suggest trying what I've been doing: recreating a beatsheet like the one you wrote at your pre-outline stage, only even shorter. Just make a list of the one crucial thing that happens in each scene. Sometimes two crucial things happen in a scene, especially if an A-story and a B-story are both involved, but usually no more than that. So I mean, literally a couple words for each scene: "Joe tells Carrie his secret." "Leslie starts the house fire." "Jeremy blames his father for his failings." "The soldier starts to regret his actions." Then look at the scene and find the part where that happens -- sometimes it's all in one line or one action. Decide on the absolute minimum you'd have to keep to fulfill the promise of your little beatsheet. Declare all the rest expendable.

Now, this isn't really true, of course. The heartbeat of a script is in all the stuff that might not be strictly necessary for this scene, but that gives a world its texture, and fleshes out a character so that their actions reflect a full and believable person. If you cut everything but story, you'd have a synopsis, not an episode. But keeping your eye on the function of the scene within the story is crucial and sometimes surprisingly difficult. If you know exactly what the scene needs to do, you can bring a slightly more objective eye to the cutting process. I've been amazed sometimes when I've realized that some four-page scene I've written actually plays better -- is sharper and more emotional -- as a one-page scene. You don't always lose when you cut. The bones of your story show up better when you take some of the fat off.

Even if you don't need to lose length off your script, I recommend that at some point you make one of these little reconstructed beatsheets, just to keep your focus on the most basic shape of your story, the real function of every scene. It will keep you from wandering off into the maze.

Lunch: steak, which I shared with a beagle who lives in the Set Dec Department. I love food from the set.


Jane on 05.03.08 @ 12:01 PM PST [link]
 
 

Did you see my episode of Battlestar Galactica that aired last night? I myself did not, as I was on a soundstage, watching even fresher Battlestar being made. So instead, to celebrate, I reread the script this morning and I thought I might show you all a little excerpt to illustrate how simple it can be to do something that might look tricky on the screen.

SPOILERS... if you haven't seen the episode yet, you might want to wait. Anyway, there's a moment in the episode where something plays out and then you realize it didn't really happen, that it was just one character's fantasy/fear/hallucination/projection/SOMETHING.... Here's how I scripted it (I'm just showing you a scene fragment here):


...Awkward pause. Adama signals the bartender, then says:


ADAMA
We all miss her, Chief. I understand if you want time off. Or even if... if you want more shifts, want to keep busy. None of us knows how we’ll react to a loss. What we’ll need.
TYROL
Don’t need anything special, sir.

The bartender slides a drink to Adama (he knows his preference without asking).

ADAMA
I guess it was just more than she could take, huh? Being married to a Cylon who made her the mother to a half-breed abomination.

Tyrol blinks at Adama. Who is JUST NOW BEING SERVED HIS DRINK. We realize that was a small moment of surreal fantasy (a la Tigh’s imagined shooting of Adama in episode three).

ADAMA (cont’d)
(to bartender)
Thank you.
(then)
She was a good woman.

See what I did? Almost nothin'. I just said what happened using emphasis so the eyes of careless reader wouldn't miss it, and then with a "We realize..." sentence. I love "We realize," because what you're really doing is conveying to the reader the intended experience of the viewer. You're not forcing them to guess about what you want the viewer to understand at that moment, and you're not using dialogue to over-explain something that a character wouldn't say out loud. I find it incredibly useful as long as it's not being used to try to convince a reader that something would be clear to a viewer when in fact it would not. It's a powerful weapon, use it well.

Lunch: shrimp dumplings, rice rolls, sticky rice and chicken in lotus leaves from Dim Sum place near the hotel. Best Dim Sum I've had in a long time. Vancouver is food heaven!



Jane on 04.26.08 @ 02:03 PM PST [link]
 
 

Hello again, Gentle Readers. Were you worried about me? So sorry to disappear for so long. I'm up here in Vancouver where they're shooting my latest Battlestar episode. It's crazy and hectic and wonderful. I'll be back to talk to you all again when I'm out from under!

Jane on 04.25.08 @ 07:52 PM PST [link]
 
 

A blog letter just arrived in one of those little packets you get from the post office when their equipment mangles a letter. This envelope inside is missing about a third of itself, resulting in a letter that's missing its corners, although not in that cool Battlestar Galactica way. Luckily for Gentle Reader Maryanne in [town name torn away], Australia, very little of the actual content of the letter was obscured.

Maryanne writes to ask:

Obviously, costumes are chosen by costume designers, rather than writers. But if the costume is actually mentioned in the script (like, for example, Riley's "clown pants" in The Yoko Factor.), how much specific description would the writer give in [word torn away, assume "the"] script?

Well, I don't have a copy of Doug's script for The Yoko Factor. I've found one on line, but I can't tell if it's the actual script or a transcript. At any rate, the line of stage description that I found reads: "Riley pulls a pair of hideous multi-colored weight lifter pants from the knapsack," which sounds about right. That's the degree of detail you'd generally give.

Wardrobe description, by the way, was something I found very confusing as I set out to write my very first scripts. I knew that clothing was part of what defined characters, but once I started describing the characters clothes, I felt like I needed to do it for every scene in order to be consistent. So I went overboard. I recently read a script by a new writer who had clearly fallen into the same line of thought, telling the reader what everyone was wearing in every scene. That's not only unnecessary, but it's distracting, since it makes the reader think that these details are going to be important, raising expectations that don't pay off.

Mention clothes when you first introduce someone, if it's important to the character ("She's the sort of young woman who insists on dressing like a teen-aged boy, right now in tennis shoes, jeans and a hoodie."), and when something significant is happening with the clothes ("His suit is rumpled and a pair of women's underwear dangles from his pocket."), and when they help define a supporting character ("Men in white coats enter through both doors simultaneously.")

Beyond that, if you assume your characters are dressed appropriately, given their characters and their surroundings, your readers will assume the same and it'll be fine to leave everything unspecified.

And if, like Riley's pants, you need to describe some oddity, do it clearly and succinctly, and don't feel like you can't convey an attitude about it, as "hideous" does in the example.

Hope that helps, Maryanne from mystery town!

Lunch: cup o' noodles, fig newtons


Jane on 04.16.08 @ 01:37 PM PST [link]
 
 

I love it when people write in with concerns I never would've thought of. We all know the frustration of having some question that everyone else seems to know the answer to, so it's never even discussed in the books.

Gentle Reader Carrie writes in with one of those questions. She asks:

After reading about copyrights regarding song lyrics not long ago, I got to wondering if there might be any copyrights associated with place names? For instance, let's say San Francisco. Is there process I would need to go through to use a certain place in a script, or would it be okay to just plunk a story down in the middle of any given town?

Plunk! Plunk away! You can set your show anywhere you want, without fear of legal problems. From San Francisco to the Pope's bedroom, you can use it all without fear.

Your main concern about setting should have to do with (imaginary, for a spec script) shooting expense. I mean that if you had a big exterior shot in which your actors have to interact with some big iconic piece of the landscape that cannot be recreated on a soundstage, that you might have a problem. For example, if your script called for your hero to blast through the canals of Venice on a jet ski, well, that sounds a bit pricey and it might be off-putting to a reader looking to see if you can write to a TV-sized budget.

The only other setting problem I can think of regarding locations is that U.S. network television has been traditionally wary of shows set overseas, but I'm not sure that should stop you from writing a London-set spec pilot (or wherever), if you've got a seriously brilliant idea. Just be aware of the bias because, again, it might, might, make a reader peg you as unsophisticated in terms of the preferences of the market.

Lunch: avocado, lettuce, tomato on olive bread. Too much mayo, but good.

Jane on 04.15.08 @ 11:11 AM PST [link]
 
 

Friend-of-the-Blog Jeff sent me this link which I'm delighted to find references not only an interesting script style, but also a couple mentions of moi-self. Heh!

The issue is the use of earthy expletives in the non-dialog portions of your script. Apparently this is done with frequency and enthusiasm over at Lost. There is some talk in the referenced piece about whether or not this is a good thing. Someone speculates there that I might not approve. Well, it depends. I like a script to have force and energy and enthusiasm. I dislike scripts that read like gas grill assembly instructions. And these certainly look like scripts with verve. If I were on that staff, I think I'd probably have fun varying my style by tossing in a few zesty words.

Friend-of-the-blog Jeff raises the even more important issue, however. What if you're writing a Lost spec? Should you follow the general rule of making it look like a produced script, and thus "fuck" if all up? Or should you avoid the dirty talk?

My inclination is to either refrain, or to split the difference. If you're comfortable doing so, you can certainly write your stage directions with rather more punch than you might otherwise do, perhaps even get profane here and there. But be very careful about going overboard, because while there is little cost to avoiding the profanity, there might be a big one to overdoing it. And I'm not talking about easily offended readers. I don't think that's the hazard. I'm talking about coming across as flippant about the contents of your own script.

Joss never liked it when Buffy was referred to as "camp," because that word suggests a style that doesn't take its characters seriously, and we always took our characters very seriously. Similarly, you don't want to seem to be making fun of all the people and actions in your spec script, and if you think about how a script with flip and exaggerated stage directions might read, I think you'll see how it could easily give that impression.

Lunch: those darn stuffed jalapenos at Jack In The Box again. I can't stay away!


Jane on 04.13.08 @ 08:35 PM PST [link]