A Writer's Life

Our Worst Script

I published the post below on this blog in July 2006...and forgot all about what I said I'd do at the end. Now I am following through...

Ken Levine writes today about the worst script he and his partner ever wrote.

In 1993 my writing partner, David Isaacs and I did a short run series for CBS called BIG WAVE DAVE’S starring Adam Arkin and David Morse. It ran that summer, got 19 shares, kept 100% of MURPHY BROWN’S audience and was cancelled. At the time CBS had starring vehicles in the wings for Peter Scolari, Bronson Pinchot, and the always hilarious Faye Dunaway so they didn’t need us.

We were given a production order of six with three back-up scripts. We assigned the first two back-ups to our staff and planned on writing the third ourselves. When the show was cancelled we put in to CBS to get paid for the additional scripts. They said fine, but we had to turn in the completed scripts. Gulp!

Bill Rabkin and I had almost the exact same experience on SEAQUEST. We'd already turned in the outline for  episode 14 when we got canceled. But in order to get paid for the teleplay, we had to write it. We did it in one day, while we were packing up our office. I still live in fear that some sf fan will stumble on a bootleg draft at a scifi convention, post it on the net, and people will think we actually write that bad. I'm in Germany now, or I'd post an excerpt. I'll try to remember to do it when I return.

UPDATE March 8, 2007:  Okay, here's an excerpt from "About Face,"  the script Bill and I wrote in a day to get our script fee. We knew no one would ever read it. All you need to know to follow along is that Piccolo a man with gills and Darwin is a talking dolphin (I'm not kidding).

How To Write a Treatment

This was originally posted back in June 2005...but since I get asked this question a lot, and I am on a plane to Germany right now, I thought I'd share it with you again.

Bryon Stedman  asked me this question in a comment to another post:

I have a situation where a broadcast entity claims they want to hear my idea for a boxing series or made for TV movie. The characters belong to my family from a comic drawn by my father.

If a narrative is they way to go, what are the key points to include? Do I go as far as dialog and cameas shots and locations or simply text with main characters CAPITALIZED? Advice requested and appreciated.

A series treatment and a TV movie treatment are very different. A series treatment sells the characters and the franchise of the show...the relationships and format that will generate stories week after week. A TV movie treatment sells a story.

If the studio is already familiar with your Dad's comic, I don't know why they need you to come up with a series treatment...the strip itself sells that or they wouldn't be interested in the first place.

A series treatment isn't about telling a story...it's about describing the characters, how they interact within the unique format of your show. Who are they? What do they do? And how will who they are and what they do generate 100 interesting stories?

For a TV movie treatment, you're selling the characters and their story.  At this point, you're trying to sell the broadstrokes...they can pay you to work out the rest. Write up a punchy over-view of what happens in the story, as if you were writing a review of a great movie (only minus the praise). You want to convey the style and tone of the movie. But don't go into great detail. Keep it short, tight and punchy.And whatever you do, DON'T include camera shots or dialogue.

Don't fixate on treatment format, because there isn't one. Tell your story in the style that works best for you. Don't worry about whether the character names are in capitals or not (it doesn't matter). Concentrate on telling a strong story.

Bryon Stedman  asked me this question in a comment to another post:

I have a situation where a broadcast entity claims they want to hear my idea for a boxing series or made for TV movie. The characters belong to my family from a comic drawn by my father.

If a narrative is they way to go, what are the key points to include? Do I go as far as dialog and cameas shots and locations or simply text with main characters CAPITALIZED? Advice requested and appreciated.

A series treatment and a TV movie treatment are very different. A series treatment sells the characters and the franchise of the show...the relationships and format that will generate stories week after week. A TV movie treatment sells a story.

If the studio is already familiar with your Dad's comic, I don't know why they need you to come up with a series treatment...the strip itself sells that or they wouldn't be interested in the first place.

A series treatment isn't about telling a story...it's about describing the characters, how they interact within the unique format of your show. Who are they? What do they do? And how will who they are and what they do generate 100 interesting stories?

For a TV movie treatment, you're selling the characters and their story.  At this point, you're trying to sell the broadstrokes...they can pay you to work out the rest. Write up a punchy over-view of what happens in the story, as if you were writing a review of a great movie (only minus the praise). You want to convey the style and tone of the movie. But don't go into great detail. Keep it short, tight and punchy.And whatever you do, DON'T include camera shots or dialogue.

Don't fixate on treatment format, because there isn't one. Tell your story in the style that works best for you. Don't worry about whether the character names are in capitals or not (it doesn't matter). Concentrate on telling a strong story.

Breaking In

I've been looking at my stats and I've noticed that there are some posts that people are repeatedly searching out. I'll start reposting some of them for those of you who only started following this blog in the last year or so. This one is from November 2005 and is also available as an article on the Writers University website...

How do I become a television writer if I don’t have any contacts?

I get asked this question a lot…but it’s disingenuous, since I’m a TV writer/producer and whoever is asking me that is really asking me to either read their script or to invite them in to pitch. So, theoretically, they already know somebody in the business.

They’re luckier than I was when I got started. I didn’t know anybody in the TV industry. But I got in. How did I do it? Everybody’s story is unique. Most of those stories, however, share one common element. You have to put yourself in the right place to get your lucky break. And it’s easier than you think.

The first thing you have to do is learn your craft. Take classes, preferably taught by people who have had some success as TV writers. There’s no point taking a class from someone who isn’t an experienced TV writer themselves.

You’d think that would be common sense, but you’d be astonished how many TV courses are taught by people who don’t know the first thing about writing for television or who, through a fluke, sold a story to Manimal twenty years ago and think that qualifies them to take your hundred bucks. Even more surprising is how many desperate people shell out money to take courses from instructors who should be taking TV writing courses themselves.

There’s another reason to take a TV writing course besides learning the basics of the craft. If you’re the least bit likeable, you’ll make a few friends among the other classmates. This is good, because you’ll have other people you can show your work to. This is also good because somebody in the class may sell his or her first script before you do… and suddenly you’ll have a friend in the business.

Many of my writer/producer friends today are writers I knew back when I was in college, when we were all dreaming of breaking into TV some day.

A writer we hired on staff on the first season of Missing was in a Santa Monica screenwriters group… and was the first member of her class to get a paying writing gig. Now her friends in the class suddenly had a friend on a network TV show who could share her knowledge, give them practical advice and even recommend them to her new agent and the writer/producers she was working with.

Another route is to try and get a job as a writer/producer’s assistant on an hour-long drama. Now only will you get a meager salary, but you will see how a show works from the inside. You’ll read lots of scripts and revisions and, simply by observation, get a graduate course in TV writing. More important, you’ll establish relationships with the writers on the show and the freelancers who come through the door. Many of today’s top TV producers were writer/producer assistants once. All of the assistants I’ve had have gone on to become working TV writers themselves… and not because I gave them a script assignment or recommended them for one. I didn’t do either.

The first step towards getting into pitch a TV producer for an episodic writing assignment is to write an episodic teleplay on spec.

By that I mean, a pick a show and write an episode for it.

Although there are some producers who prefer to read screenplays, most showrunners, agents, and network executives want to read an episodic teleplay. Even if your spec feature script has acceptable levels of dialogue, characterization, and structure, people thinking of hiring you will still wonder “yes, but can he handle my characters? Does he understand the four act structure?” An original piece can demonstrate that you have a strong voice, but it doesn’t show whether or not you blend that voice with ours. Can you write what we need without losing whatever it is that makes you unique? That’s why we need to see your talents applied to a TV episode. To someone else’s characters. To someone else’s voice.

How do you pick a show to spec? Easy. Pick a show you like. Odds are, if you’re thinking about trying to become a TV writer, you already know what show you want to spec -- you just don’t know you know. It’s the one you watch every week, and when it’s over, you find yourself thinking: That was pretty good, but wouldn’t it be cool if --"
 
Don’t worry about what’s hot and what’s not – choose a show you feel a connection to, one that you “get.” With some exceptions:

The first thing you have to do is learn your craft. Take classes, preferably taught by people who have had some success as TV writers. There’s no point taking a class from someone who isn’t an experienced TV writer themselves.

You’d think that would be common sense, but you’d be astonished how many TV courses are taught by people who don’t know the first thing about writing for television or who, through a fluke, sold a story to Manimal twenty years ago and think that qualifies them to take your hundred bucks. Even more surprising is how many desperate people shell out money to take courses from instructors who should be taking TV writing courses themselves.

There’s another reason to take a TV writing course besides learning the basics of the craft. If you’re the least bit likeable, you’ll make a few friends among the other classmates. This is good, because you’ll have other people you can show your work to. This is also good because somebody in the class may sell his or her first script before you do… and suddenly you’ll have a friend in the business.

Many of my writer/producer friends today are writers I knew back when I was in college, when we were all dreaming of breaking into TV some day.

A writer we hired on staff on the first season of Missing was in a Santa Monica screenwriters group… and was the first member of her class to get a paying writing gig. Now her friends in the class suddenly had a friend on a network TV show who could share her knowledge, give them practical advice and even recommend them to her new agent and the writer/producers she was working with.

Another route is to try and get a job as a writer/producer’s assistant on an hour-long drama. Now only will you get a meager salary, but you will see how a show works from the inside. You’ll read lots of scripts and revisions and, simply by observation, get a graduate course in TV writing. More important, you’ll establish relationships with the writers on the show and the freelancers who come through the door. Many of today’s top TV producers were writer/producer assistants once. All of the assistants I’ve had have gone on to become working TV writers themselves… and not because I gave them a script assignment or recommended them for one. I didn’t do either.

The first step towards getting into pitch a TV producer for an episodic writing assignment is to write an episodic teleplay on spec.

By that I mean, a pick a show and write an episode for it.

Although there are some producers who prefer to read screenplays, most showrunners, agents, and network executives want to read an episodic teleplay. Even if your spec feature script has acceptable levels of dialogue, characterization, and structure, people thinking of hiring you will still wonder “yes, but can he handle my characters? Does he understand the four act structure?” An original piece can demonstrate that you have a strong voice, but it doesn’t show whether or not you blend that voice with ours. Can you write what we need without losing whatever it is that makes you unique? That’s why we need to see your talents applied to a TV episode. To someone else’s characters. To someone else’s voice.

How do you pick a show to spec? Easy. Pick a show you like. Odds are, if you’re thinking about trying to become a TV writer, you already know what show you want to spec -- you just don’t know you know. It’s the one you watch every week, and when it’s over, you find yourself thinking: That was pretty good, but wouldn’t it be cool if --"
 
Don’t worry about what’s hot and what’s not – choose a show you feel a connection to, one that you “get.” With some exceptions:

An Argument for Outlining

I am a firm believer in the importance of having an outline before you sit down to write. It doesn't have to be detailed outline-- it might only be a page or two.  You just need to know where you're going and, to some degree, how you are going to get there...or what happened to author Sandra Scoppettone could happen to you:

In the course of writing today (yes, I did) I inadvertently discovered that I have two different men involved with the same two women who are trying to get the money everyone is after.  It has to be one man or the other.  Pages and pages must be rewritten.  Whole chapters.  Nightmare.

Did this happen because I took off so much time?  Or am I losing it?  I understand forgetting the color of a character’s eyes, but this is crazy.  And with one man I’m not sure I even did the set-up with the women.  I think these three just happen. The reason I don’t know this is because I couldn’t go on with this today.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to trace backwards and find out.  And then I’ll have to write new scenes, rewrite others completely.

"How Did This Happen?" is the headline of Sandra's post. No offense to Sandra, but I can answer that question in two words: No outline.

That doesn't mean that if you have an outline that the writing of your book is going to go smoothly. You could still find yourself having to go back and rewrite everything...but not because you've inadvertently duplicated a character. Outlines give you a path and a direction for your story, although that doesn't mean you have follow it.

But at least the path is there.

I think of my outlines as "living outlines," since I'm constantly revising them as I write my books.  Why? Because I am always deviating from my outlines and going in new directions, so I have to replot my story to take into account these new events and discoveries.  I usually end up finishing the outline about a week or two before I finish my books.

I've read so many books that were clearly made up as the author went along...and I find them a lot less satisfying that a tightly plotted, tightly-written, confident narrative.

Writing Blind

Novelist John Connolly has an interesting post on researching his novels. But what intrigued me was this little nugget about how he writes:

I brought with me to the US the initial draft of The Unquiet. I imagine it would be almost unintelligible to anyone who tried to read it as a coherent narrative. My first draft tends to be a little rough. There will be inconsistencies of dialogue and character. Some characters will appear in the early stages only to disappear later, their failure to manifest themselves once again left entirely unexplained. Some things seem like good ideas at the start, but quickly prove to be distractions from the main thrust of the book, and as soon as that realisation hits me I tend to let those elements slide.

I don't fret too much about how untidy the text may be (although, in my darker moments, I wonder what might happen if I didn't live to finish the book and someone else, for whatever reason, decided to piece together whatever was left behind. I wish them luck. I mean, I've written it, and sometimes even I'm not entirely sure that I always look forward to trying to put all of the pieces together). After all, there's nobody looking over my shoulder, and my main aim is to get the plot and characters from A-Z, even if that means bypassing Q and R entirely, and occasionally having to loop back to P just to reassure myself that I have a vague notion of what I'm doing.

I'm guessing that John doesn't write with an outline. I know a number of authors who write the same way he seems to...just going where ever the inspiration takes him.  I'm not going to knock it because clearly it's worked great for him.  But I don't think I could ever write that way. That doesn't mean that I stick religiously to my outline, or that characters don't come and go (I've had characters who were meant to die in Chapter One that I kept alive through the whole book), but I need it to keep me more or less pointed in the right direction. I would find writing a book, particularly a mystery, very difficult to do on-the-fly.

Making a Living

I had lunch with a TV writer-friend not long ago, and he was lamenting how the business was letting him down lately. He hadn't worked much in TV during the last year and was despairing about his future. He told me that he wished he wrote books, too. So write one, I said. But I could see from the expression on his face that he wouldn't. He liked the idea of writing a book...actually doing it was something else. He was a TV writer, and that was it.

I decided long ago that I was going to be a writer first and a TV writer second. There's no question that I make most of my living in television...but I believe it's important to me professionally, financially, psychologically and creatively not to concentrate on just one field of writing (It probablyhelps that I started my career as a freelance journalist, then became a novelist, then a non-fiction author, and finally, a TV writer/producer).  So I write books, both fiction and non-fiction, I teach TV writing, and occasionally I write articles and short stories... most of the time while I'm simultaneously writing & producing TV shows (though the TV work always takes priority over everything else). 

While the income from books, teaching, and articles doesn't come close to matching what I  make in TV, those gigs keep some cash coming in when TV (inevitably) lets me down, keep me "alive" in other fields,  and, more importantly, keep my spirits up.

As a result, who I am as a writer isn't entirely wrapped up in whether or not I have a TV job or a book on the shelves. I often have both, or one or the other -- but if I have neither, I have a class to teach or an article to write.

I'm not producing a series right now. But last week, I partnered with a major production company and pitched a movie with them to a cable network. I met with representatives of a European TV network that's interested in having me teach TV writing to their writer/producers and consult on their series. I rewrote a  TV movie treatment to incorporate studio notes.  I turned in a freelance script to the producers of a new drama series. I taught an online screenwriting class. I submitted a short story to Amazon shorts. I wrote 60 pages of my next novel. Next week, I have a meeting with a studio exec who has shows to staff up, a notes meeting on the freelance script, galleys to proof on one of my novels, more pages of my book to write, and probably a whole lot more that I don't even know about yet. 

The bottom line is, I am always writing something for pay, even if that check is miniscule and hustling for my next gig, whether it's in TV, publishing, or something else.  Why? Because that is who I am... a professional writer. And I have a mortgage to pay, just like everybody else.

My Book is Crap

It's nice to know that every writer, even the ones with lots of success, are still tortured by the same insecurities as the rest of us. Acclaimed mystery novelist John Connolly writes:

I can’t speak for other writers, but there is a wall that I hit during the writing of every book. The point at which it occurs varies from book to book, although it’s usually around the halfway stage or just beyond it. I start to doubt the plot, the characters, the ideas underpinning it, my own writing, in fact every element involved in the process.

[...] You’d think that, by now, with eight books written, those doubts would have become less intense. After all, I’ve been through it before. I know that I’ve had these concerns about other books and in the end those books have been written and published without bearing any obvious scars from the turmoil that went into their creation. But there is always that fear that this book, this story, is the one that should not have been started. The idea isn’t strong enough. The plot is going nowhere. I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way and now have to try to find the right path again.

This happens to me, too...but less often if I have a strong outline to start with (though an outline  is no insurance policy against realizing 35,00o words into your book that it's crap and you're a complete fraud). In talking with other writers, I've noticed that the ones who hit the wall the most are the ones who make up their plot as they go along, preferring to be "surprised" by their characters and the turns in the story. Of course, this means the turns may lead to a creative dead end.  I don't know if John outlines or not, but my guess is that he doesn't.

UPDATE:  Author PJ Parrish is nearing the end of a new book and is experiencing night terrors:

The new book is almost done. First draft, that is. I haven't read it through since we started the thing months ago. I am afraid to. I have this really bad feeling that it is a heaping, stinking, fetid, rancid pile of crap. I dream about it now, this pile of crap, almost every night, like Richard Dreyfus in "Close Encounters." I wake up in a sweat over it. My only consolation is knowing that I feel this way with every book. And that I am not alone.

When It All Comes Together

I came up with my story for Bob Randisi's new anthology at the oddest time and the oddest place. I was getting a haircut, tuning out the incessant yammering of the lady cutting my hair, when all the pieces that had been swirling around in my head finally clicked together -- my experience in traffic school the other day, a newspaper article I clipped six months ago, a scene from a story I never wrote, a bit I saw on Court TV some time back, and my curiosity about the life of  a guy I see on public access TV. Suddenly, in about two minutes, I had my story. Today I am off with a notepad and a digital camera to do some "location sc0uting" for the story, I'll do some googling for some facts I need,  and then I'll start writing it. I want to get it done before I start writing the third MONK book next week.

UPDATE: I got back around noon, copied my photos to my hard-drive, then spent an hour or so on Google, looking up facts on different subjects. I also emailed an "expert" in a particular field for some additional background info. I've just finished up a one-page, bullet-point outline for myself -- not that I'll necessarily stick to it, but so I have a road-map in case I have to set the story aside for some reason over the next few days to work on something else.

Now it's time to procrastinate -- which is why I'm updating this post -- and then start writing.

Intercutting

I got this email today:

I’m having trouble presenting a multiple location event in my screenplay. Let’s say, for example, there are 5 peace rallies in 5 US cities all going on at the same time. At each event there is some action and dialogue. We stay only briefly at each location. How the heck is that written? Every way I try to present it seems awkward. Thanks for your time.

Here's how I replied. I think one reason it's awkward is that the situation isn't very conducive to good story telling. It's hard to create conflict, or reveal much character, or tell a story, while cutting back and forth between five very similar events. My first bit of advice would be to restructure your story so you DON'T have to cut between five nearly identical events. But, barring that, you need to make it as simple as you can.

EXT. LOS ANGELES PEACE RALLY - DAY

Griffith Park is crowded with THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE (don't you just love CGI? How did people make movies before?) It's pouring rain. Biff and Joan make love in the mud while everyone around them sings Koombaya. Joan has great breasts. INTERCUT WITH:

EXT. CHICAGO PEACE RALLY - NIGHT

Convention Center. There are TENS OF THOUSANDS of peace-loving people here. But we don't care about them. We FIND Jake creeping under the stage, carrying the BOMB that's hidden inside the INFLATABLE WOMAN. She has great breasts, too. INTERCUT WITH:

INT. SEATTLE PEACE RALLY - DAY

Hundreds of people mill around the base of the SPACE NEEDLE, holding hands and chanting. We PAN UP to the observation tower of the Space Needle, where HOYT, 12, is about to pour a cup of STARBUCK COFFEE on the people below, some of whom have great breasts and some of whom don't. INTERCUT WITH:

and when you're done visiting your five locations (I am exhausted just thinking about it), you end the sequence with a simple END INTERCUT.

Breaking Rocks

When writing is going well, the words spill out of me faster than I can type. I feel like I am in a losing race to keep up with the scenes playing out in my head.

When writing is going badly, as it has been the last couple of days, I feel like I am trying to chisel granite.

I have an outline, so it's not like I don't know where I'm going... I just don't know how to get there. Every word, every sentence is a struggle, and even when I get them down on paper, it hardly seems worth it, since every single word sucks.  The writing is flat, the dialogue rings false, and the humor is non-existent. But I keep pounding away, waiting for that moment when I will write the line that sings, that unlocks everything, and then suddenly I will be on a roll again. Writing will be easy, the characters alive, and the world they live in filled with color and details. Not only will I go back and fix all the crap I wrote before, but I will steamroll ahead  without a moment's doubt or uncertainty...

Until I hit that granite again.