Saturday, July 12, 2008

Q. I'm currently on my second draft of a "Pushing Daisies" spec, aiming to submit it to the Warner Bros. Workshop and the Disney Fellowship. From the three sample scripts I've got, it seems they use narrower margins for dialog than other shows, I'm guessing to accommodate the show's narration, which otherwise might bloat the show's page counts.

In this instance, should I mimic the produced scripts to a 'T', or am I running the risk of being thought guilty of "margin-tweaking" in the interest of hitting a desirable page count? Or is this just a judgment call?

Offhand, I'd say that only writers working on PUSHING DAISIES are familiar with the margins the show uses. And you're not going to be showing your spec to them. So I would stick with regular margins.

Anyway, they're not reading your spec to see if you know what margins you use. They're reading your spec to see if you can get the voices and the template right.

But good eye to detail!

Q. My writing partner and I were advised by a writer in the industry not to mimic the specific [formatting] idiosyncrasies of any show because it could throw a reader off. Thus, our PD Narrator isn't bolded or italicized.

Sounds like good advice. See above.

Labels: spec scripts

4:06 PM

2 Comments:

Speaking of Pushing Daisies, I'm also writing a spec PD. I've been sticking with the established formatting for the narrator (bolded text), but I was wondering if I should keep that way when submitting it to Warner Bros, etc? It is the show's way of writing that character, but I'd hate to throw a reader off. Thoughts?

By  Wool in Sunshine, at 3:31 PM  

Same question as above, but some added info:

My writing partner and I were advised by a writer in the industry not to mimic the specific idiosyncrasies of any show because it could throw a reader off. Thus, our PD Narrator isn't bolded or italicized.

I'd love to hear your opinion on this, Alex.

By  Josh, at 3:09 PM  

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