Boiling It Back Down

I'm rewriting one of the episodes of the pay cable series I'm developing. I have some excellent notes on it from the guys in my brief writing room; and I have several months of perspective. The episode seems kind of fragmented now; I'm trying to get it back on track.

I went straight at it, first, but got lost in the scenes. Then I tried making an outline out of the script -- leaving the sluglines but replacing all the scenes with thumbnail descriptions of those scenes. Still felt lost.

What I'm doing now is boiling the whole episode back down to elemental stories. What does this character want? What are the obstacles to her getting it? Then I'm breaking those stories again, from first principles. What are the essential steps of this story? Which act does each step belong in?

When I've got stories and steps that make sense, I'll weave them together back into a new outline. Only then will I go to pages.

And only then will I consult my old draft. Probably many or most of the steps in the new draft will be scenes I've already got in the old draft. They may be in new places but they may only need tweaking. Some of the scenes will be new. Some of the old scenes won't make it into the new draft.

I don't usually take a script apart like this; I don't usually have to. (If I'd structured the script properly in the first place, I wouldn't have to.) But when I feel I've lost the thread, tinkering and tweaking will only waste time. Walking a script back to first principles, though hard, is a great way to get back on track.

Re-editing

A friend o'mine wrote:

I saw something on TV that had me scratching my head. I've been studying HOUSE for a spec.

My TiVo recorded this week's episode twice. Once on Global and once again on a FOX affiliate on the west coast. As I was watching and re-watching this episode at different times - making note of things like the different sets used, how the new characters were being integrated into the A, B, and C stories, and how much screen time everyone seems to get - I happened to switch between the two recordings of this same show.

Now while the U.S. recording followed the show's scripted teaser and subsequent four-act structure with commercials inserted at the proper times, the airing on Global created it's own act break midway through the fourth act creating its own fifth act. I was actually able to pause just before the commercials started to see a FADE TO DIGITAL SNOW as if someone in the control room hit PAUSE.

1. Is it common practice in Canada to add commercials in the middle of an act where they do not belong?

God, I hope not.

2. Do you think this kind of thing breaks up the flow of a show?

Ch'yeah.

TV writers spend a lot of time on their act outs. After a springboard is approved, the first document you might do would be a "breakdown" of the acts and their outs, before anybody writes an outline. That's how basic the act structure is.

An extra act-out where there's no cliffhanger or emotional moment is jarring. Coming near the climax, it derails the whole episode emotionally.

I've written elsewhere about the re-editing of THE TUDORS and what that did to the flow of the episode. It sounds like here again, no writer was involved in picking the moment to go out on -- and possibly no creative editor, either.

Re-editing for secondary markets (such as Canada) and syndication is a fact of life. That's why DVD sales, iTunes downloads, and even to a lesser extent free, ad-based streaming on the Internet, are a nice benefit of advancing technology: you see the episode the way it was planned, sometimes even in higher picture quality (with DVDs).

Journeyman pilot

Kevin Falls' new show JOURNEYMAN has a premise with some potential for good or gloppy science fiction. A San Francisco reporter (played by Lucius Vorenus, er, Kevin McKidd) begins inexplicably traveling back in time. Not far. Just ten or twenty years. And when he goes, he disappears in the present. Immediately. As in, raptured out of his speeding car.

This brings up obvious questions. How? Why? And what is he supposed to do about it?

And why the specific times and places, where he runs across certain specific people?

I'll talk details after the warning below. But I found the way the premise is structured well-crafted and intriguing. I'll be going back for a second bite, for sure.

JOURNEYMAN premieres Monday (tomorrow) at 10 pm on NBC and Global. Okay, so watch it, and come back to this post, k?







SPOILERS

Journeyman belongs to what seems to be almost a genre these days. He's an Everyman Character with a Supernatural Issue who's caught up in Something Mysterious That's Bigger Than Him. He is simultaneously trying to get to the bottom of the mystery (series arc) while solving individual episodic mysteries. Remember that show last year where the guy kept waking up on the same morning, trying to avoid being framed for murder? You can probably name a couple more. Oh, LOST, for example. Oh, and X-FILES.

Sometimes the character has a superpower he exercises intentionally or unwillingly, sometimes just a problem caused by supernatural forces. The character solves episodic mysteries, but the ongoing questions of How Did I Get This Power and Why and What Am I Supposed to Do With It? keep you hooked on the continuing serial story. Hopefully.

The prototypes for this kind of show didn't always have the Big Mystery arc. I don't remember there being an überplot in TRU CALLING; Tru just found herself a day backwards in time, trying to save someone from becoming a corpse. And in JOAN OF ARCADIA there wasn't an unfolding mystery. It was just, God wants you to do thus and such this week, and the cleverness of the show was how that would turn out in an unexpected way.

The pilot handles this rather nicely.

First of all, kudos for putting some serious heart into the core of the show; that's going to keep us coming back even if the story department loses control of the conspiracy arc. The heart of the show isn't that he's being used in a pawn by, probably, Future People with Supertechnology. (I don't know this, I'm just guessing because someone seems to be sending Dan Vassar back to specific parts of time.) The heart of the show is that Dan lost the love of his life, then stole his brother's girl, who had been madly in love with him all along. Now he's got a kid with her, he loves her, and he's being sent back in time to when the love of his life was still alive.

And he can sleep with her if he wants to. And oh, he wants to. But he can't. ... Can he? Is it cheating if Present You sleeps with your Then Girlfriend back when you weren't even dating your Present Wife?

Oh, and then it turns out that Present Deceased Girlfriend is really still alive, and is involved in the Mysterious Organization that is sending him back in time.

Ouch. That's personal, yo.

As for the conspiracy arc, you get just enough to know that it's going to make sense. They know exactly when and where he's going to be. Which means they presumably know why. But are they sending him? Or are they just following him? And how are they doing it? And why him?

I imagine we won't know the answers till at least the Season One finale, and presumably not all the answers until the series finale.

The website describes the show as "Dan Vassar travels back in time and helps people." Fortunately, it seem to be more complicated than that, since he gets at least one person killed.

Which is an interesting take on time travel. We've seen Marty McFly change his present circumstances by interfering with his past, and the various Enterprise captains interfere with time constantly (to the point where they made the amusing "Trials and Tribble-ations" DS9 ep). What's new is that there is an organization that is apparently tracking these changes and making sure they happen according to plan. How's that supposed to work?

And there's that beautiful moment where Dan, having just turned down sex with the lost love of his life, Past Livia, runs into Future Livia in the hallway. And he knows he's being set up for this, and she's in on it, he puts it together right quick, and asks, "What if I get it wrong." And she says, basically, "You're supposed to."

I bet she knows what happened in Tecumseh, too.

While the episode hits the obligatory note of the wife doubting his sanity, it doesn't waste too much time on him trying to convince her, or her trying to convince him. She jumps right to the intervention. And when that doesn't work, she's ready to end it, until he rather neatly turns her around.

It's always a sticky point in the narrative, when the hero has to tell his main squeeze/sibling/parent the supernatural truth. That secondary character has to doubt his sanity because she'd have to be crazy to believe him without proof. But the audience knows he's not crazy, so we're hoping the screenwriters don't hang out here.

I think the solution is to pack that argument with as much revelatory insight as possible. Show us what sort of people the hero and his significant other is, and what their relationship is. Is she willing to trust him? If not, is it because he's let her down before? (There's a hint of past substance abuse in JOURNEYMAN.)

Does he trust her enough to tell her? And if not, what does that tell us about the relationship?

Then get on with it. She believes or she doesn't believe. Just tell us which and get the hell on with the story. We've seen it so many times before, you can get away with some serious shorthanding. We'll get it.

(Oh and please, don't let all the hero's problems derive from his kneejerk unwillingness to trust his wife with the crazy truth, 'cause that's lame. Though I had an enlightening conversation with Lisa. It turns out that if she explained that she had traveled in time, but in no other way seemed crazy, I would at least consider the possibility that she might have traveled in time. If the situation were reversed, she would figure I was nuts.)

I liked how Kevin Falls handled his revelations in the pilot. I'll be watching the second episode rather closely to see how he keeps it up.

How much are we going to find out about the Mysterious Organization in each episode? I'm guessing very little. I'm guessing it's 95% the episodic story.

The überplot is another sticky issue. How much revelation do you dole out in an episode? Too little and the audience feels cheated. Too much and you have to keep complicating the hidden truth in order to keep your show going. That's where X-FILES wound up getting damn silly.

So here's why Journeyman is particularly interesting to me. I'm developing a contemporary urban metaphysical. I have an Everywoman character with a Supernatural Issue. And beyond the episodic stories, there is an überplot, with a hidden truth she's trying to find out. And a Mysterious Organization. My entire first episode is basically, "Am I crazy"? And I'm wondering how much truth to dole out.

Fortunately, because my network is fond of limited runs, I can measure out the truth in precise doses. I'm writing for a certain number of seasons. I know what revelation my heroine gets at the first season finale. And I know how many episodes I need to get to the series finale, which I also know. If the show goes, I have the liberty to write to that conclusion. I simply have to figure out what revelations want to happen where along the path. There's nothing easy about that, but it's a much saner environment to work in... and you know, I feel blessed.

Finally Up to Speed

Eleven pages of rough draft today. That's a good day's work any day. (Unless my staff and I have for some reason just been parachuted into a ongoing production and we need to rebreak the next episode and then write it from scratch for a production meeting tomorrow. Speaking hypothetically, of course.) In development, I like to get five good pages in a day, once I'm writing pages; a good day could bring anywhere up to fifteen, at which point I usually pack it in so I don't start writing gibberish.

Except the first day. Many days, the first page often seems to take me the entire first day. Go figure.

It's taken me a much longer time to get up to speed on this script. Various people liked the outline, and I didn't feel like there were holes in it. But writing the early scenes proved to be much harder than I thought. I had to rethink practically every scene in the first ten pages -- usually the mark of an outline where you've indulged in too much handwaving.

I don't think it's handwaving. I usually know when I'm handwaving. I think it's because the contemporary urban metaphysical I'm writing isn't really plot driven, although it pretends to be. It's really character driven, following the Rule of Joss I've mentioned elsewhere. So it is harder to gauge when I'm taking too long to get into the A story. On a broadcast hour, you really want your A story up and running in the first five pages if not in the teaser itself, and you ought to have your first plot twist at the first act break. Not on this show. On this show, the A story is merely the catalyst for the drama. So if the drama needs eight long pages before we meet the episodic character -- the Person With A Supernatural Issue -- it's going to get them.

(DON'T try this on broadcast. Who knows, it might not even work on cable. But I think it will.)

Still, since the pacing doesn't have to be the same as every other hour show, that means I have to figure out by my gut what the pacing has to be. Free verse, after all, is actually harder than poetic form, because it has to rediscover its own form with each stanza, and not just come off as wordburger. This is free verse TV.

However, as a general rule, if you're not writing to act breaks: keep the story interesting, and all will be forgiven, so long as you build to a climax and wrap it up in the end.

Now back to my pages...

Template

Q. I have just finished a spec script for "House" where the teaser is for the A story, but Act One opens in the clinic and flows into the B story. The A story comes in about three minutes into the Act. In reviewing "House" episodes, almost all of them have the beginning of Act One flow from the teaser. I want to submit the script for some contests, but I wonder if I should rework it so the A story comes in right away? It's pretty tight the way it's written, and all three story lines--A, B, and C--are linked thematically, but if you think it's a definite "no no" to wait that long to get back to the A story, I'll rework it.

You have obviously done your homework. Good work! And good attitude, too.

If the teaser usually flows into the first act in HOUSE, then that's what you want to do for your HOUSE spec. It's great that your script is tight now, but I'm sure you can make it tight the other way. Right? That's the hard work of writing a spec script.

Generally, in most shows, you wouldn't start with a B story. By starting act one with certain events, you're privileging them. You're telling the audience this is the important story. If it later turns out to be the B story, the audience may be confused.

That said, you have to trust your gut. There might be a circumstance where starting with your B story makes sense. The concept of A and B stories is only there to help you tell good stories. Leading the audience where you want them to go -- and where they will feel satisfied going -- is far more important than screenwriting theory.

A Messy Desk is a Sign of a Working Mind

Q. I kept wondering how "The Office" fits into your breakdown of acts and storylines. It seems very nontraditional in so many ways...First off, I can only seem to find a very obvious A and B storylines--no C. And the acts--they don't seem to be clearly defined beyond the cold opening and Act1.

Acts are easy to find on television. It's not a conceptual thing. When they cut to a commercial, that's the end of the act. If they only cut once, you have two act comedy. If they cut twice, it's three acts.

Likewise, if you're finding only A and B storylines, then maybe that's all they have. There's no law says you have to have C stories. An A and a B give you the ability to cut out of one story and go to another. Then you can give your secondary characters things that they want, which interfere in interesting ways with the protagonists of the A and B stories getting what they want ... and now you have an episode.

I think there's an interesting trend away from defining A and B stories too strictly. A show like FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS tracks all its characters as they move through their overall character arcs for the season. When two characters come across each other, are those two stories weaving together? Or is the interweaving the story itself?

I think you can overthink storytelling. It's good to know what your A and B stories are so you know that you have them, and so you can make sure something interesting is happening in every act. But the point is to keep things moving along, not to conform to some theoretical notion of structure.

Just bear in mind that a loose show like FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS is actually much harder to write than a more traditional show like LAW AND ORDER. Free verse was always harder to write well than rhymed verse.

Three vs. Four

Q: From the technical point of view, what is the difference between the one-hour episode Four act structure and the feature three act structure?

The difference is huge. Not because three acts are different from four. In feature structure, the second act is often twice as long as the first, and there's a flex point in the middle; so you could just as easily call it four act structure. The difference is that act structure in features is only a way of looking at a screenplay. There aren't really three acts. There is just beginning stuff, middle stuff, and end stuff. You could just as well treat your screenplay as having seven acts. Personally I find seven acts more useful than three or four. So long as you're spinning a good yarn, you don't have to worry about structure. You only use structure to figure out why your pacing seems off.

TV act structure is real. A TV episode is chopped up into bits divided by commercial breaks. That means you have to end each act on some sort of powerful moment that leaves the audience wanting more -- an "act out." The lengths of the acts have to be roughly the same, too; you can't have a four minute act or a fifteen minute act. TV writers struggle with their acts and act outs. (Except for Amy Sherman-Palladino.)

I have chapters in both my books going into some depth about feature act structure and TV act structure, so check those out for further info.

Oh, and ... four act TV structure is on its way out. Most new dramas are five acts. Some writers used to four acts hate this, but they have to suck it up because the network wants shorter commercial breaks. I have noticed that five act structure often seems to seem to conclude its story at the end of the fourth act break, but then take the story one step further -- emotional fallout, interpersonal aftermath -- rather than stretching the old middle from two acts to three.

Act Outs in Pay Cable?

Q: Is it possible that act outs are a good idea even for pay cable?

Thinking about the Sopranos syndi deal with A&E... wondering if maybe the producers had more control over how the content was cut post-HBO since they not only simultaneously shot "clean" versions of scenes along with the originals, they also built in natural act breaks... any thoughts?

I don't think so. First of all, Sopranos plays over an hour and fifteen minutes of broadcast television. How many acts is that? More than five, I'd think. You run the risk of writing in a hybrid form that doesn't exist, somewhere between the five acts of contemporary broadcast drama and the seven acts of a movie of the week.

More importantly, unless you luck out, your natural act outs are not going to space themselves evenly. Do you try to rejigger the story so that each act is more or less the same number of pages. Do you make sure that each act serves each subplot with at least one scene? Do you take care to go out on the A story most of the time?

Or do you write the best pay cable hour you possibly can, and let some brilliant editor find the act breaks some time in the future when your show is, inshallah, greenlit?

There's nothing wrong with having act outs. But don't write to act outs if you're not obliged to by the form you're writing in.

No Act Structure

I've been working on a pilot for a speculative fiction series I've been pitching, but for the very best of reasons I suddenly have to rethink it completely. I've been working on a 55 page five-act 55 script for a 44 minute pilot, and stressing about the fifth act being too short. Now I find myself in the exciting world of pay cable. I have sixty whole minutes to tell my story, with no act breaks.

This is first of all a relief, because the story has been resisting being put into five acts. But I need to rethread my head a bit. I need to rethink my whole story, see where I can go deeper, see where I might have shied away from something transgressive. I need to pick the story apart and see if I've gone for bigger, harder act outs than my story really wants or if the five act framework has forced me to make the wrong story choices.

But at a deeper level, I wonder what kind of structure I should be using. Just because the story doesn't have act outs doesn't mean it shouldn't have twists and turns. Is there a natural pulse to pay cable episodes? Should I be thinking in terms of four acts? Three? Should the story take a new turn every ten minutes? Every fifteen?

And what about secondary stories? In my broadcast version I'd avoided B and C stories -- I sort of had an "A story and an A story," where the speculative fiction and mundane aspects of the show came together in one storyline -- though later episodes would probably have had mundane B stories and spec fiction A stories. But sixty whole minutes seems to demand we pursue the lives of some of the secondary characters for their own sakes. And, because no act breaks, it's much easier to weave those in.

I expect a lot of creative carnage. But one nice thing about starting the pilot before anyone asked (= paid) me to is that I can now go into a longer script treating the earlier broadcast version as research. I don't have to use any of it that no longer applies. I can treat the whole thing as research. On the other hand it may be that all I have to do is strip out the act outs and continue in the direction I was going creatively -- with more latitude and more breathing room.

This is exciting!