But What Do You Do With All That Money?

Build a trebuchet to hurl flaming pianos, of course.

Makes perfect sense to me.

And Do It Again

Q. I come from an Improv and sketch comedy background, I've written 3 TV spec scripts that were good. For some reason the ability to plug into voices of characters created by others comes fairly easily to me. However, my 2 original feature scripts and my pilot were all severely lacking, there's obviously a hole in my writing education somewhere when it comes to creating original characters and stories that have legs. I've read all the usual suspects: McKee, Vogler, you...any pointers as to where to look to fill these holes?

I don't think you need to read any more books. I think you just need to write more scripts. Looking back on all my scripts, the first feature spec I'm still willing to show people comes in around #15 or so. It takes a while to learn how to write screenplays.

To write great characters, try writing some screenplays that depend entirely on their characters. Stretch in the direction you're weakest. If plotting was your weakness, I would say write a closely plotted thriller. If people are saying your dialog is too flat, try writing a script about bitchy fashion people, or create a character who speaks outlandishly, or has Tourette's.

I wouldn't expect you to be able to write a good pilot after writing only three TV specs. Everyone's asking for spec pilots these days, but it used to be you were expected to put in three to five years on staff before anyone wanted to see a pilot from you. You need that long to learn your craft.

The key to becoming a better writer is writing, and rewriting, and rewriting, for years. Do you think people would get paid so much if it was easy to learn how to do it?

As to characters, it's not enough to plug into the voices. You're using the preset characters as a crutch; you know how they sound, and you're making them sound like that. But you don't want to just write lines that Phoebe on FRIENDS could say. You want to write lines that only Phoebe could say: "I wish I could help you, but I don't want to."

Similarly, character isn't writing things that your character would do. It's writing things that only your character would do. Dr. Richard Kimble is a fugitive on the run. He sneaks into a hospital to investigate the one-armed man who killed his wife. He notices a kid has been misdiagnosed. Most people would ignore the kid; there are doctors for that. He scrawls a new diagnosis on the kid's chart and rolls him to where he can get the help he needs -- nearly getting caught in the process.

Character isn't about character bios, which I find vastly overrated. It's about giving your character things to do and say that only they would say and do. And then doing it again.

Write an Alternate Finale?

Q.  As a fan of the show Stargate Atlantis, I wasn't entirely happy with the recent season finale. I'm thinking about writing an alternate finale as my submission to the ABC/Disney Fellowship.

This is risky for a couple of reasons.

One, Stargate: Atlantis is not a show you can count on anyone having read. It's just not one of the shows that show people are watching. That's why you call agents' assistants to ask what shows people are speccing. You should spec one of the shows everyone's speccing, because those are the shows people are watching.

Two, it's really hard to write a satisfying season finale. Much harder than writing a "center cut" episode. There's just a lot more work to do resolving story arcs and tying up loose ends, while creating a convincing hour of television. So you're raising the bar for yourself.

Finally, the season finale is the culmination of the whole season. You're trying to show how you can pay everything off better than the showrunner. But the reader may not have even seen more than one or two episodes of the show you're writing. You can rely on any decision maker to have seen BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, but you can't count on him knowing every last detail of which Cylons are "out" as Cylons to the humans, and which are secret, and what Baltar did on New Caprica, etc. A season finale is more dependent on detailed knowledge of the season than any other episode. Readers who aren't fans won't get it; readers who are fans may have very strong opinions about whether your approach is canonical or not.

Now these are only risk factors. If your Stargate:Atlantis alternative finale reaches a big S:A fan, and it sings to him, then you have broken out of the pack. High risk can bring high gain. A highly competent CSI may not grab anyone who's had to read twenty other highly competent CSI's. Anything you can do to set yourself apart can work in your favor.

(But I still wouldn't do this for S:A. I just don't think it's got enough buzz.)

I'm Going to Be on KPFK

I'm going to be jabbering away on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles tomorrow, Sunday, from 2-3 PM PST. I'm appearing on SAMM BROWN'S FOR THE RECORD and talking about "The Craft of Film and Television." 

I'll be appearing with former movie exec Rob Tobin, who wrote John McTiernan's upcoming CAMEL WARS, and has a bunch of DVD's and books on screenwriting.

If you're out of town, you can listen to the show online at KPFK's site. You can also listen to it on audio archives for the next 90 days.

Playwrights

Aaron C asks if he should hire playwrights rather than TV writers for his internet series:

Because my season is already pretty much outlined, dialogue and character are most important to me. My hunch is that playwrights tend to be better at dialogue, and get into writing more for the love of writing than for fame and fortune.

I could not disagree more.

Plays and TV are entirely different media. Plays can have action, but the characters can't go far. Editing is limited to scene changes. The frame never moves in a play. There are no closeups. All you can do is move your characters around the stage. The audience sees the players from various different angles depending on where they're seated. So, plays are about the words.

TV is about the words, the action, the framing, and the editing.

They are different media. And therefore, they use different flavors of dialog.

So play dialog tends to be expansive and wordy. It is often stylized. Mamet's characters all speak Mamet-speak.

TV dialog is terse. If a character has more than three sentences strung together, it's a big deal.

Plays have huge ole chunks of dialog, character arias, often about the past. TV rarely describes the past, and tries to avoid referring to it. You can go hours on TV without hearing a character say, "You remember when...?" and then recounting an event in it its entirety that both characters remember perfectly well.

A great play creates a ritual space; the dialog is the words of that ritual, in which the audience is a celebrant.

A great TV show brings you into a world, and makes the characters a member of your family.

Playwrights aren't better at dialog than TV writers. They are better at play dialog. On TV, play dialog would sound stilted, portentuous and gassy; just as, in a play, TV dialog would sound bloodless and mundane.

Playwrights are also not used to necessarily doing what they're told. David Mamet refuses to take network notes at all. That comes from being a playwright, where you can simply refuse to change a line if you don't want to.

I wrote a play once. It even got a reading at a playhouse. I learned how different playwrighting is from screenwriting, and that plays are not my medium.

No, I wouldn't hire a playwright to do a TV writer's job; unless that playwright also happened to be a pretty good TV writer.

And the play? Now a pay cable series I'm developing for The Movie Network.

Oh, and Aaron ... all the good writers, in any medium, get into it for the writing, not for the fame and fortune.

Fancast

Just got this press release, and my mind has been in Gary, Indiana, so I'll just lay it on you:

TV addicts now have a one-stop online destination where they can watch full episodes of current and classic TV including "The Office," "24," "Lost in Space," "The 50th Annual Grammy Awards," and more for free.

With entertainment content from over 100 providers including major television and cable networks, Fancast.com takes out the guess work for users looking for their favorite shows by allowing them to find it, watch it and manage it 24-hours a day – whether it's on Fancast, TV, online, on demand and more.

One of the site’s many features is the “Watch List” button that allows users to organize and catalog upcoming programming, set a personalized play list and send reminders to themselves about what they should watch in the future - creating an easy-to-use, personalized entertainment guide.

Let us know how it works for ya!

Slow News Day

Matt R writes:

Q. You may not remember me... But I'm the cool, young, attractive dude who writes dark/funny/hip television (x2) and film (1) scripts.

So, my question is: is there a place for a Cool, good-looking dude amongst the Geeks?

I'm not sure I understand your question. Is it that you think you're too handsome and attractive to be a TV writer?

Q. No, I mean because I'm not a geek. Are there many non-geeks out there in Canadian (and American) television?

Please trust that this is not tongue-in-cheek, but do you think I would be discriminated against for being a cool, good-looking, heterosexual dude?

Um. ... No. You'll probably want to have written more than three scripts in your life before you worry about being discriminated against. But I would say that the average TV writer is more attractive than the average, say, car salesman.

Not only does creative fulfillment does a lot for a person's attractiveness. But there's a lot of selection going on. If you're not a smart, funny, attractive person, you're probably not going to be too busy in the TV world.

Bear in mind that our standards are skewed by working alongside actors, who have unnatural levels of charisma and beauty and coolness. So we call ourselves "geeky" in a sly, self-deprecating way in order not to feel embarrassed. But it's a front, just as TV writers tend to affect extremely casual dress, but it's all carefully thought out. All show people tend to burn just a little brighter.

Real nerds rarely make it in the biz. You can have a successful computer programming career without social skills. You can live in a treehouse and email in your work. Show business is just as much about the show off the screen as it is about the show on the screen.

The rest of the response is left as an exercise.

Because I Said So, That's Why

The Tories have obviously got sick of hearing how Bill C-10 is a bass-ackwards way of imposing censorship while crippling the whole tax credits system on which the Canadian motion picture industry relies. So rather than fixing the bill, they just made it a confidence measure in Parliament:

OTTAWA — Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is declaring film tax-credit legislation a matter of confidence in the Conservative government, meaning MPs could land on Canadian doorsteps this spring to debate the line between art and pornography.

Mr. Flaherty said the legislation, known as Bill C-10, contains a range of important tax measures and changes will not be tolerated.

"The bill should not be amended," he told reporters yesterday. "A tax bill is a confidence bill. We all know that."

A confidence bill (for those of who you are subjects of the Unitary Executive) means that if the opposition votes it down, the government falls. The Liberals aren't ready for an election, so they probably won't have the balls to vote C-10 down.

So we'll get sneaky, bass-ackwards, financially crippling censorship.