Glee Part 2

I know there's been some discussion recently about whether or not Glee was a well-written pilot. Critics have been loving it, the buzz has been great -- even my non-TV watching friends tuned in and fell in love. Yet, writer Alex Epstein points out serious flaws with the pilot on his blog. Some of the comments agree with him, and his points are really valid.

Structurally, the pilot was off. Some of the character intros and arc were introduced in a backhanded way. For instance, it wasn't super clear why the teacher wanted to coach the club in the first place. While watching it, I actually got a bit jittery because everything I've learned about writing a pilot seemed to be thrown out the window.

Yet, it was a massive success. And as much as the "issues" with the pilot stuck out to me, I loved the show. I will definitely watch it when it returns this fall, and I kind of can't wait. So it makes me wonder...

How important are the rules of pilot writing? It seems that you can create a successful show without following the code absolutely. Sometimes the audience can surprise you by standing behind a show that if it weren't made by already successful writers probably wouldn't get made. There are enough elements of Glee that fit in with what audiences want -- music, bright colors, underdogs, snarkiness, multimedia -- so maybe in this case, "industry standards" don't apply.

Glee Part 1

It's the talk of the town, right? Everyone, even non-TV watchers are buzzing about the show...but I'll get to that in the next post.

I'd like to use this one to talk about finding your place as a writer. And no, it's not tied in to "Don't Stop Believing" -- though that's a valuable mantra in this business.

Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee, is also the creator of Nip/Tuck and Popular. I've never actually seen more than five minutes of Nip/Tuck (I have a thing about doctors, which somehow only disappears for Grey's), but I was a huge fan of Popular.

Just to refresh your memory, Popular was a show about cliques in high school, centered around two seemingly opposite girls -- Queen Bee Brooke and anti-conformist anti-popular Sam. At the end of the pilot Sam and Brooke discover that their parents are engaged, and the once mortal enemies are now on their way to becoming step sisters. The show explored the social scene in high school, basically focusing on how every teenager is insecure, even the most popular people have issues with which they struggle, and as much as people would like to crossover between groups, as much as people would like to live outside the labels high school slaps on them, it's hard.

Then, take Glee. So far it's about a high school teacher, former Glee Club star (back when the club was the coolest thing) who takes over the Glee Club in the hopes of returning it to its former glory. Except at the school now, Glee is the rung below the bottom rung on the ladder. Cheerleaders and jocks rule the school. Luckily, the teacher persuades a jock to join the club, hopefully giving it credibility among the popular kids -- but it seems from the preview that it may just stir up trouble. To top it off, the teacher struggles with his wife who's pregnant and wants him to get a better paying job to support the family. In his own way, he's doing the uncool thing by sticking with Glee, when he can have a high-powered more respectable job. Hooray for plot mirrors!

Popular and Glee are two different shows -- one is musical, one wasn't. One is a little more adult, one was clearly for middle school and high school kids. But the themes of the shows are similar. They both deal with social hierarchy in high school. Just in totally different ways.

Ryan Murphy clearly has a story he wants to tell about high school. The subject matter moves him in some way, and so he continues to reinterpret the basic core theme that is attractive to him. He's establishing himself as a writer with a certain tone (from what I understand, Nip/Tuck is pretty snarky, Popular was as well, and Glee seems to be that way too), and a certain genre. It's fairly obvious what his voice his, what his stories are, and most importantly...WHO HE IS AS A WRITER.

There are many more examples of writers who have successfully established themselves in a certain genres...Josh Schwartz. The OC, Gossip Girl, even the sadly not-picked up Lily spin-off. Shows about rich kids growing up, impacted by their setting, but at the end of the day still kids. With a little bit of soaptastic drama thrown in. Alan Ball is the master of sexed-up, sort of creepy but so good you have to keep watching, death hanging over the story stories. Joss Whedon -- sci-fi, funny, quirky, layered, suspenseful dramas that create an entirely new world that feels more real that ours. They all know who they are as writers, what they want to write about, and how they want to write it. And more importantly, Hollywood and their fanbase know it too. See, you can't quite have a fanbase without having a clear persona.

So my question to you is, who are you as a writer? If a bigshot producer stopped you on the street tomorrow and said, "Hey, aspiring screenwriter, what sort of stuff can I expect from you?" how would you answer? It's important to know who you are, what stories you are compelled to tell, and how you will tell them.

ABC/Disney Fellowship

Here's some extensive info on the ABC/Disney TV Writing Fellowship -- what the application process is like, what the program is like...

http://hollywoodwritersoffice.blogspot.com/2009/05/abc-disney-fellowship-night-by-diana.html

Good luck!

Budgets!

Last week, I had the privilege of attending a seminar for work with Richard Guay, an expert on EP budgeting software. At the beginning of his talk, he showed us a page of screenplay, and broke it down in terms of the budget process. It really made me look at scripts in a new light.

For example, if I write "INT. HIGH SCHOOL HALLWAY - DAY" followed by "GREG, 16, slams his locker shut. It's the end of the last day of school," I'm just thinking about the fact that I wrote two sentences. But a budgeter would see that and think:

"Okay, I need to secure a school. Probably on a Saturday? Should we cast someone actually 16 to play Greg? If so, we'll need to think about minor restrictions, and we'll need a tutor on set...Okay, it's the end of the last day of school. What does that look like? Lots of kids running out, being wild. How many is "lots of?" 100? 50? How can we stretch the extras? So if these are high school students, maybe we can secure a deal with the high school to use their students? What would that entail? If we have 100 high school kids waiting around set, it could get rowdy -- maybe it would be good to have a few extra PAs on hand that day to keep them in line. How much do we pay these PAs?"

Stressful, right? If two lines could cause this much trouble, imagine what 120 pages does!

BUT

And this is a big but. Hence the caps. It's not your job as a writer to think about budget. Even if you're a writer/director working on your own indie -- get someone else whose entire job is worrying about the budget. As daunting a task as budgeting is -- as overwhelming as a screenplay can be -- it's your job as a writer to tell a good story. a page turning, engaging, relatable story that moves an audience. And you can't move an audience if you're panicking about money at each line.

I attended a seminar during Tribeca with writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien, entitled "Writing Big and Small." The intended topic was how a big or small budget affects the writing of the film. Both writers started off by saying, quite simply, "It doesn't." They went on to explain that a good director (for them, this was Steven Soderbergh) can stretch a dollar. And sure, maybe in the filming process some things will need to be cut or adjusted -- but if the script is solid and its story shines through the pages, the director, producer, and budgeter will see what's necessary to tell the story and what isn't.

Bottom line: concentrate on writing a great script. That's hard enough. Leave the math to someone else.

(most writers I know were never any good at math anyway...)

How much outline is enough?

I'm working on a pilot that I've been thinking about for almost half a year, taking mental notes, etc. A few weeks ago I started to make actual notes - character bios, info about future episodes, an outline for the pilot. I thought because I'd been working on the story in my head for so long I'd be able to use a vague outline. In general, I don't love outlining because I get too bored with the writing process if I've already written everything out. But I'm finding that I'm more frustrated now that I have a minimal outline -- I know what's coming but I have little idea of how to get there. And I'm getting way too bogged down by character set-up. I just wrote two scenes, a page and a half, where all that really happened was character introduction. Not, "Hi My name is Jessica" -- luckily not that bad! -- but those first interactions that tell you who a character is. And they drive the story forward I suppose, but we're so far away from the meat of the story...I read some pilots last week to get my juices flowing and I know that these last two scenes are on such a different level than those scripts.

I wish I'd made a better outline, with exactly how I plan to introduce my characters in a story driven way. It's so hard to accept that even though I've started writing I have to go back a step and outline. But I guess that's how things are.

Index cards, here I come.

Soundtrack

I guess I've been inspired by other bloggers' posts recently, but this post about writing to music by Amanda the Aspiring TV Writer really stuck out to me tonight. If you haven't checked out her blog, you should. It's really great.

I've gone through a good number of playlists for my feature. The first was songs I thought told the story of the script. That didn't work very well for me, though, because the playlist moved faster than my writing. And, once I had finished the draft of the beginning, the playlist still had those appropriate songs. Very frustrating. I spent way to much time fast forwarding and far too little time writing.

So I made a shorter playlist once I neared the ending of draft 3. That one worked a lot better, but still the pace was off. Then, another idea dawned on me.

I'd been imagining Zac Efron as one of the main characters, so I decided to see if listening to him would inspire me. I popped in my Hairspray CD and listened to all of his tracks on repeat. Eventually the music just faded away, and I was writing like a machine, propelled by the hope that someday the voice I was listening to would speak the dialogue I was writing. Sure, it's unlikely, but the hope is what keeps us going.

Then, I had to work on a final touch up. I decided to make a playlist for my read-through. So I thought, hey, why I don't choose songs my protagonist would like? This way I can work on character development! I decided that my protagonist would listen to mostly indie stuff, but with a poppy tonality.

So there I was, pounding away at the keys, bopping along to some Moldy Peaches and Rilo Kiley (though at this point are Rilo Kiley so indie? Beside the point). But I realized something. My character's whole point was that she had never really rebelled. She was more go-with-the-flow don't wanna stir the waters. So it was unfathomable to me that she would seek out unique music. It was so completely out of character. And I'd actually written her taste for indie music into the script (though not specific songs! never!). That needed to be changed. So I changed all the instances of indie to "Top 40" and breathed a sigh of relief that my character development hadn't been an epic fail.

Moral of the story? Make a playlist your character would listen to, and see if it's true. Once you're listening you'll notice if the words you're writing fit with the songs you're listening to.

Oh, and if you want a musical actor to be in your movie, get out the soundtracks!

Zen

I stumbled upon an ad from the WGA East today at work. I thought I'd share it. It's an excerpt from "On Writing" (Not Stephen King's fabulous book, but from a publication by WGAE).

"[David] RAYFIEL: You know, there are only two things I know about screenwriting. One is a quote from Kuniyoshi, a Japanese-American painter who was once asked about his way of working. And he said, 'At a certain point I send the model home.' And that's the way it happens. You can't keep going back to the model or the source. The screenplay becomes its own source.
...[the second thing is] something Willa Cather once said: "Whatever is felt upon the page without specifically being named there, that, one might say, is created.'"

Ahhh...Feedback

So I stumbled upon this great blog about getting feedback on your writing.

Basically, the author suggests giving comments in the form of questions. Instead of "Wow, your dialogue is super-cheesy," something like "Would Cara really say something like that?" would be better. It makes the writer think about the issue at hand, it cushions the blow, and it probably means the writer will be more likely to take advice. No one like a Negative Nancy...

...which brings me to another point. It's always best to include something positive in feedback. If you're a writer looking for feedback, ask the people to whom you're sending your script to mention what they liked about the work. If you're a reader, keep in mind how you would feel if it was your work coming back peppered with negative comments. There's always something good to say about a script -- even "I liked the main character's name" can be an ego boost. But it's not all about ego either. Notating the positive is useful not only because it makes the negative comments easier to receive and follow, but also because it means the good scenes won't get cut in the editing. Once a writer takes scissors to his or her script, anything goes -- but if there's a scene that's particularly good, the writer will keep it in. Mentioning the positive can also give the writer an idea of what works, and what the rest of the script should look like. If the dialoge is perfect in one scene, but atrocious everywhere else. pointing out the good scene will provide a framework for what the rest of the script should look like in a rewrite.