What Happens When You Don't Have A Story Room.

I've got a big post brewing about spec scripts and how to start one - and also a little about the TV writer/Movie Writer demarcation point. But those posts will be heavy-lifting and heavy committment (which, by the way is the one word, after all these years, that I can never remember how to spell, so if I got it wrong there, then great: the streak is alive.)

So instead today I offer a wafer.

I've written before about development, and how lonely and crazy-making it can be...and how sometimes you really find yourself jonesing for the story room.

What I didn't share was this: a couple years ago, a writer friend and I were bitching over the difficulties of breaking story by yourself. There's no trick to it, there's no back and forth, and you never know if you're really going in the right direction.

So anyway, she confessed at that point that when things got really bad, really lonely, sometimes she'd dig out her childhood teddy bears and arrange them around the table so it seemed like she had company, or people to bounce ideas back and forth with.

Hearing this, I did what any self-respecting man would do in the situation with a girlfriend with whom he was not currently canoodling: I passed about three inches of vodka through my nose and mocked her mercilessly for the rest of the night.

To her credit, not only did she take it, she bought me a new vodka. And then she fixed me with a vengeful gleam in her eye and she said five words that chilled my soul:

"You laugh now. But wait."

Well, now here it is February 2006. I'm trying to break an important story for one of my shows. It's going very slowly. I have the corkboard out. I have the index cards with beats on them. I have the coffee. I have the laptop.

Hell, I even broke out the Magic Guinness Hat.


Sometimes, it helps me to focus. Not today.

Today, nothing seems to be working. So... *sigh*








Opus has an absolutely foolproof bullshit detector, and surprisingly, Marvin the Martian is really good with story. Although he does go for the ray-gun vaporization deus ex machina climax a little too often for my taste.

If this series goes, and these guys sue me for story credit, there's gonna be scissors.

So basically, I guess what I'm saying is...
Dorothy Parker*, you win.

*not her real name