The Fresh, The Familiar, and The Impossible Trick

TODAY WE'RE going to geek out a bit about process and psyche here, and it will be insidery and not necessarily pretty. You've been warned.

Friend of the blog blueglow waded in a with an interesting couple of comments in the post below, where I talk about the upfronts. Here's a taste of what he had to say:

This is a little off topic with regard to the body of your post, but it's something I've been thinking about since i started reading the various blogs about writing and screenwriter and since I am currently in full procrastination mode... what the hell...

I have no idea how you guys do it.

If I was ingesting the amount of info about the biz and the trends in programming you do on a daily basis I don't think I could write a word...I know when I have tried to pay attention to shows of a similar ilk to the ones I'm working on it stops me dead because it makes me feel like there in not a single original thought in my head so why bother...How do you manage to navigate thru a story when you are so aware of all the other stories and series that in development or are going on around you -- obviously you're able to do it (you're working tons right now) but I know if I was paying as much attention to the media as you do I would feel like there was little point in adding to the clutter....the question I guess I am asking (because people work in different ways) is, do you take into consideration all the other shows that are being kicked around or are on the air when you work at the most fundamental elements of plotting and characterization?

The short answer is Yes -- not necessarily the shows that are upcoming (not in any real organized way) but certainly shows that have come before that have a similar area.

This answer is going to be a rough mix of process and the much muddier psychological whys. (I was trying to lay out one then the other, but I can't figure out how to do that because they're so mixed.)

Though I completely understand your approach, and I understand everything you're saying, the thought of working the way you do terrifies me, because how would I know if I was doing something that a similar show had already done? If you don't know what else people have done and are doing in the genre, how can you possibly know when you're being original? See, same question, same neurosis, opposite entry point.

I tend to go into things for television from a craft entry point anyway, because that has so much with how I view the idea of originality on TV.

Simply put, I think when we talk originality on TV we're using a different mixture, or recipe, than when people talk originality in art or in the novel or even the movie. Originality in TV to me is more akin to originality in popular music.

When you hear an unbelievably catchy song on the radio (these days, if you're talking a new song you haven't heard before, I'm probably talking, on the satellite ratio) the thing that gets you is that most of the time it pulls off an impossible trick: it simultaneously feels and sounds fresh and familiar. Maybe there's something about the bassline or the chord progression, or maybe it's built upon a sample from an earlier song you liked...but to me the pleasure comes from feeling that it's both new and familiar - both receptors in your brain go crazy, and that's why some songs you hear for the first time and go, "that's amazing!" and you love it right away.

I think that's kind of like what we do in TV. TV is about constantly pulling off the impossible trick. When you drag people out to a theater (and I'm talking about viewers here who aren't 18 year old boys with no sense of history) you have a bit of a higher burden on creativity -- it needs to not be something you've ever seen before, or if it's even the slightest bit pastiche, it better be great pastiche, like The Departed. Same is true of a good novel, I think.

But at home you're competing with laundry and the kids and pilates and dinner and the effing cat, and most of the time you really need to draw in your viewer quickly or they'll choose one of their other 278 entertainment options. And of course, because your timeline is longer -- rules of characterization are completely different. Imagine trying to paint a character like Tony Soprano in 2 hours and 30 mins.

When I sit down with a series idea, my entry always is 1) Okay, what's this like? 2) Now, how's it different? 3) What am I going to give the audience that surprises them -- something they haven't seen before?

And I go from there. When I'm writing off a bible I didn't create, it drills down to the episode level. What's the shorthand of this ep? Is it a Frankenstein story? Is it the Telltale Heart? (genre room, now) or What's the obstacle here: (action show, now) ticking clock bomb, secret that can't get out, etc. etc. I can't speak for my compatriots, but when I was on Blood Ties, I was very aware of Buffy and Angel, and would often when bumping up against something, think, "how'd they do this?" to actively try to go in another direction. (I didn't much consider Forever Knight, since I've only seen maybe a half dozen eps of that show, and it was long enough ago now that I think the statute of limitations has run out on story-messing.)

The thing is, I enjoy working this way. When I see a series that's cross-pollinated two genres, I'm delighted and giddy to see if it works. When I see a refinement of an idea that's out there already, I love it. Raines, to me, was kind of genius-y because it took that Medium/Ghost Whisperer vibe and gave it a secular twist that men and women could watch equally. I'm not gonna watch Medium because I don't really buy the whole psychic mom thing, and the less said about Ghost Whisperer the better. To me, Raines was that idea 2.0, in that because he knew his conversations were all in his head, you were automatically off the hook in believing in heebiejeebie, and it was also a great extension and twist on the defective detective area Monk introduced a few years back. His vision/conversations told you about him and revealed his character, not just plot. I'm constantly looking to do something like that. I want to pull off the impossible trick.

I also have this need to figure out when a show fails, why it fails, beyond bad timeslot or poor promotion. I'm not as good at that, but I think I'm getting better. But. But. I worry that more and more of the shows I find fresh and original don't catch on. I'm not quite at the point where I'm second guessing my own tastes yet -- not really -- but I can see that being a potential problem in the future.

Some people might look on my way in as setting the bar lower, but, fine, let them go off and get work then, I couldn't care less. Working my way cuts me a little more slack because the boulder you still have to roll up the hill is huge, but at least you've got all those giants who came before helping you push. I tend to think that execution of an idea is all.

(Nothing makes me angrier than a great idea poorly executed. Seriously, I can't understand for the life of me once you've caught the tiger by the tail and have a great idea that you don't do the work to make it good. Arrrrgh.)

Let's face it, TV only has a truly 'revolutionary' show once every few years. And the revolutions are constantly being re-fought, because people have no memory. All In The Family made certain topics OK for tv, and now they're not again. Hill Street Blues gritted up the drama. E.R. amped the pace, made jargon and complex research okay, then de rigeur -- and The Sopranos signalled that Cable was now the tastemaker. Most of the stuff that is really groundbreaking (Hello, Twin Peaks) burns bright and out fast. Those shows leave marks on us all as creators, without necessarily re-shuffling the landscape.

Now a bigger question is: why am I this way? Well, I've got a theory.

I'm in the first Sesame Street generation. That show, The Electric Company, and even Mr. Rogers -- those shows were made for me.

Those were the last shows that were made for me.

I don't want to back and refight the great and stupid GenX-Boomer culture war, but the truth of it is, when I was growing up, I and most people my age were cultural refugees. We'd come home from school and watch Three's Company and M*A*S*H, shows that were in NO WAY aimed at us. (Seriously, could you imagine a 10 year old today watching reruns of West Wing? I know they watch Friends, but Frasier? Not so much.) The culture was obsessed with boomerdom. I watched the old SNL and watched the cast change to the Eddie Murphy SNL, and then the ringer years where the old boomers came back. But it wasn't aimed at me. Letterman was aimed at college students when I was still in high school. Parents were watching Carson. I watched and appreciated them both. Because I wasn't locked into stuff that was aimed directly at me, I surfed and cadged a lot more from various places. I discovered jazz early, and my parents were quite puzzled when I got hard into Sinatra at 15 or 16. To them, that was their parents' music: but to me, it was all the same. All culture talked about events that happened before I was born, or referenced things I had to go look up. That's just the way it was. I didn't give it a second thought.

While this was going on, the whole pop culture ascendancy came in, too. Entertainment Tonight came on the scene. 24 hour news became a factor. Then MTV and Muchmusic -- which was the only part of the culture that I felt aimed at me, and even then, for only about eight minutes. Weekend box office totals started making the papers.

By the time I got to University, cultural marketers had started to finally cool on the boomers in order to go after their kids. A Young Market was identified and people started actively going for it. The entire concept of 'tween shows' still freaks me out a little, because, man, where were those shows when I was that age?

I'd look at SNL, and Sandler and those guys came in and I sometimes found them funny, but not all the time. And the boomers clucked "Saturday Night Dead" and how bad it was, while the people a few years younger than me were getting it. And for a while it was, "wait a minute...where's our cultural moment? Oh, don't tell me it was that fucking TIME magazine article, the Coupland book and Reality Bites...C'mon...I'm gonna fucking kill somebody!"

The came Britney...

And...

Oh..oh man. These people behind me...they're not going to be cultural refugees, are they? Hmm.

Part of having to spend all those years parsing things that weren't meant for you made my brain work in a way where it kind of always stands apart and analyses. Very rarely do I ever get fully immersed in a story or a movie or a TV show. I'm always clocking where they're going, and what they're doing... Once upon a time I thought this was just the famous GenX cynicism, but I've come to understand that that's merely a symptom, not a cause. It's not so much cynicism as it is distance. A distance that comes from spending those big teenage years not as the focus, but on the outside of a culture looking in.

So it is any wonder that now that I'm making culture that I feel comfortable working that way?

I don't know how it's going to work for those coming up behind me. Because I have to assume that the marketers klieg light is going to shift again. Now we have the "Most Praised Generation" entering the workforce, and there are hilarious articles like this, all I can think is, "what's going to happen when these guys find that the experience they've had all their lives is shifting? How will the people who've had stories aimed at them their whole lives react when they have to tell stories for someone else?

I guess we'll see.

I'm gonna keep my head down, clock what's out there, and keep on trying to pull the Impossible Trick.

You Either Break the Story...

...or the story breaks you.



Mommy, make it stop.

Co-Writing and Gang-Breaking

In my trolling-for-inspiration question-solicitation mode, W.C. Dixon writes:

Do you find it easier to break a story on your own or with a group in a writer's room?

That's a no-brainer. I think the room is the way to go. You get a bit of Stockholm Syndrome with yourself when you're breaking: you will convince yourself that you've got a solution all worked out when it really is still crunchy. And then when you go to outline, that will bite you in the ass. If you're in a well-put together room, there will always be someone there to say, "wait, wait. I don't buy it, what about this?" And then you fix it.

Working alone -- to geek out for a moment -- is like having a single processor trying to crunch story. The room, you get all those brains crunching at once -- bam -- instant parallel processing.

I find when I break alone, I also tend to get off track easier, and get bogged down in fridge logic issues.

(digression) For those of you who don't read John Rogers, or haven't seen his excellent posts on Jargon Preservation, Fridge Logic is a piece of inconsistency in a story that doesn't really impact the audience's enjoyment: ie: it's something they won't bump on, so you don't really need to worry about solving it. The most famous piece of Fridge Logic ever is probably the letters of Transit in Casablanca. When you think about it, the idea that there are these letters that can get anyone out of Casablanca --because they can't be questioned -- by Nazis -- well, it's ridiculous. But if you think of that at all, it's a half hour after you've enjoyed the film, and you're standing at the Fridge looking for the Snapple and you go, "you know..."

Geek fanboys, when they talk about the inconsistencies in Star Trek episodes, 99% of the time they're complaining over fridge logic. (Sci fi fans are fueled by fridge logic...they'll find inconsistencies where there are none.)

The story logic you have to worry about is where you do something that really is going to make the person bump, or is too convenient, or violates something you've done before (ie: on Star Trek, they establish that you can't beam through shields. If they do that in an episode, that's not fridge logic. That's a mistake . Bump. (/digression)

Aside from those things, there's also some psychological comfort to breaking as a group. You don't own the success 100 percent -- but TV is collaborative, so you never do. But you don't wear the failures yourself, either. The story is our problem to solve, not your problem to solve. And you get to be with people, and though it's hard work, it can also be fun.

Breaking a story by yourself isn't fun. Is never fun. It's just a pain in the ass.

Which brings me to co-writing...have you had success co-writing with anyone or prefer to write solo?

I'm co-writing something right now. It has a lot of advantages and a lot of drawbacks. I firmly believe that once you do have a story, someone has to be the conductor, and move it forward. Most people I know who cowrite regularly have a system where one person takes first pass, one person takes second pass, and they go on like that. I co-wrote a play like that last summer. It can be an interesting process. Generally, when I co-write, it's a project where I was not "the primary" ie: it's not mainly my idea -- a lot of the initial ideas come from someone else. I tend to have very proprietary and solid ideas about how to execute ideas that I come up with myself. In order to have the necessary malleability to make the co-write work, I just find it's better if I'm not the originator. But that's probably a quirk that says more about me than about the process.

There's another common way to co-write tv, which is one person writes Act 1 and 2 and the other writes Act 3 and 4, and then they put them together and try to harmonize voices. I know that sounds horrifying at first blush, but it can really save a lot of time. If you are in sync with your writing partner, and you're working off a good outline, there's no reason in the world why you shouldn't be able to do this. I've done it in production a couple times, though more commonly as a rewrite of a freelancer script.

I remember years ago interviewing William Gibson (or maybe it was Bruce Sterling) about the book they wrote together, The Difference Engine. Apparently their rule was to rewrite over each other and the rule was -- you only saved the current version, you could not change anything back to the way you had it. Sounds like an interesting way to work -- this is in the age of trading disks back and forth. Now I guess you'd just shoot emails back and forth.

I know there are people who actually sit down, looking over each other's shoulders, and write together. I also think this is what most people think of when then think "co-writing." I can't imagine doing this for the life of me. Although I suppose if you're really in sync that could work.

I've only written like this once -- years ago, when I was in University, I co-wrote a sketch with a friend of mine. It was exciting to come up with stuff and get it down right away, right there. It was great to have the instant validation. It turned out to be a great sketch. That sketch probably marks the time when I stopped writing to have something to perform, and realized I took more pleasure in the writing of it.

That writer's on Corner Gas now, by the way. I know the good'uns.

The other thing that I notice about writing partnerships is that a lot of them seem to end acrimoniously. Hardly surprising, I guess. But if my heart's going to get broke, I suppose I'd rather have it be because my heart's broke, not cause an intimate work relationship got wrecked. But again, that might just be me. Your mileage might vary.

The Second Episode Problem

So. Pilots. They're easy.

Either it's a premise pilot -- the story of how your world comes to be (Rachel moves in with Monica after leaving her fiancee at the altar, and meets the Friends; Mackenzie Allen, after being advised not to take the oath, becomes President after the death of her strange-bedfellows running mate; Agent Mulder, a believer in all sorts of phenomena, is assigned a new skeptical FBI partner named Scully) or it's a story where you're dropped smack in the middle of your world (the first episodes of The West Wing, The Office, Trailer Park Boys, Corner Gas, Law & Order, etc.)

Both have their advantages -- It's simpler to hide exposition or convey information about the characters in a premise pilot, because the audience is learning things along with the characters. However, there's something to be said for being dropped right into the action. An interesting example of this is Firefly, where FOX ordered up a new, action-oriented pilot ("The Train Job") after they judged the original pilot too character-driven. Having seen the whole set, I can't necessarily say they were wrong. Remember -- the two other times Joss Whedon created a show, they came with built-in equity: Buffy's premise had been explored in a movie, and Angel brought two well-defined characters from Buffy.

And I lied in the first line, okay? It's not easy to write a pilot. It's actually really, really hard.

But in many ways, when you sit down and face the Second Episode Problem head on, deep and abject depression is the only intelligent, motivated and sane reaction.

It's like you managed to scale a mountain using only salad spoons and string cheese, and you have one moment at the peak, and then, what do you know -- there's another mountain lurking right behind it.

Where your pilot episode is about establishing the tone and the breadth of the world, your Second Episode has a different, and in many ways more daunting purpose:

It has to show both the sturdiness of your template, and the sustainability of the world.

First, sturdiness -- those characters you met briefly in the pilot? Let's see more of them, and let's note now how their conflicts are deeper, or funnier, or even more dramatic than we thought. Let's return to the main locations that we visited in the pilot and show how these locations are the right locations to promote dramatic conflict and situations.

Now, sustainability -- Let's show how a case, or a story, or a problem, or a funny situation, can just walk right in the door and demand to be dramatized. See how easy this is? See how lovingly the parameters were crafted in the pilot? Can't you just imagine seventy or one-hundred and sixty five stories in this exact vein -- all different, of course -- but not too different. The conflicts between your main characters? Those aren't going to get solved any time soon. They may even seem insurmountable. The endearing quirky bits you got hints of: well, just drop a few more nuggets that show how you haven't seen any of the true quirkiness, and by Dog when you do see it, it's going to be adorable and you're going to want to watch forever.

In short, the Second Episode is really where your story becomes a TV series.

Sturdiness + Sustainability = Template

The template is what happens every week; it's what your show delivers every episode: the type of story, tone, execution, humor, atmosphere, the whole magilla. In Veronica Mars, you know the template is that every week she's going to learn some small piece of the season-long mystery (big or small) while still solving the case-of-the-week. And the case-of-the-week will usually have something to say about the class or social differences lurking just under the brackish waters of Neptune High.

Sometimes you establish your template nice and tidy-like and then a few episodes in realize you're screwed. Smallville had a fun thing going with the Kryptonite-monster-of-the-week thing for a few weeks, but then realized, egad, that's going to get boring -- so they defaulted more to the rich cabinet of their mythos. (Which you don't have, by the way, because you're not splashing in the pool of one of the most beloved characters in the 20th century pop cultural pantheon.) Others have pointed out the limitations of House -- how many times can they screw up medically and almost kill the patient before they discover how the patient lied and make the correct diagnosis? (Actually, as it turns out, quite a few: say one thing about House -- their research is impeccable.)
House did a number of things in the first season to try and break out of their straitjacket: they brought in Chi McBride as an antagonist. That was never going to work, but it bought them a few weeks of arc momentum until they could twist and turn the character interactions enough to give them a more solid grounding. (They also refocused around House, thanks to the introduction of the ex.) House also manages to show how having a really good template does NOT mean tellling the same story the same way every week. The two episodes (so far) where they've messed around with story timeframes and flashback elements have been among the strongest in the series. Yet they did contain the elements of the template: there was a medical mystery, there was a personal involvement by one of the doctors, and there were plenty of interesting red herrings and half steps along the way.

Like House, Frasier figured out its template early on, and at least until the good writers left, found that it was pretty elastic. My favorite episodes of early-series Frasier were always the "farce" episodes. They were constructed differently than the others, which was why they only did one of those a season: but the elements of character conflict, interaction, humor -- all were the same. They just got to hang a different frame around it.

So establishing your template -- figuring out what happens every week -- does not have to be restrictive. The people who say it is, or does, simply don't have a sophisticated understanding of the television narrative form, or how films and TV series differ.

The problem is that when you sit down to start that process -- it's an almost mathematical experience. And I don't do well with Math.

Once, I was in a group with the Executive Producer of Frasier, Peter Casey, and he said that the secret he found when it came to write Frasier's second episode was this: don't count on anyone having seen the first episode. In other words, find a way to re-introduce all the major conflicts, plot points, and relationships all over again. If you watch Episode 2 of Frasier, you'll be amazed how similar it is to the pilot. The problem Frasier faces with his father is the same - it's still about Frasier not wanting to lose his freedom. The conflict with Niles is the same. You could easily start with Episode 2 and dive right in. And these days, you have to count on that if you want to survive. Even with a "Previously on..." you still have to make your second episode as accessible as the first. Assume the whole room watching is new.

I just sank a little lower in my chair.

Two of my projects now are at Episode 2 stage. (I was contracted for two scripts and a bible on each of these series.) Another project I'm writing is at Episode 1 -- and though it's in many ways the most challenging of the three, it's also easier to write for a few hours each day...even though I know that for that project, too, the daunting, dreaded Episode 2 lurks just over the horizon.)

For my half-hour comedy, the Episode 2 problem was this: I'm past the premise pilot. I have a core cast, and like Friends, in the pilot episode, I really was only able to concentrate on three of the ensemble. One of the seven characters didn't even appear until the last scene. (She was the comic relief, talked about but not seen for the first episode.)

When it came to craft Episode 2, I knew I had to focus more on the characters who were given short shrift in the pilot. Okay, so that dictates a certain kind of story. In the same way, I have to service the main couple, and the two comic relief guys whose plot was the thing that everyone responded to in the pilot. Whew.

This is a series about university students living in Rez. Episode One was the move in and the first days. I know that the show -- the template -- is about the ongoing problems and challenges of living together, so that immediately sparked one realization: I needed time to have past. It would be natural to pick up the story with the first interactions of all the characters -- but I already did that in the pilot, at least with some of the characters -- and that's not the show.

To be true to my template, then, the answer was simple: there is now a one-month gap between Ep 1 and 2. In Ep 1, they all move in, and in Ep 2 they've been living together a month.

So now I needed to find a plot that serviced the unserviced characters, and spoke to the premise of the characters having trouble getting along...

...and you know what? The demands of the template actually led me to a great, natural plot. I think that Ep 2 of this series is stronger than Ep 1. It's certainly more representative of what the concept and premise can be.

Episode 2 thinking is all about strategizing up front. If you've done it right, hopefully once you're writing script you're confident in what you need to accomplish.

With my hour drama -- I'm still at the pitch. And the pitch has been a bitch. I made a silly mistake with the first iteration: I focused the story around the guest charater, instead of the principals. My understanding of the principals was evolving at the time, but once that was pointed out to me, and I engaged in the requisite ritual self-flagellation, I realized that the fix wasn't really all that difficult.

My story -- my template -- needs to be about my characters being devilishly clever and manipulating everyone around them to get what they want. Sounds simple, except, of course, for the fact that I'm writing people who are definitely, without a doubt, more clever than I am.

I want a writing staff so much right now I could just cry.

Anyway, one of the other weird things about the Second Episode Problem is the fact that you live with the first episode so much longer. In both the cases I've cited above, there's been more than two years to get to draft on the Pilot. Then you need to come up with Episode Two within a month or two. That's still more time than you're going to have once the bastard goes into production (sound of Denis knocking wood) but it's still a strange, whiplash experience nonetheless.

I remember years ago I used to go to tapings of the great Canadian TV comedy series Kids in the Hall (you can still hear me laugh on about half the episodes. I'm a loudlaugher.) Here's the story that terrified me beyond belief: The Kids gigged in clubs here in Toronto for seven years. Seven years, building material and a catalogue of proven, killer sketches. Then they did season one. And at the end of season one, the cupboard was bare. Season One writing time: seven years. Season Two: Three Months.

That's why you need to do the math, and think through the template. The beast must be fed, and the cupboard, sadly, well...it's always, always bare.

UPPITY DATE: Serendipity alert: as I finished this post and hit "publish," who should walk into my neighborhood coffee shop but Mark McKinney from the Kids in the Hall

So I promptly crushed his head