by Linda Venis
Also, sometimes combining characters will help you make connections you didn’t expect and add another layer to your script. So…in that spec pilot you’re writing about the werewolf district attorney, you check your character list. You suddenly realize that the waitress who testified in court in act 1 feels very similar to the janitor in act 4 who cleans up the hairy, bloody mess the attorney made after he changed into a wolf. Now is a good time to wonder, if the waitress and the janitor were combined into one character, could she notice something in the mess—the attorney’s necklace, say—that she also noticed in the act 1 scene? And could that lead to additional jeopardy that your attorney’s big werewolf secret will be discovered?
If, for some reason, you feel that you absolutely can’t cut or combine your two similar characters, then figure out a way to differentiate them. Change genders. Give somebody a limp. Make her a Zoroastrian.
5. Make Sure All of Your Main Characters Appear in Each Act
This is a rule—yes, I’d go so far as to call it a rule—many beginning TV writers break. Even seasoned professionals screw up on this sometimes. You have so many characters to think about that one of them slips through the cracks. I recall being in the writers’ room at Pretty Little Liars at the end of a long day, and we were all feeling pretty good about the story we’d just broken and ready to go home—and then we suddenly discovered we’d forgotten to put Aria in acts 2 and 4. Oops!
This is an important rule, because out of sight is out of mind. Your reader will stop caring about the character if she’s gone. Even worse, he may forget who the character is. Readers, and TV viewers, are fickle that way.
There are a few exceptions to this rule:
Not every main character has to appear in your teaser. (Although your big star characters should.)
Not every main character necessarily has to appear in your final act, especially if it’s very short. Use your judgment. (And again, all your big star characters should appear here.)
Sometimes you can get away with a semi-main character not appearing in one of your middle acts, if you have the other characters talking about him and thereby “keeping him alive,” to use a cliché I’ve often heard in writers’ rooms. However, this strategy is to be used judiciously. It’s often not ideal.
There may be other exceptions that escape me at the moment. But again, as a general rule: Ideally, all of your main characters should appear in each act.
6. Make Sure All of Your Stories Progress in Each Act
You’re rewriting your pilot about a sex-crazed but kind urologist from Mars who’s eager to return to his home planet. In your A story, he’s desperately trying to cure somebody’s major urinary tract problem. You’ve got a B story where he’s constructing a spacecraft out of an MRI machine. Your C story is about his attempted romance with a cute manicurist who finds him intriguing but thinks a right hand with eight fingers isn’t sexy.
Go through your script. Make sure you’ve got something about each story in each act. As I said above: out of sight, out of mind. If the story disappears for too long, your reader will forget about it. She’ll figure it must not be important. Then when the story reappears, she’ll have trouble caring about it. All that brilliant, poignant writing about your urologist’s longing for the manicurist in act 4 will go for naught if he hasn’t been mooning for her in acts 2 and 3.
Not only should each story appear in each act, but ideally, it should move forward in each act. Stories are like sharks; if they don’t move forward, they die.
Exceptions to these rules:
Not every story has to appear in the teaser, especially if the teaser is short. (But the A story should be in the teaser.)
Sometimes you can have a story end in the next-to-last act, especially if the last act is short, or if the A story in your last act is so suspenseful and page-turning that your reader would get frustrated if you pulled her away to waste time on some comic C story. Maybe your act 5 urinary tract operation is so thrilling the reader doesn’t want to hear about any cute manicurists.
Sometimes you have a story that’s a “wraparound”—i.e., it wraps around the episode. It appears at the very beginning and the very end, but during the middle, maybe never. So for instance: Instead of doing a full-on B story about constructing a spaceship out of an MRI machine, maybe you just want to do a wraparound and show your hero working on the MRI machine at the very beginning and the very end.
By the way, this example may sound ridiculous to you. That’s exactly how I feel about zombie shows!
7. Do a Pass for Each Character
One great way to do this: Sit down at your computer and read all of a single character’s lines out loud. Don’t read anything else; don’t read the stage directions or the other characters’ responses.
You want to make sure that in every scene, each character wants something from the other characters in the scene. That’s fundamentally what makes for good drama—or comedy, for that matter. In CSI: Miami, when the CSIs are looking at clues together, they’re not just looking at clues (at least, when the scenes are well written). Calleigh wants to get approval from Horatio, or Horatio wants Delko to focus on the job because he’s been slacking off lately, or some other interpersonal want is happening.
As you read out loud, you’ll also be able to hear if your character sounds too passive. Or if she repeats herself, saying basically the same thing in act 3 that she did in act 1. Or if she’s just plain boring.
By the way, I’ve noticed over the years that when a character asks a lot of questions in a row, there’s a good chance she’s a passive character, existing mainly to illuminate the lives of others. My basic rule of thumb is that if a character asks three questions in a row, that’s not necessarily bad, but it’s a definite warning signal. Even if your character is a detective questioning a suspect, make sure she isn’t just getting information and that her own unique personality, needs, and point of view are coming through.
8. Check Your “Act Outs”
When I use the term act out, I am referring to the last moment in an act. (Some writers use this term in referring to the last scene in an act.) Regardless of what definition you prefer, the key ingredient of a good act out is: Stuff gets worse.
Usually stuff is getting worse for one or more of our heroes. This is not always true; for instance, the act out to act 1 of Law and Order was almost always that our heroes busted somebody. So stuff got worse for the suspect.
But in general, since we care most about our main characters, you want stuff to be getting worse for one or more of them. If you’re writing an In Plain Sight spec: Mary Shannon is in charge of transporting a deranged serial killer to prison—and he escapes. Or you’re writing a pilot about a caring surgeon who just got married—and at the end of act 1, he discovers his new bride is secretly a vampire. Or a Republican. Stuff is getting worse.
Another way I’ve heard people define a killer act out is, “Everything the TV viewer thought he knew is suddenly turned upside down.” This type of act out is most often found at around the halfway mark of a show. Your surgeon hero discovers his wife is not only a vampire and a Republican, but she’s also secretly smuggling rare man-eating Tasmanian tulips into the US. Now there’s an act out.
A more serious version of a world-turned-upside-down act out: Your hero discovers his happy marriage of twenty years is a sham when he comes home and his wife has cleared out all her stuff and disappeared, leaving behind only a short note on the bedroom pillow.
It’s not an absolute requirement, but if you have one act out where the world suddenly turns upside down, it will help your script tremendously.
By the way: The one TV show that doesn’t follow the normal conventions on act outs is Mad Men. That’s a whole other kettle of fish. If you can write as well as Matt Weiner, feel free to write any act out you want. You can end your act with a close-up of a glass of milk and it will somehow be absolutely perfect.
But if you’re not Matt Weiner, remember: Stuff gets w
orse, usually for your heroes.
9. Take an “Emotional Juice” Pass
Read your script. Have you gotten as much emotional juice as you can out of every scene? Are your characters saying things that would get more of an emotional wallop if they kept quiet and just communicated with a look? Conversely, are they not saying things that, if they did, would give your reader an emotional jolt?
Don’t get corny, of course, but don’t leave anything on the table. If there’s a scene where you might be able to make the audience cry…go for it! In the writers’ room at Women’s Murder Club, with every episode we’d ask each other, “Where’s the scene where the music swells and the audience gets teary eyed?” Even on Law and Order, a much grittier show, we’d often ask ourselves the same thing.
10. Take a “Fun” Pass
Read your script. Are you missing any opportunities for more fun? Could you take the comedy a little farther?
11. Take a “Long Speech” Pass
Go through your script and look at any speech over three sentences long. Chances are good that a lot of them would be better if they were shorter.
12. Change Up Your Writing Habits
As you do your rewrite, you want to stay fresh and keep looking at your script from new perspectives. An easy, painless strategy for achieving this is simply to write in a different way. A friend of mine who wrote for CSI: Miami did his first drafts at a desk and his second drafts sitting in an easy chair. Another friend who worked on House did first drafts in the morning and afternoon, but generally did rewrites at night.
I am currently revising an ABC Family pilot, and I’m using a pink pen as a way to access my inner teenage girl. Hey, whatever works! So if you did your first draft on your computer, try doing some of your rewriting longhand. If you customarily write at home, hit Starbucks. If you usually listen to Miles Davis while you write, switch to Adele. All of these things—posture, time of day, surroundings, music—will change the way you think.
13. Check for Scenes That Can Be Tossed
Are there any scenes that don’t add much? If so, bye-bye, scene. Even if the scene is well written, if it doesn’t move your story forward and/or illuminate your characters in an exciting way, cut it. Keep the show moving.
To quote Elmore Leonard, “Try to leave out the part the readers tend to skip.”
14. Check for Cuts at the Beginning and End of Each Scene
Look at each scene. Would it work just as well if you cut the first couple of lines? How about the last couple of lines?
The basic rule to follow is to get into the scene as late as possible and get out as early as possible. That way, you’ll keep your show clipping along at a fast pace.
15. If You’re Writing a Spec Pilot, Make Sure Your
Descriptions of the Continuing Characters Are Colorful
You want your reader to get your characters instantly and be intrigued by them. So when you introduce a character for the first time, describe him in a way that makes him come to life immediately. Hit your reader with both barrels. For instance, here’s the initial description of Byron, Aria’s father, in the pilot script of Pretty Little Liars: “Aging well, he’s the handsome professor that the college girls on campus all talk about when they get drunk and horny.” Marlene King, who wrote the pilot, could simply have described Byron as “a good-looking professor.” Instead she had fun and made the character and the milieu vivid.
(But please, please—here comes my pet peeve—don’t write “Men want to be like him, and women want to be with him.” I’ve read versions of this in five thousand different pilots, at least. When I read it now, I don’t know whether to laugh or puke.)
One other thing: remember to type each character’s name in all capital letters the first time she appears. This way your reader will pay closer attention. And when your character reappears an act later, your reader will be more likely to remember who she is.
16. Check for Pages with No Stage Directions
I started out as a playwright. Like most playwrights, I was very spare with my stage directions. I’d write whole pages with nothing but dialogue. But when I switched to TV writing, I learned that doesn’t always fly. If you have a whole page with no screen directions on it, just dialogue, it looks funky to some people. If I’m your reader, it won’t bother me. But somebody else—like Stephen Zito, who was the showrunner at JAG for most of its run—will be bothered by the lack of stage directions. So my advice is, play it safe. If you have a page of dialogue with no screen directions, then throw in a screen direction or two.
17. Get Your Script the Right Length
“What is the right length?” you ask. I know you’re asking, because all my students, without exception, have wanted to know the answer to this question.
For a spec pilot, shoot for fifty-three to sixty-four pages. Ideally, sixty or fewer. If your script is under fifty-three or over sixty-four, your reader will have a quick hit of negativity before she even starts reading. It’s not a deal breaker, but still.
For an episode of an existing show, shoot for fifty-one to sixty pages. Ideally, fifty-two to fifty-nine.
By the way, different shows have different script lengths. I once wrote a script for JAG that was seventy pages long. But the episode came in on time because it had a lot of airplane action, and some of those pages took under twelve seconds of screen time. On the other hand, when I wrote for Supernatural, the head writer wanted the scripts to come in at forty-two to forty-four pages. Supernatural had a lot of slow, spooky scenes, and also a lot of music between lines of dialogue, so that number of pages turned out to be just right.
Most shows have scripts that run from fifty-one to sixty. Possibly there are shows on the air right now with forty-two-page scripts, though I’m not aware of any. Even so, I wouldn’t write a forty-two-page spec for any of those shows. Most of your readers won’t realize forty-two is actually the right number, and they’ll think you messed up.
So now, what do you do if your script is too long?
The best option, by far: Cut!
Sometimes students ask me if it’s okay to screw around with the margins. I’m not a fan of this strategy. For one thing, it makes the script look cramped and a little funky. If your script has half-inch margins at the top and bottom, or your dialogue keeps going an inch farther to the right, I believe the reader will sense something is off, even if he doesn’t consciously notice it. Each page will take a little too long to read, and the script will seem slightly boring in consequence.
I don’t mean to sound too dogmatic about this. If my script has a “widow”—a page at the end of an act with just one or two lines on it—then I’m not above futzing with the margins.
But don’t overdo. Cut!
18. Get Your Acts the Right Length
And now you ask, what’s the right length for an act?
Just don’t make them too short. Don’t have any acts that are shorter than six pages—except for the teaser (if you have a teaser) and possibly the last act.
If you’re writing a spec episode of an existing show: Copy the act lengths of the scripts you’ve read, give or take two or three pages.
If you’re writing a spec pilot: Pilots often have very long first acts, even as long as twenty-three pages. That’s because the first acts of pilots have a lot of work to do. They have to set up the A story for the episode, set up the basic idea for the series, and establish the main characters. So if your first act is running long, don’t sweat it too much. Do try to hold it down to twenty pages, if you can.
19. If You’re Writing a Spec Episode of an Existing Show:
Copy Minor Style Points
It’s possible that some of the folks who read your script will have read actual episodes of the show. So copy the ways that the staff writers do things. It will make your script feel a little more professional to these folks. You don’t have to copy every tiny detail obsessively. But if they have SMASH TO BLACK at the end of each act, then what the heck, you might as well write S
MASH TO BLACK too.
20. Proofread for Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar
Okay, I confess. I’m shallow. If somebody gives me a script and it’s missing commas, or the writer uses the word lay in a screen direction when it should be lie, I instantly think worse of the script. I won’t necessarily say the script has a strike against it, but it definitely has one-tenth of a strike against it.
I’m aware that some of the greatest writers in the world can’t spell worth a darn. I actually try not to care about spelling and grammar. But I can’t help myself.
And everybody else cares about this stuff too.
Before you turn in your script, proofread it. Even better: Have a trusted friend proofread it. Offer to wash his or her car in return.
21. When You Are Finished, Stop
Okay, so now the million-dollar question: How do you know when you’re finished?
Actually, according to an old saying, “art is never finished, only abandoned.”
Speaking for myself, I know I’m finished when I look at the changes I made the day before and realize that half of them, or more than half, are no good, so I change them back.
I’d say when you hit that point with your script…you’re done! Once again: Mazel tov! Congratulations for completing your rewrite!
And now, as a special bonus, I am going to give you one more piece of advice.
Now that you’ve finished your rewrite, put it in a drawer for a few days. Don’t give it to your important contacts—your uncle whose new wife is an ICM agent, your old friend from high school who works for Greg Berlanti—just yet. Don’t submit it to that major contest. Sit on it.
Because if you do give it to these folks right away, you may find that in a few days, you suddenly realize there’s something you wanted to change. And then you’ll feel tortured: Should I send my new draft to the agent and tell her not to read the old draft, or does that make me look unprofessional? Bottom line, it does look a little unprofessional, but you’ll probably do it anyway, after spending three hours trying to figure out how to word the e-mail properly. And then you’ll kick yourself about the whole thing.