Writing the TV Drama Series 3rd Edition: How to Succeed as a Professional Writer in TV (28 page)

•   Do you have enough story? If your outline only seemed to be complete, but actually contained mostly a premise or the circumstances in which a story would occur, you’ll need to go back to the outline stage and create more events, more real turns — more of a plot. Rewrite the outline before you rewrite the script in this case.

A
T THE
E
ND OF
I
T
A
LL

Sorry, there isn’t an end, at least not anytime soon. This process will go on for as many more drafts as you can stand, and if your episode is produced, some writers revise all through postproduction and only quit fixing things when they’re forced to because the thing is on the air! In television, this obsessive tinkering is limited, fortunately, because shows get on the air very quickly.

If this is an assigned script, you probably have to deliver it to the headwriter now. But if you’re ahead of schedule by a day or so, don’t hand it in early. Take that day to let the script “cool,” then re-read it with as much distance as you can muster and refine what you can, but deliver on time. TV schedules don’t have much slack, and slackers don’t get much work in TV.

If this is your own spec with no deadline, now is an opportunity for feedback. Have your draft read by everyone, not just other writers or your grandma who thinks everything you do is perfect. Sometimes an outside reader will ask what you need to hear: “Why would she do that?” “I don’t get why they don’t just make up.” Or you might hear awful reactions: “Is this supposed to be a parody of
Buffy?
” Don’t be crushed by one stupid reader. On the other hand, the reader might be on to something. It’s a gift to have the chance to reconsider.

If readers are too polite, or don’t know how to give feedback, ask them three simple questions:

•  Do you care about the people in the stories?

•  Were you rooting for something to happen?

•  What do you think this script is all about?

After all the input, I suggest setting the draft aside for a couple of weeks, if you can manage that. With enough distance, you might see what you need to change by yourself. You’ll also see typos that your eyes glazed over no matter how well you spell-checked and proofread. My favorite was a student script for the series
Boston Public
innocently handed in with the letter “l” missing in the title on the first page.

Y
OUR
S
ECOND
D
RAFT

You need to understand the difference between revising and rewriting. The kind of editing you do every day — fixing spelling and punctuation, tightening lines, omitting a speech, clarifying an action, lopping off the heads or tails of overlong scenes — all those corrections are parts of normal writing. Rewriting is a whole other job.

A rewrite means rethinking the structure and sometimes characters as well. You’re still dealing with the same general story, but you want a fresh way to tell it. You can’t do that by crossing out lines or replacing words. Go back to the drawing board.

Start by putting aside the script. I mean it. As long as you cling to the precious moments you’ve written you’ll be tied to your first draft. Take a breath and let go. Maybe you’ll be able to use many of the pages you’ve written; and certain scenes, even sequences, might survive intact. But when you begin a rewrite, everything is on the table or you’ll turn into a pretzel trying to fit a structure around scenes that don’t belong.

Depending on the notes you got from the producer or readers, your episode may require a new outline. Can you work with your existing outline as a reference to re-organize the beats, or do you have to start over? Either way, boldly get rid of what hasn’t worked and add completely new elements, even a new arc, if necessary.

Then begin the second draft using the new outline, though, again, you might be able to keep much of your first draft. Now, I’m not saying to throw out the story the show bought (if indeed it was bought). On that point — being told to do a second draft on an assignment is terrific news. The alternate is being cut off after the first draft and having your script given to another writer. Don’t imagine for a minute that anyone’s first draft is shot exactly as first written, not even when the showrunner writes it himself! And if you’re on assignment, the second draft generates a payment.

I had a funny experience with a rewrite. I’d handed in a first draft (this was actually a TV movie) and the network called for an in-person meeting at their office. That didn’t bode well, because if notes are minor they’re often given on the phone or in a memo. So, in we went — the producer, a company executive and me — anticipating a high level effort to save the project. As it happened, this particular network exec wasn’t experienced, and she sat there going page by page through the script. Two hours. And at the end of it she’d asked for changes in five lines. Five lines! The producer was so steamed that he told my agent to bill the network for a full second draft, which amounted to something like a thousand dollars per word. Don’t count on that kind of waste in episodes, though. Show-runners mean it when they want a rewrite.

If you’re speculating, draft numbers make no sense. Every selling script is “First Draft,” even if you’ve written this thing eleven times. To keep track for yourself, you could put the date of the draft in the lower right corner of the title page. Or you might run a header showing the revision dates of specific pages (some screenwriting programs have this application). But submit your script with no draft numbers or dates. And no colored pages — that’s for production revisions after the shooting script. Remember, the sample you send to a producer is always shiny new, hot off your printer.

Y
OUR
P
OLISH

Technically, a “polish” means what you’d think — a small revision, like polishing a surface, fine-tuning. Frequently the term is used for a dialogue polish where a writer goes through a script and sharpens the speeches. Polishes do not include re-structuring or creating new characters or story arcs.

Sometimes a cultural “wash” is called a dialogue polish too. That occurs when a character’s background is not familiar to the original writer and a second writer is brought in to make the character speak naturally. Usually that kind of polish is not credited.

For you, if you’re working on a series, a polish may or may not appear in your contract, and if it does, the payment is slight. That shouldn’t matter. If you’re fortunate enough to be kept on an episode after your second draft, cling with your teeth and fingernails and polish anything including the boss’s chair. Scripts keep changing, and the more you’re willing to do, the more the final product will be yours. Of course, if you’re on a staff, you’ll be polishing other people’s scripts routinely, sometimes because the original writer is busy with something larger. It’s a normal stage in preparing a script for production.

As for your spec script: Polish until it gleams.

W
HAT’S
N
EXT
?

Do it again! If you’re speculating, write another spec for a series that demonstrates you can work in a different genre. If you’re writing on assignment, you’ll have the thrill (really) of seeing your creation on screen. And if it’s well received, you’ll get another assignment in the future.

No matter how this script turns out, the best way to write better is to write more. If this is your first dramatic episode, you’ve taken a great leap. Just think how much you learned. And next time it will be easier. Just kidding. If it’s easy, you’re not stretching. So don’t expect easy, but once you’re comfortable with the basics, next time will be more fun.

Finally, when you have a few writing samples in your portfolio, you’re ready for the next step: joining a staff.

S
UMMARY
P
OINTS

•  In writing your own spec script, go through all the steps, from outline to first draft, second draft, and polish.

•  An outline is a list of scenes or beats in the order they will occur in your script. It’s the first professional step and generates a payment and “story by” credit if you’re writing on assignment. You may create the “A,” “B” and “C” stories separately and weave them together, watching that cliffhangers fall at the act breaks.

•  All teleplays are in normal screenplay format, written on standard screenwriting software, using the submissions option rather than as shooting scripts.

•  Rewriting a script is not the same as editing, and involves re-thinking structure or characters.

•  A polish is a smaller revision that refines dialogue and tightens scenes before presenting your script.

•  Ask for feedback on your finished script and be willing to rewrite many times before giving it to a producer or agent as a writing sample.

Photo: Douglas Sonders

G
UEST
S
PEAKER:
D
AVID
S
IMON

A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and multiple writing awards for
Homicide: Life on the Street
and
The Wire
, David Simon also co-created
Generation Kill
and
Treme
.

Pamela Douglas:
Would you share something about your creative process, the writing process that might help new writers?

David Simon:
It’s very hard when you haven’t experienced a lot of life to comment on life. I had the benefit of spending the first part of my career as a newspaper reporter, for about fifteen years, from the time I was in college until I left the [
Baltimore
]
Sun
. Those fifteen years grounded me in lives other than my own. A lot of beginner’s literature tends to be singular and onanistic because people don’t know much of the world when they start writing. They might become a craftsman as a writer and people could do it at a young age because they’re smart. They read and learn other writers and they get the dynamic. But that doesn’t answer the question whether they have anything to say about the world.

To speak to something serious about life or about society it helps to have lived awhile, endured a bit of loss and tragedy and the things that happen to you when you get older. Not to mention, as you get older you see the cycle of political behavior and you’re better able to parse things for what they are rather than what they claim to be.

What I look for are writers in their forties and fifties who have seen a little bit of life, and if they’ve been in situations or places in the world where they can bring something to bear on the subject at hand, that’s even more important.

The notion that you “age out” of the grand themes is bull. Ancient Greeks were writing about this stuff. The great issues endure. The political issues endure. The arguments Socrates was making, for which they gave him hemlock, or the themes inherent in Aeschylus or Sophocles — they’re still there. The political dynamics they were arguing over in Athens are still there. The power strategies in the War of the Roses can still be put to dramatic use because our world has not changed as much as we think it has. The human dynamics don’t change.

But if you want to be current, maybe you have to go and research dialogue, do reportage. If I want to write something about New Orleans in 2007, it matters that I was paying attention, that I was down there in 2007.

PD:
At that time
The Wire
was still on. Were you thinking ahead to doing
Treme
back then?

DS:
Yes, I was there in November and then again in December after the storm for several weeks. We sold the pilot idea to HBO in 2005 right after the storm. I needed to get down there while
The Wire
and
Generation Kill
were both still in production. I needed to start doing reportage.

PD:
So you did a reporter’s work to develop these characters long, long before they were scripts.

DS:
We took about two and a half years before we tried a first draft. We also needed time to see what was going to happen with New Orleans. How can you know how to arc the thing until you know what you’re trying to say?

PD:
I had the opportunity to see a draft of the original proposal for
The Wire
. I noticed that it was unlike any other show treatment or proposal I’d ever seen because of how full it was, minute by minute. Would you share why you did that?

DS:
Try to imagine yourself in the room trying to explain
The Wire
to the HBO executives. You’re asking them to do what seems to be a cop show. And HBO at that time had been successful by doing the opposite. They were counter-programming the networks by doing shows the networks couldn’t touch, shows about sexually active women in New York, or shows with Mafia gangsters as protagonists, shows going to the heart of dealing with death. These are shows the networks can’t deal with because they’re busy selling to people every thirteen minutes. You can’t convince people their rampant consumerism is essential and viable and worthy when you’ve just spent the past twelve minutes (in the case of
The Sopranos
or
Six Feet Under
or
Oz
) demonstrating that perhaps the underpinnings of society are not as intact as we thought they were. You can’t tell a dark story. You can’t be honest about the human condition, which is essentially tragic. We are all mortal and we are flawed. And if you want to deal with that honestly you can’t oversell redemption. So to sell a story you have to sell the advertisers, and that’s unacceptable.