Sophisticated Hokum

I just caught the pilot episode of mystery drama airing on FOX.

It’s about an unorthodox yet brilliant doctor who works on bizarre cases that only he can properly diagnose and solve.

He’s in charge of a team of somewhat optimistic but by-the-book doctors who are shocked by his methods that include breaking into a patient’s home to learn more about them. This doctor is also quick to rebel against the hospital’s female administrator with whom he shares a past (and maybe) some sexual tension, and will most likely be crossing paths with a black member of the staff who has ties to some big pharmaceutical companies that provide him with a lot of funding.

While we don’t know much about his past, we do learn this doctor’s last real relationship was with an oncologist (who might have been a best friend or close confidante).

I wish I could say I’ve discovered House for the very first time, and that I am way, way behind in my TV viewing. Unfortunately, this description is for a new show called Mental that mimics House on so many levels but fails miserably. It feels like you’ve stumbled into an imperfect parallel universe.

No thanks. I’m staying on the House side of this warped event horizon.

I mentioned the Warner Bros. Writer’s Workshop in a post last week, but did not go into too many details about the actual program.

Essentially, applicants who are accepted into this prestigious program are given weekly lectures from TV writers and show runners, the opportunity to work in simulated writing rooms to develop scripts, and the chance to be staffed on a WB TV show.

Their website offers a few pointers for writing a spec script that just might get you a spot into the program. They include:

• let a reader know where a story is going as soon as possible, and hook them by page 10;
• don’t play it safe; your spec has to stand out;
• your story should say something and reflect on life and the human condition; and
• proofread it again, and again; watch out for typos.

I finally had a chance to watch a couple of The Write Environment DVDs I picked up while I was in Los Angeles.

Screenwriter Jeffrey Berman does a wonderful job interviewing some well known TV writers and show runners in this DVD series that takes the viewer to each writer’s office space. There, Berman’s one-on-one interviews tackle their influences, their career highs and lows, and their thoughts about the TV industry and writing profession in some extremely candid one-hour interviews that are also quite entertaining.

Sam Simon (executive producer of The Simpsons, and a producer and writer for Cheers and Taxi) discusses his career beginnings, why he enjoyed working in animation, and the benefits of working in a writer’s room. Meanwhile, Joss Whedon’s interview discusses his inspirations, his approach to writing movies and the differences between film and TV, his work on Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Firefly, and the importance of crossing and mixing genres.

While these interviews are more biographical than instructional in nature, it’s rare to find such in-depth interviews with writers where they are given the opportunity to speak about their lives and craft, making this series valuable to anyone who wants to gain some insight from people at the height of their profession.

Berman also seems to have a wonderful rapport with these writers, and helps make these interviews very conversational. These interviews cover a lot of ground, and these writers often offer up some advice or inspiration, too.

Whedon suggests writers should give the villains they create some perspective, or a reason for doing what they’re doing to make them more sympathetic. He also believes films are more about providing answers, while television is more about asking questions. He also tells writers to work their obsessions into their stories to reveal the geeks they are.

This series also features interviews with Damon Lindelof (Lost), Tim Kring (Heroes), and Phil Rosenthal (Everybody Loves Raymond).

Speaking of The Warner Bros. Television Writers Workshop Guide, I should add that this book is a very straightforward introduction to TV writing by Abby Finer and Deborah Pearlman.

Aside from explaining sitcom and one-hour drama writing basics, this book also offers some nuggets of wisdom I have not read elsewhere.

The authors suggest a television spec script should NOT revolve around a holiday or deal with life-changing events. They also suggest avoiding stories that feature long-lost relatives, or natural disasters (including blackouts).

And while they stress the importance of not writing a “special” episode that deals with “addictions, amnesia, or dream sequences”, which I have heard before, I was surprised to learn that some producers dislike it when you show off your knowledge of a show by throwing in little-known facts or back story.

They also offer some good advice to help you determine just how important a particular scene is to your story:

“Each scene must advance the story, so new and relevant facts need to emerge, giving the character something to talk and joke about. A good way to test the sequence of the story by scene is to remove a scene that might not be fitting in with the rest of the story. If you remove a scene and the story still makes sense, then you didn’t need that scene in the first place.”

Finer and Pearlman also stress that you need to track “characters as they enter a scene thinking or feeling one way and wind up with a slightly different attitude by the end of that scene.”

They also suggest exposition “can be inserted into dialogue through conflict, particularly when tempers flare and angry words are spoken”.

John Beck, a writer and executive producer for According to Jim, describes the often-confused differences between story and plot in an interview that appears in The Warner Bros. Television Writers Workshop Guide.

It’s one of the best explanations I have read in a while:

“Story is the conflict and resolution between two of your main characters. The plot is how the story plays out. There are a million different plots you can use to tell the same story, but regardless of how funny the plot is, if the story is lacking, the script will suffer,” he says. “I look at it now like curtains and curtain rods. The story is the rod that holds the curtains up. And no matter how beautiful these curtains are, they will be useless without the curtain rod.”