Guest blog: Paula Finn

So today and for the next several posts I'm going to shake things up. Yes, I'm crazy like that. So...I'm going to have...drum roll please...a guest blogger! Tada! Her name is Paula Finn, she's the daughter of the writer of Honeymooners, Herb Finn. I know, wow, right? And she's written a book called Sitcom Writers Talk Shop: Behind the Scenes with Carl Reiner, Norman Lear, and Other Geniuses of TV Comedy. Awesome, right? 

So I'm completely honored to share some of her tips that she's learned from interviewing and sitting down with these comedy greats. And they're in her book if you're interested in reading even more after reading these tips in my blog. The book is published by Rowman & Littlefield, and available on Amazon and through Rowman.com. So without further ado, the first tip: 

1) Get real.

Carl Reiner believes the truth of the material and of the actors is critical to any show’s success. In his words, “Once in a while you get a fanciful idea for a show and sometimes that carries it for a time…but really, there’s nothing better than the truth.”

Phil Rosenthal makes the same point: “…As long as you stay in the real world, in the world that’s believable and relatable — then you really can’t go wrong.”

Janet Leahy suggests that writers do research to get to what’s real: “If you’re stuck for a story or if you’re stuck in the middle of a story and you don’t know how to get yourself out of it — ask yourself what would really happen in this situation. A lot of times writers will make things up, and that’s why they feel a little awkward because they haven’t done enough research. Even in comedy you can do research. And the more truth you find, the more creative your storytelling becomes…go out and do research, meet people, read books, whatever you need to do — but the truth always helps you.”

2) Know your characters.

Hal Kanter illustrates the importance of knowing your characters with one of his favorite anecdotes. The story is from the Amos ‘n’ Andy radio show, but it applies equally to screenwriting: “All of the writers were sitting in the room with the actors putting together the final script. And we were trying to get a line for the Kingfish; nobody was happy with the line that we had. Everybody was throwing lines back and forth, back and forth. It was a large group of writers, all of whom were excellent, and nobody came up with a line. I finally turned to Freeman Gosden who was the headman and also played the part of the Kingfish. I said, “If the Kingfish himself were to come into this room right now, and you were to explain to him what the problem was, what do you think he would say?” And Freeman immediately shifted into the character and he said, “Well, boy” — whatever the line was — and we all fell down laughing. That was the perfect line! Even Freeman himself was startled by the fact that that character had come out of nowhere. That was a lesson we all learned; you have to know your characters before you sit down and write. And he knew his so well that the Kingfish actually came alive.”

These sound like two really great tips to me! Have you used these tips to help you get out of a writing jam? If so, I'd love to hear how it helped. 

The nose knows

So for first time writers, or newbie writers, they will hear a lot of "it's on the nose" when people read their scripts. And when you're a new writer you're not always sure what that means. Recently, a new writer reached out to me in need of some explanation so I thought it might be a good post to help other new writers in this position.

I asked him to read as many articles on what "writing on the nose" meant. I also asked him to rewrite a scene of his once he thought he knew what it was to see if he had applied what he thought he learned. Even with that, it still turned out he was in the dark.

What I did notice is that he thought to fix writing on the nose meant to write everything shorter. Dialogue. Narration. Descriptions. Now sometimes yes, it can mean writing less. But not always. He cut out so much I no longer could tell what the characters were saying or meaning. So don't cut just to make things shorter. Cut to make things less obvious.

See, people in real life never say what they mean. So our jobs as writers is to not be so obvious. It's to play what is going on underneath what the characters are saying but leave things hidden and to let them come across in other ways. For instance, if a character has a bad day at work and that scene was written on the nose, we'd hear exactly what the writer intended. For instance, the character would come in from work and say it all, "I had a bad day at work! I don't like anyone right now." Wife, "Why do you have to yell at me for having a bad day at work?" Man, "I'm going to go sit at my computer and ignore you because I don't like myself or anyone right now". Yuck! Not a good scene is it? Now if it wasn't on the nose it could be written more like this...

He comes home but doesn't tell her, she kisses him but he just brushes past her, says he's not hungry for dinner and goes to hide at his laptop. Then when the wife asks if he's hungry after she's cleaned up the dishes, then he could snap at her so much that they get into a fight. But maybe he yells at her for the way she parked the car. And how she always parks the car that way and he can't fit in the garage. And then she's annoyed he keeps bringing that up so they fight over the car instead of what really happened at work. Then when going to bed, both ignoring each other it might finally come out, "Sorry I got yelled at by my boss for messing up. I guess I took it out on you." So that scene would be so much more interesting than the first. Don't you think?

If you need to write a scene really obvious the first time you write it, that's okay. But once it's on the page, ask yourself how else can I write this scene? Can I write it with no dialogue? What could I have that person do instead of what I actually intended him to do? Is there another character he could interact with that will show off the scene much better? Is there an object I can introduce to the scene that would make it less on the nose? There's many ways to hide what the character is thinking. But it's up to us, the writers, to figure out the best way it is to do that.

TV Animation pitching

Sorry I haven't written sooner, been a busy year. But busy is good, right? So this year I've gotten to pitch to a Cartoon Network producer. Being that I have a 9-year-old son, the thought of writing cartoons is awesome to me! Maybe it would be awesome to anyone. But especially to me because I watch them more frequently at this point in my life than probably...ever. So, last year a Cartoon Network producer came up to me at a chamber meeting for our area after I mentioned I was working with a high-profile producer. She said she'd love to meet and hear ideas. So it took all year to finally get together. I thought I'd pitch her rough ideas, sort of like what I do when I have a general meeting with feature film producers. Well, guess what. That's not how the cartoon world works! At least not in TV. So I'm going to share with you what I learned, so that if you're ever in this position, you know what to pitch. Luckily the producer I met with was so nice and happy to school me in what I should have pitched. She told me that the lead character is king in the TV animation world. A logline is fine, but they really want to hear who that lead character is and why we would spend week after week with that character. Makes sense. They also want to know the world they're in and how it's unique. And, it's got to be a boy lead character. No boys want to watch girl leads. My son is living proof of that! And the idea has to be out there. Way out there. Some ideas that are doing well right now are Regular Show and  Adventure Time. Anything like that, kind of different and funny will do well in today's market. So, now I know that. And now you know. So I'm coming up with more ideas and then pitching to the producer again. I have come up with a bunch of ideas I'm already loving. Hoping you can too!

Rewriting in a big way

I think when I was a newbie writer, rewrites were not really effective rewrites. I might have changed sentences here and there, rewritting sentences so they flowed better. I might have added a character but not one that really helped the story move forward better. Now I know that rewriting takes a whole lot more than just dotting more i's and crossing more t's. Rewriting is really tearing things apart and building stuff back up. It really takes a lot to get to the core of the story and sometimes that means rebuilding. A lot! Even in this rewrite that I'm working on, I have put a scene that was in the middle, as my opening scene. I thought, well, it's a comedy, and that comedic moment happens half way through my story. It's a very visual moment. And we all know that opening with a visual moment is a good idea. So I decided why not? The good thing is you save the other drafts, so if it doesn't work, you can always go back to the older version. I think that was key as a writer for me to learn. That it's okay to play around and try new things. Once I learned that as a writer things became and felt so much more freer. I even got rid of an entire character that I was sure I needed. But people had suggested I might not need him. So I thought, why not try it without him? And by introducing a whole new character, now I have more motivation for my inciting incident and the 2nd act. So ask yourself, what are you doing in your rewrite? Is each scene filled with conflict? Does each character help move the story forward? Do you have some characters that fill up the same spot and purpose that other characters do? Don't be afraid to cut out things and put entirely new stuff in. You just might surprise yourself and see your story flourish like never before.