Here we go again – 306

Well, Julie’s car repair cost twice as much as she was expecting, and for Maria, even though she knows she looked, and the other driver admitted that she did not look, the other driver’s insurance company has decided that the fault was fifty-fifty. Since Maria does not have the cash to cover the deductible (she is still not getting full hours at work), her bumper will not be getting fixed any time soon. Also, I have hope again, so there could be a horrible crash coming.

Still, it is not horrible to have hope. Basically, I sent a friend two very short treatments for potential series ideas. Her contact thinks that the one will probably sell (not the one I would have expected, but we’ve established that I don’t know what I’m doing). Although I have thought about both ideas a lot, I had never written anything on either of them until I did these page and a half treatments. Now she has asked if I have anything written, to which the answer is “no”. However, I feel like the right thing to do is to just write a script for the pilot episode.

I do not know what I am doing. Not really. I’ve had some practice with the feature film format now, but with television, no only are you working with shorter time periods, but the timing is more important, because it needs to fit the programming slot. You also need to put in little starting and stopping points for the insertion of commercials. There are conventions for this, but I am not familiar with them. So, in addition to working out more information on my characters, and the premise, and how to best introduce them so that viewers would want to watch additional episodes, I also need to watch a current hour-length drama and jot down the time intervals.

That should not sound like a complaint—I am just worried about it. That’s the question that comes up all the time with this: Can I really do it? I hope I can. There’s no guarantee I will make any money with this. Writing the episode is not a job; it is what I feel is the best way to show them that I could do this job, and that they should take me seriously.

I had been intending to make April television month anyway, though this is not how I pictured it. In addition to writing the screenplays, I was thinking that now that Leverage is shooting in town, I could try and get on there. I personally am more drawn to features, but it would still be professional writing, and it would probably be good experience.

Generally, the way you try and get on a show writing staff is to write to sample episodes of a similar show. You never write for the show you want, because the people reading it have their own concepts of the characters, and it is personal to them, so it is easy to step on toes, or to look like you have completely missed the point. The good thing about this is that there are fewer obstacles to getting someone to take a look than with a film. A big part of why film screenplays will only be reviewed when submitted through agents or entertainment lawyers is the fear of lawsuits—that you will have something similar already in the works, but someone will claim the idea was copied. I believe the reason that it is looser with shows is that you are sending them something that they really can’t use. It’s different characters and locale, and even if the plot contains a germ of an idea that they could adapt, the potential for outright plagiarism is much lower.

Anyway, my original plan for this month was to figure out a series in a similar vein to Leverage, watch a bit, write to episodes for it, and get them submitted. I may still do that later, but I have something else to work on right now. (Also, I can’t think of any really similar current series, though there are some departed series that would be a good match.)

So that’s where I am. Scared, which has almost become second nature to me now, but not quite down for the count.

Oh, did I mention that bandaging bleeding dogs is really hard, and we've had two separate dogs get bleeding injuries yesterday and today? And my allergies are acting up.