LEVERAGE Week 7

Above, the writer's room. The hose in the back leads from Bessie, the air conditioner Chris brought in to combat the effects of the late-afternoon sun beaming in through the window-wall to our left.

I'm going to just stop apologizing for the posting delays and assume you know why I'm a bit pokey. And to recap:
Leverage: Lessons from the Script Pile
Leverage Week 1
Leverage Week 2
Leverage Week 3
Leverage Weeks 4 + 5
Leverage Week 6

One of these days I'm going to have to go back and finish that production diary. I stopped primarily because I was convinced it might have been considered promotional, and therefore against strike rules. Got my notes around here somewhere.

Week 7: We tweak the outlines for 105 and 106, send them into the network. At the same time the network calls -- no real notes on 103 and 104. Albert is launched on 104. He now has roughly two weeks to turn in a first draft to the room.

Sidebar on how the final writing schedule worked out. We've got four outlines approved by TNT. Every Monday from now on, we launch a new writer to tackle his/her draft. That means two writers out of the room at all times as they overlap. Or, taking into account the various loose elements Chris and I tossed together while we were working and reading the scripts, this is the pre-season:

Showrunners read scripts & hire writers: 6 weeks
Showrunners only screw around with ideas: 2 weeks (and some back in the previous segment)
Writers break stories: 6 weeks
Writers off writing before shooting: 10 weeks, but 5 of these will overlap with actual pre-production.

The writers are off working on this staggered schedule

Writer 1 Week 1
Writer 1 Week 2 / Writer 2 Week 1
Writer 2 Week 2 / Writer 3 Week 1
Writer 3 Week 2 / Writer 4 Week 1 etc.

Somewhere around where Writer 3 or 4 goes out, I should head back in to TNT with the next batch of four outlines. The cycle repeats.

There are a few "room days" built into every script's development cycle, plus some "reset" weeks where we look at both the new outlines as they fit into the season and take a last look at the final drafts before they're sent to directors for prep and shot. Taking all this into account, with safety factors in place, buffers, etc, we should (should-should-should) have 6 scripts plus the pilot written by start of shoot.

Is this the normal schedule for television? Absolutely bloody not. One of the advantages of working for a studio that's never done a television show before --

I'm sorry, I have to put a cold rag on my forehead for a moment. Back in a bit.

-- right, one of the advantages is there's no entrenched methodology. Dean started (I'm paraphrasing here) this process with: "Okay, what's the one thing every show you've ever been on has done wrong, that you swore you'd never do when you ran a show?"

"They all start the writers too late."

"Go forth, hire writers, and start 'em when you want."

Now to be fair, most network shows can't do this, because 22 episodes takes you from July/August through April-ish, and more times than not you have no idea if you're picked up again until mid-May. In addition, you must often spend a few of the remaining weeks rebuilding your staff, depending on who got deals, was fired, etc.

The longer hiatus is one of the benefits of doing 13, which is both a profitable and creatively fulfilling number of episodes to produce for a televisions show. Being able to fully take advantage of the longer hiatus is one of the benefits of doing this indie style.

Right, back to the workweek.

On Monday, the staff writer team of Reider and Mrs. Glenn present us with a document summing up all their research into the world of their episode. Some very, very cool stuff -- the sort of process geekery and "Hmm, I didn't know that" that made Michael Crichton a very rich man. They also have a good victim and villain, and the rough ideas of a plot. The room dives in, pulling down ideas off the wall and kicking around ways to make sure at least one of our characters has a strong emotional arc through the episode.

Nicely enough we've been talking about a backstory episode for Chris Kane's character. The ep involves horses, the setting fits the loose backstory for Eliot's character, I know Chris can ride ... okay, this one is Kane's. That's not to say the other characters disappear into the background, but story physics of ensemble shows work best if you've got at least one character who really digs in on the plot o' the week, particularly since we don't have B-stories. And man, no B-stories... that's some hardcore plotting thrills right there.

The room plows ahead for Tues/Wed as Dean and I head to New York for Upfronts. The upfronts are traditionally where the broadcast networks present their new shows to the advertising buyers. Dog and pony show, lots of talk about "brands", the stars of the shows come out and say a few words while clips and trailers play on a giant screen behind them. A show business business show, you could say. The quirk this year is TNT and TBS (the linked cable nets) plowing in during the ABC/FOX/NBC/CBS network week and doing their upfront at the same time. It's a shot across the bow of the "networks", and me likey.

TNT has been nice enough to charter a jet for all its talent. There's a lot of talent on TBS and TNT (I'm contractually obligated to say that), so our jet's basically an old Korean airliner -- not kidding, the seatbelt sign lettering is hangul -- some charter outfit's ripped the seats out of and replaced with first class all the way back. Head out for the airport for 7:45 am, and by 9 am this is the view:


That's Beth Riesgraf, who's playing our thief Parker. The seats filled in before we took off. But before that, in the terminal I see a guy using one of the Flip videocameras to grab footage of the departure.

"Showrunner?" I ask.

"How can you tell?"

"The actors are the good looking skinny ones, the execs are the skinny ones in suits. You and I are both slightly overweight guys in untucked blue button-down shirts. It may as well be a uniform."

Turns out he's David Feige, the co-creator of Raising the Bar, Steven Bochco's new show for TNT. A couple hours into the flight, we're having a chat. I ask if it's his first upfronts. He answers, "No, first televison show. Ever."

David is the former trial chief of the Brooklyn public defenders. He wrote a book two years ago called Indefensible, about tragicomic life in the public defender's office -- the corruption, the racism, the insane judges, the politicization of the prosecutorial process, and more. He then ignored several film options and sent the book to Steven Bochco. Mr. Bochco then calls him, invites him to LA. Six months later David's learning to write television from Steven Bochco and his show is picked up for 13. He pauses as I just stare at him.

"That is an amazing story," I say.

"I know, it's crazy." He's actually laughing, boggled.

"An amazing story you must never, ever tell any other writer in Hollywood."

We circle Newark for a day and half, head into NYC, arrive at 7:30 pm. Straight from the hotel room to the hospitality suite to do the network and actor thing -- first time I've seen the actors since the shoot. (Aldis Hodge brought his mom. Good kid.) Meet all the promo people, the advertising people, reconnect with the execs, and back to the room for 11:30. Of course, it's 8:30 LA time, so I'm awake until 3 am EST. (Where do you think I got the time to write last week's blog post?)

6:45 wake-up because we need to be at the Hammerstein Theater for 8 am. Upfront's at 10, lasts 81 minutes -- then straight back into a van to Newark. We're delayed by an hour as all the actors and execs go through an ad hoc security screening on the runway -- because, of course, you never know when Holly Hunter's just going to lose her shit and torque an airliner into the Capitol Building -- and then we're in the air. As we land back at LAX I have the jarring realization that I've spent 14 hours in NYC without actually ever setting foot on a street in NYC. We get in early enough that I can go to the office for a few hours after getting in from the airport. My staff reacts with such amazement when seeing me in a suit that I'm a little disturbed at the prospect of precisely how ramshackle I must appear on the regular workdays.

(There's a fantastically embarrassing photo of me snoring on the flight that Aldis is sending me. I will post it just to make sure nobody's under the illusion this is a tale meant to bedazzle with glamor.)

Once back on Thursday, Chris and the room present me with an almost entirely finished story. Wow. I add a few tiny things and suggest that Reider and Mrs. Glenn go off for Friday to get their outline together to pitch to Dean. We'll take Friday to work on 107.

As soon as I say it, I can feel Berg staring through my left temple. (It should be noted that our co-producer has more one-hour experience than Chris and I added together) End of day, she cheerfully and rightfully points out that having baby writers pitch an episode outline to the studio is considered by most shows to be, well, insane. They've never done this before. Hell, they've only ever even seen one other writer -- Chris -- do this. Once.

"Hey, they have to learn sometime."

"Are you going to tell them this is not normal?"

"What, and freak them out? Nah."

And I think that's where we'll leave it for Week 8. As always, drop any questions you have in the comments. This post is already too long, so I'll tackle last week's Comments questions in a separate entry.

LEVERAGE Week 6

... written from my hotel room in NYC, at the upfronts. Hope to catch up this Friday.

Right then, this is the week we killed a story. Always sad, of course, but it happens. Welcome to televising.

First off, things are getting complicated. We have no picture yet (this week) but the cast members to this little drama are:

Rogers - exec producer and loudmouth
Chris - the other exec producer
Berg - co-producer
Boylan - staff writer
Albert- staff writer, although wrote for 20 years in other mediums.
Reider & Mrs. Glenn -- staff writers
Filthy Assistant - filthy assistant

First things first. Dean has come up with the quasi-insane idea of himself, Chris and I going in to TNT on Thursday and live-pitching the episode outlines to the Beloved Suits. By which he means me. I, reasonably, believe he's mad. Networks, after all, have a process...

But his argument is compelling. We are, in the end, a very complicated heist comedy show. We want to make sure both the plots -- usually consisting of two separate scams per ep -- and the jokes land. Why not go in and pitch everything out, answer questions in the room, and then the outlines are just reference documents rather than cold dead things which, by their nature, betray our baby joke chicks?

Okay, so not only do we need to get the remaining outlines in shape, they have to be in good enough shape for me to pitch live without making an ass of myself. Huh. That's with one approved, two needing fixes, and one hopelessly snarled.

The hopelessly snarled script -- currently 106 in the order -- came back with pretty dire "I don't think this is our show" notes from our studio (Dean and Marc)... and to a certain degree, we agree. It was the first episode broken, before we really had the rhythms of the show down. The end is super, the beginning is great, the victim is great, the villain's a Classic Douchebag ... but they don't match up. The road from the great villain and victim in the opening is far too logically convoluted to get to our admittedly spectacular ending. It's a bit of a dog's breakfast, as even the writer assigned the episode argues when I mention the structural flaws.

(She actually chews me out a bit and notes that only her superior writing skills carried the ep outline this far. Now, we have a card up on the wall, asking the eternal question vis a vis certain story choices. That card reads "HUBRIS ... or MOXIE?" This qualifies as moxie, at least for me.)

We put that aside for a bit and focus on the other episodes. This is part of a showrunner's job -- to see when the room's energy is being dissipated, and to steer it over to constructive issues. As early as we've started, each moment we spin our wheels is a moment stolen from prepping a script from production. Over Mon-Wednesday, we hammer out the issues on one episode.

Let's get into detail. There are two issues with the ep we'll call 104. First, we need to develop some sense of escalating threat throughout the episode. When you have a team of expert thieves, making sure there's some room for failure is always challenging. Second, the choreography in the final three-stage heist in act five is tricky. What exactly are our guys trying to accomplish, how does it play out, and how do we surprise the audience.

As often happens, the writer of the ep (Albert) tumbles the escalating threat, and the room builds the act five choreography out of the addition of that threat. The solution comes only when we back up and strip the episode right back to its roots: What does Nate Ford (the protagonist) want to accomplish? What are his obstacles? And, since we're a heist show, how does he use those obstacles in unexpected ways in order to accomplish what he wants? At one point I actually go back and diagram out in the old pulp school style.

This style is an old writing trick from the pulps. It's meant to create an inexorable forward motion in prose. You actually write the story in two columns. Left column is where you write the action paragraph . Right column is the result paragraph that leads logically to the next action, bing bing bing bouncing between the paragraphs, letting, well, story gravity draw you along.

That solved - and hey, it's always a good day when you solve a problem -- we let Albert go off and retool the outline to 104 as the room tackles the other less-troubled 105. We wrestle that fifth act to the ground (most of the ep is untouched) and then take on 106, the crippled story, head on.

Finally, we ask around the room. "What do you like about this story?" Multiple answers, all solid, come back. "And how do we fix this story?" ... ah. Crickets. It's never pretty, but finally Chris and I exercise showrunner's privilege and put a mercy bullet in the outline. We switch over to 107 (the episode I was supposed to write) even as that new story Chris and the room broke last week slides into the now-vacant 106 slot.

Thursday arrives, and this is where we stand. The position of 102, the first ep after the pilot, doesn't seem to fit any of the broken stories. Dean suggests that we write 102 together as a "reset" pilot, covering all the pipe necessary for the episode-to-episode series and re-introducing the concept of the show and the cast. Okay. 103 is the outline that was approved last week. Everybody loves that one. 104's outline is turned in, spiffy. I decide to (NOTE: edited) rewrite the final act of the outline of 105 -- as we finally get a good solve on the very day it's to be pitched -- while Chris knows the new 106 (former 107) like the back of his hand. He'll pitch that while Berg grinds out the writing outline. We've got a good handle on what's now 107 -- which the writer of the crippled story, Boylan, calls dibs on -- but it's not really in outline form yet.

So with the written outlines of 103 and 104 and the promise of written outlines for 105 and 106 to be delivered the next day, we go in and pitch TNT on Thursday with outlines that are, on the average, 20 pages long. Each.

Two pretty good hours later (I pitch 3, Chris takes the one he broke with the writers), we've got a lot of laughs, minimal notes, and I've sweated out five pounds. Not to suck up to the Beloved Suits at TNT, but this is genuinely the best experience I've had in 13 years of television. TNT execs don't just pee on an outline to mark it. Their notes are not just "look at me, I'm contributing" notes --

-- pretty common type of note, by the way. I mean, if you're an executive who's paid to give notes to production, how many times can you say "I like it, I don't really have any notes" before somebody in a more expensive suit and office begins to ask themselves "What exactly are we paying this guy for, anyway?" Execs are motivated to give unnecessary notes by the very structure of the the studio/network system.

So, we'll hear back on the leave-behind outlines on Monday. Friday is our last freelancer day. Chris and I take pitches while the room is off doing assignments and researching the next batch of stories. The Baby Writers, Reider and Mrs. Glenn, will present the bones of the episode they've been researching on Monday of Week 7. Be aware, staff writers are never guaranteed episodes on their first job -- these kids are fighting to get a script credit in their first year, against all the ideas the rest of the staff have put together, all the ideas Chris and I brought to the table in pre-season prep, and all the ideas Dean has tossed in. Not to mention a pretty spiffy freelance pitch from last Friday. Can they pull it off? We'll see on Monday ...

Also this week, we cook up a rough writing schedule to coordinate with the production schedule. Some of you may be amused to know that I'm tracking script assignments and outline deadlines on Google Calendar. We may move to a Google Group to coordinate all the documents, outlines, and notes. The writing staff of a professional television show is using great gobs of free online software. If there were a production-ready screenwriting program we'd consider trying it, but the simple fact is revision tracking during production is monstrous. Many programs that can handle a first draft fold up as soon as you move into production rigor of multiple drafts. Movie Magic it is for scripts, then, but it's worth mentioning our use of Google software. (and, hey, if they want to help out on production costs, I have no problem writing a testimonial or three thousand ...)

Week 7 coming up -- the Baby Writers pitch, and Adventures in New York. Now, let's see what questions we had from last time.

eleanor: Hi John, I find this whole process fascinating.

Any chance you can satisfy my geek Brit need-to-learn-this-stuff osity and (sometime when you're allowed to?) post all the different card types, notes, and the finished script for one episode, so we can all see exactly how it's done? HAVE TO KNOW! Pretty please?

Our Filthy Assistant keeps all the cards. We will, someday, post it all. Probably not soon, but we'll see what we can do.

alan scott: Also (proceeding tangentially from comment on your pitching style): Is there any audio or video footage of your old stand-up comedy act? What would one have to do in order to obtain such footage?

Footage of my appearance on the Just for Laughs Showtime special and Comedy Central appearances are still kicking around on cable, while my Canadian Comedy Central specials, including the first Comedy Now ...

huh.

Well, if you're in Canada, enjoy. You may also find my CBC special, in which I appear briefly in a wedding dress. Otherwise, I may someday post a few minutes of my failed sitcom pilot -- if I lose a bet.

anonymous: I've got a question for you--Who works on the opening credits sequence, and when? Most seem hacked together at the last minute with random images, but some ("Dexter", "Dead Like Me") are truly works of art in their own right. Just curious.

The opening credits sequence is rapidly becoming a lost art. Usually they're cut while doing pre-production on the first episode, but can be honed well into shooting. I'm not an afficianado, but my commenters handle this question adroitly. Go back to the last blog post and follow the discussion there.

tuckpendleton: What is "prosumer"? Does that mean the camera is only available for pros, or that I could theoretically buy it if I wanted, as a consumer, but only by paying "pro" prices? Also, can you explicate: "they don't take primes" -- as I assume it's not about mathism.

"Prosumer" means high-end consumer, at amateur prices but producing a level of quality acceptable for many professional works. "Primes" are the prime lenses, the focal lengths that we all know and love -- the 50mm, the 30, the buck twenty. With a standard camera, you change the shot by changing the lens. The Sony XDCam, at least the current version, has a digital zoom.

warren ellis: "Have I told my fanfic story? It involves Michelle Forbes and Warren Ellis and booze ... hmm next time if I have't already."

NOOOOOOO!

Oh, come on, you come across as devilish and charming. As usual.

michael clear: (RE FANFIC) If I'm allowed to use British television then I'm tossing in Sally Sparrow from the "Blink" episode of Doctor Who and the Michelle Ryan and Gina Bellman characters from Jeckyll.

Sally Sparrow -- criminally underutilized.

pretty shaved ape: senor rogers, you might be pleased to find that there is a way by which your beloved sony can shoot with primes. redrock has a flipping amazing system that i am currently lusting over for my canon xha1. hell, redrock will even outfit my canon hv20 (which i might add is a freaking stunning little camera, i was shooting without lights in st. mungo's crypt in glasgow cathedral the footage is ridiculous. where the sensors dealt with the low light by producing what looks like cine noir film grain. for the money there is no better camera anywhere.oh and the next gen, the hv30). anyway, a friend of mine outfitted himself with the redrock system for his panasonic and the footage is sick. all the clarity of high def and the depth of field of primes using your 35mm camera lens. oh toys, how i love toys.

To which Dean replies "Good device and useful in many ways, but it's still glass-on-glass and therefore often a soft image. Too soft for our purposes in many situations."

See, we educate as well as insult here.

john: Somewhat off-topic, but our beloved Kung Fu Monkey can add another notch to his belt: He's listed in the playtester credits for 4th Edition D&D.

(...Waiting for June 6th when my preorder will ship...)

For what it's worth, I also just wrote the Feywild entry for the new Manual of the Planes. Game design may pop up here a bit more in future posts. I'll also do a special geeks-only D&D post on release day, spoiling my feedback on the system.

kid sis: ... Also, that "Kalifornia" scene where unbathed Pitt is in Juliette but drooling and eyeball screwing Michelle? Hot.

My wife, for years, could drive me to madness simply by mimicking Juliette Lewis's singing in that movie. All potential hotness is ruined by "Iiiiii wiiish ... Carrie was haaaappy ..."

Stay safe, and we'll see you soon.

LEVERAGE Weeks 4+5

Sorry for the long downtime -- my posting day was consumed with travel last weekend.

Right then. Last we left you as we entered Week 4, four writers were submitting outlines to Dean Devlin, who is our studio, kind of. When there's no studio building, no automatic door closers and no bottled water, I'm not sure it's actually a studio. But he's it.

Dean is at the time on location shooting a web-series on the dead sexy Sony XDCAM. Having now seen this footage, even untweaked, I can say with some assurance that this camera is king of the prosumer cameras. Besides being light and fast, they shoot ridiculously well at night, thanks to a design hink in the chip. Storage is rock solid -- they never lost a shot in 12 days of shooting -- and the workflow's a breeze. They don't take primes but you can do a hell of a lot with them.

While Dean was reading the outlines out on location, the network did testing on the series name. Now, you'd think that a show's title is pretty locked up from Day One, but actually many TV titles wind up coming back from the testing bin. (For example, Pushing Daisies was originally called Murder Mysteries In the Vividly Chromatic Land of the Ambiguously Gay Zombie-Making Twee Lord) This is one of the few times I don't mind testing -- you only get one impression in today's insane media marketplace, and we don't want people thinking "You know, I'm in the mood for a funny heist action show, but unfortunately all that's on is this 'LEVERAGE', which I'm going to assume is some sort of home mortgage drama." Click.

So the room cooks up a half-dozen or so more titles and tosses them into the test bin. This is always tricky, as each title has to be one you could conceivably live with for 100 episodes without wincing. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, however, the results come in -- we're still LEVERAGE. Thank God, because I already had the crew underwear made ...

Also while waiting, we attack another story -- one of mine to script. As soon as the strike was over and we heard we got picked up, I went to a pub with a pad of paper, had myself a Guinness and crisps, and wrote down every idea I could come up with. No censorship, no limits. Just bang on, in two categories : "Scenes I Want to See" and "Things They Can Steal". Four Guiness and an equal number of pages later, I tuck my 80-odd scribbles into a briefcase and leave them until March, when Chris and I are reading the 210 scripts. In order to stay sane we pull out our respective Idea Lists, take a few breaks poring over ideas and soft-breaking a few stories. (By "soft break" I mean just the bare bones plot idea, the act breaks, and the big turn). These were filed until we had writers quorum, and at the very least primed the pump.

I can't go into much detail, as it is a "twist" show, so hopefully we'll have some good stuff for the podcasts. It may illustrative, however, of the creative process to track at least the nub of one idea: I'd written "Scandal in Bohemia" on the List, and was transferring it to an index card when Chris asked what it meant.

"Sherlock Holmes story. Holmes pretends to be a minister, starts a fire during a wedding to figure out where blackmail letters are hidden."

Now, I'd been thinking about the specific mystery mechanic, but then Chris said, "You know, Tim Hutton would be pretty funny as a minister or priest." Hmm, I had a wedding note in my files, just a scam but with no plot ... but spot-welding Chris's sideways take on Scandal with my unrelated note, we wound up with what's already one of our favorite scripts of the year.

Midweek Dean calls with the notes. We shelve my ep, run the notes past the writers, and we turn them loose to work. Again, the point is to keep the documents in their hand as much and as long as possible. I wind up on a plane Friday, and then it's Week 5.

Interestingly, Dean pitches an episode nugget while I'm wheeling my luggage through the Toronto airport. The room loves the high concept idea and Chris runs with it, breaking the story with the other writers. Since I'm already a day behind by the time I get back, we divide labor -- I'll tweak the three writer's outlines we have in, standardizing them in tone and structure, while Chris and the room continue to break the story. The fourth outline is put on a shelf for a week while we try to figure out how to make one specific change.

This outline rewrite is a brutal test of my Asshole Threshold. You have to understand, there's always an enormous amount of arrogance involved with writing. Writing, as I've said before, is the art of making choices* Empty page. Nothing but infinite choices. And after X number of years, you have to be pretty confident in your choices -- insanely so, actually -- or you simply can't function as a writer.

So, once you're the showrunner, with nigh-infinite right and power to rewrite every other writer who crosses your desk ... gaaaaaah. Even when the writing is as good as these outlines were, it's still not precisely the cadence, the jokes, the structure that's ... anyway. Many showrunners rewrite every script, and while I can certainly understand the urge I know that part of doing this job is learning to let go and trust the process and the people I hired. As I mentioned these outlines were already all pretty close, which helps me resist the dickish urge to pee on the documents excessively (somewhere, my hard-done-by staff is sorting in derision).

The docs go back to Dean. While Dean rereads, I go back in the room and find out what they've been up to. Chris has got the show broken down into Sequences -- what I'd call the orange cards, but the room uses some sort of bastardized semi-detailed pink cards ... I swallow my horror, hear the pitch and enjoy it immensely. It's neat hearing a story when you've not been in the sausage factory with it. Probably the closest I'll ever be to an actual viewer.

Along the way we have a production meeting: figuring out candidates for the UPM, briefing the other department heads on script status, talking physical production and distribution and editing and publicity ... show business, folks.

Dean bounces back after that with notes on the newest revisions of the outlines. He then goes down to hear Chris pitch out the new story. Chris, frankly, then knocks it out of the park. Another interesting thing about the room: seeing all the techniques. I pitch like a stand-up -- fast, hit the jokes, rely on the timing, lots of judgement calls on what's needed and not. Chris used to be a lwayer. He presents the episode almost like a brief or summation. Still funny of course, but concise, bullet-points off typewritten pages. His rhythm is more a steady boom boom boom leading you from beginning to end in a very low, confident tone.

Dean signs off, and a writer picks up the story to bring to outline. One of the three revised outlines passes with flying colors, the other two need just one more tweak before heading off to network. Those outlines are tabled for Monday, as we're now at Friday, or what Chris and I have determined is Freelancer Day.

We're not taking open pitches -- not this year anyway. With luck, next year. Most of these pitches are people we almost hired, but just didn't fit into the cable money/room size matrix. We hear a half-dozen writers pitch story ideas in varying detail. Neatly enough, there's some duplication. I take this as a good thing -- if the same emotional beats and relationships ping with separate writers, that means they're well-established enough in the pilot for the viewer to attach themselves.

Meanwhile, the writer's room takes the day to break that newest episode down to fine scene detail, all under the command of our ranking writer. I know, I know, "command' is a silly word for it, but that's just part of the bit ... because. my friends, our staff is so damn geeky, that when I leave the room to work on other stuff, I cannot help but announce "I'll be back in an hour. Berg ... you have the bridge."

All these outlines, putting them down and picking them up a few days later, etc. all seems a bit mad, but it's crucial to keep your scripts flowing. As every script has its own development tempo, there's going to be a lot of overlap. We keep the script status straight on a whiteboard with four categories carved out.

"First Base: story idea to be broken
Second Base: broken into scenes/sequences
Third Base: writer outlining
Home Run: writer out to script"

The scripts move through this cycle at their own pace. One story fell into place in one day. Some have been hammered out over two weeks. Some will stall somewhere, stranded on base.

Right then, that brings us to the end of Week 5. Even leaving out the arbitration I'm embroiled in because somebody out there doesn't want to share their $4.58 cable MOW residual check, it's been a bit busy. As always drop any questions you have inthe Comments, and I'll do my best to give you a constructive answer in the next week's post. Let's see what I missed from last time ...

Michael: Is it net-acceptable yet to write a crossover fanfic where the female characters of Leverage get it on with Boomer from BSG and Claire from Heroes? Let me know so I can set aside some time to work on it.

Throw in Torchwood -- but the 1918 version - and I'd say you have an obligation, sirah.

Have I told my fanfic story? It involves Michelle Forbes and Warren Ellis and booze ... hmm next time if I have't already.

Jason Mitchelitch: " I mean, come on, what sentient being can ride in a Hummer limo and not be cognizant of their karmic debt?"

Is this really such a rare thing out there? I feel like I see them all the time. Of course, I'm from Northern VA, where hummer limos are what the rich kids take to the prom. I imagine there are a fleet of them in employ in Dallas, TX at any given time, as well.

Yes. Some rich kids do take them to the prom. And those rich kids are douchebags. Don't make me break out the Venn Diagram.

Mr. Glenn (spouse of baby writer): I say YES to the video blog idea. Then I can see my "sugar momma" all day!

Don't pull your FLDS cult discipline crap on my show, mister. She's out from your Svengali influence in the room and it will continue to be a safe place!

Ahhh, newlyweds.

I hope to have a few interim posts up this week. Take care, all. It's getting a bit freaky out there ...












* Oddly, this is the central idea of the movie Wonder Boys, which I didnt see until years after I'd already cooked up my half-assed theory. Great movie, by the way.

LEVERAGE Week 3

No photo this time, as this week's snap was intended to be a staff picture in answer to Javi's. East side, yo. However, my staff rebelled at a spontaneous portrait. Apparently it will be allowed when more mascara is applied and hair crimped. And that was just Chris Downey. (Insert alternate hack punchline here) Ahem. Next week then.

This week was mostly consumed by beating out the 12-or-so page outlines for the first few episodes. This is the first time this staff has worked together, first time some of the writers have worked in one-hour, and first time any human alive has attempted to outline this particular heist/con man/vigilante show. So, you know, process stuff, exactly what our outline format is, "what was that great joke you pitched about Hardison and Parker?" etc. Filthy Assistant types at approximately 1000 words a minute so most of this stuff is already in the room notes, but it helps to have another human look at your act breaks and say "No, you are not insane, that works."
While those writers then buggered off for a day or two to put the final shine on the outlines, the rest hacked at a few new ideas for the next batch. They ranged from super-high concept to particularly gritty. So gritty, in fact, that researching and discussing one of the topics wa a magnificent, soul-sucking buzz-kill. This is the risk you run when writing a show about high-tech thieves going after powerful assholes in order to right wrongs -- there are so very many assholes, and so many wrongs, it can get a bit depressing. I cannot even imagine what the writer's room is like on a rainy day over on Law & Order: SVU. "Hey, it's child-rape Wednesday. When's lunch?"

It can also, admittedly, be quite inspiring. Downey brought in this article, about the ultra-rich jetting off to Miami, driving around in Hummer limos and playing competitive paintball with ex-DEA agents, and you cannot help but be fired up by the magnificent douchebaggery presented. I mean, come on, what sentient being can ride in a Hummer limo and not be cognizant of their karmic debt? I, personally, felt the belly-fire re-ignite at the prospect of skewering these fella's fictional counterparts.

The outlines were then turned in, group-read, and group noted. Not excessively so -- again, we believe firmly in the assigned writer's right to call an audible -- but there are always little logic humps that multiple brains can help with, or things that look a little screwy in the cold light of the outline. Sometimes a writer will simply say "Go ahead, read that bit. I could not make it work, no matter how hard I tried," at which point we all pitch in to fix it -- or often agree that the idea does indeed not work when put in a form that may actually need to be acted and shot, and so an alternative must be found.

The most fun is just seeing the individual writers' styles inform the very dry beat-sheets they go off with. There were great, unexpected little surprises in each document.

We were also somewhat distracted by the discovery that The Closer writers have a video blog. You can watch screenwriters ... screenwriting. The staff spent some time amusing themselves at the prospect of a videoblog detailing our day at work, and decided that it would not accomplish anything in growing the fan base, but would probably initiate a UN human rights investigation over my people-management skills. I chuckled munificently, had them throw out their lunch wrappers -- as I insist they not leave the premises during lunch -- and then started the 48 minute timer for our first afternoon session.

And you think I'm kidding.

As always, sate your curiousity in the Comments, and here are the questions from last session:

Caseyko74: So, do the writers have their own little office or are you all in the same location as the production office? I am curious since I have only ever worked on a pilot, and mostly films where we rarely see the writer(s).

Right now the writer's room (and I mean room) is based at Dean's magnificent new complex. When we actually go into production we will probably move to whatever facility we shoot out of, assuming we are in LA.

Oh, and Casey, hope you didn't think I was blowing you off when I was in New Orleans. I was there for 72 hours to visit and do some quick rewriting. I am, possibly, the only person to come to New Orleans and literally eat nothing but craft services. I know, I know, what a bloody waste. On the other hand, I got some spiffy pics of a cemetery.

joshua james: Once this season is finished and you're a hit, does the staff grow? Will you adopt more baby writers for the next season / level / dungeon challenge?

Hey, no summoning Princess Kinahora. Assuming there's a second season, I don't know what the staff situation will be. Personally I'm rather digging the small staff. If they stay, they stay. Our co-producer Amy Berg, for example, wrote a crackling pilot as a sample and I wouldn't be surprised if she's running her own show within a year or two, if not this one. So you never know.

As we're freelancing a batch out, we're grooming those folk as possible staff replacements. Speaking of which, I know there's a question about that somewhere ...

jim: I vaguely remember you saying some time back that this show was going to be highly freelanced. How does that work into this process or has that been dropped or am I just nuts and you never said that?

There we are. Well, oddly, although we have a small staff, that seems to be working out just fine. Now as many of you know we're required by the Guild to freelance out two scripts a year (hmm, that's for 22, I'm not sure what our quota is. I should check ...) Although we're not freelancing out as heavily as I originally intended, we're still going to use our freelancers as an aggressive bullpen, rather than the standard "Oh God we're behind, let's farm out a script" or "Hey, my buddy needs to make his Guild minimums for the year ..." We'll freelance fewer than planned, but more than usual, and in a different context. Once the show is on the air and more people can get a better sense of what it's like, I hope, hope, to go to Next Generation's old open pitching policy. But we'll see.

deepstructure: "The odd thing about television is that story doesn't really matter" well no wonder tv sucks! come on, no one else was shocked by this? i know characters are (more) important, but really.

Let me clarify. I said "doesn't really matter", not "doesn't matter", and there's a reason for that distinction.

Basically what I mean is, no matter how hard you work on story in TV, ultimately story will not save you. Character in TV is ALL. Truly good stories, of course, come OUT of character, they don't happen TO characters. Good story always comes out of character choice.

This doesn't mean that you can slack off and write bad stories, or you shouldn't bust your ass to write great stories, which is what all those writers hammering away in writer's rooms right now are doing. It's just that you can not help be cognizant of the irony that you are working hardest at the part of the show the audience cares least about. Very rarely do people show up, week in and week out, to watch intriguing stories regardless of characters -- those are anthology stories, or, arguably, Law & Order. People tune in to watch characters they like do things and deal with unexpected complications in delightful or interesting ways. Your story, per se, is disposable, week after week, replaced in the viewer's mind by the new week's dilemma like clockwork. Nature of the beast.

While I personally cannot think of a show that I watched on a regular basis because the story was just so gripping -- even though the characters were boring or I hated them -- we can all recall episodes of our favorite shows where in retrospect the episodic stories didn't really hang together, but we loved watching the characters deal with the situations (good chunks of several X-Files seasons fall into this, and I'm sure you can all add your own personal picks.)

What good story does is provide the most interesting or intriguing framework for the characters. Great story supercharges a show. Also, cumulative great stories allow you to address a season as a creative meta-work of art unto itself. Even so, while you need a constant stream of great stories, and breaking great stories is bear work, it's the invisible part of the magic trick, the skeleton, for 99% of the viewing public, and hence the occasional frustration.

Wil wheaton: Hey, is that Boylan on the board Christine Boylan?

Yep.

kid sis: Hey Rogers! Don't make a Brazilian porn fart on my wet dream of Underpaid Glorified Dialogue Writer! Zeus knows I can't clean bedpans or fill out insurance forms...

For that metaphor alone, you should get an automatic staffing gig.

Until next time, remember -- always three-quarter, never profile.

RE Software Guru

Thanks to all for the speedy replies. The tone of the post was indeed snarky; I was actually posting mid-room-rant, typing even as I grumbled aloud, proving the point to the writers that I could summon up the technical knowhow necessary to lick the perceived problem within seconds because My Commenters IS Smarter Than I (tm Ezra Klein).

As many of you surmised, I mispoke in the post -- I was talking more about how we format information for display rather than about literally print-format issues. All those who commented and e-mailed, thanks, and I will reply within a day or so. It's part of a larger discussion about how some information should just stay dumb, but we'll tackle that in a bit.

Again, thanks, and I'll reply imminently.

LEVERAGE: Week 2

No, no, I'm not THAT crazy. Baby writer Melissa was gone for a week, and the staff decided to welcome her back with a big dose of paranoid crazy. This was the first thing she spotted when she arrived in the room, hidden among the other notes on the wall. Almost had her there, for a second.

Some people in the last post reacted in horror to the index cards. Fools. FOOLS! The cards will save us all. We're making 13 hours of television here, or writing roughly 6-8 movies in about four months -- and those movies have to have connecting plot and character tissue.

Let's put it this way -- in the spiffy Ellis-like future, I will have some sort of nano-cloud hanging over the center of the table. As seven people brainstorm, the nano-writer's assistants will tag the ideas and then hang them in suspension assigning them a rough shape and color for easy identification and classification. As we link those concepts, the nano-notes recombine into story-molecules, changing color and phase-shifting. Onto these story molecules we graft other individual idea-atoms, or combine the story molecules into a longer narrative -- this combination phase-shifts again, forming an increasingly complex and dense lattice-work, until finally the narrative is represented as a story-solid, a complex chain of poly-beats consisting of all those individual ideas and the new phase-shifted forms they take when combined. That story solid is delivered to the writer for final crafting with his own individual style and voice.

LACKING THAT, we use the cards.

Work proceeds apace, with damn near half the staff already working on outlines for submission to the Beloved Network Humans. A few of these will drop out, of course, but not bad for two weeks in. Some shows submit essentially prose first drafts (45 page outlines!), which works wonders for them. I admit I'm weak, and don't like getting trapped in an outline like that, so we're aiming for a structure that's a bit more reasonable. Scripts are organic things, with their own rhythms inherent in the structure. Also I subscribe quite heavily to the Hemingwayesque theory that a story only has so much vital energy behind it, and every time you tell the story, some of that energy is dissipated. The last thing I want are the writers tired of the story by the time it's come to whip up the banter.

First guess, I'd say we're going to wind up with about half the staff outlining at any given time, and then release people on a staggered schedule to write drafts, so we always have room quorum. These drafts will be tuned once we get a better sense of what the episode broadcast order is -- then we go back in and backfill a little on the relationship arc stuff. But for now, breaking the stories and coming up with fun character bits is snappy enough work.

Far more important that all that "making television for The Man" business, the room bits are also coming along nicely. A discussion of how Casper the Friendly Ghost, taken in abstract as a dead kid, works differently in other cultures, gave rise to the recurring character of Casperu, the Japanese Dead Ghost Child Buddy. The kid from The Grudge showing up in your Harvey Comic is a different matter entirely ... "Sophomore year", the groin shield barbecue, Chris trapped on the staff of Pushing Daisies ("Five pitches on whimsical fruits! GO!"), tiger cubs and the Endless Spinning Void of the Atheist Afterlife (that last requires me to spin in my chair, hands up, as I fall endlessly through the darkness making small talk with Hitler) -- as with all good room bits, they are generally incomprehensible to outsiders and triply hilarious for being so.

Wil Wheaton once chastized me for not answering Comments questions in the main post bodies, as he reads by RSS feed, so I'll grab the answers from the last week.

D.M: (off photo)Should you be buying your office wall lamps from funeral home overstock?

The LEVERAGE offices are located in a 1930's dog hospital. No lie. We suspect ghost dogs. Or at least I hope that's a ghost dog doing awful things to my leg under the table.

MCM:Having just done something similar (but in a very different way), I'm curious: where do writers start to impact the story in your system? Do they get to pitch ideas, or do you basically give them that quasi-outline and they have to play in that box?

All writers in at every step, but we have a weeeeee tiny staff. Seven people in the room, and that's counting both showrunners. Chris and I get right of final refusal on any pitches, but this is such a complex bear of a show -- we're averaging two heists/cons per episode -- I welcome the voices.

Each story originates from one of the writers in the room, sometimes just the high concept, sometimes a three or four beat arc. If possible that writer's assigned the script, and then will follow it all the way through production.

I know some rooms are "producers and up" or even showrunner-written outlines which are then assigned, etc. but I was taught by my old showrunners (LAAAAANDSBEEERG!) that part of the EP's responsibility is training the younger writers to work in the room and eventually create their own shows. Also, why the hell are we hiring theses people if they're just going to be glorified dialogue machines?

MARK: I'm curious about long-term show and character arch. Does you show have long running plot lines? If so, how do (did) you go about scoping those out? How do you incorporate them into each episode.

We have a progression of relationships, but this show lends itself to stand-alones. Some recurring day players will drop in, and we'll shove the characters through a change by the end of the season, but I think in season one you want to make sure people can drop in somewhere around episode 4 and not feel totally lost.

As a result, we've got the character changes arc-ed out over 4 ep increments. Episode 13 could not occur without the character changes from eps 1-12. Think THE CLOSER arc style rather than BUFFY. It will, however be a closed season. I despise cliffhanger endings.

CARLO:What's the ballpark pay for the 50+ hour weeks, Rogers?

Hmm, staff writers are paid weekly, but on short contracts. Once you're producer level and up, you're paid by the episode, and that fee is amortized out over, for 13 eps, about 40 weeks. It's good money to get paid to do what you love, but all in all it probably ranges from staff writer to CO-EP as, say, a young newbie insurance agent to a decently paid bank executive. (NOTE: I just checked. Staff writers make a little less than nurse-practitioners) Cut out your agent and manager fees, plus cost of living in LA, and it's comfortable but not filthy ga-ga money everybody thinks it is.

However, seeing as it is a specialized profession in a highly profitable field, it's precisely what the market will bear. And who am I to doubt capitalism?

J: As an aspiring baby writer (an embryonic writer?), I was wondering if you could talk about what it's been like for your baby writer thus far. How is s/he doing? Do you give baby writers a few weeks to learn and absorb everything or do you have them just jump in with ideas?

Multiple baby writers -- they're cheap and hungry, and not still attached to some truly goofy quotes.

A "few weeks to learn"? You're in the Show, kid. Deep end, etc. etc. What, am I going to send them off to read Lajos Egri while we're breaking story? Bah. Paid to write means you're in the room. And pitching. Your baby writer ass off.

Anil: How much does this process vary from what you do when you're outlining a screenplay alone? Do you use cue cards? Do you type a list of arenas a go from there? Do you have your theme of tone written somewhere so you can always reference it (do you do that for the show?)

Because the show's recurring, it has repeating structures and themes so it's easier to stay on track. ironically, over that much larger cumulative page count. The odd thing about television is that story doesn't really matter, even though you spend so much time breaking stories -- it's the characters, and as characters are theme, everything's a bit more self-evident as we work.

When I work on a movie, if it's not a rewrite, I generally work backward from the main story points (which I've already derived from any ideas about theme and character). Using those 5-8 points as my anchors, I do use the card method to fill in the blanks with incremental levels of detail. The room process is a refinement, however, and I'm interested to see how lessons learned as I apply the technique to large tracts of story transfer to my individual projects.

Writing's just years and years of building the toolbox. It never stops, and you'd best hope you don't accidentally pick up some crappy wrenches along the way.

Ask away in the Comments, and we'll see how long we can keep your interest up.

Wanted Software Guru

To consult on developing a pdf reader or just explain to me why we can't just goddam print comics and books so they're formatted landscape-wise when delivered as pdf etc. to fit the media space that is now the predominant information delivery system for the entire fucking planet. Oh, website integration would be a plus, but frankly I think Flash readers are shit.

Pay is crap, but you will be very famous, probably, when this all shakes out and I betray you.

Contact kfmonkey@gmail.com

Shh, I'm in my Thinking Corner

Filthy Assistant's vengeance for the candid yesterday. Sometimes I have to shut my eyes and see the pretty pictures while everybody else pitches. That's Albert Kim lately of Dirt rocking out the water bottle. And yes, that is a giant bottle of Advil on the table. A must have for all television writer rooms.

Leverage Week 1

No internet at the new home yet, hence the absence. And, oh yeah, running a television show. Here's the post meant for last Friday.

First week in with our earnest staff, and so far they've tolerated my obsessive compulsive writing process and my emotional manipulations (always praise randomly -- it's more effective.) The awkward two-day personality integration process is done, the seating arrangement has finalized -- a particularly complex bit of social engineering -- and we're breaking stories.

That's the Relentless Assistant to the left, Amy Berg to the right, my chair on the end there. The other showrunner, Chris Downey, is just OS right. "Relentless Assistant" was somewhat hurt when I switched to "Filthy Assistant" on the blog, even though I tried to explain that this was the highest compliment I could pay her.

Behind me as I shoot this photo is that big wall o' ideas I've mentioned before, also on index cards. What you're looking at in this photo is the end stage of breaking an episode. For what it's worth, for those of you who always wondered how such things are done (at least in our room) --

1.) Loose story ideas (often called "arenas") are run by the network and approved for further development. This is to make sure we don't wast a week breaking a story they just hate the basic premise of. Once a batch of pitches are approved, we get to work.

2.) We start with the anchor concept of the show -- the crime, the victim, the villain, whatever sparked this particular idea. We do profiles of the characters and flowchart out the path of the heist/con on those big sheets of typing paper there. Little grace notes -- character moments we've been thinking about, dialogue runs, neat camera bits etc. go on cards under those ideas.

This wall is actually a re-break of a story we did on Thursday, so the rough plotting section is a little less crowded than usual. Usually about twice that amount of info up there to the left. Interestingly enough, almost everything up there in this photo is useless, as we tried a path that led to a dead end. So nothing you might be able to make out in the photo will actually wind up in the episode.

3.) The rough structure of the episode, often based around the act breaks, are then put on the board. They're pinned in under those blue cards, which are marked with the running times and approximate scene space of each act. This helps to keep you from over-writing an act and bends the story to fit how it'll be taken in by the viewers. Structure is your friend. The tea takes the form of the cup which contains it. Yada yada.

4.) Then orange cards (yes, you're beginning to see what the staff suffers. I won't even go into how I've got them on the 48/12 timer) are pinned up, replacing the vague structure ideas. On the orange cards are plot points/sequences. These help you see how the story actually breaks out, make sure it makes sense. I prefer cards to the traditional whiteboard, btw, and once you've broken story this way, so will you ...

A nice loose use of the orange cards is to start with them off to one side, just banging out the scenes that are absolutely necessary for the story to make sense and have fun. I arrange them in four columns of 6 -- roughly 2 minutes a sequence in television x 24 = 48 minutes, a little longer than our runtime, but some of these drop out. When we have at least three of those columns filled, we can then move the orange cards into the outline structure, like a little reward. Once the spine of the episode is laid out, you can then play around with pacing, see where you can fill a hole with a character beat or B-story, etc. Backfill a bit, see where the air is, where the ep is crowded.

5.) Those orange cards are then replaced by white cards with individual scene sluglines. And I mean replaced. No orange sequence card comes down until all the individual scenes necessary to accomplish the storytelling described on that card are finished. Then, slowly, the very specific slugline white cards replace the more general orange cards, bit by bit, until there you have it -- a whole episode of television, plotted out for you

6.) That story's put away for a day or two so we can reflect on it, let those little nagging doubts fester, until finally we all have fresher, better eyes, and we rework it. Sometimes it's broken back all the way down to the premise, but usually it goes no further back than the orange cards.

7.) Once a final set of white scene cards are up, and the entire room is happy, Filthy Assistant types up this pseudo-outline. The writer then takes those notes off and does a writing outline. Since the writer is the one who has to generate 45 odd pages of script, they can tune the outline to taste.

8.) Said outline will be submitted to Beloved Network Suits for approval and notes. Once those notes are addressed, the writer is launched. I'm not saying how long we give for first drafts. Trade secrets and all.

There's a scoreboard on a small whiteboard in the room, with categories on it. Episode names move from slot to slot as they progress:

1st base: To be Broken
2nd Base: Sequences & Scenes
3rd Base: Writer off Outlining
Home Run: Writer on 1st draft

This my sound awfully rigid, but what it is is freeing -- having the process protecting us allows us to range far and wide on ideas. Everyone can pitch anything, and all changes are fair game if they fit the episode. Sometimes a great idea will totally derail you and send you back to the base pitch, but that just means we start the process over again, not that we're cast into the psychological void. Often great ideas don't fit but go on the wall to be pulled later. To invoke the greatest of traditional sitcom room aphorisms: "We use all the parts of the buffalo."

In case you hadn't noticed yet, this looks an awful lot like work. Now, in the pre-season, it's a standard 50-ish hour week. Once we're in production and racing the train, kiss your evenings goodbye. Mopy artistes need not apply.

When we get some scripts in, we'll go through the post-writing process. Any questions, toss them in the Comments, I'll answer what I can.

Freakangels

Collecting some links for research, and I'd totally forgotten Warren's FREAKANGELS was up to Ep 007. For creator-owned goodness with some truly shiny art, go here.