Vincent Saia is.
D.C. Fontana said that when she was teaching screenwriting at AFI she knew the students who had been working on the same script for years were probably not going to become professional writers and Tom Wolf said, "It only takes six to eight weeks to write anything. The rest of the time you're just dancing around the project." Do you also feel the ability to write quickly and on demand necessarily separates the professional writer from the amateur?
I agree with William Goldman. Writers should go at their own speed but write as much and as quickly as they can. The danger of going too slow is you tend to obsess and try to make every word perfect, which results in stilted scripts. But if you go too fast you miss things.
The distinction between professional and amateur has more to do with the ability to be creative on demand.
From John Schrank:
I really like the two posts on wording and the importance of setup! In Dick Cavett's first book, after some very interesting sections about writing for other comedians, he tells about some of the material he wrote for his own act. He says the right wording is almost always the way it comes to you first. Tweaking it sometimes weakens it.
Have you found that to be true? His major example was his joke about wedding that was done on the cheap. "I don't know much about caviar, but I do know you're not supposed to get pictures of ballplayers with it." Then he wondered if "cards" was better than "pictures"... or if there needed to be some reference to trading cards in the line before to set it up. He finally decided it was good the way it was.
I disagree with him. Often times the first thought is the most obvious. When David Isaacs and I are writing we often bat around lines back and forth until truly, we can’t remember who came up with it.
However a caveat (to Cavett): In the writers room if someone pitches a joke and everyone laughs it goes in exactly as pitched. Even if it had a funky construction, if it got a laugh it goes in untouched.
To fool with those lines is when you start to over-analyze and kill the joke.
But there is value to tweaking. We’re not Mozart.
Joseph Scarbrough asks:
You've written before about "Good-bye, Radar" originally being written as a single episode to close Season 7, but it was the network that insisted it a two-parter for sweeps, and that when you and David Isaacs re-wrote it as such, you added the subplot about the generator to pad it out with filler for the extra time. So, does that mean everything else about your original script for the episode was still the same? Radar meeting Patty Haven? The circumstance of Uncle Ed passing away? The sudden arrival of wounded canceling Radar's farewell party?
Yes, the whole Radar storyline was in place the end of season 7.
We may have added a couple of new steps to go along with the generator story (which was there for padding), but after Henry’s death we wanted a character to leave and have a happy ending. Giving Radar a possible love interest seemed interesting and showed a side of him we’ve never seen.
The overall theme was his maturity and we felt he now was ready to have a real relationship. Leaving his teddy bear behind was also our idea. It seemed the perfect symbol for his having grown up.
And finally, from JS:
Why when shows get desperate they bring in a baby? It never works. It is the sign of death.
Yep and amen. An argument can be made that a baby opens up a whole new vein of stories, but especially for a romantic comedy, it forces you to put the romance on the back burner while your couple is managing an infant. And those stories are just not as fun and interesting in my opinion.
However, if it’s a supporting character, like say Frasier then the baby really doesn’t alter the series. Frasier’s bar habits didn’t change (although they should have).
A REMINDER: For the next two weeks I am working on a big project and will not have as much internet access as I normally do. So it will take longer to moderate comments. Hang in there and continue to comment and ask Friday Questions. I will get to them eventually. Thanks much. Ken
from By Ken Levine
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