Lee Goldberg

Another Great Idea for a TV Series

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I got this email today:

I am just beginning my venture into the world of television.  More specifically, I am trying to find out how
to go about presenting my idea for a television series.  I think it’s a
terrific idea and have mentioned it to several friends, co-workers, and
family members for feedback.  They all agree it sounds like something
they would really be interested in watching.  My question is HOW do I
get started in something like this?
 
I’ve had this idea for a few years, and there is nothing on TV
similar to it.  I just have no idea how, where, and to whom to present
my ideas.  I am a good writer as well, but I have never written
anything "dialogue-related", such as a play or TV series.

I politely replied by directing her to two of my previous posts here on the same topic. But I could have answered her question by rewriting her note:

I am just beginning my venture into the world of automotive design.  More specifically, I am trying to find out how
to go about presenting my idea for a new car.  I think it’s a
terrific design and have shown it to several friends, co-workers, and
family members for feedback.  They all agree it looks like a car they’d be really interested in owning.  My question is HOW do I
get started in something like this?
 
I’ve had this idea for a few years, and there is nothing on the road that’s similar to it.  I just have no idea how, where, and to whom to present
my ideas.  I am a good artist as well, but I have never designed
anything "automotive-related", such as a motorcycle or truck.

No one in their right mind would ever write a note like that to a car designer. It would be insane. So why would you send it to a TV writer? Because TV isn’t car design. It doesn’t involve complex engineering and manufacturing.

Think again.

One season of an hour-long TV series costs $50 million to produce. It takes a crew of several hundred to make it happen…and the resources of a studio (aka a factory for producing TV shows and movies). No one is going to gamble that much money, or entrust that much responsibility, to someone who has never done anything "dialogue-related."

There’s no short-cut to creating a TV series, designing a car, becoming a doctor, or becoming a great chef. It takes knowledge. It takes skill. It takes work. It takes experience.  Simple as that. You start at the bottom, learn the basics, and work your way up.

Making a Living

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I had lunch with a TV writer-friend not long ago, and he was lamenting how the business was letting him down lately. He hadn’t worked much in TV during the last year and was despairing about his future. He told me that he wished he wrote books, too. So write one, I said. But I could see from the expression on his face that he wouldn’t. He liked the idea of writing a book…actually doing it was something else. He was a TV writer, and that was it.

I decided long ago that I was going to be a writer first and a TV writer second. There’s no question that I make most of my living in television…but I believe it’s important to me professionally, financially, psychologically and creatively not to concentrate on just one field of writing (It probablyhelps that I started my career as a freelance journalist, then became a novelist, then a non-fiction author, and finally, a TV writer/producer).  So I write books, both fiction and non-fiction, I teach TV writing, and occasionally I write articles and short stories… most of the time while I’m simultaneously writing & producing TV shows (though the TV work always takes priority over everything else). 

While the income from books, teaching, and articles doesn’t come close to matching what I  make in TV, those gigs keep some cash coming in when TV (inevitably) lets me down, keep me "alive" in other fields,  and, more importantly, keep my spirits up.

As a result, who I am as a writer isn’t entirely wrapped up in whether or not I have a TV job or a book on the shelves. I often have both, or one or the other — but if I have neither, I have a class to teach or an article to write.

I’m not producing a series right now. But last week, I partnered with a major production company and pitched a movie with them to a cable network. I met with representatives of a European TV network that’s interested in having me teach TV writing to their writer/producers and consult on their series. I rewrote a  TV movie treatment to incorporate studio notes.  I turned in a freelance script to the producers of a new drama series. I taught an online screenwriting class. I submitted a short story to Amazon shorts. I wrote 60 pages of my next novel. Next week, I have a meeting with a studio exec who has shows to staff up, a notes meeting on the freelance script, galleys to proof on one of my novels, more pages of my book to write, and probably a whole lot more that I don’t even know about yet. 

The bottom line is, I am always writing something for pay, even if that check is miniscule and hustling for my next gig, whether it’s in TV, publishing, or something else.  Why? Because that is who I am… a professional writer. And I have a mortgage to pay, just like everybody else.

Immortalized

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I’ve been immortalized as a hitman in Victor Gischler’s new book SHOTGUN OPERA:

He was born Lee Goldberg in Sydney, Australia, but it had been many years since anyone had called him by that name. His stage name was Jack Sprat. He changed it after meeting the Fat Lady during a boardwalk carnival act in Atlantic City. Mavis was big and soft and beautiful, and Goldberg — now Sprat — fell in love.

They were married three months later and the stage names were a no-brainer. Jack Sprat was five feet five inches tall, all spindly hard muscle and sinew, a bald head and a big nose that gave him the appearance of a vulture.

He’s got my manly nose and sinewy bod down right, but the rest isn’t quite accurate.  I’veDm6a_1
returned the favor in my new book THE DEAD LETTER, where Victor shows up as a hitman, too:


Victor Gischler, known as The Do-er to the underworld of gun monkeys and the casual readers of the classifieds in Soldier of Fortune magazine, drove his growling ’68 Mercury Cougar up to the Monterey Bay
area from his home-base in Fontana, California, where he liked to hang out with his fellow members of the John Birch society, the Aryan Brotherhood, and the Boy Scouts of America.

[…] he’d show them both the glorious American eagle tattooed on his belly, its talons clinging to his hairy navel, and they’d be overcome by patriotism and lust. They might even fight with each other over who got to have him first.

I haven’t seen Victor’s belly but if he doesn’t have an American eagle tattooed on it, he should get one.

Nobody Wants to Read Your Adaptation of CHILDHOOD’S END

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I got this email the other day:

Suppose you adapt something that you love (a novel or a comic or short story) and it turns out very good. Would it be ethical to use this as a writing sample? Would it be a good idea? Would it demonstrate to a producer or agent your ability to adapt other materials?

On the one hand this seems to me very much like fanfic in that you’re using characters and a world created by some one to which you have no rights. On the other hand when you spec a TV show, which you do use as a writing sample, you’re doing the exact same thing.

I have to admit that these are questions nobody has ever asked me before.  The answer is no, you should not adapt someone else’s novel for your spec script.  And here’s why:

1) The point of a spec feature is to show off your unique voice and your ability to tell a compelling, original story. No producer is going to be impressed if you adapt THE DAVINCI CODE as your spec.

2) The point of an episodic spec is to show your ability to capture the structure, voice, characters, and tone of an existing TV series.  Basing your spec on a book, comic, or pre-existing movie tells a producer absolutely nothing about your grasp of the four-act structure or your ability to mimick the voice of a TV character.

3) You don’t own the book, comic book, or short story. It’s not yours to adapt. It’s stealing.

4) It’s not even remotely the same thing as writing a spec episode of an existing TV series. It’s accepted practice within the TV industry that it’s okay to write an episode of an existing series for the sole purpose of using it as a writing sample. You’re given a free pass, essentially, to play with characters you don’t own because there’s an understanding you’re not going to publish it, produce it, or sell it. A spec episodic script is a sample of your work, a way for producers to gauge if you can mimic the plotting, voice, structure, and tone of a TV series.

5) It’s an enormous cheat. Let’s be honest, you’re turning to a book, comic book, or other pre-existing property
because you’re too lazy to do the work involved in coming up with an
original story. Or you don’t have the skills to mimic an episode of a TV show. Or you’re so blinded by fanboy love of the material that
you can’t see what a stupid idea it is to send out your own adaptation.
Here are some of the least offensive things agents and producers will
think of you if you send out your unsolicited adaptation of  CATCHER IN
THE RYE or CAPTAIN MARVEL or your reimagining of SEAQUEST DSV:  "Loser,"
"geek," "never been laid," "speaks fluent Klingon," "talentless
amateur," "moron," "loves Real Person Slash Fic," "Collects unicorn
statuettes,"  "Lives with his Mother," "Dimwit," and "Longs for the return
of the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA."

All that said, I vaguely recall reading somewhere that John Irving gave a young director the rights to one of his books (perhaps A WIDOW FOR ONE YEAR or OWEN MEANY) based on an  screenplay adaptation of the novel that the film-maker wrote on spec to impress the novelist.  But that’s a unique situation and very different from what you’re proposing.

It’s Offensive

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I got this email today:

It’s = "It is."
Its = possessive

From your website:

"I’ve written here before about the unethically close relationship between
Writer’s Digest and it’s vanity press advertisers."

"The CW has leaked it’s fall schedule… and it doesn’t include EVERWOOD or
REBA."

Please stop offending your readers with such sloppiness and/or ignorance.

Very Truly Yours,
Pinky

It’s sloppiness. I know the rule, but I make the mistake anyway. It’s one of my many flaws. I also have a hard time spelling "marriage," "villain," "similar," "envelope," and "weird" correctly. But I don’t spend a lot of time proofing my blog posts (okay, none at all), so if you offend that easily, I suggest you visit my brother’s blog instead and make sure he’s using the term "fucktard" correctly.

The Elusive Fucktardicine Americanas

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Every week, my brother Tod hilariously skewers Parade Magazine and the fucktards (and Parade staffers) who pose questions to Walter Scott.  This week, though, Tod is at his best. Here’s my favorite part, which had me choking on my morning bagel:

As a child in the 1960s, I loved the novelty songs of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Are they still around?

It’s
hard to answer the question Jon Brown poses because it works on so many
different levels of consciousness. Are the songs still around? No, Jon,
the songs were stuffed into a time capsule and shot into space, which
is why you never hear them around Christmas anymore. And everyone knows
that once a song stops playing, well, it ceases to exist. Why, it’s
amazing the Star Spangled Banner has lasted so long, but I put that in
the hands of the Lord. You know what also no longer exists? Final
Countdown by Europe. Poof! It failed to exist. It’s no longer "around".
Same with Mickey by Toni Basil. The entire Blow Monkeys catalog.
Remember 99 Luftballons by Nena? Gone. No longer "around".

And then the larger question: Does Jon actually mean Alvin
and the Chipmunks? Does Jon Brown of Natick, Mass, really think Alvin
and the Chipmunks are no longer "around"? Well, that would indicate
that Alvin and the Chipmunks ever, you know, existed. You see, Jon,
they were a cartoon. Louis Leakey discovered in 1975 that cartoons
weren’t, in fact, part of the hominid line and all the history books
had to be rewritten. C. Owen Lovejoy, in his landmark paper on the
subject, noted that cartoons were actually "[D]rawn by people working
in Burbank, California and have no relation to any known lines of human
evolution. In addition, it appears the Brown family of Natick, Mass. is
part of a forgotten link in the parade of humanity known as fucktardicine americanas."

Bum Bum Bum-dee Bum Bum…

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I didn’t like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3…but I absolutely love the soundtrack. I can’t stop listening to it. The score is exhilirating in a way the movie wasn’t. Composer Michael Giacchino did a fantastic reinterpreting Lalo Schifrin’s classic cues and added some great ones of his own. I’m also a huge fan of Giacchino’s THE INCREDIBLES soundtrack, a rousing and fun-loving homage to the John Barry 007 scores of the 60s and 70s (particularly ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE).  I’m hoping the Bond folks pick Giacchino to score CASINO ROYALE…

Who Am I? The Sequel

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I got another email from Doug Mannington at Point of Impact today:

Greetings – I am looking to purchase 5 text link ads on neilgaiman.com/journal/

Each ad is two to three words in length and can be placed anywhere on your page as long as the ads are visible on the majority of pages on your website. I would be willing to pay for 3 months of advertising up front.

Would you be interested?

Looking forward to your response,

Doug

I replied to Doug that I’ve double checked my birth certificate, driver’s license and passport and I’m still pretty sure that I am not Neil Gaiman.  But I could be Pierce Brosnan.

Bouchercon

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I’ve just booked my hotel room for Bouchercon 2006 in Madison, Wisconsin ( if you attending, and haven’t made room reservations yet, you better hurry — the area hotels are selling out fast). I also received my Anthony Award ballot in the mail this week.  The Anthonys are selected by Bouchercon attendees and any mystery novel published in 2005 is eligible for nomination. I hope if you enjoyed THE MAN WITH THE IRON ON BADGE, and are attending Bouchercon this fall, that you will consider nominating the book for Best Novel when you receive your ballot.  My book aside, I can’t honestly remember all the good stuff that I read that was published in 2005. Please jog my memory with any suggestions you might have in the comment below. The categories are Best Novel, Best First Novel, Best Paperback Original, Best Short Story and Best Critical/Non-fiction Work. Thanks!