10 Years of Bitter Posts - How I Write a Spec Episode

I continued my introspective streak with a series doing something I've wanted to do ever since I started the blog - take the reader through my process of developing, breaking and writing a script. The challenge I faced was that I didn't want to do that with anything I was actually going to put out there under my name and it seemed to draining to invest all that time into a script written specifically to be thrown away.

A few years ago I briefly considered writing about how to break a spec episode. That at least would slightly mitigate the intellectual property issue, as stealing a spec script would be useless unless the thief intended to pass it off as their own. Then, last year I hit on a way that seemed likely to bear results.

I made an idle joke about how Season 3 of 13 REASONS WHY should take its cues from the short-lived AWAKE, where a detective found himself shifting between two worlds, one where his son survived a car accident that killed his wife, and another with the victim and survivor reversed. On a lark, I tweeted this pitch.

When I was writing that piece on @dylanminnette, I was reminded he was on the excellent AWAKE which would have been PERFECT for the streaming era. Maybe next season of #13ReasonsWhy can follow 2 timelines: one where Hannah lived and one where she died.

— Bitter Script Reader (@BittrScrptReadr) May 31, 2018

Yet this idea stuck with me more than many of my other one-off jokes. Maybe it was the fact I had just come off writing a legitimate spec episode of the show and was already geared up to be inside the heads of these characters and the rhythm of the show. Or maybe I was just bored and had enough time for my mind to ponder, "Hey, what if I really DID go through with this.

I just was stuck on this image of Clay waking up and Hannah lying beside him. He thinks he's losing his mind until he reaches out to touch her. That's when he confirms she's not only solid, but she still bears the scars on her wrists from her suicide attempt.

That image stuck with me - the visual tell of "She slashed her wrists, everything you know about her happened... but she survived it in this timeline." It stuck with me long enough to ponder the Butterfly Effect of Hannah surviving. That thought exercise more or less led me to the conclusion that there was an interesting story to tell here.

And since this was useless as an original spec for obvious reasons, or as a spec episode for any kind of contest (since this kind of crossover, impossibly out-of-continuity spec is forbidden by most), I'd finally found an idea that I was excited about exploring and was useless enough to become a featured blog series.

Of course, me being me, I went a little overboard. I reasoned that for this episode to truly feel like the first episode of a season, I should have some idea what the overall shape of that season would look like. That way, the first chapter would feel authentic. I started with just a few broadstrokes and bulletpoints, just enough to give a sense of what the running storylines in both timelines would be.

But why not go further? As an intellectual exercise, I started sorting those into 13 chapters, refining the story into an overall three-act structure that somewhat recalled how 13 REASONS WHY broke its story in the first season.

And if I'd come that far, why not flesh it out just a little bit for a few of those episodes? And so bullet points became paragraphs.

Yeah, uh, I kinda broke the whole season. But that's MY craziness. You don't HAVE to do that. My process on this was that it helped to know the ending in order to tell Chapter One. And no, this isn't all prelude to drop an entire season of spec episodes on you. I'm crazy but I'm not insane.

I'll admit, after several friends and strangers all came back to me with reactions in the vein of: "This feels like the show. I wish this WAS what they were doing for season three!" I pondered the viability of assembling a few more like-minded writers and writing an entire spec season. That last about ten seconds, but I still pondered it.

You can download the script here. I'm very flattered by the positive reactions from people, particularly those familiar with the show who felt I nailed the characters' voices.

Spec episodes are a particular kind of writing, some might even call it a lost art. There are showrunners and reps who are only interested in reading original material. I've also talked to a number of showrunners and high-level writers who think that it's an invaluable skill for new writers to practice mimicking the voice of another writer because that's what the job requires when on staff for a TV show. That's all the convincing I need to practice this end of the craft at least once a year.

If you're interested in my process, make your way through this 10-part series.

Part 1: Finding the concept
Part 2: Character
Part 3: Story and Theme Development
Part 4: The Break
Part 5: Act One Scenes
Part 6: Act Two Scenes
Part 7: Act Three Scenes
Part 8: Act Four Scenes
Part 9: When your lead character demands a rewrite
Part 10: Act Five Scenes