How Greg Berlanti helped make CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS an EVERWOOD reunion

The EVERWOOD reunion in tonight's CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS Zoom live read came about because I broke one of the most unbreakable rules in showing your scripts. With every other script I've ever written, I've never shown it to anyone with any standing in the business until AT LEAST four people have read it - usually many more.

When I sent CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS to Greg Berlanti, NO ONE had read it in full, not even my wife. It was one of those scripts that was just so dense, and so inside baseball that I couldn't really thinking of anyone in my trusted circle who would "get it." But I was putting it out there publicly and I was playing with some of Greg's most beloved characters. Also, if you go back to the first day of reactions to the initial pages I posted, you'll see that Jonathan Gabay, an executive at Berlanti Productions was one of the first people to be intrigued by this concept, telling me, "I need this script finished asap." Since I was sending it to Jonathan, there was really no reason NOT to send it to Greg, at least as a heads-up.

Within days, Greg replied he couldn't wait to read it over the weekend and that it sounded awesome. I'd mentioned that Ben Blacker was already on board to produce this as a live-read fundraiser, and so Greg generously said if we needed help from anyone on his team, we should let him know. When I asked, he said he'd be happy to make a few calls. 

During the planning, I discovered one trait of Greg's that might explain some of his success. It was the first phone call with me, Greg Berlanti, Ben Blacker and Gregory Smith as we were hashing out the best way to do this live read. Greg Berlanti jumps on the call, and very quickly he's saying things like, "I think this could be something really special! You could raise a lot of money with this, do a lot of good! I think it's the kind of thing people need right now with the state of the world and it'd be a really fun show!"

It felt like he was selling ME on MY script! Obviously I agreed with him, but hearing him say that got me even more charged up to do it - and I think that's the point. It's like a coach giving the halftime speech to the team, it just brings up the energy immensely. If there's one thing I've learned from Greg it's to be the most enthusiastic person in the room. Be that beacon of positivity. Be the one who believes the most in what you're doing because people WILL follow you.

I've had bosses in this business who seemed to exist in a state of permanent jadedness and world-wearyness. Every move came from a cynical place. Even if they were right, they didn't fire you up about what you're working on. In the entertainment industry, you have to be the biggest believer in what you're working if you're ever going to make something people care about.

Anyway, within a couple weeks it was official - Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp were onboard. I - perhaps one of the biggest EVERWOOD fans alive - had written something that would be a mini-EVERWOOD reunion.

As protective as some actors are of their iconic roles, I knew to temper my hopes as far as getting anyone to reprise their role. I really don't think that Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp would have returned without the script having Greg's blessing. It really meant a lot to have three of the most important people in EVERWOOD put their weight behind this.

How did I get to the point of being able to email Greg Berlanti directly? Well, it started with Twitter.

A quick look at my archives will substantiate that I've been writing about EVERWOOD for a long time, and that it's not the only one of Greg's shows I've raved about. Whenever one of those posts went live, I'd tag Greg on the tweet promoting it. Greg's not particularly active on Twitter, so I never got the kind of interaction I'd had with some other showrunners, but every now and then he'd send a brief reply of thanks.

Then one day out of the blue, he followed me on Twitter. It was strange because I hadn't engaged or tweeted anything that should have caught his eye. My best guess is that maybe he saw my breakdown of the EVERWOOD pilot, which I'd posted about a month earlier. There was no interaction then, but it's important because it meant almost exactly a year later, I was able to DM him directly.

I was setting up a live read of THE MAKING OF STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII, a script I'd written with Brian Michael Scully. The occasion was my ten year anniversary as the Bitter Script Reader and I decided to mark the event by throwing a live read and inviting the many Twitter friends I'd made, and some of the professional contacts I had yet to meet in person.

To that end, I sent Greg a DM that read something like, "please excuse this one-time intrusion into your DMs, but I'm doing this live read as part of an anniversary celebration. I'm inviting a lot of people I've met via Twitter. Your work's meant a lot to me for a long time. It's part of the reason I want to be a writer and it'd be an honor to have you."

And then I waited to get unfollowed. But that didn't happen. Four or five days later, I woke up to a DM from Greg that began, "First of all, I'm touched you asked. And by all means this doesn't need to be an intrusion so write anytime." He went on to tell me that he had a conflict with that date - and it was a legit conflict - but he'd try to send someone from his company.

I wrote back to thank him and that I was glad it wasn't annoying. I mentioned that at the moment, I was working at Warners, so at least now I knew not to be shy if I ran into him on the lot.  On the day of the show, Greg sent me a message wishing me luck and saying that since I was on the lot, maybe I could stop by the office sometime and say hi.

Well, I'm not gonna say no to that, am I?

What eventually happened was we agreed to meet for coffee on the lot, and I learned something valuable from that. I got to meet Greg outside his office and then within like thirty seconds our chit-chat led me to bring up my son... and we discovered our kids are literally just days apart in age, so as Dad's we were dealing with the exact same things, same TV shows they were obsessed with and so on.

At this point, I'm pretty good at not being star struck, but I always worry I'll make a fool of myself in front of someone who's work I've really been into. By meeting Greg on neutral territory and having the conversation go the way it did, I didn't feel like I was meeting "Greg Berlanti, most prolific TV producer." I was talking to "Greg Berlanti, fellow dad" and from that moment on, it was like talking to a new friend who I was on equal footing with. When you're taking a general meeting that you're nervous about, try to find some way to get to that place in the conversation.

And then we went back to the office anyway. Greg said, "I want to know what you're writing now, your two best scripts, and what shows you're really into at the moment." My technique for answering was to make sure there was a thruline that ran through all of these. In other words, figure out how your favorite shows relate to what you've written before, and how all of that informs what you're writing now. As a bonus, if you can make all of that relevant to the person you're talking to, that's gold.

After I weaved through those answers, Greg said, "Okay, let's skip to the end of the meeting and then we can just chat for 40 minutes. I'm gonna give you my email. Send me your two best scripts. Give me a couple weeks to read them because we're about to work on some pilots, but after that we'll have hired some new execs for staffing and then I can pass what I like onto them, if that's okay."

If that's okay? Yeah, I think I'll be fine with you reading my work personally and then considering me for staffing.

I sent him my teen drama thriller pilot and my 13 REASONS WHY/AWAKE spec. Since at least ten minutes of our meeting ended up discussing THE MAKING OF STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII, I also included that, while specifying it was independent of my submissions. I was just sending to him in case he was curious.

He read all three - which means that even before Greg read CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS, he'd read more of my work than every showrunner I've worked for - put together! 

As it turned out, that staffing season wasn't my year. Had some meetings with his execs and one of his showrunners, but didn't get it. I kept up contact with Greg and ultimately, when SUPERMAN & LOIS came along, I was offered Writers' Assistant.

That was a no-brainer. My favorite character in a series produced by one of my favorite writer/producers? It felt like destiny that after all the time I waited to break in, THIS was going to be it.

And this is where I've buried the lede. I can't tell you anything about the episode's plot. I can't even tell you which episode it will be, but by the end of first season of SUPERMAN & LOIS, you will see an episode with the credit, "Written by Adam Mallinger."

(That's me, in case you forgot already. Craig Byrne at KSiteTV was the first to break the news in this interview with me today.)

My first episode of television is going to be a Superman episode. This is something like 35 years of my life in the making. There are so many things in my life that have led up to the developments of the last couple months that if my life was a TV show, I'd feel like this was the endgame leading to the series finale.

I hope you all enjoy the show tonight. The entire act of making this program is an experience that has meant a lot to me.

The full script for CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS is now available!

You guys were here at the start of this less than two weeks ago when I dashed off four pages of CRISIS ON INFINITE TEEN DRAMAS as a joke. It was basically taking the format of the big comic book mega-crossovers (and the Arrowverse crossover that the original CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS inspired) and applying it to some of the biggest teen dramas of the last 30 years.

The reaction was so good that I wrote another four pages. And then another. And another.

By then it was becoming clear to me that I'd have to finish this script I had no plan for when I started. It makes sense that I'd be drawn to something like this - teen dramas are among my favorite shows. Three years ago, when I listed the 16 Great TV Shows that made an impact on me as a writer, THE WONDER YEARS, GILMORE GIRLS, EVERWOOD and 13 REASONS WHY all made the list. Two years ago, I wrote an alternate season 3 premiere for 13 REASONS WHY, using it as an example of how to write a spec episode.

This script went from idle joke to completed spec in about eight days. I've held it for a few days because with all the protests happening across the country, it didn't feel appropriate at all to say, "Hey guys! Check this out!" It's now clear that several days into this, there IS going to be no golden time to be silly. The next five months until the election (and probably several months after) are going to be marked by continuing tragedy and aggression from Donald Trump and his party as they terrorize a nation to distract from their terrible pandemic response - and maybe make an undemocratic power grab as a bonus.

The world sucks, and things are bleak right now. Take joy where you can find it. If this script is in line with your interests, I hope it can make you smile for 75 pages. It's a loving tribute to many of the shows and creators whose work has inspired me and healed me throughout my life.

You can download the full script here.

After you click that link, press ONLY the button that says "Download" next to the script title, and ignore any pop-ups you get or any messages telling you that your Adobe Flash is out of date.

Some credit where credit is due:

BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 created by Darren Starr

DAWSON'S CREEK created by Kevin Williamson

EVERWOOD created by Greg Berlanti

GLEE created by Ryan Murphy & Brad Falchuk & Ian Brennan

KATY KEENE developed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacsa & Michael Grassi, based on characters by Archie Comics

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS developed by I. Marlene King, based on the novels by Sara Shepard

GILMORE GIRLS created by Amy Sherman-Palladino

ONE TREE HILL created by Mark Schwahn

RIVERDALE developed by Roberto Aguirre-Sacsa, based on characters by Archie Comics

THE OC created by Josh Schwartz

VERONICA MARS created by Rob Thomas

13 REASONS WHY developed by Brian Yorkey, based on the novel by Jay Asher

THE WONDER YEARS created by Neal Marlens & Carol Black

The TV Writer Spec Episode Database

Update 4/20/25: Added spec by Juan Carlos Fernandez.

Update 9/25/23: Added spec by Carlos Cisco.

Update 5/3/22: Added spec by Jeff Lowell.

Update 2/15/20: Added specs by Jose Molina.

Update 9/17/19: Added specs by Diane Ademu-John, Ian MacIntyre, Matt Okumura, Jeane Wong.

Update 9/10/19: Added specs by Julie Plec, Akela Cooper, Helen Shang, Brig Munoz-Liebowitz, David Iserson, Brandon Margolis & Brandon Sonnier.

Update 9/9/19: Added specs by Aaron Ginsburg & Wade McIntyre, Sarah Watson, and Gillian Horvath.

About a year ago, I started a Twitter conversation with pro writers about the spec episodes that got them staffed or noticed for the first time. The result was a lot of amusing answers (Julie Plec wrote a BUFFY!) and informative (many people wrote SEVERAL specs until they finally broke in.)

This past weekend, a similar topic came up again on Twitter, as a debate sparked if writers should still do spec episodes instead of focusing on original pilots. Many writers will tell you that speccing an existing show will teach you the valuable skill of mimicry, which is essential to succeeding as a staff writer.

This time, there was also real conversation about creating an archive of the pro spec episodes. To my surprise a lot of very successful and established writers were willing to make their earliest spec episodes available. Many seemed tickled by sharing these with a wider audience and so I've volunteered to curate this database.

If you're a pro writer and you want your spec to join this archive, email me at zuulthereader at gmail and I will be happy to add you to the list along with as many of your old specs as you wish to submit. If you want to give a little context for those specs, please do.

To keep everything together, I'll make all updates on this post, listing the specs alphabetically by the writer's last name. It's my hope to make this a useful resource for emerging writers who have an interest in seeing how writers they admire got started by writing for other shows.

I'm also putting my money where my mouth is. I've already made available my spec for an alternate season 3 premiere of 13 Reasons Why (full story on that here), but for the first time, I'm posting my spec episode of Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23. My earlier post on that spec is here.

Without further ado, here's the TV Writer Spec Episode Database:

Diane Ademu-John (Empire, The Originals) - Deadwood

Angelina Burnett (Halt and Catch Fire, Genius) - Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

• "The one door I remember this opening for me was a meeting with the showrunner for New Amsterdam (not the one now, the one from a long time ago). He thought it was really funny, and that I should try to get it to Sorkin (I never did). And though I didn't get the staff writer gig, he did hire me as his assistant with a possibility of a freelance. Then the strike happened half way through the season so... No freelance. I got staffed right after the strike, but I can't remember which script got me that meeting. Might have been this one?" 

Carlos Cisco (Star Trek: Discovery) - Parks & Recreation

• "This is the second spec I ever wrote (first was Justified and I can't seem to find the PDF), and my only true foray into straight comedy. It seemed to work since it got me in the NHMC TV writers fellowship where I promptly shifted to drama and foolishly wrote a Walking Dead spec that was rendered irrelevant 2 weeks after I finished because they killed Rick's wife! Last time I ever specced heavily serialized shows!" 

Akela Cooper (Luke Cage, American Horror Story) - Supernatural

Justin Doble (The Lord of the Rings, Stranger Things) - Justified, Parenthood

• "The PARENTHOOD got me into the Warner Brothers Writers' Workshop and the JUSTIFIED I wrote in the workshop and it got me my first staff job on FRINGE." 

Jay Faerber (Supergirl, Zoo)- Burn Notice

• "This is what got me into the WB program back in 2010." 

Glenn Farrington (Roswell, New Mexico) - The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family

• "They both were also the ones that got me into the running for the ABC writer’s program."
  

Matthew Federman & Stephen Scaia (Blood & Treasure, Limitless) - The West Wing

• "For context, [we] were PAs on The West Wing and decided to write one together, inspired by a news article. It began our writing partnership and launched our career. So always read the news, kids!"

Juan Carlos Fernandez (Inventing Anna, Scandal) - The Closer

• "This was written while I was a script coordinator on COLD CASE. At the time, the only samples I had were for genre shows and I wanted to demonstrate that I could write a procedural. It earned me the opportunity to pitch to my showrunners. They were excited by at least one of my pitches… then COLD CASE got canceled and that opportunity died on the vine. But I reworked one of the pitched ideas into an original pilot that got me staffed on SCANDAL and selected for THE BLACK LIST’s Latinx TV List." 

Aaron Ginsburg & Wade McIntyre (New Amsterdam, The 100) - The Office, Rescue Me

• "Our The Office got us into the WB writing program. Our Rescue Me helped get us our first agent." 

Marc Guggenheim (Carnival Row, Arrow) - The West Wing

• "[This spec] got me all my first gigs."

Joe Henderson (Lucifer, 11.22.63) - Dexter, The O.C.

Gillian Horvath (Beauty and the Beast, Primeval: New World) - Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Quantum Leap (More info available on Gillian's site here.)

• "My QUANTUM LEAP was my third spec. It got me my first agent and got read at Universal, leading to a NORTHERN EXPOSURE that I sprinted to finish when the QL guys wouldn't read my QL. That got me a freelance QL. My next, a BUFFY, was still getting me jobs 10 years after cancellation."

David Iserson (Mozart in the Jungle, Mr. Robot) - Seinfeld

• "Please note that the spec I submitted was something I wrote my Junior year of high school and I haven't touched it since except to format it."

Niceole Levy (Cloak and Dagger, Shades of Blue) - The Closer, The Good Wife

• "'The Closer' got me into the CBS program. I wrote my 'Good Wife' while in the program, and it got me a ton of meetings." 

Jeff Lowell (Spin City, Manhattan Love Story) - The Larry Sanders Show

Ian MacIntyre (Degrassi: Next Class, Inspector Gadget) - Parks and Recreation.

• "[My] Parks & Rec spec got me my first full-season staffing job on Degrassi: Next Class (Netflix). 
  

P. J. Marino (Captain Tsunami's Army) - The Simpsons

• "I wrote this Simpsons spec back in 2002. It was only the second script I'd ever written (I'd also written an original pilot). It won 2nd Place in the Scriptapalooza contest, and got me a meeting w/ a big literary manager. She gave me a huge confidence boost to continue. I'm still not WGA, but this year I got my first feature produced, with two other features in negotiations for options." 

Brandon Margolis & Brandon Sonnier (LA's Finest, The Blacklist) - Common Law 

Jose Molina (Agent Carter, Firefly) - The X-Files, Law & Order

Brig Munoz-Liebowitz (Abby's, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) - Girls 

Matt Okumura (Blood & Treasure) - The Handmaid's Tale.

Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries, Legacies) - Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Thomas Reyes (The Great North) - Silicon Valley

• "The Silicon Valley spec got me into the Warner Bros Writers Workshop. It was also a semifinalist at the Austin Film Festival. I still use it as a sample (it got me showrunner meetings this staffing season)."

Barry Schkolnick (In Plain Sight, The Good Wife) - The Sopranos

• "Some context: I wrote this script because I fell in love with the show from the start and was in-between gigs and needed a new piece of material to show. I also wanted to break away from the purely procedural style of Law & Order which had come to define me in the marketplace. It led pretty quickly to a lot of meetings and then a co-producer gig on Peter Berg’s “Wonderland” (short-lived medical drama about Bellevue mental hospital on ABC). This was also the last spec I wrote, as I started writing original pilots on assignments within a short period. Since then I only write originals on spec because, as you know, the marketplace for writing samples changed, and they can also be sold!" 

Brian Michael Scully (co-writer on THE MAKING OF STAR WARS EPISODE VIII and the writer of GENESIS) - Star Trek: Voyager

• "It was the third I wrote and submitted [to the Star Trek "open spec" program.] The rules were you could only submit two if you had no reps. When my first two were rejected ("Pseudo" and "Chimera"), I submitted this third spec under the name Mike Scully and used my grandmother's address. As Al Bundy once said, "It's only cheating if you get caught." Five days after I started writing it, "Mortal Coil" aired and it was almost identical to the themes I think I was going for (I say I think because I wrote this over 21 years ago, who the hell knows what I was thinking then). I was too stubborn to rebreak and write from a different angle. So I just moved forward and sent in anyway. To this day, I still cannot fathom how that show read this script and called me to pitch. I really don't."

Helen Shang (Lord of the Rings, 13 Reasons Why) The Big Bang Theory, Once Upon a Time

Dan Steele (Faking It, Hart of Dixie) - How I Met Your Mother

Sarah Watson (The Bold Type, Parenthood) - Gilmore Girls

• "This got me staffed onto: Lipstick Jungle, The Middleman, And Parenthood! I don't think there's a title page on it and I can't for the life of me remember what year I wrote it. I think I called it 'The Bell Jar Jar Binks.'"

Jeane Wong (Arrow) - iZombie

• "Got me into wotv and abc finalist. Opened development/selling stuff for me."

Bonus: I'll also be tracking the "infamous" gimmick spec episodes that have gained notoriety over the years. If you know of one worthy of inclusion, let me know and I'll take a look at it.

SEINFELD  - "The Twin Towers" (9/11 episode) by Billy Domineau

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

Fifteen working writers name the TV spec episodes that helped start their careers

Completing my series last week on "How to write a spec episode" made me nostalgic for a Twitter thread I got going about six months ago. Lately, the practice of writing spec episodes has fallen out of favor. For the most part, they're only used for programs like the Disney ABC Writing Program and the Warner Bros Television Workshop, as more and more showrunners want to see original pilots from prospective staff writers.

It wasn't always that way. Up until recently, writers would write spec episodes for a series similar to the one they were submitting for. You never submit your spec episode to the show you've spec'd - for two basic reasons. First, they know their show WAY better than you do, so they'll be far more harsh on things that feel wrong for the show, whether it's getting a character's voice slightly wrong, getting something minute wrong about their house style or episode format, or just telling the kinds of story they have reasons for not telling. The second reason is perhaps even more obvious - if they never read a spec of their own show, they can't be accused of stealing it should the show do something similar to this spec episode.

What this means is there are several generations of TV writers who came up by writing spec episodes, perhaps of shows vastly different from the ones they are famous for. With that in mind, I tweeted out a call for writers to tell us the specs that got them hired or repped. The result was one of the more amusing threads I've been a part of.

I'm sure this'll provoke a unanimous chorus of "Nah Bitter, we're good" but if any of the writers in this post - or any other working writers for that matter - are interested in putting their spec episodes out there for people to read, I'll gladly host them. Just email me at the address you can find on the side of this webpage.

Joe Henderson (Lucifer, 11.22.63, White Collar, Almost Human)

My Smallville got me some attention. My Joan of Arcadia elevated my craft. My OC was my favorite. My Entourage got me into the WB workshop. My My Name Is Earl was lots of fun. My Dexter got me a lot of meetings. Shit I wrote a lot of specs

— Joe Henderson (@Henderson_Joe) February 16, 2018

Taylor Elmore (Blood & Treasure, Limitless, Justified)

ER, Dawson’s Creek, then Shield. I think I peaked careerwise on the Dawson’s spec

— Taylor Elmore (@TaylorElmost) February 16, 2018

Justin Marks (THE JUNGLE BOOK, Counterpart)

This isn’t the same, but once I wrote fan fiction set on the prison planet in Alien 3. It detailed the prisoners’ lives before Sigourney Weaver arrived. Unbelievably, seventeen years later someone married me.

— Justin Marks (@Justin_Marks_) February 16, 2018

Mike Royce (One Day at a Time, Men of a Certain Age, Enlisted)

Frasier. @jonlovett would be proud

— Mike Royce (@MikeRoyce) February 16, 2018

Amy Berg (Counterpart, Da Vinci's Demons, Caper, Person of Interest, Eureka)

For the Lost spec, it was during the show's first season when the episodes were told from specific character POVs. I chose the dog. People still talk about that script.

— Amy Berg (@bergopolis) February 16, 2018

Jordon Nardino (Star Trek: Discovery, Quantico, Smash, Desperate Housewives)

Oh also I got rejected from the WB writers program with the samples that got me staffed on Gilmore Girls a few months later so fuck everyone.

— Jordon Nardino (@jnardino) February 16, 2018

Benjamin Raab (Arrow, Scream, The Flash, Beauty & The Beast)

A Smallville got me & @dblackanese our 1st manager. An Alias got us our 1st agent. A CSI & a Nip/Tuck got us our 2nd agent. A Rescue Me got us into the @nbc Writers On The Verge Program, as well as our 1st staffing job on #Warehouse13.

— Benjamin Raab (@Wondermasons) February 16, 2018

Bo Yeon Kim (Star Trek: Discovery, Reign)

I also wrote a really shitty Supernatural spec which will never see the light of day.

— Bo Yeon Kim (@extspace) February 16, 2018

Robert Hewitt Wolfe, (Elementary, Andromeda, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) who probably made enemies of several people in this thread with this disclosure.

Umm... I've never written a spec. I got my invitation to pitch to #StarTrek #TNG off a feature script. But that never happens anymore either. So yeah, I'm useless.

— Robert Hewitt Wolfe (@writergeekrhw) February 16, 2018

Bryan Q. Miller (Shadowhunters, Sleepy Hollow, Defiance, Smallville)

A Smallville in grad school
A Boston Legal in grad school
A Dexter got me into the WB workshop
A House during the workshop

Latter two (plus staffing up through the workshop) helped get me repped

— Bryan Q. Miller (@bryanQmiller) February 16, 2018

Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, Containment, Legacies)

Buffy.

— Julie Plec (@julieplec) February 16, 2018

Who else wants to read a Buffy spec from the co-creator of The Vampire Diaries?

Chris Luccy (Undateable, Melissa & Joey, Better With You)

The readers will be happy not to have to read their 50th Modern Family or whatever that years popular spec is and it’ll make you stand out from the beginning.

— Chris Luccy (@boynamedluccy) February 16, 2018

Dan Steele (Faking It, Hart of Dixie, Gossip Girl)

I like this game. My LOST taught me structure & won my first contest. My How I Met Your Mother won a trophy & opened the door to @WBTVWorkshop. My Dexter got me hired on Gossip Girl. Specs were a great training ground.

— Dan Steele (@dansteele) February 16, 2018

Lynn Renee Maxcy (The Handmaid's Tale, Covert Affairs)

Eli Stone taught me how to format scripts, Modern Family let me try comedy (once), and Chuck & Castle made me fall in love with TV writing - but I’ve only used original pilots for reps/staffing. The writing practice was invaluable for me, though.

— Lynn Renee Maxcy (@lynnreneemaxcy) February 16, 2018

Daniel Thomsen (Westworld, Time After Time, Once Upon a Time,

My first spec was a Malcolm in the Middle, but then I learned more about comedy rooms... and my second spec was The Shield. Got me an agent at Endeavor.

— Daniel Thomsen (@danielthomsen) February 16, 2018

Jorge A. Reyes (Kevin Hill, Queen of the South)

Ally McBeal.

— The Coolest (@jorgereyes) February 16, 2018

Quite an interesting mix of writers and shows, no?

Related posts:
Writing a spec episode - a 10 part series.
Anatomy of a TV spec - Don't Trust the B---- In Apartment 23

Writing a spec episode - Part 10: Act Five Scenes

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

Download the first draft script here.


We start here at the bottom of p. 46.

INT. CLAY'S HOUSE - BEDROOM - MORNING - This scene has a simple purpose - remind the audience that Justin and Clay are living under the same roof, with Justin being Clay's adopted brother in this timeline.

SERIES OF SHOTS and EXT. TONY'S NEIGHBORHOOD - This is a lot of narrative shoe leather and connective tissue. I needed to honor the reality that Clay would have gone to school that day, but I didn't have any story I wanted those scenes for, so I skipped through it. After that, the scene in Tony's neighborhood is just there to allow Clay to connect some dots.

INT. BAKER'S DRUG STORE - Another scene that's pretty self-explanatory. It made sense to me that Tony would have sought out help from Olivia, and it made equal sense she'd do what she could by giving him a place to crash in New York.

I'll admit that with some of the plotlines, I tried to project a trajectory for them across 13 episodes, just because it forced me to think of this one episode in a larger context. When it came to Tony's plot, I didn't come up with much beyond the notion he'd probably be back in town within a few episodes.

When it comes to the rest of Clay and Olivia's interactions, though, I did have a few ideas. I think that at some later point in the season, Clay would have tried to use his connection to the other Hannah as a way of bringing some peace to his Olivia. I hadn't worked out what that was. Maybe Clay would eventually tell Hannah what he's experiencing and tell her that his Olivia needs some peace of mind. Perhaps Alternate-Olivia has reacted badly to Hannah's suicide attempt, either becoming over-protective, or maybe she's furious with her, or humiliated, or she's overwhelmed with guilt and in trying to deny it.

However it came out, Alternate-Olivia would have been in a bad place, but through his connection to the other Olivia, Clay would be able to provide Hannah with what she needed. That's a bit abstract, but it's the start of an idea.

There's an important moment here where Clay knows something he learned in the alternate timeline and it turns out to be something true in the "real" timeline. This lends some credence to the idea that both worlds are equally real. Clay certainly seems to think that's the case, as the odds of his dream inventing something that's actually true are pretty long. But it's hardly conclusive and there's room to assume Clay might have heard something about Aunt Laura before, and his subconscious brought it out in the dream.

It's early in the season, so I couldn't give Clay a clue that was TOO definitive, just one that seemed very suggestive, while being explained away with a little effort.

INT. DR. LIZ DUFFIELD'S OFFICE - There's one big objective here - show Clay passing on the chance to treat the Alternate Timeline like a delusion he needs serious treatment for. We know he's pondered that he might be crazy. Now he's in the room with a trained professional and he won't tell her the truth. Maybe some would read this scene as him not wanting to sound crazy, but I was going for the subtext that he doesn't want to be cured of his delusion.

INT. CLAY'S HOUSE - BEDROOM - I initially thought I'd go out on the scene with Clay talking to his therapist, smashing to black as we reveal he's embracing the alternate timeline. But I had trouble landing that beat in a succinct line that would provoke a smash-cut to black. So I added this scene of Clay preparing for another timeline shift. It also is a subtle echo of the end of the pilot, which concludes with Clay finishing one tape and then putting on the second side.

Usually when I finish a first draft script, I blast it out to five friends. I mostly use people who've read a lot of my stuff before (and who's own work I've read) and so by now, I'm familiar enough with each of their style of notes that I'm able to decipher what the "note behind the note" is.

"Note behind the note" is an acknowledgement that what people say isn't necessarily what needs to be fixed. Their viewpoint is valid but their diagnosis could be wrong. And by now, I know that there might be certain readers who get particular buttons pushed by something.

My point is - I give it to five people I know and trust. That's enough to get a sense of consensus. I don't always go by majority rules, though. If four of them LOVE something and the fifth picks something apart but does so in a constructive way that makes me realize, "Fuck. I can't ignore THAT observation," I'll probably take that lone reader's advice. On the other hand, if one reader thinks the mystery was too obvious and the other four totally fell for my red herrings, I'll be relieved that a majority took it the way they were meant to.

Then after those five sets of notes come back, I do a rewrite and then blast it out to another four or five people. This is important because it gives you a fresh read on the changes. Go back to the same five people and subconsciously they might still remember the old version. This means they'd have to intellectualize about if the changes really work. Give it to new readers and they don't know what changed, so they're more accepting of everything as a whole.

If I do a rewrite off of these notes, I might send it to a couple people in the first group, hoping that the longer time between them and the more massive changes will make this different enough that it's almost fresh for them. Otherwise, I just suck it up and accept I won't get a totally fresh read.

Eventually, a draft emerges that I'm happy with.

This has been a fun blogging journey over the last two weeks. I hope you guys have gotten something out of it, and I've enjoyed all the comments and tweets from people who enjoyed the script. Feel free to comment further on the script. For now I think I'm done with this, but should inspiration hit and I do any substantial rewrites, I'll detail the process here.

Writing a spec episode - Part 9: When your lead character demands a rewrite

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

Yesterday I talked a little bit about a moment where Hannah gave me a line of dialogue I didn't anticipate and the implications of that line changed everything about the scene and what I thought I knew about her state of mind.

Today we're going to pick up with the scene that starts on p. 41 of the script.

Download the first draft script here.

EXT. LIBERTY HIGH SCHOOL - AFTERNOON - After a tense parting with Hannah, Clay sees her at the end of the school day with Zach. This is one of those moments I knew had to be in the script in some form. Given their history, we need to see Zach reaching out to Hannah upon her return to school. But it was also the kind of scene that felt too convenient every time I tried to make Clay a witness to it. There were only so many opportunities to play that card and my gut told me I'd already used them all.

The next best thing was for Clay to see them at a distance and maddeningly not know the nature of their conversation. In the two-part segment I wrote earlier this year about the Zach/Hannah retcon in Season 2, I think I was pretty clear about my feelings on this development. But it's part of the show canon and it would be dereliction of duty to ignore that. I feel it can be dangerous to call back to that plot, given the inconsistencies it raises. It can be a little like picking a scab best left benignly alone, but there is a way it could pay dividends.

Remember that the Zach/Hannah relationship isn't on the tape. That means that even though Hannah knows Clay has heard the tapes, she still has no reason to think her history with Zach is known to him. That alone is another bomb waiting to drop at some point in the season. It would be interesting if Clay and Hannah were getting closer together and it bothered Clay that she was going to keep this part of her history secret.

Clay is also in the unique position of possibly losing his virginity twice, technically. Let's say he sleeps with Sheri in the Prime timeline during midseason. If the possibility of a hook-up with Hananh presents itself again, once Hannah lays her cards on the table about her history, Clay has two options:

1) lie and say he's a virgin. Which is true in this alternate timeline but not for Clay.
2) tell the truth and then have a real dilemma. It would be a lie to tell Hannah he lost his virginity to Sheri because Clay didn't sleep with the Sheri who Hannah knows. But it would also be dishonest if he decides to claim it was some random girl Hannah didn't know. And we know Clay isn't a good enough liar to pull off any of these lies.

There are a lot of ways to get to this complication, and most of them involve building off the Zach/Hannah past. For both reasons of plot and character, there should be acknowledgement of that here.

With that out of the way, let's get onto:

INT. MONET'S CAFE - NIGHT - I was pretty sure I knew how this scene was going to play in the story break. It was the last time Hannah and Clay interacted in this episode and from the beginning, I wanted him to be able to tell her that he'd spent the last year "thinking about" how horrible it would have been if she succeeded in suicide. He was going to pour his heart out about what she meant to him, all the ways he wished he'd been better to her and everything he was going to do differently now.

It was Clay's big moment. Figure for a year he's imagined what he would say to her, much like his imagined conversation with her in the room that night, the one where Hannah's haunting reply was "Why didn't you say this to me when I was alive?"

So in some ways I wanted to pay that off. I wanted a catharsis for Clay. It was his chance to let go of anything he was holding inside and in doing that, I figured it would bond him even tighter to this reality. It all flowed from a character perspective. It also meant this scene was all about Clay. And there's nothing wrong with that - he's the core of the show and this story.

But when I approached this scene as a follow-up to Hannah's "I ruined you," it changed EVERYTHING. It forced an approach that had HANNAH pouring her heart out, explaining what she had been through in the last year. It let Hannah speak for herself, filling in some gaps from both before her suicide attempt and explaining some of her distance and behavior since then.

For most of this scene, I felt like I was transcribing more than I was writing. Hannah took over, decided the scene was about her and dictated everything while my typing fingers raced to keep up. This scene was part of the day where I turned around 12 pages in 5 hours because I just felt very keyed into what Hannah was going to say and how Clay was going to have to react to that.

It didn't matter that it changed two scenes that I had been sure were going to mean something else. When you hit a point where the characters start doing their own thing, run with it as far as possible. On the off chance that you go down a wrong path, you can always rewrite later.

So this was Hannah, expressing concern that her medication hadn't just taken away the intensity of how she felt towards Clay last year, but also pondering that maybe she hadn't really been in love with him in the first place - that she'd convinced herself of that because he was "safe." He was a life preserver she needed, and that's why she freaked out that night - her mind was telling her body that it was wrong for her to use Clay like this.

Is Hannah right? I don't know. But this is what she believes right now. It changed what I thought was going to happen with regard to Clay embracing this timeline. I thought this scene would represent Clay committing himself to this reality, not this reality seemingly rejecting him. But when the dust settled, I realized this was more compelling. Hannah's accessible, but just out of his reach. It forces him to strain to get her.

It gives Clay a challenge instead of a win. That feels like better drama. For some of the audience, it might even raise enough doubt about the desirability of this world that the ending is more of a shock when Clay decides not to tell his therapist about his experience, meaning that if it is a delusion, he's actively not seeking help for it.

Hopefully this was a good example of how you draw on older stories to find fertile ground for new conflicts, and also how sometimes your characters know better what they bring to the table than you do.

(This scene also has a pretty big goof on my part. The dance that Hannah refers to and that Clay says he's thought about for a year and a half isn't the Spring Fling. It was the Winter Formal.)

We'll wrap all this up tomorrow with a look at the final act of the script.

Part 10: Act Five Scenes

Writing a spec episode - Part 8: Act Four Scenes

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

Download the first draft script here.

Today we're gonna get to discuss one of my favorite things that can happen when you write a script. But we'll get to that soon enough...

Act Four basically starts on p. 32 of the script, with Clay shifting back to the alternate timeline. I don't have much to say about the first couple scenes. They're mostly narrative shoe leather, but I wanted to have a little bit of a build-up to Tony's appearance. I was hoping that would have some impact coming on the heels of learning a bit more about what happened to him.

EXT. LIBERTY HIGH SCHOOL - MORNING - Clay catches Tony up on his predicament off-screen. I originally had a little more dialogue here where they both debated if Clay was crazy and this was a figment of his imagination. Tony said, "Look, I know you're not imagining me," to which Clay replied, "that's just what a figment of my imagination would say." It was a little too jokey, and though I wrote it hoping it would let us acknowledge that Clay can either second-guess everything OR he can move forward. Weirdly, as soon as I raised the issue it seemed to make that concern even more of an elephant in the room. This is why the scene starts with a little disbelief from Tony and moves immediately to Clay hitting him with information he shouldn't know (at least from Tony's POV.)

One of the functions of this scene is to fill in some blanks about what happened in this timeline after Hannah didn't die. I was worried about this because it was an infodump, but once I started writing, I realized what a gift Tony is when you need exposition. He has a real point of view, and an emotional one at that - he's concerned for Clay. He's keeping secrets for Hannah, now Clay shows up, tells a crazy story and is pushing Tony for info that might be damaging to share. Clay's function in this scene is to get information. He's got a valid motivation for it, but it's Tony's stake as Hannah's confidant that gives this scene some juice.

This was one scene that changed drastically when I got to writing it. I went into this scene with the notion that Tony would give us a flashback that explained how Hannah didn't die in this timeline. We'd hear about how her mother arrived home sooner, due to a small chain of events that happened differently here. (It would have been something like a customer at the Baker's drug store would have accidentally spilled something on Olivia's clothes, leading her to go home earlier to change on a break, leading her to find Hannah soon enough that she'd survive.

I hadn't worked out the details, but it would have been a butterfly effect kind of thing, where one tiny difference ended up putting Olivia at home sooner. But when I got there, I didn't have much interest in writing that flashback and I realized any scene I wrote would be competing with (and might even compromise the memory and impact of) the scene where Olivia finds Hannah dead. There are some moments that shouldn't be trampled on, some callbacks that that can throw you right out of a story.

In the moment, I decided maybe it shouldn't be about Clay asking how Hannah survived, but that Tony might wonder how Clay found out Hannah died. It was a line that just grew organically out of Tony's concern for Clay, but as soon as I wrote it I realized the show had never even alluded to the moment Clay learned of Hannah's suicide.

I knew right away I wanted it to be a moment without any of the expected TV melodrama. I didn't want someone telling Clay in a sad voice, "You'd better sit down." I also didn't want a moment where Clay gets the bad news at home and breaks into tears as his parents try to comfort him. I thought about Clay and how this was going to be a moment burned into his memory forever. I wanted to find the worst possible surroundings for such a moment.

INT. CRESTMONT THEATER - BATHROOM - NIGHT - FLASHBACK - Isolating Clay from anyone else felt like the right way to go. We saw in season one that group texts circulated a lot of info. It made sense Hannah's suicide would have lit that up right away. It justified Clay having no one to lean on when he gets the worst news of his life.

Plunging a toilet also felt like one of the least dignified things a person could be doing when they get bad news like that. Clay already feels pretty low for having to clean this up, and then he gets sucker punched with the news about Hannah and it's just too much for him to bear. He shuts down and can't even cry.

When we returned to the present, I wanted Tony to transition us to a Clay/Hannah scene and so it seemed to set up some tension by having him say, basically, "Things have changed. She's changed."

INT. LIBRARY - The first chance Clay and Hannah have to talk since his earlier mistake. I wanted to have Hannah be over her earlier reaction by now. It felt like once she had a chance to calm down, she'd realize she doesn't want to hold Clay in contempt for a while. She doesn't WANT to be mad at him and that gives him some slack.

And yes, I'm starting with them reconciling just so I can really divide them by the end of this scene. Having Hannah immediately absolve Clay keeps this scene from feeling like a 180 on top of a 180.

Bryce's arrival here is probably a little flimsy. The problem is that it's tricky to set that up in earlier scenes without telegraphing what's probably going to happen here. For this draft, I allowed myself the coincidence, but it's flagged as something I'd like to improve.

Because we've seen Bryce shrug off a punch from Clay before, they only way Clay would lay him out is if it was a total sucker punch. Gravity does most of the work here anyway, once Clay throws him off balance. My hope is that most of the audience is so thrilled to see Clay actually trip that smirking punk that they don't even think about how much this whole thing would rightly upset Hannah.

INT. HALLWAY - First, just to deal with a bit at the end of the scene, Alex is here for two reasons - I needed someone to tell Clay, "Let her have her space." I also realized that we hadn't seen his non-impaired counterpart yet and I was low on options for where to feature him.

It's SO Clay to think he was helping Hannah by beating up her rapist, and also to not get that it isn't JUST being in the same room with Bryce that upset her. I really think Clay meant well and he's had the experience of seeing Bryce get a slap on the wrist, which was possibly even more enraging than when he wasn't even going to be charged.

When Clay catches up to Hannah, he thinks she's just upset about seeing Bryce again. Funny thing about that - that's what I thought she was mad about... until I went to write that particular line of dialogue. I was trying to figure out how to express her turmoil at seeing Bryce again when I heard Hannah's voice in my head and she said, "I ruined you."

Shit. That's where she's taking this scene? I thought.

This was the first - but not the last - time that one of the characters I was writing just took a look at what I was about to put in their mouth and said, "I think I'll speak for myself, thanks."

When this happens, GO WITH IT. When the characters are talking to you, let them speak because often what they have to say is WAY more interesting than what you were going to have them do.

The context: In season one, when Clay finally gets to his tape, we learn that on the night of Jess's party he and Hannah started to hook up. As things got physical, Hannah was triggered with PTSD from virtually every other sexual contact she's had. She freaks out, tells Clay to get off of her and then throws him out of the room. Clay, not sure what just happened but also fearing he did something wrong, goes.

When Hannah recounts this story on her tape, she tells Clay part of the reason she reacted this way was, "you aren't every other guy. You're different. You're good and kind and decent. And I didn't deserve to be with someone like you. I never would. I would have ruined you. It wasn't you. It was me. And everything that's happened to me."

One of her biggest fears was ruining Clay. And I didn't quite realize until Hannah told me herself that if Hannah saw everything her tapes did to Clay, she might see her horrible fear realized.

That was FAR more interesting than just any PTSD from Bryce because it's a conflict that challenges the very core of season one - the love story between Clay and Hannah. It shows a consequence to Hannah's actions that she now has to deal with and it provides Clay with something to deal with in that just having Hannah alive doesn't make everything wonderful and happy.

Listen to your characters. And that's something I'll talk about more tomorrow.

Part 9: When your lead character demands a rewrite
Part 10: Act Five Scenes

Writing a spec episode - Part 7: Act Three scenes

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

Today we're going scene-by-scene through Act 3 as I give you a sense of what the break/scripting process was for these scenes. Hopefully it'll serve as a good example of the kinds of things you need to consider when breaking a story and when translating your outline into actual scenes.

Download the script here and start on p. 22.

INT. CLAY'S HOUSE, BEDROOM - MORNING - Let's talk a little bit about the function of a scene. This is the scene where Clay wakes up in bed and realizes due to the fact that Sheri is next to him that he's in the Prime timeline again. There are two ways to play that: "Whoa! Was that just a strange dream?" or "I'm moving between realities, somehow!" These moments are always a bit tricky to write because in a sense, the audience is already ahead of the character in getting what's going on and accepting it. They know the story they signed on for and now they have to wait for the character to be all in.

(In a comedy, this point in the story is a little more fun to write because the protagonist is allowed to be humorously bewildered and frustrated. Think about the first trip through the time loop for Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, or when Jim Carrey discovers in Liar, Liar that he's incapable of telling a falsehood. In a drama, it's easier for this beat to feel perfunctory.)

There was a little bit of this dilemma the first time Clay shifted, but there I was able to use the big shock of Hannah being alive to provoke Clay's shock at what happened and blow past any question of HOW it happened. But now that Clay's back in "his" world, you need to have him react. I decided that since he experienced a full day and actually physically interacted with the world, he would be satisfied it was "real." I didn't want to waste a beat on, "Am I dreaming?" It's schmuck bait because the audience knows he's not dreaming.

And if Clay was losing his mind, and the "Hannah lives" world is just an vivid delusion, would he likely have the presence of mind to wonder if he was crazy? In the interests of pacing I just decided, "He accepts what's going on. His concern now is the 'rules' of moving between the two worlds." That's at how I arrived at his acceptance that "I'm living each day twice." And then once we saw he understood that, I wanted to end the scene as fast as possible.

That's why his mother bursts in when she does. It's less about the gag of Clay being caught in bed with a girl and more about getting out of the scene before Sheri has to react to Clay's behavior.

By the way, I'm sure that some writers would have made a meal out of Clay wondering if he's going crazy this early. It just wasn't to my taste, at least not at this point in the arc.

EXT. BAKER' S DRUG STORE - This scene is pretty self-explanatory. Clay and Sheri find Mrs. Baker at the drug store, which has finally found a buyer. Hopefully the first time through, most readers are satisfied that the only reason she's in town is to finalize the sale. As we learn later, her visit has another purpose.

I originally thought I might have Clay passing a message from Hannah to her mother (or vice-versa). Some moment of connection between mother and daughter where either Mrs. Baker gets one last interaction with Hannah, or Hannah better understands her mother now that Olivia has lived out the worst case scenario.

I actually still like that idea, but there was no place to execute it here. It felt more like something an entire episode would be built around.

INT. LIBERTY HIGH SCHOOL, HALLWAY - I didn't have many opportunities to write for Jess and I found I like the dynamic of her alternately supporting and teasing Clay. This is another scene that exists to show the difference in the Prime and Alternate versions of people. It's also where we see Clay putting together a lot of little things to realize there's tension between Justin and Jess... something that seems different from their prior tension. (And also, if the audience somehow didn't see the prior season or missed all the little clues, having Clay make the observation helps them catch up.)

Thirdly, it's a small showcase for the brotherly dynamic between Clay and Justin.

INT. LIBERTY HIGH SCHOOL  - LUNCH TABLES - I'll use this to point out the transition. The last scene ended with Clay wondering about something he witnessed, now this scene goes straight to him acting on it.

I went back and forth on if it was fair play to go into Jessica's mind to see her flashbacks here. Technically it's a cheat because everything's been from Clay's point of view. On the other hand, it's a flashback to a scene the audience has already seen, so nothing new is revealed they didn't already know. It's there as a reminder.

You'll also note that while Jess and Alex have their moment together, I made sure it happened somewhere where Clay could witness it. Clay is supposed to be our eyes and ears. The story can't go somewhere he doesn't.

INT. CLAY'S HOUSE, LIVING ROOM - We meet Detective Diamond in a scene designed to help bridge the five-month gap between last season's finale and now. I didn't want Tyler's near-shooting at the school to be the focal point of this episode, but I couldn't ignore it either. I also couldn't see how Clay would have ended up in too much trouble even thought he had the gun when police showed up. That's the kind of thing he either talks his way out of and nothing happens, or he doesn't and you're stuck with a storyline about Clay clearing himself of something we already know he didn't do.

So that's how I landed on Clay being regarded as a witness, with there being a manhunt for Tyler and his presumed accomplice Tony. It seemed right to put Clay in an ethical dilemma where he's caught between his desire to help Tony and the possibility he'll have to break the law. It also allows for a slower burn where maybe in doing so, he ends up doing something that can land him in jail. My original concept was that the Act Three ending would be Tyler being arrested, with that raising the stakes for Clay, who'd kept some secrets for several months.

That was when I thought I wanted to end the episode with Clay getting arrested and put in lockup awaiting bail. When I realized that was accelerating things too much, I turned my focus to just laying pipe that could feel like it was setting the state for a much bigger consequence a few episodes down the line.

I also think there's a good chance Detective Diamond is being a little manipulative here, giving Clay some information so he can see what he does with it.

It makes for a softer Act-Out than I liked, but there's enough of a sinister tone, especially with Clay's concern that if Tyler is caught, his life is over.

General thoughts: You'll notice the thrust of Act Three is often about the absence of people who Clay can see in the other world. Here, Clay wakes to a different girl in his bed. His encounter with Olivia is another reminder of the loss of Hannah. At school, he doesn't have Tony to lean on and the end of the act reminds us of where Tyler and Tony are and what they're probably facing if they're ever caught.

If I was going to do a rewrite, I might try to hit that subtext a little harder than I did in this draft. This part of the script feels a little soft... though that's not out of the ordinary for a Netflix show. They're more willing to slow things down for a character beat in the middle of the story and not be as wedded to the idea that every scene MUST advance the plot.

Part 8: Act Four Scenes
Part 9: When your lead character demands a rewrite
Part 10: Act Five Scenes

Writing a spec episode - Part 6: Act Two scenes

Part 1: Finding the Concept
Part 2: Character
Part 3: Story and Theme Development
Part 4: The Break
Part 5: Act One Scenes

I continue with my "writer's commentary" as we go into Act Two. If you want to follow along, Download the script here and start on p. 12.

EXT. LIBERTY HIGH SCHOOL - ALTERNATE TIMELINE - We've already thrown a living Hannah at the audience, so now it's time to send Clay to school and have him keep encountering reminders that things are very different here. Sheri, of course, had to be the first one he encountered. It was here I realized that the distinction between the hardened Sheri and the sweet one largely comes down to how the actress carries herself differently. There are nuances of dialogue too, but they come out in specific situations. Hardened Sheri is a bit wearier and a bit more likely to speak her mind rather than be a people pleaser. The trick here is that Clay quickly brings up what Sheri thinks is a secret, so she immediately has to get confrontational.

This scene also reveals a big detail to Clay and the audience - somehow Hannah's tapes weren't circulated in this timeline. That means Sheri's secret remains a secret, she never turned herself in, and that the suppression of the tapes probably resulted in a Butterfly Effect series of different consequences.

INT. LIBERTY HIGH SCHOOL, HALLWAY - ALTERNATE TIMELINE - Another landmark difference exposed right off the bat - here, Bryce is a member of the Hall of Fame and got a full ride to Stanford instead of having a rape conviction, losing a year of his credits and being reassigned to another school.

Tony is also still in school in this timeline. This goes back to something I've discussed before - I wanted a few ways for the audience to know immediately which timeline we were in, at least until they got used to the flip-flopping. Hannah's presence is one such tell and it's also why here Tony is only featured in this timeline. Later, it led to me taking Mrs. Baker out of an alternate timeline sequence because I was already using her in the Prime timeline.

I knew it was safe to assume that Tony would have heard all of the tapes, and so that rationalizes his closeness with Clay. This Tony might not have gone through everything with Clay that we saw in season 1, but he'd still be sympathetic to the kid, particularly where Hannah's concerned.

With Clay/Hannah's part of the scene, I just wanted to plant the thought that "If they woke up together, they definitely went to sleep together and there was probably at least a conversation that led to that.

Tyler's purpose here is pretty self-explanatory and I decided Justin's appearance would have more impact if he first showed up as his cleaner, bro-ier self as opposed to the kinder heroin addict who's been adopted as Clay's brother.

INT. SCHOOL CAFETERIA - ALTERNATE TIMELINE - This is another bit that I think is self-explanatory. Jess is more like the Season 1 incarnation, with the difference here that she was never motivated to speak up about her rape. She mentions Hannah's tapes, and the reason for that is that it felt to me like the more interesting contrast was if she heard the tapes and assumed Hannah was lying AND that she'd done all of this for attention at the expense of the people she named. I liked the idea of Hannah having to deal with some fallout from what she did and it was easy to rationalize the tapes made it to Jess before Tony recovered them.

I also decided I DIDN'T want Tyler to know he'd been fingered as a "reason why," so that left the only wild card being if Alex heard the tapes or not. I had to think a while about what made for the more interesting story. Alex was one of the few people who felt guilty about how he treated Hannah once he heard the tapes. It ate at him so much he attempted suicide. I didn't want this Alex to go that far, largely since we've already seen that and it would put him on too close a path to his counterpart. (Yes, I suppose that since Hannah didn't die, Alex would have substantially less guilt in this timeline.)

It soon became clear the option with the most potential was that only Justin and Jess got the tapes. It denies most of them the context that would make Jess's personality shift more alarming. This also puts this Jess and Alex at more of a distance from each other, another solid contrast from their Prime selves.

By the way, I kinda like writing bitchy Jess. She's TERRIBLE to Hannah, but that conflict usually makes for charged scenes.

INT. BAKER'S DRUG STORE - ALTERNATE TIMELINE - I needed a good act-out and one that threatened the Clay/Hannah relationship seemed to be right on the money. I didn't think it was too much of a stretch that Clay would blunder into upsetting her by bringing up the tapes. Cluelessly, he thinks she's finding it too hard to tell him something she wants to share. He thinks he's helping by saying, "Yeah, I already know everything."

Remember, his last truly significant conversation with Hannah was the night she freaked out. He KNOWS that on the day she tried to kill herself, she told Mr. Porter, "Clay Jensen hates me." In his mind, he failed her that night at the party, both by triggering her and then by not staying and finding a way for her to explain what was going on. He's had a year to think, "I want that night back. I want her to know I understand. I want her to know I care about her and I want to help her."

So that explains his eagerness to deal with the subject, and once he learns she's had a hard time talking about it, his solution is "Let's just get past it. I'll save you the trouble." It's exactly the wrong thing to say. She clearly rethought putting the whole story out there and probably had a lot of relief about not having to deal with everyone hear her pour her heart out.

For me, this feels like what you want in a character conflict - the points of view are established firmly enough that you can understand each side's reactions and the personalities are consistent enough that you understand what motivates them. Here you can see the disconnect in how Clay's brain works and how sometimes he has a blindspot when it comes to understanding Hannah's perspective.

He says the wrong thing in a well-meaning way, she tells him to leave. She's trying to diffuse, he's trying to explain, and in a very Clay-like way, says something else that comes out badly.

For me, this was a scene with pretty clear objectives and it wrote pretty easily. Sometimes the best scenes come from putting characters you know well into a scenario that lands them at cross purposes.

And with that, we've reached the end of Act Two. Tomorrow, Act Three!

Part 7: Act Three Scenes
Part 8: Act Four Scenes
Part 9: When your lead character demands a rewrite
Part 10: Act Five Scenes

Writing a Spec Episode - Part 5: Act One Scenes

Part 1: Finding the Concept
Part 2: Character
Part 3: Story and Theme Development
Part 4: The Break

Next up in this utterly exhaustive look at my process, I thought I might go scene by scene, so that I can illuminate the purpose of each scene and discuss what went into fleshing out my story break.

Download the first draft script here and follow along.

We begin with voiceover from Clay. I landed on this as an opening after wanting to find as many ways as possible to make this feel like a true episode of the show. I've already blown up the format, which has the consequence of making everything from Clay's point of view. That's a pretty serious shift from how earlier seasons, especially the immediately preceding season, were structured. Both season 1 and 2 begin with voiceovers of a sort - first Hannah's then Tyler's. Having Clay speak to the audience while ostensibly speaking to another character felt like a subtle way to connect this opening to the show's roots.

Clay guides us through a series of flashbacks that occurred in the crucial first season episodes 9 through 11. Those shows are where all the dominoes fell that really broke Hannah: Her first hookup with Clay triggered sexual abuse PTSD, resulting in trauma and her alienating a boy she really likes. She witnessed Jessica's rape and was powerless to act, and after that she was in a car accident that set the stage for a later, fatal accident that killed another student. It's the one night that changed everything for everybody - everything goes back to that night at Jess's party.

It felt right to me to set this "season premiere" one year after that party, at the end of summer just before school starts. That not only gave him something to talk about with his therapist - dealing with the anniversary of such a loaded event, the first one that will set off a series of anniversary reminders of Hannah's suicide - but it also gave me fodder for later scenes.

Clay's talking here about how much he's thought about how things could have gone differently that night, setting up the premise of him getting to experience an alternate timeline. There was one thing that concerned me - as I said, there were plenty of reasons to showcase the anniversary of the party, but would an audience be confused by an opening that was about "What if the party went differently" and then ten pages later, they're given an alternate timeline, but one not specifically borne of that scenario?

I didn't want the audience to be confused, thinking that Clay's opening speech is preparation for exactly how the Alternate Timeline saw events play out. On the other hand, if EXACTLY what Clay is obsessing over becomes the world he enters, that seems to make a stronger statement that the alternate world is a figment of his imagination.

In the end, I liked the therapist pushing him to confront that first anniversary, so I decided to ride that horse. I figure if too many readers report being confused on this point, I can always pull back on the flashbacks.

(Oh, and I'm not going to call out EVERY inside joke, but Dr. Liz Duffield is named for two writers I know via Twitter who also happen to be 13 Reasons Why fans - Liz Hannah (THE POST) and Brian Duffield (the upcoming SPONTANEOUS, which happens to star Katherine Langford.) I couldn't resist the inside joke.)

Therapy scenes can often be an easy way of getting characters to talk about their feelings. It's also a trap where things can come out too on the nose. I decided Clay would be in a place where he accepts he needs help and that he'd even be able to share the things he expects he'd have to. But I also feel like Clay might be saying things in there he wants to believe more than he actually believes them. We saw last season he went a little overboard on research when he tried to help Skye. I didn't see any reason he wouldn't do the same for himself, and figured he might even try to convince himself of a catharsis even if he hadn't arrived at that emotional place yet.

Clay saying the anniversary of the party is going to be hard is true, but it's not what he's really at therapy for. He's there to work through why it's hard and everything he feels about that night that isn't obvious. At this point, he's only willing to go so far. He's guarded but he THINKS he's being forthcoming. There's a meta-awareness of how this conversation is supposed to go, and to an extend, Clay's following that script, probably on a subconscious level. I wanted the therapist to call him out on that a little bit, and I decided that was probably as far as she should get in this first scene.

INT. CLAY'S BEDROOM - I wanted a transition between the therapy session and Clay going to see Jessica. So there was a turn here, I decided that Clay would be leaning towards not going to Jess, avoiding memories of the party, and then have him swayed by something. Eventually I landed on a small moment - Clay seeing a memento from the Spring Fling, where all the kids really supported each other.

In season one, Clay was pretty much an outsider among his peers. Season two started chipping away at that, finally reaching a point in the final third where most of the kids on the tapes show up at Jess's in a show of solidarity and support before she testifies. That moment is the first real moment where the audience senses, "These kids have a bond," and that feeling is reinforced several times in the season two finale. Calling back to that seemed like a good way to get the audience in the right emotional headspace.

EXT./INT. JESSICA'S HOUSE  - Since half the script was going to take place in an alternate timeline where these kids aren't all close, I really wanted to use this first act to showcase their friendly relationships. Ergo, Clay arrives to find everyone else had the same idea about supporting Jess on this difficult anniversary.

This also presented opportunities to establish things about these characters that will be contrasted by their alternate versions. That drove some of this, such as:

- Alex showing off his cane trick is something I conceived just so there'd be a memorable reminder of his physical state here. His alternate doppelganger never attempted suicide, so he'll still be fully mobile and unimpaired.

- Alex and Jess are a couple in the Prime timeline, but won't be together in the other one. I wanted to make sure that was something that stood out.

- Courtney is a member of the group in this timeline, but in the other one, she's a shallow phony. Alternate Courtney is like a more terrible version of Buffy's Cordelia. I was bummed I couldn't find a way to make that play more here, but was less upset when I realized I didn't really have a place for a "bitchy Courtney" scene later in the script.

- Sheri is a bit more hardened and reserved due to her time in juvie.

So I wanted to show as many of those interactions as I could and I wanted this "party" scene to feel different from Jess's last party. No beer, no loud music, no loud crowds. It was going to be a more intimate setting where they just did silly things and had fun. That's why I have them playing "Mafia" and not beer pong.

I briefly had them doing karaoke too, but that became a tool in procrastination as I tried to figure out the perfect song for each of them to sing. (The winning idea probably would have been Jess and Sheri dueting on "What is this Feeling?" from Wicked, but I shelved the gag when I worried I was getting too indulgent.)

I want to talk about this sequence as a whole because it went through several permutations. I went into the writing of this thinking it was my big chance to show I could write the whole ensemble and I was determined to give everyone their moment there. Aside from the aforementioned karaoke scene, I had other things like Zach and Ryan competing against each other in Charades; a Sheri/Courtney moment where Courtney's trying hard to be friendly to Sheri, but Sheri's defenses are up and she all but flat-out says she doesn't trust Courtney isn't still the conniving two-face she was in season one; and I kept trying to squeeze in a conversation between Clay and Alex.

Very few of these pages survived long before I realized none of it was particularly working. I felt like I was trying to force fun into the scenes instead of the scenes themselves emerging as fun, to say nothing of the fact it was too long. Way too long. Thus, I did what I usually do when I feel like I'm forcing pages - I took a long walk and by the time I was done, I figured out what I needed to do.

The scenes were trying to do much. Once I freed myself of trying to give everyone their moment, I was able to refocus on what the scenes needed to accomplish. Clay was getting lost while everyone else was taking over. So I started pruning away scenes that mattered the least. Courtney/Sheri's moment became Clay/Sheri's scene together, where I could still showcase her attitude while keeping Clay's story in mind. Zach and Ryan became casualties as I realized I had very little for their alternate counterparts to do that would contrast with this.

And once I did that, the stuff with Alex and Jess worked better - especially since I realized I should have Clay start picking up on every little hint of the Alex/Jess/Justin triangle. That made it part of something bigger - Clay noticing the pieces - rather than just playing the discord without anyone noticing.

I'll be honest, I'm still not satisfied with this sequence at Jess's house. There are moments I like, but I can't help but feel there's a better version of all of this that comes closer to giving everyone their due. This isn't quite there yet. I feel like it's better than the "Here's the bad version" sequence, but it's not as flawless as it needs to be.

INT. JESSICA'S HOUSE, KITCHEN - This scene is here to reinforces the Sheri/Clay connection we've seen throughout the first two seasons. I wanted someone to acknowledge that this was a pretty shitty night for Sheri too and also call back again to what she lost in the past year. Obviously this could work to set up a Sheri/Clay/Hannah triangle down the line too. Beyond that, Sheri's one of my favorite of the second-tier cast and I wanted to play with her a little.

INT. JESSICA'S HOUSE, LIVING ROOM - This scene's here because I again wanted to push the Clay/Jess friendship. I like the idea that these two would be looking out for each other in the coming weeks (maybe because it's easier for them to worry about the other one than worry about themselves.) Also, it's a way of getting out in front of the audience that Tony's MIA.

INT. CLAY'S HOUSE, BEDROOM - Note that I use Clay's last line in the prior scene, about Sheri, as a way of transitioning to this scene, which starts with Sheri's arrival. Always look for transitions. They certainly help the read. A friend of mine once pointed out that a lot of my scenes in a particular script ended with questions, and the next scene would always have a connection to that question, even if it wasn't obvious at the time. In more subtle cases, you can use the question ending one scene to direct the audience's perception of the next scene.

Here we further unpack what the last year cost Sheri, how much of her life and innocence was destroyed as a result of the accident and from her secret getting out via the tapes. It's there for the contrast with Alternate Sheri. This is also why I had her open up to him about her sexual assault, so when Clay meets the other Sheri, he instantly understands just how much Sheri was punished for her mistake.

Also, because she has just opened up to him about sexual assault, I made sure that Clay was cautious in how he reacted. He's awkward about touching her not because he's awkward around girls, but more because he's thinking of how Hannah was triggered last year by their contact. His conflict here is balancing that concern with the very human urge to comfort someone in pain.

This is why Sheri makes the first move. Did she go there with the intent to get involved physically? Well, she snuck in a window after midnight, so I doubt the possibility of a hookup was entirely out of her mind.

I wanted this scene to end with him in bed with Sheri so that in the morning, he'd have to quickly hide his bed companion.

INT. CLAY'S HOUSE, BEDROOM - MORNING - Clay falls asleep, wakes up, and has to hide the girl in his bed very quickly before his father sees. This is all in service of giving Alternate Hannah an entrance. She comes out from under the covers and Clay gets the shock of his life.

Here's an interesting thing - if we were doing this for a network show, this would be the commercial break. Where within the scene would you place the break?

1. After Hannah is first revealed
Pros: It's a big shock as we go into commercial. The audience doesn't have time for that to wear off before asking "What's next?"

Cons: We've seen Clay interact with versions of Hannah that aren't there before so going out on that beat might have a "been there, done that" feeling AND leave the audience with doubt that this really is Hannah.

2. After Clay notes the scars on Hannah's wrists
Pros: It's a big visual moment. It also communicates story - we see that she at least attempted suicide but somehow survived. That's a big thing to leave the audience pondering during the break.

Cons: Is it confusing to throw that much at the audience at once?

3. After Hannah leaves
Pros: It means we experience the Hannah/Clay reunion as one complete scene instead of building an artificial break for commercials.

Cons: Leaving after the scene has ended means that we don't have the most compelling hook as we go into commercial.

This is why I'd go with #2. It feels like the point where tension and shock are at their highest.

Beyond that, this scene doesn't establish much beyond "Hannah's alive" and "She's comfortable enough with Clay to at least stay over in his bed, fully clothed."

Next week, we'll cover the rest, starting with Act Two.

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