I punched Q in the face!

Robert Hewitt Wolfe, TV Writer, Novelist, and Geek Culture Guy

[writergeekrhw]

25 THINGS I’VE LEARNED IN 25 YEARS IN TV WRITING

Well, it’s actually been 30 years now, but here’s a spew I did 5 years ago on the bird app to commemorate my 25 years as a TV writer. 

I’ve edited it a bit for clarity. Hopefully some of you will find it useful.

1. In TV writing (and writing in general) there is only one unbreakable rule: Thou shalt not be boring.

2. Write characters people want to hang out with for an hour or so once a week for years to come. Even if they're bad people, make them interesting, engaging bad people.

3. If your lead is a bad person, make them funny and/or sexy. Direct most of their bad behavior toward other bad people or themselves. Make them well motivated. Maintain rooting interest.

4. What makes a character special should be intertwined with what makes them struggle. Perfect people are boring.

5. Characters should complement/conflict with each other. No two characters should serve the same purpose/have the same backstory/have the same voice.

6. Cast the best actor, adjust the character to suit.

7. Give your leads the best lines/moments. No one is tuning in to watch the funny guest star. Like Garry Marshall said back on HAPPY DAYS, “I’m paying Henry Winkler $25,000 an episode. Give the Fonz the jokes.”

8. Your characters, good & bad, should reflect the reality of our wonderful, diverse world. White male shouldn’t be the default.

9. Avoid stereotypes. Stereotypes are boring.

10. If all your POV characters know some secret, the audience should know it too.

11. If your show hinges on a big mystery, know more or less what the truth is from the beginning. You can change it later if you need to, but write to a specific.

12. If your story doesn’t test your characters mentally, physically, psychologically, emotionally, or spiritually, you don’t have a story.

13. You can start by figuring out the Beginning, the Middle, or the End, but you don’t have an episode until you have all three.

14. Big suspenseful act outs (the last moments before the commercials) aren’t just a gimmick. They’re a good way to structure an hour of entertainment to make sure the audience is invested and your pacing is solid.

15. Every scene should be a consequence of the previous scene or a refutation of it.

16. A scene also needs a Beginning, Middle, and End. The end should propel the characters and/or audience into the next scene.

17. Every scene is a negotiation/confrontation between two or more characters who want different things or have different ideas on how to solve the same problem.

18. A good action scene is still a character scene. With punching. (This applies to sex scenes too, but you know, with sex.)

19. A crap page is better than a blank one.

20. It’s easier to cut than to add.

21. Good things rarely happen in the Writers Room after dinner. Go home, get some rest, write pages at home if you have to, start fresh in the morning.  Writers who have a life outside the writing room are better writers. Beware the showrunner who doesn't want to go home to their family. That said…

22. Script by day one of Pre-Production. No matter what.

23. You’re a writer first. Almost nothing happening on set or in post is more important than the writing. Delegate when possible.

24. Make an extra effort to surround yourself with writers who are different from you (background, race, gender, orientation, etc). Listen to their perspectives, especially on experiences alien to you.

25. And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make. In TV writing and life in general. 

PART TWO HERE:

https://at.tumblr.com/writergeekrhw/25-things-in-25-years-part-2-25-things-ive/okjzwofyiq6i

[aphrostiel]

more kiradax

[hollis-art]

needed new backgrounds for my laptop so i decided to give my favorite guys a beach day :)

[writergeekrhw]

Run 2 Quark's!

[writergeekrhw]

Hi,

It's great to have a screenwriter such as yourself on this site. I have a couple of questions:

1) Were you daunted or excited when you first got to write for such a massive franchise as the Star Trek universe?

2) Star Trek has some of the most devout (and occasionally unforgiving) fans. Have you ever been on the wrong end of this devotion? Have you ever been called out about some minor detail or plot point?

Thanks again for all your insights and advice. I, and all the other writers and fans on here, really appreciate it.

I was excited. It was my first job and I was thrilled to show what I could do, and to get paid as a writer, which probably overshadowed any nervousness I might have felt.

Oh, doubtlessly, but honestly, I don't pay much attention to that sort of thing. I take my lumps for the episodes that were actually, you know, bad. But when it comes to messing up some minor detail, I'll let you in on a little secret. Internal consistency in Star Trek has never been perfect, and after so many episodes, there's no way it actually could be. Which goes double now with the tangle of alternative timelines and parallel universes and time jumps. There's no way it will all ever make sense in every particular detail. So while I always did my best to make things fit into canon, and keep things consistent, if something fell through the cracks, or maybe had to be fudged to make a story work, well, c'est la TV.

[writergeekrhw]

HAPPY 420 🎉 I had a question but I forgot what it was, fittingly. Instead I leave you with the mental image of O'Brien being flabbergasted that his wife is being brought to Odo's office for questioning until he finds out Keiko's been supplying every dealer in or around Bajor's orbit with the most insane botanically engineered trichome-dense Galaxy class kush because she got bored. Morn is her best dealer.

That's not a holiday I celebrate, but it sounds like you had fun.

[pippinstook]

oh sisko i love u like how u love basebal...

[writergeekrhw]

According to Memory Alpha, you were the person on the writing staff who came up with the BTS idea that Odo can store some of his mass in subspace when he shape shifts to things of low mass. This has led over the years to some debate in the fandom as to his communicator when he shape shifts. Some think that he forms a functioning communicator when he takes on his normal appearance. Others think that he stores his communicator away in subspace when it's not part of his appearance. What is your take?

Personally, I think Odo puts his comm-badge in subspace, but it's definitely something we handwaved for the entire run, same as his blatant violations of conversation of mass.

So like this. But seven years instead of five and Odo's ass is multidimensional.

[writergeekrhw]

I dabble with fiction. Although I love characters imbued with a distinct voice, I currently have a cloth ear for dialogue and it makes both the product and the process unsatisfying. How do you go about exercising that muscle?

For me, it helps a lot to speak the lines aloud. That tends to make the voice more "real" for me and easier to keep consistent.

Also, when proofing, I always do at least one pass where I have Word or Final Draft read the script to me. The computer voices they provide aren't very good at playing the emotion of the lines, so it's kind of like having a read-through with terrible actors. The benefit of this, for me, is that it makes awkward phrasings and off lines and mistakes jump out, because they sound wrong.

That's also true for lines that aren't "right" for the character. It just doesn't sound like the character.

Finally, for some people, it helps to picture a specific actor saying the lines. That's a big benefit when on staff for a TV show, because you get used to the actors delivering lines for the characters, and if it doesn't sound right in their voices, it's not right.

Hope that helps!

[writergeekrhw]

In the season 2 episode of DS9 Sanctuary, were any illusions to real life political situations intended?

Honestly, not that I can remember.

[writergeekrhw]

any tips for getting started on a new writing project? My brain gets stuck at the idea of getting into something new, even though I know the answer is "just do it."

My suggestion: If you don't feel ready to start writing, jot down any ideas you have for the project on 3x5 cards. One card per scenes, characters, snippet of prose, whatever comes to mind. (You can use different card colors for different stuff.)

Shuffle the scene cards until they're in an order that seems to make sense. Attach snippets to scenes if it feels right. If you feel the pull of a scene, start writing that one. It doesn't matter where it falls in the story, just write the scene. Maybe it will stick, maybe not, but hey, it's words!

Add cards and/or roughed out scenes whenever you feel called to do so. At some point, you will realize you now have an outline (the scene cards in order) and a bunch of written or partially written scenes. Now you're on your way!

[writergeekrhw]

Really random question: is there still the concept of working overtime by the time of DS9/any other trek, and who among the DS9 crew would do the most overtime, and who would absolutely refuse, and general view on work-life balance if there's such a thing in trek universe?

Hmm, I don't think "working overtime" is a concept in Starfleet. That would imply that people get paid, and get paid extra based on their hours. Starfleet officers do their jobs and take the time needed, while still (hopefully) maintaining a good work/life balance. Meanwhile, Starfleet takes care of all their needs. In a way, all Starfleet personnel are "volunteers." They work from a sense of duty, honor, and personal fulfillment. They don't ever have to worry about money or pay or hours.

Work/life balance is probably still a thing, and finding that right balance is something Starfleet no doubt encourages, at least in peacetime. A personally fulfilled, happy officer is a good officer in Starfleet's mind. I suspect in the Federation, superior officers probably have to encourage people to take leave or not work too much, since everyone loves their jobs, and maybe overdoes it on the work side of the work/life balance.

Hurray post-scarcity socialist space utopia!

Now, if overtime were a thing, I think most of the Starfleet characters on DS9 would work it without complaint. Bashir and Worf would do so without question. Sisko probably works himself to the bone, but he does make sure to carve out time for Jake, his friends, and for other R&R (baseball, cooking, building stuff). O'Brien would pull a ton of OT but probably gripe a bit. He likes to gripe. Griping is one of his hobbies.

The only possible exception, in my mind, would be Dax (both Jadzia and Ezri). Jadzia and Ezri both seem to value their private and recreational time and have very good work/life balance.

[pillowprincessherbertwest]

meeting jeff for the 5th time next week, and I get to tell him all about how woon was my first..Him. asdfghj

[writergeekrhw]

Ok random question: Do you know the romances on DS9 were conceptualized? When I started watching the show I kind of assumed Bashir and (Jadzia) Dax would get together—not because they had chemistry (they didn’t! so not doing that relationship was a good call, lol) but because it seemed like the most obvious place for the story to go. I also recall some veryyyyy early tie-in stuff that loosely hinted at some kind of romance between Kira and Sisko of all people, but I don’t even know if any of this was official or if people just assumed. So I guess my question is, were there any actual pre-planned romances—like, “Bashir and Dax should get together at some point” kind of plans? Or was it more of a “we’ll see what happens with all of these different characters” kind of thing? (I like Kira/Odo but I did get the vibe that it was not planned ahead of time haha)

Early on, I think Michael planned for Bashir and Dax to become a couple once Bashir matured a bit. The chemistry, as you noted, never felt quite right though, so we dropped that pretty early on. I don't think anyone on the staff ever discussed any kind of romance between Kira and Sisko. That just wasn't the kind of relationship we envisioned between them. And Kira and Odo's relationship definitely grew more out of the energy between them in scenes and wasn't initially planned at all.

In the end, what we leaned more into the throw-two-characters-together-and-see-if-it-clicks path toward romance. For example, we created Kasidy as a potential romantic interest for Sisko, though we would've bailed on it pretty quick if the characters didn't have chemistry. Luckily, they did! (But who wouldn't fall for Penny Johnson, really?)

The only romance we semi-planned between regulars was Dax and Worf. We thought they might be a fun couple, so we decided to write scenes for them together and see. And they were great together.

[aphrostiel]

some of my favorite star trek ships

[writergeekrhw]

what is the first thing you remember writing for fun? As in, not for school, but because you wanted to? (Might not have been for fun, might be spite or revenge but I'm hoping you had some fun with it)

I tried to write my first novel (a YA fantasy) at 10 or 11. I took another stab at it around 13 (another YA fantasy) and then a third try when I was 22 (a grimdark fantasy before there was such a thing). I never completed any of them, but I had fun working on them... until I didn't.

It took me until my 50s to finally finish my first novel (THE GOBLIN CROWN, Amazon.com: The Goblin Crown: Billy Smith and the Goblins, Book 1: 9781681626123: Wolfe, Robert Hewitt, Fowler, Tom: Books) and get it published. Novels are hard, man.

I do think the one I worked on in my 20s might be worth digging up and dusting off if I can find it. So thanks for making me think of that!

[aphrostiel]

kira on my sketchbook

[writergeekrhw]

Okay, so Curzon Dax was the ambassador to the Klingons for decades. Lwaxana Troi's career had to have some overlap, which means they surely were invited to the same diplomatic events.

One: Did they fuck? (I assume yes, given the characters as we know them.)

Two: When did Jadzia drop this bit of information on Worf?

ONE: Maybe? I mean, it seems highly likely and completely in character for both of them. Although, neither Jadzia nor Lwaxana mentioned it when Lwaxana visited the station, and neither of them is particularly discrete. Which speaks against it. I'd say, could go either way.

TWO: I feel like Jadzia knew what a baby Worf could be about her past lovers (witness "Let He Who is Without Sin"), so I doubt she'd just be: "Hey, babe, FYI I slept with your ex's mom in a past life." Probably she would only confirm something like this if Worf asked. Which I doubt he would've. All of which makes me guess that if Lwaxana and Curzon got down, the answer to Two is: Never.