scifi or Good writers

[RobertScorpio]

By definition, I suppose, those who write for STAR TREK-TV are scifi writers. But sometimes I think they are hired for being writers first, not true-and-true scifi writers.

Do you think that any future Trek series or Movie should be written by a proven Scifi writer, or someone who can take budgets into mind and how TV shows are produced?

Rob
Scorpio

 

[Warp Coil]

Producers produce. Writers write. The writers shouldn't be thinking about budgets and production schedules - that's someone else's job.

As for what type of writer to hire, I honestly don't think Trek needs a "true sci-fi" writer. I'd rather have someone who can write compelling stories and rich characters. The "sci fi" element is something that can be incorporated as needed. And really, I'd love to see a Trek episode that avoids most of the sci-fi cliches that we've seen so often (time travel, wormholes, spacial anomalies, technobabble).

 

[JiNX-01]

TOS scripts were often produced by actual sci fi writers.

 

[Rhaenys]

I think Star Trek needs both. Of course, it needs good writers. But it also needs writers who knows how to write sci fi. They don't have to have much experience in that, but they needs to know how to write good and interesting sci fi.
Because I don't want another sci fi drama like Galactica. Star Trek must have real sci fi stories, not just sci fi elements incorporated in drama stories just for the reason that they can say: "It's Star Trek, it's sci fi."

If they ever do a new series, one of the most important things for them must be IMO to find good writers who know how to write sci fi.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I totally agree Rhaenys...great post..

Rob

 

[Mysterion]

Both. I don't think good TV writing and good SF are necessarily mutually exclusive.

When and/or if they do another ST series they need to hire someone like David Gerrold (say...David Gerrold, even) to helm it. He understands what makes good science fiction, he understands what makes good television, and he understands what makes good Star Trek. Hire him, and give him a free hand to hire the people he wants/needs.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Producers produce. Writers write. The writers shouldn't be thinking about budgets and production schedules - that's someone else's job.

And that's completely wrong.

Writers who don't write with an eye to the practical demands of production - budgets, schedules, available resources of all kinds - don't turn in useable scripts. The desirability of writer familiarity with the production requirements of a given TV series is one reason among several for the decades-long movement toward staff-written dramas over the once-widespread use of free lance writers.

One of the biggest mistakes made by writers pitching or submitting spec material to "Star Trek" was ignoring the show's production requirements in favor of their storytelling vision. The sf writers who worked most successfully on the shows (possible exception of Ellison) took pains to understand what could and couldn't be done and "solved production problems in their typewriters."

Now, most of the Trek episodes that are most durable, IMAO, were written by people with previous experience and enthusiasm for science fiction and fantasy - Jerry Sohl, Jerome Bixby, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, Norman Spinrad, Richard Matheson...

 

[TGTheodore]

Producers produce. Writers write. The writers shouldn't be thinking about budgets and production schedules - that's someone else's job.

Teleplays and screenplays are different animals. Rhythm, structure, pacing. You're writing to be SEEN, not writing to be READ. It's a totally different format and approach to get the final product.

Also, it's not an "earn while you learn" proposition. You have to already know how to write for TV (including budgets and other limitations peculiar to a specific show) or you won't get hired. Period. Producers produce, but they only hire writers who CAN write TV (unless you're SO amazing that they're willing to help you).

Crossing over from one form to another is difficult but many have done it. (Novelists tend to write excellent stage directions in scripts.) But you'll notice most of those crossovers occurred in early Trek when the business was a lot less complicated.

Now writing the STORY for a TV script is different than writing the actual script, but you still need to know pacing, act breaks, developing and resolving arcs in a specific length of time, etc. In sci-fi TV you more often see different story and screenplay credits for the same episode than in almost any other TV genre.

Writing for series TV is much more restrictive than writing prose (storywise and structurewise). They're both extremely hard to do well, and have their own plusses and minuses creatively.

--Ted

 

[Maurice]

I don't know that novelists tend to write great stage directions. The few screenplays I've seen written by novelists are excessively action slug heavy. And, frankly, most directors ignore excessive stage direction. As such, it's best to be clear, short and concise about what happens in the scene because busy production people glance right over detailed action slugs, and they often end up staging the action very differently than written, often changing the meaning of a scene because they miss some nuance.

I never got that writers have so much trouble with the limitations of TV. You just ask, "Ok, how many standing sets do we have, how many can I use in one episode, and how many characters can I have outside the regular cast?" If you keep those restrictions in mind and don't go crazy with elaborate action sequences or effects, you're most of the way there in terms of practicality.

Back to the subject: the problem with not having writers or producers who are conversant with the science fiction idiom is that you end up with scrips written by people who don't know what actually makes the medium what it is. You then risk ending up with fantasy disguised as sci-fi (the technobabble hand-wavium solution for "a wizard did it") or conventional stories told against sci-fi set wallpaper. I'm not saying *any* SF writer is going to be immune to the above, but some of them can set the bar and introduce concepts that other writers can pick up on.

If you know what neutronium actually is, its sheer mass and the gravity it would generate, that can itself suggest things that could happen within a story, whereas if you don't know what it is then it's just really tough stuff (actually incorrect), and nowhere near as interesting story-wise. Think of the current craze of saying everything is done with nano-machines or nano-probes. Ask those writers what nanotech actually is and most of them won't have a clue. It's "magic"...the infamous "tech tech tech" justification for anything the writer wants to happen, no matter how implausible.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

In fact, TNG got script submissions from writers who somehow figured that a holodeck episode featuring an exotic locale would cost less than a "planet story" with the same kind of location. Talk about not getting the mechanics...

 

[TGTheodore]

I don't know that novelists tend to write great stage directions. The few screenplays I've seen written by novelists are excessively action slug heavy. And, frankly, most directors ignore excessive stage direction. As such, it's best to be clear, short and concise about what happens in the scene because busy production people glance right over detailed action slugs, and they often end up staging the action very differently than written, often changing the meaning of a scene because they miss some nuance.

I never got that writers have so much trouble with the limitations of TV.

Like limiting stage directions?

Stage directions are pivotal in enhancing character. Also actions within the stage directions are pivotal for pacing, tempo, feeling and even the visual style.

A good director will pay very close attention to the stage directions rather than dismiss them and do what they want to do. Especially since by the time the director even SEES the script, it's gone through polishes and approvals by the story editor and producers. This is episodic television, not features.


--Ted

 

[SFRabid]

I had no idea a TV script had so many rules and restrictions until I looked into converting an series of stories I was working on for the internet into TV script format. Breaking the stories up into pre-measured blocks of time was bad enough. I cannot imagine having to write for something like Star Trek where you also have to worry about canon, budget, using pre-existing personality type and linguistic styles, the confines of what you are allowed to do with or to a character, trying to avoid recreating a previously used story line when you don't have time to watch all of the previous episodes. It has to be harder to write a script for a TV show that you don't normally work on than it is to write a novel.

 

[Maurice]

I don't know that novelists tend to write great stage directions. The few screenplays I've seen written by novelists are excessively action slug heavy. And, frankly, most directors ignore excessive stage direction. As such, it's best to be clear, short and concise about what happens in the scene because busy production people glance right over detailed action slugs, and they often end up staging the action very differently than written, often changing the meaning of a scene because they miss some nuance.

I never got that writers have so much trouble with the limitations of TV.

Like limiting stage directions?

Stage directions are pivotal in enhancing character. Also actions within the stage directions are pivotal for pacing, tempo, feeling and even the visual style.

A good director will pay very close attention to the stage directions rather than dismiss them and do what they want to do. Especially since by the time the director even SEES the script, it's gone through polishes and approvals by the story editor and producers. This is episodic television, not features.


--Ted

Which still doesn't make me believe novelists end to write good stage directions. Go an example? The examples I've seen aren't good.