What is a Spec Script?

        The most effective way to show your prowess in the field of television writing is to write a spec script.  Spec means; to specifications, or something speculative, or a gamble.  All of the aforementioned are definitions that apply to a spec script.  It is a writing sample to be introduced to potential agents and buyers of your work.  The script will be wholly a figment of your imagination as applied to an existing cast and an existing franchise.  You develop the story and the structure and insert them into an ongoing series.  For a television writer they are perhaps the most important scripts you will ever write.  It may also be the first script you ever write, as it is almost unheard of that a writer not from another medium is paid to write his first script for the screen.

        In order to obtain work you must prove that you can write well.  That you are facile and fast, understand structural necessities, have an instinct for emulation, the ability to structure a scene, can promote momentum for the story, and have an ear for honest dialogue that fits well into the mouth of the character at hand, as well as serves the tenor of the scene, and promotes exposition.  If you can put it all together in a spec script or three, really make it play, eventually you will begin your career.  If you can make it play, you can make it pay.

        Deciding which show to write your spec script for is as easy as flipping the clicker.  Write what you watch.  Write what you are a fan of.  Write your favorite show.  Better yet write a show you love.  Since you are not being paid, its the only thing that makes any sense.  My first spec script was an episode of my absolute favorite of all time television series.  Lou Grant.  Circa 1980.  The late great, Leon Tokatyan, and the very talented, Michelle Gallery, taught me through their wonderful, warm, funny, incisive, human style how to write for TV.  They are the writers I emulated first.

        At the time my partner and then wife Jessica Klein and I were so naive we still were not aware that scripts could be bought.  So in order to create a sample for ourselves to peruse, we audio tape recorded (there were as yet no home VCR's on the market) an episode of the show and then transcribed it into a script format, filling in locations, and screen direction as we went along.  The dialogue came right from the audio cassette.  For us it was a very effective way of capturing the essence of that show on paper.

        It was a very successful spec script along with an episode of Fame we wrote that same year.  However in both cases the shows were canceled within a season or two of our writing those scripts and our specs became cold.  No one wants to read a show that is no longer running.  So try and pick a show that looks like it might have a decent shelf life.

        Try and procure a copy of a shooting script from the show you wish to write from a script service.  It will save you the awkward step I described above.  As writing for an existing TV series is largely the product of a successful emulation, an existing script of the real thing will be very helpful as a road map for the show's structure, and style, and generally a tremendous guideline for your effort.  Often if read as an accompaniment to the episode you will also get to see what hit the cutting room floor.

        Don't write what you think the show is or should be.  Write what the show is.  Write for the show and the producer, not for yourself.  I can most adequately describe what I'm talking about here by sighting the spec scripts which I read while on 90210.  Especially among the younger writers the dialogue was very glib and very hip.  Too glib and too hip.  The specs were full of things the writers thought they saw, or thought they heard.  Actually the dialogue for the 90210 characters was very down to earth and not given to trendiness or fads.  The younger writers aspiring to write the show tried to push every hip thing they ever heard or said.  It wasn't the show.

        The idea here is to write a script that tastes, smells, looks and feels like the real thing.  So good in fact that the reader will swear he has seen it.  If anyone after reading your spec script ever says that he can see it, or thinks he has seen it, you will know that you have had at least a modicum of success.  I once was hired to write a pilot because the producer had really liked our episode of LA LAW.  He was certain it had been filmed and aired.  We didn't have the heart to tell him it was a spec script.  When we finally told him he hit the ceiling, but that's what agents are for.  And that's another story.

Good luck on your spec script!

Steve Wasserman

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(C)Copyright 1998-2005 Steve Wasserman & Donald McMurray