A good script needs more than just lucky charms

A new jacket won't make bad writing or a poor show any better,

One afternoon this week I went out and bought an expensive pen. I carried it back to my hotel room – I’m in New York right now, preparing to shoot the first episode of a new series – and then went out to buy something new to wear. A new shirt, I was thinking, or a new blazer – it didn’t really matter what, so long as it was new.

I have a reading of the first episode of this new series in a few days, and when it comes to the beginnings of things like this, I’ve always followed three superstitions.

First, I get a new pen. A heavy one – something that feels substantial, like an anchor in my pocket.

Second, I make sure that I’m wearing something new. Back in the 1990s, when I was living on a studio deal (that turned out to be economically unsustainable), the new piece of clothing was often some kind of blazer from Italian craftsmen. In those days Italian craftsmen apparently kept track of how much Los Angeles comedy writers who are terrible with money were willing to pay for jackets they could wear only a few times a year in the Los Angeles climate.

As a result, I have a wardrobe full of very nice cashmere jackets reflecting the various styles that were in fashion from the early 1990s until about 2010.

But times are different now, and with a nod to the ever-thinner margins on which most major television studios and networks now operate – and the correspondingly smaller pay packets for writers and producers like me – I went to the most expensive men’s store in Manhattan, Bergdorf Goodman on the corner of 58th Street and 5th Avenue, and bought a pair of socks.

They were expensive socks, naturally – hey, I’m not a monk – but they were within the range of the new realities of show business. Also they were new, the only thing that really mattered in this.

So now I have two of my three good luck charms lined up and ready for deployment a few days from now, when the first reading is scheduled.

The third one is a little trickier.

I’m aware, I promise, that good luck charms don’t really work. Objects and rituals like this may give me comfort or confidence – and those aren’t small things, I know – but they’re not actually going to weave some kind of magic spell over the proceedings and ward off vampires. If I’m missing a really good third act, my new socks aren’t going to write it for me. If some of the jokes misfire, my pen won’t come to life and begin to dance merrily over the script, punching up dialogue and trimming extra words. I’m going to have to do that sort of thing myself.

And that’s where my third good luck charm comes in:

Before the reading, probably sometime tomorrow, I’ll sit down in a quiet place and tell myself the story of the first episode, out loud. In other words, I’ll pitch my script to myself. I’ll do this a couple of times, until I really know it.

This sounds odd, of course – I wrote it! How could I not know it? – and if anyone saw me doing it they’d think I’d lost my mind. But for me it’s the only way, after months of casting and preproduction and rewrites and adjustments, to remember what show I’m trying to do.

When production kicks in – when the cameras start rolling and actors start speaking the lines – it’s awfully easy to forget the point of the script. When bits of dialogue – or, sometimes, even whole scenes – don’t work and things need to be rewritten and adjusted, the key is to know what’s adjustable and what isn’t. And the only way to confidently open up a script and start digging around in its guts is, first, you have to know what is the real story you’re telling.

I write it down. On paper. With my new, heavy pen. And I carry it around with me – in fatter times, in the silky smooth vest pocket of an expensive Kiton blazer. In more recent times, in the front pocket of my jeans.

And I look at it, reread it, and – irritatingly, to my colleagues in the rewrite session – even recite it out loud, with other people in the room, before making changes to it.

It’s easy for all of us, I suppose, to get off track, to lose the thread of the story we’re trying to tell. But if you’re willing to look silly by talking to yourself in public, and happy to annoy your colleagues by telling the entire story over again just to figure out if it matters if the character drives a BMW or a Porsche, then it’s hard to really veer off course.

The pen and the socks, of course, may not be as effective. But I’m not willing to test that.

Rob Long is a writer and producer based in Hollywood

On Twitter: @rbcl