The Briefest of Briefings

Hailing Frequencies #3, 3.29.24

Hail and well-met, fellow travelers. And Good Friday, to those who celebrate.

Welcome back to Hailing Frequencies. This week’s edition will be a touch shorter than the last, if only because I have a bit of work to accomplish today. So without further ado…

THIS WEEK IN REVIEW

Last week, I shared a (somewhat redacted) look at my current slate of projects, in hopes to provide a window into the creative process and my life as a professional writer and showrunner. A few of those projects had some updates this week.

PROJECT GLITTERING is inching forward. I’m currently in the research phase, reading through the book series and gathering my thoughts for meetings with the producers. I’ve always found adaptation to be a tricky beast, but a rewarding one that I’ve been told I’m rather adept at.

Obviously, television and film are not the same medium as prose — timing, length, and narrative focus are all are intricately intwined when transposing a story from one format to the other, but they require a different emphasis because they are built to accomplish different things. In film and TV, I’ve found as long as you present the most evocative version of the powerful moments in your hero’s journey, find ways to treasure the spirit and tone of the original material — while taking full advantage of the visual medium to do so— it will inevitably come out how audiences want it to. Sometimes a sound, an image or an expression can evoke a thousand words, which frees you up and allows you to focus on character.

It’s also fun to find little things that are alluded to or hinted at in the books and bring them forward in ways that perhaps the readers will be excited to discover — or even add notions or ideas that fit cleanly into the world, but haven’t been touched on.

PROJECT COVE has been approved by the studio to move on to scripting the pilot, which I am grateful for. It’s a story we’ve been developing for a couple of years now in various iterations, so to finally get it to the page should hopefully be an enjoyable endeavor. I’ve found as much as ink that you can spill talking about how great a show will be in the pitching of it, it’s always far more effective to just write the story. So this will be taking some of my focus this week.

PROJECT FIRMAMENT is also about to move to pilot. Perhaps more on that next week!

A LITTLE Q&A

First, a quick thank you to the website Red Shirts Always Die for giving this newsletter a shoutout. I will admit, it’s always a bit of a jump scare when I see my name in a headline — but this was a positive surprise.

I received quite a few Q&A questions this week, so any I don’t cover in this installment I will likely do in the next edition. So stay tuned!

Commander Meg asks,

In Tales of Arcadia, would another sun (like another planet’s sun) have the same effect on trolls?

Let me first caveat this by saying I have a personal head canon, and then there is the “official” canon of what’s appeared on-screen. This is my own thinking on the matter.

Tales of Arcadia is a science fantasy series at heart, so we often found ourselves constructing elaborate magic rules, while relishing the inherent fun of it feeling rather overwhelming for a teenaged boy who was suddenly thrust into it. I always loved Ursula K. LeGuin’s take on magic systems in A Wizard of Earthsea, which insisted that concepts in themselves hold a kind of totemic power — and the naming of a thing is the key to evoking said power. To that end, I think daylight is daylight, and the destructive power that the sun might have on magical creatures like trolls is not limited to our sun. Most everyone anywhere in the galaxy see it as such, and so it is.

When mixing sci-fi into the brew, we also subscribed to the Arthur C. Clarke philosophy — namely, that science, sufficiently advanced, would be indistinguishable from magic. To that end, you could also use Superman rules. Kryptonian biology (and the powers therein) operates as a kind of solar battery via photosynthesis. And Superman can get his powers from any yellow sun.

John Little asks,

If I’ve written a couple of pilot scripts, should I try sending them off places, or is it better to write spec scripts and hope you can land an WA position these days?

A few showrunners have differing opinions on the matter, but I believe the conventional wisdom is still to write a couple of original pilot samples that showcase your strengths in the genre of your choosing. There are a few EPs out there that still prefer spec scripts, so it doesn’t hurt to have at least one solid spec script in your quiver of a show that’s on the air. As for sending it out, most would agree that getting a manager or an agent is the main avenue for that. Obviously, if you happen to know someone who is willing and has the time to read your script (ask first!), take them up on the offer. Likewise, if there is an opening for a writing support job, jump on it. I should say, though, that those are exceedingly rare, especially now. So don’t be discouraged if you can’t find any.

Never, ever, ever send your scripts or ideas unsolicited, though. For legal reasons, writers and producers cannot read everything they receive because any similarities to existing projects put them in jeopardy. Professionals must and will delete unsolicited material. If you or your reps ask politely, and they are interested and tell you to send, then do so.

Mark Wrote That asks,

If you could serve as a cadet under any series regular captain, who would it be and why?

If it’s on the actual Star Trek series, I would probably say Captain Jean-Luc Picard — if only because the Enterprise-D seems like a really cozy place for young people to traverse the cosmos. I know Picard was infamously uncomfortable dealing with children, at least at first… but he gets better.

I think Captains Sisko and Janeway were also wonderful with their younger crew, but the series location gives me pause. I wouldn’t especially want to earn my pips in the brutality of the Dominion War or stuck in the Delta Quadrant.

ONE COOL THING

I recently began playing Helldivers 2, a multiplayer game newly released on PC and Playstation. Anyone who knows me is well aware I have a soft spot for the works of Paul Verhoeven, and his take on Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers is no exception — it made a profound impression on me as a young man. Verhoeven’s over-the-top satire of jingoism is on full display in the game clearly inspired by it.

I’m not endorsing violence, but… the dark humor is hard to ignore. The name generator allowed me to name my ship The Elected Representative of Wrath.

Have a great weekend,

Aaron J. Waltke

Glendale, CA

3.29.24