{"id":1309,"date":"2007-06-22T08:44:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-22T15:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2007\/06\/22\/jane-espensons-writing-exercise\/"},"modified":"2007-06-22T08:44:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-22T15:44:00","slug":"jane-espensons-writing-exercise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2007\/06\/22\/jane-espensons-writing-exercise\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Espenson’s Writing Exercise"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m doing Script Frenzy<\/a> this month, which means writing a 20,000-word screenplay in 30 days; and the magic words “quantity, not quality” also appeared in Jane’s “I Guess He Really Can’t Drive”<\/a> blog post yesterday. So here I am to write some punchlines. Brace yourself.<\/p>\n

First, with the set-up “Are you wearing that?”:<\/p>\n

MAN
Are you wearing that?
WOMAN
No, I just couldn’t find another hanger.<\/p>\n

MAN
Are you wearing that?
WOMAN
Why, do you want to trade outfits?<\/p>\n

MAN
Are you wearing that?
WOMAN
Someone didn’t do the laundry yesterday like I asked him to.<\/p>\n

(Okay, switch!)<\/p>\n

WOMAN
Are you wearing that?
MAN
What? Do these shorts not go with this bow tie?<\/p>\n

WOMAN
Are you wearing that?
MAN
Barely.<\/p>\n

WOMAN
Are you wearing that?
MAN
Well, I wanted to wear the Klingon costume, but I couldn’t find the plastic forehead.<\/p>\n

Okay, let’s try the other set-up:<\/p>\n

MAN
Is this ketchup?
WOMAN
As far as you know.<\/p>\n

MAN
Is this ketchup?
WOMAN
No, it’s “freedom sauce.”<\/p>\n

MAN
Is this ketchup?
WOMAN
Do I look like a food critic?<\/p>\n

(Switch!)<\/p>\n

WOMAN
Is this ketchup?
MAN
I choose to believe that it is.<\/p>\n

WOMAN
Is this ketchup?
MAN
Sure, why not.<\/p>\n

WOMAN
Is this ketchup?
MAN
We ran out of salsa.<\/p>\n

Wow, some of those are really strange without any context. I almost want to continue writing the scene for a few of them.<\/p>\n

~CKL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m doing Script Frenzy this month, which means writing a 20,000-word screenplay in 30 days; and the magic words “quantity, not quality” also appeared in Jane’s “I Guess He Really Can’t Drive” blog post yesterday. So here I am to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[13,56,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-tv","category-writing"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}