Michael Jamin has been writing for TV for decades, and has just published his first book of humorous short stories, A Paper Orchestra.
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Michael Jamin had been writing sitcoms for TV for more than 25 years when he decided he wanted to write personal essays. He said, "I’ve long been a fan of David Sedaris. I just love the way he tells stories. And then at one point, I remember thinking a few years ago, ‘what if I did that?’" This would be a change for someone who says, "I write what people pay me to write."
At first, Michael thought this would be easy. He was a writer, after all, used to telling humorous stories for TV. "I’m a TV writer. It’s still writing." But as he discovered after spending some time reading David Sedaris’ stories, being moved by their endings, he realized that "This is going to be so much harder than I thought."
Michael had to find his own voice after years of writing in the voices of characters on TV shows. "As a TV writer, we’re paid to be mimics. So my job is to capture the voice of whatever character is on the show, capture the tone of the show." When he started writing, he was happy with the results, but then, "I set them aside, and then I reread them with fresh eyes a few weeks later. And I hated them. They were terrible. I felt like I was just trying to sound like [David Sedaris]."
Michael discussed what it’s like to write stories. "When you write any kind of story, you have three problems. You’ve got to create characters. You have to come up with a story for those characters. And then you have to figure out how best to unpack the details of the story to make it engaging." These are the basics, but "when you’re writing about yourself, you don’t have to create the character that’s you. You don’t have to come up with a story. You already lived it. So now you can focus on one thing, which is how best to tell it."
Michael’s stories are about him and his family, some about when he was a child and some as an adult. For the oldest stories, his memories may not be totally accurate, and he talked about a story that took place when he was 10 years old, recounting "dialogue between me and my mom. I don’t remember exactly what either of us said, but I can tell you how I felt in that scene. And so it’s easy to recreate the dialogue based on how I felt."
Since Michael was used to writing for television, with its strict limits on time, I suggested that he could write the stories as long or as short as he wanted. He said, "Ironically, most of my stories, if you were to read them out loud, they time out to about a half hour, which is about the length of a sitcom."
I asked how Michael sequenced the stories. He said he listened to interviews with musicians, and that sequencing stories in a book was similar to determining the order of songs on an album. "I wanted to have a flow of, ‘Okay, here’s a light story. Here’s a heavy one. This one’s really intense. Now we’re going to take a break,’ so that it would feel like a journey."
Scrivener helped Michael during this process. "The drag and drop reordering chapters makes it very easy. I also have notes and comments. I would put my outline in the notes section and then also their comments. I’d make a comment at the end of the line, like, ‘this line, the moment’s not landing. Come back and revisit this or expand on this.’ This made it really helpful for me to give myself notes."
A lot of this process comes from writing for TV. "When I get into someone else’s script, I make tons of notes in the margins. And so when I’m reading myself, I’m giving myself notes."
Michael has also performed these stories live, as stand-up, and recorded an audiobook. I asked about the audiobook recording, and how he dealt with timing, which is so important with humor and comedy. He first recorded the audiobook, and said, "I was performing it as if I was performing on stage; you’re loud, you’re big. But people don’t listen to audiobooks that way. We had to redo the whole thing, to change the tone of my performance, as if I was talking to one person."
I ended our discussion by asking Michael what makes something funny. He said, "Here’s what makes something not funny. Talking about comedy. The worst thing you can do to comedy is explain the joke. So I don’t know what makes something funny. I just know what makes something not funny."
Kirk McElhearn is a writer, podcaster, and photographer. He is the author of Take Control of Scrivener, and host of the podcast Write Now with Scrivener.