Page 25 of How To Plot a Payback

Only, with Higher Stakes being a drama, we didn’t have live audiences like they do on Neighbors. Still. It seems unnatural and unhealthy for the writers to look this intense, this on edge over a line needing adjustments on a Monday morning, when this script still has weeks to go before it’s polished, given the stamp of approval from an executive producer, and shipped off into the cast’s hands.

Nobody’s neck is on the line here.

It’s 9:32 a.m.

Right?

I glance over at Paula, and she raises one brow as though to say, Well, what happened to you? I reply with a slight shake of the head.

So much for good impressions.

I spent all weekend preparing for this very moment. After repeating the entire account to Paula five times and managing to sink into Paula’s head what Mr. Goodwin had really offered to me, to us, I zipped home and spent every waking minute planning.

Walked around with my laptop and notebook, playing Neighbors day and night, catching myself up. Scribbled notes. Drew the story arc of each and every character. Filled out character descriptions. Researched Seattle and the surrounding areas. Tried to catch up on all I’d missed the past decade.

Tried to learn the idiosyncrasies of the show. To catch the rhythm, the undercurrent. To know where I needed to begin in order to let future ideas flow.

Slept little. Wrote and brainstormed much.

Came up with a dozen trails on which to take the show, and a dozen more that were decent enough for the back burner. My laptop bag is full of them.

Frankly, that brainstorming wall of theirs looks like child’s play next to what I put up at home.

But it was necessary.

Because in addition to being a perfectionist in my work, the one tiny thing Mr. Goodwin still doesn’t know about me is that until yesterday I was the only person in very likely the whole of America who had not watched a single episode. Not one.

Three years ago, I woke up in hospital from appendicitis surgery to Lavender’s face on the telly in my room, and I yelled so loudly the nurse thought I was dying.

No. Just had pulled the tubes out straining for the remote.

Of course, I knew the plot. As with the Super Bowl in this country, no matter how hard one tries, one cannot go without hearing some news. But still, up to this weekend, I had truly succeeded in avoiding seeing her act.

The worst part, my greatest disappointment, was that I finally saw Lavender Rhodes was not the overrated actress I had so hoped for.

She was good.

Actually, on acting merit alone, she was excellent. Worthy of every Emmy in her no doubt pompous dressing room overflowing with awards and flowers from her cultlike following. She’d made something of the show despite clichéd scripts and oversimplified character arcs. She’d managed to pull out emotion despite flat side characters and their flat side stories. As far as acting went, she was a writer’s dream. Surely these people trusted her to flawlessly deliver the words they poured onto the page. I imagine she delivered the jokes, the heartbreaks, the beats just as they saw them in their minds—or better. I would bet she also delivered the not-so-great words in a way that transformed them from mediocre into something great.

The revelation was awful.

I peer over to the person on my right to see the joke in question.

All around the room people are muttering under their breath. It’s a race. War. Fight to be the first to clinch the zinger.

“What if . . .” A man holds his script at arm’s length. His forehead is screwed up, as if he’s deciphering an ancient map. “What if, just as Kye—”

“Lance,” the room replies in unison.

“Right,” the man says, lower lip quivering nervously. “Lance”—he shoots a glance around—“stands at Resident 3A’s door with roses for their first date, Lavende— Ashley opens hers across the hall. They catch each other’s eye, long dramatic pause for feelings”—he winds his hand—“feelings feelings feelings, and then he looks down at the roses and says, ‘Whad’ya think? Too much?’ And after a bittersweet pause, Ashley gives a tender smile and says, ‘They’re perfect.’ Then she closes the door and walks past the kitchen as the camera pans to the dried roses in her windowsill, a memento from their first date ten years ago. End scene.”

Mr. Goodwin throws his glasses on the table and squeezes his eyes even before the man is finished. “We’ve done it. We’ve done it all before.” He throws his script on the table, and the papers scatter like cherry blossoms skidding over water in spring. “I want bigger,” he says. “Better. Even just . . . different.”

“It is decent, Mr. Goodwin,” a woman says carefully. “And clock’s running.”

Wait. This is for today’s shoot? As in, they are changing it right now?

“If I just wanted decent, Cindy”—Goodwin’s eyes cut to the woman I recognize from heavy Internet researching as the co-exec—“I’d have created Everybody’s Fine Here or 10th Street. Do any of you know anybody walking around in an Everybody’s Fine Here T-shirt?”