Song Meme (sort of)

Long ago, before my PC went kaput, and before the dawn of time, etc. I was passed the 'song' meme to do something with: specifically, to give an example of a lyric that says something to me about writing. Lots of people had trouble finding something suitable, as I remember. And so did I, 'cos I'm going to cheat! This isn't really the lyric of a song, it's a lyrical picture book for children, called 'Some Dogs Do' by Jez Alborough. I read it to my son on many a night before he goes to bed, and it's lovely and always brings a tear to my eye, because it speaks about something optimistic and beautiful.

It's the story of Sid, a young dog, who when he was on a walk to school one day, "a happy feeling came his way", which fills him up so much that he finds his paws leaving the ground: "without a how, without a why, Sid fell up towards the sky" and flies "in the land of sun and moon, like a doggy-shaped balloon."

Sid comes back down to Earth, and arrives at school, asking his best friend Ben "Did you see me fly just then?" "Don't be daft," came Ben's reply. "You're a dog, and dogs don't fly." "But I did," said Sid. His classmates are just as sceptical, and even his teacher, who says "All dogs walk and jump and run, but dog's don't fly - it can't be done." Still Sid protests "But I did".

Finally, the school bully Gus says "Right, if you can fly, come outside ... let's see you try!" But Sid's happy feeling is gone, and all he can do is flop onto the ground. "You see, you're just a dog," said Gus, "with paws for walking just like us. That will teach you not to lie. Now you know that dog's don't fly."

Sid goes home from school, morose and defeated. And though he did "the things he always did" still "something wasn't right with Sid". His Dad comes out to the garden, as Sid is sat staring at the sky, and asks him what is wrong. But all Sid says is "Dog's don't fly."

Sid's Dad offers to tell him a secret, and when Sid turns to ask what the secret is, he sees his Dad soaring into the air. Sid's happy eyes are open wide. "I knew it... DOGS DO FLY" he cried.

The book ends with Sid's Dad, his Mum, and Sid himself, flying in the sky above their house, accompanied by this couplet:

"Do dogs fly? Is it true?
Some dogs don't, and some dogs do."

No matter who tells you you haven't got what it takes - even, and this is especially important, if it's yourself - always be a dog that does. Till next time...

Televisual Autopsy - Part 2

So, I was writing a 6 x 60 minute drama about people in an evening class, all trying to write their first novel. My aim was to produce something without any formal shenanigans or fantasy elements (good for the competition, and good for me). I liked the idea, and I was excited to be exploring it.

I spent most of my time for the next few weeks building up characters, their back-stories, how they interacted with the rest of the group, what their arc was going to be, and so on; but, I didn't write a word of screenplay. Perhaps I spent too long on this stage, given the constraints I was working to (although it's very useful material to have now I'm rewriting). A self-imposed deadline was approaching fast: I had to complete my first ten pages soon, as a number of writers, including myself, were taking part in a peer feedback exchange at the end of August.

Just before I started on the script proper, a thought occurred. The format of the show was that each episode concentrated on a single character - would it work if each episode covered roughly a week of their life, the week that their novel would be the focus of the group's attention, being read out and criticised by everyone else? And how about the theme of each character's novel in some way mirroring their main story? This tickled me. I had turned the idea of peer feedback into the structure of my Red Planet Competition entry. Mild worry: was I falling into the trap of making a post-modern joke of this work, already?

I decided not: if you're dealing with characters that are facing some sort of conflict or crisis (and of course I was), and these people are aspiring writers then whatever they are writing is going to – in some way – be affected by what's going on in their life. It was psychologically true enough for me to be satisfied, and it gave the work a Unique Selling Point – each week, a new character, a new story, a new book: nothing over the top, but the character writing the spy story is living a double life, the fantasy author is off in a world of their own, and so on. I was keen to have a USP, as I had remembered the Channel 4 Series The Book Group from a few years back, and wanted to make sure my pitch wasn't too similar.

Still, I didn't want to overdo the literary angle, or else I'd risk creating the over-structured style of story I was trying to avoid. So, I set a rule – you would hear the 'story within a story' occasionally, but only when a character was genuinely reading out a section. Sometimes it would carry on in voice over through the following scene to give an ironic juxtaposition. But nothing more – no fantasy sequences, no sections of adaptation, and no scenes of people at typewriters or computer keyboards if I could help it (that's always death).

My first ten pages and series outline were put together quite quickly, and sent off to a number of very knowledgeable and helpful people. I then carried on working on the remaining 50 pages, but they were basically in a very sketchy outline form at that point, when I was asking for my first ever feedback. So, this is probably where klaxons are sounding in your head. In a perfect world, I would never have sent out the first ten pages of anything, if I hadn't finished it, as things in those first ten pages were bound to change as I kept working. But it isn't a perfect world. And besides: I wanted some feedback on the premise at least. I wanted to see if people said “Is this too much like The Book Group?” as that was obviously a slight concern (no one did).

I got very good feedback and lots of potential notes from people who are out there making a living writing. As usual, I looked for any points that three or more people picked up on. There was one biggie: three people all said (I paraphrase): “Based on your outline, I thought there would be more of the literary genre stuff: fantasy sequences, that sort of thing – you should go for it”. I became very worried that I was being too tentative in my first draft, avoiding the main thrust of what I should have been doing, because it might upset a reader. But with 20:20 hindsight, I now see how I could easily address this threefold note:

Change the outline.

Get rid of the 'story within a story' from the outline as it's distorting people's expectations. But, I did not change the outline, I went against my initial instincts, and embarked on a rewrite of the script, dialling up the literary style and emphasising the ironic counterpoints between the lives the writers lived in reality, and the lives they lived in their prose. And - to be fair - it could have worked. But it was preventing me from doing what I should have been doing, which was finishing the next 50 pages and rewriting to make it more like the thing I set out to write. By the time I submitted them, the first ten pages had voice over, flashbacks, and fantasy sequences; this, as well as introducing my ensemble and setting up the first focus character's plot. I hadn't a chance in hell, frankly.

I still hadn't finished the remaining 50 pages to my satisfaction when I submitted to the competition. I really shouldn't have sent anything in at all, as I didn't have faith in the material. But it's easy to say that now. After submitting, as I kept on writing, I desperately wanted to fix things in those first 10 pages, but obviously I couldn't.

So, I didn't win a competition with material I wasn't happy with: in some ways, this has to be better than not winning with material I am happy with. Plus, I've learned (or relearned) some lessons. I shall publish them here, so I can look back in a year's time before I enter the Red Planet Comp 2009:

1. Keep hold of your project's core idea or ideas. Work out in your mind what you're okay to change, and what you'd fight like hell to keep. Don't be inflexible, but don't let the rewriting process tear your idea part either.
2. Don't get seduced by a new direction if it takes you too far from that core idea.
3. Try not to get feedback until you're finished.
4. Consider not sending something in to the competition at all if you aren't happy with it: hard, I know, but if you don't feel something's ready, chances are a reader won't either. And there will always be other opportunities.
5. Consider all notes carefully. Don't rush in to a rewrite: the most obvious way to solve something isn't always the best.

Televisual Autopsy - Part 1

There's a book by Douglas Hofstadter called Le Ton beau de Marot. It covers verse and verse translation, amongst other topics, and uses examples of poems written by Hofstadter himself (an academic, but hardly a poet) to illustrate the creative process. I remember the Poetry Review being very sniffy about this at the time of its publication: the level of detail gone into was, the reviewer felt, unseemly for poems which were previously unpublished and produced by not much more than a hobbyist. I suppose it was a fair enough point, as Hofstadter was probably more surprised at some of the mysteries of the writing process he uncovered than his readership were likely to be, given that they were inevitably poets and writers themselves, and would be engaging in that process every day, for their jobs and everything. It's still a good read though.

I preface today's post with the above tale, because I am aware that it might seem odd to go into detail about a work of mine that has proved a bit of a failure. But I am going to go ahead anyway, and explain what I felt went wrong with my Red Planet script, Life Support. I hope this is useful as an example of things it's probably best not to do. If I'm teaching you all to suck eggs, please forgive me: mine is a cautionary tale, that - no matter how many times one's been told the pitfalls - it's still easy to come a cropper. To put in context exactly how this came to be, I need to talk about the genesis of the idea.

And just in case this seems like me self-administering a public whipping, let me reiterate: I'm not giving up writing. Danny's latest post in his wonderful sequence on professionalism says it all: you have to deal with rejection, and learn from it. Read on for what I've learned this time...

The Red Planet competition was launched at this year's Screenwriters' Festival, and I started working immediately. In a rare quiet moment later that day, I sat on my own and started a mental inventory of possible ideas, but I didn't like any of them. I knew I wanted to do something naturalistic and straight. There were many reasons for this: partially it was inspired by The Wire's brilliant wonderfulness, but mainly it was because most of the longer example scripts in my portfolio have some fantasy elements, or voice overs, or tricksy structures. I was getting a bit tired of that kind of stuff and wanted to do something purer. Plus, all those things can put off a reader unless they're done really, really well.

I also knew I wanted to do a series in a character anthology style (i.e. the genre with no name). I like those kind of shows, and - as this was the first TV drama series I was to write - I thought it might be a more gentle learning curve to start with a structure that allowed me to write six mini-movies, one for each of my characters. I also thought it was a good thing to concentrate most of my time on creating the ensemble and let the plots arise from their characters. After watching all the BBC continuing dramas for so long, I'd firmly decided that characters, and in particular regular characters, are all. A good guest plot is a bonus, but people tune in to watch people, people they know and love.

I needed a linking device to bring my characters together. The idea finally came from one of the speakers at the Festival. There had been an infamous session with a life coach (she of the 'Baby steps, baby steps...' comment). I was musing on this afterwards, and it tickled me to think of what happens to you if you're going through life coaching, and your coach dies. Bing! Light bulb moment.

I still had problems to solve, though: was this a realistic precinct to get my characters together? This was important, as I was going to explode the precinct in episode one, by killing off the mentor character, and then explore whether the group dynamic could come back together and function again. So, it needed it to be a solid and realistic group to begin with; but, life coaching is usually a 1-on-1 activity. Though I did check, and you can get evening classes where groups go through something like life coaching, I didn't know if an audience would buy that.

Did it have to be life coaching? Surely any evening class would become some kind of support group after everyone's been going there for a while. How about a writing group? Write what you know, and all that. It gave me wonderful opportunities for conflict - in life coaching each person's goals would be different, so there would be no real room for jealousy at that level; it would be hard to dramatise 'you're getting yourself together faster than I am' but 'you've got published and I haven't' - everyone can understand that.

This was something I was wary of, though: some readers and script consultants will advise against anything that involves writers or writing: too in-jokey and incestuous. But, as I was avoiding screenwriting and concentrating on wannabe novelists (most of the general public don't think they have a screenplay in them, in fact they probably think the actors and director make it up as they're going along), and as I was working hard to make a distinct group of characters (different ages, different goals, inner and outer, i.e. it wasn't just going to be a bunch of arty twenty something media types), I thought I could get it to work.

In fact, this is the one thing that I'm not attempting to change in my rewrites - I like the novel writing class idea. It may well prove that it's a hard sell, and might not have been the best choice for a competition entry, but I'm sticking with it. Besides, the script had greater problems than that. I'd already sown the seeds of my own destruction (okay, okay, really I'd only sown the seeds for not getting into one competition and having to do a major rewrite - but that doesn't sound so good).

Next: how really really not to deal with peer review feedback...

Juvenilia #2 and some (possibly old) news

Well, here's a turn up for the books: a play which I wrote when I was eighteen is getting its first ever performance in my old home town, Worthing, tonight and tomorrow. My co-writer back then, Alex Shaw (hello Alex!) is now a drama teacher and is putting it on at Worthing High School.

I don't get any money (hey - it was the first thing I thought of - maybe I'll get the freelancer mentality eventually!); nonetheless - if you're anywhere near there tomorrow night at 7pm - why not go along to see 'Double Glazed': it's just your usual, run-of-the-mill Time Travel Costume Drama Musical Comedy. I'm doing something else tomorrow night which I can't really get out of, unfortunately, so I won't be there - that's the second premiere of my work that I've missed out on in one year.

Still, this is a good sign. Maybe everything I've ever written will be bought and put on...

...eighteen years after I finish it. That's something to really hope for.

ADDITIONAL: As I was drinking with most of the blogosphere last night, some of you out there may not know this (and if you all already did, then forgive me for the old news): the episode of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe that aired yesterday was not the usual sarcasmfest, but instead an incredibly indispensable set of interviews with some of the best TV writers around: Russell T Davies, Paul Abbott, Tony Jordan, Graham Linehan, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain . It's top! Go to iPlayer, or fire up your PVR/hard drive recorder/video for a repeat. Your brain will love you.

Stock Taken

Well, I have to keep being a scriptwriter to a bit longer. Firstly, because otherwise Jason Arnopp will burn me and Phill Barron will kick me in the nuts; but also, I'll have to keep going until at least October now, 'cos they've changed the dates on next year's Screenwriting Festival. See Martin's blog for a summary. A festival? In a ladies' college? I can't miss that.

Some of my regular correspondents have taken slight exception to my last post. Yes - it was a bit of a vent; for that, everyone has my apologies. But I stand by the thrust of it: there's no point in immediately believing that the work just wasn't right for the reader or the competition. You've got to review the script entered, pull it apart and see if it's as good as it can be, even if this autopsy can be pretty depressing and make you feel like you should give up. And the honest-to-goodness reaction to not getting through in a competition is that it hurts like hell, and I wouldn't be a truthful writer if I pretended otherwise.

In this case, I know the sensibilities of a good few of the authors, and was privileged enough to see a few of the entries at points in their development before being submitted: I know that the subject matter and overall tone of what got through was very varied, and not a million miles away from the stuff I'm doing. So, what more can I have done? It may be nothing. Perhaps I was trying to do too much. Or too little. It may well be that the style I'm going for (white collar versions of Raymond Carver short stories but with more jokes, and on telly) isn't really suited to the schedules of today. Or it could be the kind of thing that's being done too much already. Or maybe it was just a rubbish idea.


Anyway, I'm not giving up, so I've been doing a few things over the last couple of days to make me feel more like a writer, to whit:

• Analysing new dramas: just caught up with the first two episodes of Survivors. Quick capsule review (warning: very light spoilers): I'm liking it, after a questionable first half an hour where the build up to the apocalypse was a bit slow, and the logic of the contagion/poison was undermined - if it takes a different length of time for different people to die, why did everyone on the final day die overnight, no matter what their symptoms were like before? This is a dramatic virus, methinks. I shall catch up with Wallander tomorrow, and The Devil's Whore soon-ish.
• Reading 'How to Guides' on writing: the Guardian gave lots of pamphlets away a month ago, on writing lots of different things: comedy, journalism, etc. and someone kept them for me. They make interesting reading. I'm saving 'Plays and Screenplays' until last. Yes - that's right: they're both covered together in one pamphlet. Like they're the same. Twelve pages to cover comedy was ambitious, but six to cover screenplays is just insulting. I'm looking forward to violently disagreeing with it, already.
• Writing: I'm doing a big rewrite on the Life Support pilot. This isn't a kneejerk reaction to its not being selected. I think the idea has merit, but I've made a few mistakes which I want to rectify. I'll try to share some of that process over the next few posts, as - who knows - it might be useful.

Taking Stock

Congratulations to all those who got through to the next (and final?) round of the Red Planet competition. Jason has handily collated all those winners from the blogosphere here. Well done, y'all.

But: hmm...

When a competition is held, and a large number of fellow bloggers and drinking buddies get through and I fail to get through, it's hard not to think: I should give up.

There, I've said it. No dancing around 'they were looking for something else' or 'it's not the right time' or 'I'm on some kind of different wavelength': despite spending a lot of time on it, my work wasn't good enough. I have to make it better, or quit.

We all need a certain amount of encouragement to keep going, otherwise we'd be insane to keep going. And though I'm not claiming not to be insane, I could do with some official encouragement at the moment, but it's thin on the ground. Maybe I'm missing something that's being told to me, loud and clear.

But I'm not giving up: I'll give it at least six more months before I start trying something different. And I'm not talking wildly different: I'm not going to be learning the ukulele, particle physics or African pottery: I'll just try writing novels, maybe - see how that pans out.

Nobody on their deathbed ever regrets not spending more time at work

Worry not, Phill – I'm still alive! But my computer isn't quite yet. After getting a new desktop to replace my ever malfunctioning old one, I was in the middle of rebuilding it from various back ups and other sources . This took quite a while, and some things are possibly lost for good. I had to type the pilot episode script for my Red Planet entry in from scratch, copying from a paper copy, because the last time I backed things up, I'd hardly started it.

It was quite amusing: after having desperately searched every scrap of paper in my office, finally finding my activation key code, then chatting to a Final Draft support techie in the U.S. using some rather nifty InstantService web-chat instant messenger doodad, and getting the software un-registered from the broken down PC, and re-registered to my new one, I then copied the backup files from my portable hard drive, and – trembling,and with bated breath – clicked to open the file marked 'Life Support – Episode 1' . This is the extent of what I'd written before backing up:

INT.


That was it. Thank the Great God Aethismo I'd printed it out, that's all I can say. Except to add: if anyone who gave me notes has still got a copy of my one page series outline, could they send it to me, please? Don't seem to have that at all, any more. Do regular backups, ladies an gentlemen: learn from my stupidity.

Anyway, I was in the middle of rebuilding the computer when my monitor stopped working. I couldn't afford to replace it until pay day (this Friday just gone – it arrived today) and before that I was making do, using my old RGB projector hooked up to the PC and blasting the screen image all over one wall of the room – it's hard on the eyes (and the screenwriting process: see your script's faults writ large!), so progress has been slow.

I had the natty new netbook too, of course; but, enter another thief of my time: the day job. Don't get the wrong idea - I love my day job. But this time of year is always frantic and fraught. I work as a project manager for a team designing web sites and web applications. It's work I like, and I always find that the writing I do is better when I have a stable and enjoyable job of work to pay the bills; so, it contributes to my proper job too.

And, despite working for a financial institution, my day job seems for now to be unaffected by the credit crunch - fingers crossed. Certainly there's a lot of work coming in for the team. Too much. The problem is that big institutions, even in the web technology area, err on the side of caution (except, obviously in the area of mortgage lending, but let's not go there) and a change freeze operates throughout December when I can't put any websites live.

So, the year end rush of projects happens in November as people use up their budget, instead of in December when people want to be on holiday. It's nice in a way. But it means that round about now I'm horribly busy. It was the same last year too – I had a working computer then, but I was also writing a feature; I seem to remember a November of the comments section bursting with chides for my not posting enough. Plus ca change.

Anyway, all is fixed up now, and by the end of Friday the day job will have settled down too. Expect more blather here then.