wordface

Alchemy

2008-06-05T11:13:00.003+01:00

...is part craft, part alchemy.

The craft part is relatively straightforward. Sketch a family background - how did they become who they are? Is their job important to the story? If so, research what characteristics they would need to make them good at their job - or bad, if the story requires - and how that effects their relationships with other characters. What do they want? What do they need? Does their psyche help or hinder them in getting it? Why?

And so on.

But there's something else. I tiptoe round them, filling in bits and pieces that seem to fit, sizing them up, sticking in a failed relationship here, a guilty conscience there, an obsession down in that damp patch in the shadows, circling them warily with but one question; that's all very well, but who are you?

And then, if I'm lucky, I get it. A sudden insight - something which takes that patchwork biography of attributes, desires, and contradictions and links it - no, merges it with the story that is simultaneously taking shape. Hard to explain, but for me it's often linked to an understanding of the overall theme of the piece. He is like this, which is why it makes puts him in conflict with that in the third act, which is why he... will pursue vengeance at the cost of all he loves... pursue love in spite of the world being against him etc. And so the biography becomes a character, and the character, story.

Character is story, story is character. They're not linked - they are inextricably intertwined and inter-dependent.

I only mention this because it happened a couple of days ago - I've been wrestling with a character for a while, compiling notes with a frustrating lack of direction and then PING - she came alive, and the story with her. Magical.

Alchemy.

I'm sure I could analyse that process in the hope of making it systematic and reliable, but you know what? I prefer the magic. It's those precious, rare moments that make the slog worthwhile.

How to start writing

2008-05-27T13:38:00.002+01:00

The key to starting to write is to write.

Oh so simple, oh so easy for me to say - and so ludicrously hard for me to do. As a boss prevaricator in the vast underworld realm of prevarication, I find getting started on the latest project next to impossible. Every...single...time.

And I go through a pointless, anxiety inducing, and entirely destructive thought process that includes such nuggets of wisdom as, 'I don't know what I'm doing', and 'I've forgotten how to write', and 'I'm rubbish'. Every...single...time.

When of course I haven't forgotten how to write - I just don't know quite how to write this particular project...YET.

And the correct response to this dumb exercise?

Write.

Anything. Doesn't have to be the project in hand - this would count (and I am counting it, believe me). Because it's action, and action provokes energy and thought, and before you know it, you're in there - you're writing.

Huzzah.

Just in case you thought you were the only one.

note; this does not apply to writers forged in the furious fire of continuing drama, such as my pals JP, MG and AP, who, used to the relentless weekly demand for 'words, damn you, get me words for the actors to say and get me them now', don't bother with such self-indulgence. They just get on and get it written. Swines.

Minger

2008-05-22T12:14:00.005+01:00

So Minder is being revived. Can't see it myself - with the word 'updated' in all the press I've seen, I have images of a 2008 Terry slamming a rival scallywag up against a wall with a stanley knife at his throat. Good clean gentlemanly fisticuffs just won't play these days...

ITV didn't go for the pitch - too quirky. The incoming regime intends to play it safe, which is fair enough given their gruesome performance recently. So off it pops in hopes of finding a different, perhaps better, home. Fly little pitch, fly.

I want this in black (white's just silly, isn't it? White electronic goods are so clean, shiny and antiseptic they make me think of sanitary ware) and I want this.

The former because it's the laptop I've been yearning for since I first used computers - I don't want a whizzbang desktop replacement on which I can watch HD movies/create my own movies/play GTA/surf/mix my latest gabba track to irritate my fellow train travellers with, I want something on which I can type up notes, maybe work on a draft if production pressure demands it, that's fast, no heavier than a plumpish book, and won't make me feel sick if (or rather when - I know myself all too well) I drop it. And the latter because it's about as close to a magic wand as I've yet seen.

But we need to get a sand pit. Tsk. The bairns can play but I can't...?

Barfta

2008-05-15T10:39:00.003+01:00

So, went to the BAFTAS. Life on Mars 2 didn't win, which surprised nobody. I felt disappointed for Matthew and Ashley - they should have won at least one. The nature of the drama winners reflected the nature of the juries and their motivation, I reckon; white middle class guilt. Britz over Cranford? What?

Best part was strolling along an unusually pedestrian-free Great Marlborough Street in the warm Sunday evening with my LoM buddies, dressed in my Moss Bros suit (no bow tie; there are limits), and gradually realising that the reason for the absence of pedestrians was the iron fences holding back the crowds gathering at Argyll Street, which was red-carpeted from one side to the other. I loitered uncomfortably for a while with lovely Julie Rutterford as Philip and Dean were blinded by flashbulbs, then made a dash for the auditorium and the free champagne. My response to the dazzling and the bedazzled crowds is to think of this. I had to agree with Ash - writers just aren't made for this kind of event.

Cop pilot finally in and awaiting final absolute definite really this is it this time decision from the Beeb. Pitch in at ITV. Working on a treatment for a thriller type pilot and about to start on the single commission. Busy busy. In a good way. And the sun's shining.

Killing time in Foyles before a meeting - oh joy - I picked up a screenwriting manual, my first in a long time. It turned out to be fascinating - first I've read that reflects the TV writer's real experience rather than the fantasy life projected in most feature writing books. I'm sure you all know it, but I'll recommend it anyhow; Writing the TV Drama Series, by Pamela Douglas.

Stuff of writing days

2008-04-02T11:17:00.004+01:00

I suppose what I should be writing here is the bit on co-writing I promised, but that seems to involve more thought than I've been able to manage for a week or two, so it'll have to wait. So this is an insight into the STUFF of writing days of the last week or two.

Holed up in a room with my cop pilot* co-writer for two days thrashing out what we hope is the clinching draft (as opposed to the several other clinching drafts we've been through so far). It's the first time we've tried working in the same room simultaneously, and it proved surprisingly painless. We're closing in on the final greenlight decision, so everyone's getting antsy.

Reading lots of stuff on the web researching for another pilot I'm doing (another cop show - have I mentioned that writers are as prone to typecasting as actors? Probably a post topic in itself), trying to avoid logging on to this, this and this, failing miserably, and consequently frittering away hours at a time**.

Met the woman on whom the show will be based, which was both intimidating and thrilling - she had an extraordinary job, and perhaps the most extraordinary thing about her is that she doesn't seem extraordinary at all, other than extraordinarily nice. Extraordinary.

Arranged a meeting with some other people whose world is very far from my own that I had to postpone, but when it goes ahead I'm sure I'll post about that too.

Ashes to Ashes finished magnificently - the audience declined in a fairly normal and graceful arc rather than a catastrophic plummet, which bodes well for A2A2.

And Life on Mars 2 was nominated for a BAFTA. This apparently means everyone involved in the show can now embroider "BAFTA NOMINEE" on their underwear, which is a bonus. The genuine actual bonus is that I get to go to the ceremony, dinner and party which, even though Skins will walk away with it, is pretty damn exciting. Big question is - which frock?

Met my very favourite exec in the world for coffee, gossip, and a casual 'let's see if we can cook something up' meeting. And, much to our surprise, we did, so I wrote a two page pitch which went down very well and will go to a broadcaster next week, with the backing of one of the UK's top indies.

Crivvens.

Now, before you click your mouse button with bitter fury - lucky bastard, he gets it on a plate, I could do that, it's not what you can do it's who you know, it's not about ability it's about luck etc. bear in mind how long it's taken for me to reach this point. Eight or so years on the dole and working part-time in a corner shop while churning out scripts that gradually got better, followed by eight years of writing scripts under the pressure of production deadlines and all that entails.

That's a lot of work to put in to earn some luck.

It's led me to the precarious point in my life as a working writer where people are looking for me to come up with stuff with real expectation - exciting, but also terrifying; the tightrope is thin, the fall vertiginous. The opportunities now coming my way entirely depend on my ability to produce the goods - screw them up, and the work goes away.

Okay, now I'm really scared...

*Meaning the cop pilot show we're working on, not the profession of my co-writer. Though he is an ex-cop. If I discovered he flew light aircraft that would really screw my glib 'cop pilot' phrase.

**My goal in supplying this information being to suck you into a frittering vortex of my creation, reducing my own I-should-be-working guilt levels by allowing me to believe that 'everyone else is doing it'.

A2A2...

2008-03-07T17:29:00.002+01:00

...is on.

Quite a debut for Monastic Productions - go the West Country writer monks, go!

Scores on the Doors

2008-03-07T12:12:00.005+01:00

Ashes to Ashes Ep. 5 did remarkably well in the ratings last night - 6.6m with a 28.6% share. The consolidated figures* across the series so far have increased the audience by an average of 950k per ep, which could push ep 5's ratings to 7.5m, which would be very very good indeed.**

I also note that IPlayer now has a top ten most popular downloads, and that ep. 5 of Ashes is no.1, while ep. 4 is no. 10. More good news. And which oddly makes me feel more connected to the audience - as I type this on my PC, someone somewhere is watching the episodes I wrote on a PC just like mine in a scruffy hole of an 'office' just like mine. I'm as connected to them as I am to you as you read this - doesn't that give you an eerie, ever so slightly paranoid shiver?

And all this good news doesn't just apply to me. The relevant part for those of you who aspire to write TV drama, is that the extra 800,000 people who watched Ashes to Ashes this week were watching Trial and Retribution last week, which means that they preferred to watch drama rather than football last night. Drama still pulls them in! Across a variety of platforms and media, there is still a large popular audience for the stuff that we make up.

Feeling better?

You might think it's shallow to be preoccupied with viewing figures - what about my artistic integrity, dammit - but you're wrong. Audience figures are everything.

Somewhere in the suspiciously ordered desktops*** of The People Who Really Make Decisions there is an unbelievably precise breakdown of how many people of what kind watched how much of the show that you wrote. If it's the right number of people of the right kind, and they watched it to the end when the trail for the next show has a chance to keep them watching the channel, the next time your name is proposed as a writer on a new show, the suggestion might be greeted favourably; the wrong number of people of the wrong sort - maybe the suggestion won't be discussed for as long as you might hope...

*which include 'time shifted viewers', i.e. people who recorded it to watch later, and the figures that really matter for those shadowy, omni-powerful figures known as 'Commissioners'. However, they don't include the figures for those viewing via BBC IPlayer. Yet - but they will, oh yes they definitely will...the future is coming, Fumble.

**Unless those 800k people who watched T&R last week all taped Ashes to watch later...

***I just bet they're neat.

Funk to funky

2008-03-04T15:18:00.009+01:00

So Ashes is going down well.

Apart from a Life on Mars=Genius, Ashes to Ashes=Betrayal Of Every Aspect Of Humanity That Makes It Remotely Bearable hardcore fanship, the audience seems to sticking around for the ride. Which is good. They better strap in, 'cos it gets dark and bumpy from here on in. Ha.

This was going to be a post about co-writing, which I am currently doing, but that will have to wait until I've recovered from the latest of my impressively continuous series of colds.

Playgroups. Swamps of infection; a bunch of kids swimming about in a thick viral soup they can't wait to smear over their parents' mucous membranes the instant they get home.

Went to the BBC Worldwide Showcase Ashes to Ashes themed dinner*, which was quite an event. Being part of a group that was processed into the central tables in the middle of a vast ballroom crammed with drunk and over-excited television buyers was quite an experience, and one that the estimable Mr. Glenister and the quite remarkably lovely Ms. Hawes handled with considerably more glamour and grace than myself. Not really built for this part of the job, writers. I stuck close to Ashley, hoped some of his award-winning gravitas would rub off on me, and tried not to have more than an inhuman amount of alcohol*. Not that I needed to worry – the real star (apart from the aforementioned talents) was this, parked on a dais for all to see, admire, slaver over and gently caress. Wish I’d had me camera.

*I particularly liked the "Gene Says..." T-shirts the waiting staff were wearing. V. nice touch. I wanted one badly, but swapping shirts didn't seem like a good idea - there was no competitive element to the evening. Maybe okay at an awards ceremony - the TV Plus awards, perhaps, but only by winners in parallel categories.

**And failed. When will I learn...?

He knows the use of Ashes

2008-02-18T18:12:00.007+01:00

As requested by oli, glimpses of the development process on Ashes to Ashes (now officially a hit show, a relief and delight to all concerned).

I’ve mentioned a little about it in previous posts (top secret groovy project). While it didn’t stay top secret for long, it does remain groovy, thanks to its fine pixie boot stylee.

Not long after Life on Mars 2 finished shooting, some time in October 2006, I was asked if I’d like to join in on developing the proposed spin-off. Didn’t take me long to answer.

I joined Matthew, Ashley, Jane, Claire (later Simon), Beth, and Anna (creators and all round top men and writer geniuses, execs, producer and editor) for a number of mind-expanding series development sessions over the next few months. Matt and Ash had the format clearly in place from the start – London, 1981, Female psych cop as co-lead etc. – but how that might play out was another thing. It was the most exciting and stimulating project I’ve been involved in at such an early stage, thanks to the generosity and infectious enthusiasm of all concerned, particularly Matt and Ash, who were quite ready at all times to kick their baby round the room, bounce it off walls and force it into an endless series of mutant shapes.*

To oli’s questions;

Given that the LOM series finale (more or less) concluded Gene et al were fictional, did you worry about the audience connecting with a hallucination, and if so how did you tackle it?

Personally, not for a moment. Every dramatic character is a fiction, every ‘realistic’ world a selective projection of its makers, no matter how ‘real’ they might claim it to be. If the stories and characters are engaging and compelling enough, the artificiality of the story framework is irrelevant. Fantasy stories that explore and celebrate the power of the imagination over the real are so familiar a narrative type that they are almost a sub-genre in themselves. Not many people have difficulty connecting with ‘The Wizard of Oz’, so why shouldn’t they connect with something that has cops at its centre instead of a seventeen year old woman in a chest band, witches, a lion with a speech impediment, and very small people with strange haircuts?

On a similar note, how will you make the fantasy elements effective now the audience (presumably) knows the whole thing is a fantasy?

As above – by making the characters engaging and their stories compelling. Alex as a character has a broader frame of reference and a bigger journey to go on than Sam. Hopefully the audience will be entertained and intrigued enough by the fantasy elements to stick with her and engage with her predicament.

I detect a confusion amongst some critical voices between fantasy and science fiction – neither Life on Mars nor Ashes to Ashes are science fiction. Much as some people might like them to be about time travel, they’re not, and never were.

Why was the decision made to switch from "first person" to "third" - e.g. giving Gene scenes that Alex is not present in?

If the LoM universe is a fantasy constructed by Sam, why should Sam be unable to have POVs other than his own? He has no requirement even to be Sam. Sam could be a six foot mole if he fancied trying out black velvet fur. I don’t know about you, but for me part of a dream’s disturbing power comes from the fact that sometimes I am myself, sometimes I am someone else, and sometimes I am neither, but someone/thing else viewing those characters' bizarre dilemmas (I’ve never actually been a female nurse trapped in a bubble in a stone tsunami, but that didn’t stop my dream of the same haunting me for years of my childhood with its overwhelming 'realness').

There are of course other imperatives - time pressure on the leads, and the necessity to differentiate Ashes stylistically from LoM - it might seem a very similar world, but appearances can be deceptive...

The interesting thing for me is that Sam didn’t take a ‘third person’ POV of his situation – his narrow, very literal, view of the world restricted him to his own POV, which tells you a lot about his character. Alex has a broader perspective, different expectations, an even more turbulent past, and doesn’t share Sam’s occasionally tiresome moral certitude. Her view of the world of 1981 differs from Sam’s view of 1973 as their view of 2007 might. And yet she finds herself inhabiting a very similar world…

Spooky?

Mm.

Intriguing?

I bloody hope so.

* the ‘mutant baby’ metaphor for story development deserves someone’s thesis somewhere, surely?

GOAAAALLLLLLLLLL!

2008-02-08T12:27:00.001+01:00

...the ball drops to Graham outside the penalty box... he takes it on the volley... and SCORES.

7m with a 29.1% share. Well done the Graham lad.

I'm Happy, Hope You're Happy Too

2008-02-07T15:24:00.001+01:00

I know, I know, it's been so long. Too long, some might say, but hey - we know this is special. That our relationship transcends the petty boundaries of time.

So, anyway - where were we?

The very least I can do is a puff for the show that kept me so busy last year, Ashes to Ashes, so do tune in to BBC1 at 9 pm tonight. Essential viewing, not least because if you don't watch this first ep, the chances of working out what's going on when it comes to my eps (4 & 5) are slim. And you are going to watch my eps, aren't you? Course you are.

Stick with it, even if you genuflect beneath the acting icon that is Simm - it will grow on you, trust me.

What have I been I doing all this time? Writing for Ashes (or A2A, as it has become known in fannier* circles), co-writing a cop show pilot, and becoming a dad for the second time. Blogging got pushed down the list, but I will be updating occasionally in the future.

*if it isn't a word, it should be. I blame Gene Hunt. I clearly haven't evacuated him entirely from my system.

Channel Flicking Pays

2007-04-17T12:16:00.000+01:00

I am the living proof. Idly flicking through channels on a Saturday night - hoping to find a really great film that had just started and continued to midnight so that I could get tetchy about not seeing it, and go to bed satisfied that I had spent the day well - I happened to notice some very familiar urban nightscapes. Oh my god, is that - could that be - It is! The opening sequence to the second Taggart* I wrote on ITV3. Yippy day, calloo callay.

Repeat fees! As they're being shown sequentially, that means the 1st one I did was probably shown too. Ha.

Aren't many jobs you can count a good day's work as slumping on the sofa casually pressing a TV remote button.

*Ken Russell's a fan, apparently. Which impresses me more than it probably should.

A bit of a gap...

2007-04-05T16:04:00.000+01:00

Mmm, yes, sorry about that. So much for good intentions. Truth is I got bored with the sound of my own blog voice, which along with a flood of work and a hospital visit to repair a wrist injury*, meant that my blog-blathering came to an abrupt halt. This entry may or may not signal a remarkable return to form. My money's on the latter.

Worst thing about the wrist op - apart from projectile vomiting across my own bed in front of my fellow wardmates - was that I had to turn to voice recognition software to churn the words out. It's amazing how accurate it is, although apparently the robotic monotone I have now become accustomed to using does tend to grate on the listener. It's fine for e-mails and the like, and pretty good for notes too, but when it comes to the grimy, claustrophobic furnace at the wordface (Final pain in the arse bloody Draft), it gets very sticky indeed.

I don't know about you, but the act of creative writing seems to come as much through the mechanical act of writing as through the mind for me; something about the physical tappety tap of fingers on keys gives rhythm and drive.

Anyhow - spent a lovely day at the Lighthouse as guest writer on the TV writing course run by Philip Palmer - got good news about a crime series I co-created - got an Ashes to Ashes draft in with the help of the voice recognition software and packets of strepsils - was chuffed to find that my Life on Mars ep held its own with the football - went to the screening of the final LoM ep and secreted a tiny tear in the darkness of the auditorium (cracking ending...) and enjoyed flashing my post-op scar at every opportunity. Makes it look as though I fended off a razor attack, and means the Weegie** hardnut persona is an option should I ever have need to use it.

*I went into hospital, they put me under general anaesthetic, and then they broke my arm. Admittedly that was part of the mending plan, and they did have the decency to put it back together with a couple of bits of meccano and a few screws, but all the same... Ouch.

Software

2007-02-21T18:24:00.000+01:00

I vowed to myself when I started this that I wouldn't talk about screenwriting software - what software should I use? is one of the most common and least important questions that beginning writers ask - but I stumbled across a really nifty thing today that seems like something I might actually use, rather than the kind I have on my hard drive and only ever open up when I feel like pretending to be the kind of writer who has a method rather than being the kind of writer who frightens himself into producing stuff through an excess of anxiety.

So, yes I use the antediluvian and arse-achingly awful in just about every respect Final Draft*, mainly because when I was starting out I got a free copy. It works as a basic script formatter, but on every other level is a disastrously misconceived piece of crap. I foolishly upgraded from FD5 through to FD7, but have gone back to FD5 since the only useful structuring tool available within it - the navigator, which shows your script as an outline using scene headers - was rendered useless in FD7 when they made it possible to view alongside your script, but impossible to shift scenes about using it. Morons.

The INSTANT the latest version of Write Brothers Screenwriter comes out, FD gets binned.

Glad to get that off my chest.

The only time you need these script formatting programmes is approaching production, when the script gets 'locked' in order to make it simpler to issue revised pages to the various production departments. Up till then, nobody gives a damn what you use as long as they can read it.**

The programmes that I find genuinely useful, particularly in the early stages of structuring, which is the difficult bit, are Word, Storyview***, and the absolutely terrific, and not just because it's free, Keynote, which is simple to use but infinitely customiseable and powerful once you get into it.****

And the nifty wee thing I found today? Bubble.us, a brain/mind mapping type thingy whose beauty lies in its simplicity and speed. I often do bubble maps (much prefer the idea of a bubble map to a mind map - bubbles are multicoloured and go pop in an enchanting way, whereas mind maps sound like an away day in a motel off the M25. With lukewarm milky coffee and stale biscuits.) when looking for scene/story ideas, because it doesn't feel like writing, and in the early stages I prefer to feel like it's all provisional and fluid and not really writing yet.

*I'm not linking to it because I don't want to be responsible for someone spending their money unnecessarily. I HATE that sodding programme.

**Word will do fine. Better than fine, because at least you can move headings about in outline view.

***rumour is Write Brothers are going to incorporate it into the next version of Screenwriter. Please please pleeeeease....

****check out the add-ons and plug-ins - some are very good indeed.

Six Day Hangover

2007-02-19T13:09:00.000+01:00

Well that was quite a do.

Strictly speaking it was a one day hangover that eased smoothly into flu*, but still. Still shaky, but manfully hauling myself to the desk I think, of course, of you, dear readers.

Jesus.

It was a memorable night for many reasons - finally meeting the legend that is Tony Jordan was definitely one - but the biggie has to have been me forgetting it wasn't a Friday night, and the last train was at midnight. Not one o'clock. Which is when they bring the shutters down at Victoria.**

Damn expensive, london cabs.

Lots of drunken bets laid that night were well off the mark, as ep 1 didn't get anywhere near the ratings anyone would have expected, though ep 2 did very well on BBC 4. I hardly dare draw attention to this post...

Head still monged with viral garbage, and having had a glimpse what being 80 might feel like (physical frailty is no fun; stairs are a test of stamina and courage), I have to do proper think work today. The very idea of an idea makes me want to boak, but that's the job.

Cheered by a phone call from a producer saying that yes, she'd like to go with the approach I'd suggested for a prospective development project but all the same - I'd rather be in bed.

UPDATE: It's not a bloody diary, ego boy. Or not just. It's about new/starting out writers getting a glimpse of the process.

Sorry.

Same day of the party, we did another brainstorm session on the Top Secret Project, with 2 drafts of ep 1*** and treatments for eps 2 & 3 also on the table. We finally wrestled with all the awkward questions we'd circled round and decided to leave well alone at previous meetings, only to find they were, of course, the questions we really needed to answer. We stripped down, we greased up, and we grappled. And by god I think we floored 'em. As with every meeting so far on this project I've gone in wondering how on earth we can really make it work, and come out enthused. Maybe a good sign. May not be.

Next stage for me is to do another treatment/beat sheet for my ep.

*the genuine bone-aching article. I immediately suspected HN51 but fortunately, just before isolating myself in an oxygen tent, I recalled that the (tiny) hors d'oevre served that celebratory evening didn't include turkey guts. To the best of my knowledge.

**this may possibly be related to the enormous amount of wine and the very little food I consumed. I blame shyness - free wine never comes with a 'don't dare touch me, bone-headed writer with the restraint of a vulture in an abattoir' warning. Which it should.

***Already. I know. Lead writers work for that additional adjective.

Watch Life on Mars Tonight

2007-02-13T12:59:00.000+01:00

9 p.m., BBC 1

Because it’s ruddy good, that’s why.

Here’s a swanky entry, tapped hastily in a Starbucks on Victoria Road, me having come up the Filth for two ‘hi there, who are you, would we like to work together’ meetings*, an episodic nitty gritty meeting on the Top Secret Project (that mr. Carver has rumbled – far too quick on the clues for me; he may be a whodunnit boy in the making - and which I may well now refer to as A2A, which is nasty textese but has already gained currency in the forums and is convenient for filenames), followed by the tx** party for Life on Mars 2.

This is about as glamorous as it gets. Not very.

I’m sure that the glamorous lifestyle I imagined successful writers must lead was one of the things that sustained me through the years lobbing cases of Special Brew and Buckfast about in a corner shop cellar. Not only have I discovered that the writer's life is anything but glamorous, when I am occasionally brushed by glamour I find that I hate it. I'm just a cardie and baffies boy at heart. So I've got my best cardie (only the one boiled egg stain; thanks, sweet daughter) and outdoor baffies on. Dressed to impress or what?

*The first of which I discovered was postponed three minutes after making a sweaty dash for the train. Ho bloody hum.

**meaning transmission, which I had to have explained to me, which in the using makes me feel like I’m really connected to the production process. Which I’m not.

Place Marker

2007-02-08T13:31:00.000+01:00

I knew this would happen. I'd open up with rush of enthusiasm and submit post after post tickled by my own ingenuity and sparkling wit - has there ever been such a highly polished ego mirror as a blog? - before realising that regular posting was a lot more of a drudge than I thought and grinding to halt. Pretty much like writing scripts for a living.

And now I'm in actual real life work mode, rather than swanning about town doing lovely meetings and having lots of treats (you know what? As I'm up the Filth* and have an hour to spare, why don't I treat myself to a nice lunch? Mm, yes, why don't I. I could add to the whole experience by staring out of the window and cultivating a thoughtful, writerly look to impress my fellow diners.**), I need to spend the time doing proper procrastination, like filing and making urgent stationery purchases.

So I'm forging ahead with the beat sheet for the Top Secret Project, which isn't as Top Secret as it was before Peter Fincham blabbed to a member of the press, but which is still excitingly confidential. And up the Filth today for more meetings, which will be fun.

I might even have lunch.

*Dirty old London TAAHN

** who are thinking 'why's that twat staring out the window with a slightly pained look on his face? Maybe he should think about visiting the lavatory.'

New, Strange and Different

2007-02-02T13:22:00.000+01:00

I refer, of course, to the world of West End musicals. Of course.

I've spent the last two Friday nights in the magical land of showbiz.

Astonishing.

I saw We Will Rock You and Mamma Mia, (research purposes, see, because - oh, just research purposes, ok?) and encountered a whole world I HAD NO IDEA EXISTED. As a TV writer the audience I write for largely consists of me - the notion of trying to second guess what 6 million people might fancy watching is beyond me, and anyway I never meet them. If I wanted to I'd have to wander round the streets while the show was being broadcast, knock on doors, introduce myself and ask how they think it's going. Going on past experience they'd probably say 'never watch telly, me' and slam the door in my face even as I picked up the sound of the final credits music drifting from the sitting room.*

Firstly, the audiences - amazingly diverse. Lots of tourists, ages from 14 to 95, all regions of the UK (including at least one coach party from Huddersfield, if my ear for accents is as keen as like to believe).

Secondly, the enthusiasm. The bristling excitement in the lobby, the packed auditorium, the applause that followed every single song, the little neon tubes waving in the glittering darkness of the auditorium, the standing ovation... a great collective experience.

Thirdly, the professionalism and talents of musicians and supporting dancers and singers.

Fourthly, in the case of We Will Rock You, just how entirely it failed as drama. And I mean just jaw-droppingly DREADFUL, worse than amateur panto**. Using a 'nudge nudge we all know this is ridiculous but isn't it an hilarious laugh ooh how ironic' style to justify the limpest dialogue and least effectively structured narrative piece I've ever seen (how can you botch the ending? With all those singers, dancers, costumes, flashing screens, swivelling runways, and upliftingly bombastic rahk, HOW CAN YOU BOTCH THE ENDING?!), it ended up like the most expensive sketch ever performed by 'The Young Generation'***. Which may have been its intention, because...

Fifthly - its audience loved it. LOVED it. Cheered and cheered and left the theatre with shiny excited faces.

Mamma Mia was MUCH better - really well crafted, genuinely funny and even touching in places. This is partly to do with the fact that the Abba catalogue are all about love, the losing of it, and the encroaching bitterness that comes with break-up, whereas Queen songs are about - well, nothing much - but mainly to do with a well-made dramatic structure and a genuine attempt to mine the drama of the songs and build on it.

My main reaction was shock - I have no idea how to reach that audience. I just don't get it. And the audience is vast, and shelling out massive sums, but I just wouldn't know how to give them something that would please them. Which is my problem, not theirs.

TV is a small and self-important world. One audience in a vast, shifting, fractured world of audiences that are going to be fracturing, shifting, and reconstituting at an accelerating pace as we finally move into the digital age.

Write for an audience you think you've identified, or write for yourself and see if they find you? You decide.

*Or I could do something like this blog and hope they might write in with constructive criticism, in order that I might fulminate with rage about how people JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND MY MASTERFUL INTENTIONS. And let's face it, people who write and read blogs are a bit weird and probably don't indicate the feelings of the majority of the audience. Yes you are. You know you are.

** Amateur panto can be brilliant even it's badly written, because you know that everybody else know that Buttons (teaches RE at the local secondary), is getting off with the Second Ugly Sister (works behind the counter at the chemists in the high street).

***That explains a lot.

Developing a project, Part 1

2007-01-29T18:43:00.000+01:00

Not what you'd call a conscientious poster, am I? Quality not quantity, that's what I'm after - feel the luxuriant nap of my blogging cloth, go on - touch it.

Anyhow...

Another thing I would have liked a little understanding of when starting out is just how incredibly long it takes to get things to PP*, SO, here begins a wee timeline of 2 projects as they develop. I'll give occasional updates whenever anything significant happens, so you can see for yourself how long these projects take to bloom or, as is much more likely, wither and die.

DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS

September 2006 - I meet with producer, who I first encountered at a read through for a show for which he was one of the execs. We chat around a bit, connect, fumble towards a few ideas that get us both excited, and agree to meet again to work out which of the amorphous blobs we fumbled with might be shaped into a viable dramatic story.

October 2006 - meet again, pick three ideas to work on, get excited, I bounce around like an over-enthusiastic puppy. I'm never sure whether or not this a good idea in meetings, but can't seem to help myself.

November 2006 - e-mails bounce back and forth a few times, we have a phone conversation, Producer says I must pay you something, I say, nah, wait till I've got it on a page and see if it'll work before we get to that stage.** I send him a one pager on one of the ideas, which is for a series. Producer takes it to his boss, it gets a cautious 'we like it'. It will move on to treatment stage. However, as it will involve a considerable amount of research, we decide to push on the 2nd project first. Also, the 2nd project depends to a certain extent on the consent of a 3d party, so it makes sense to find out whether or not we're going to get it.

December 2006 - producer contacts 3rd party re. 2nd project, who say they want an outline before they'll talk further.

January 2007 - I send a one pager on the 2nd project to producer, who forwards it to the 3rd party. We wait.

Four months have gone by already.

More news as it happens, newshounds.

*That would be PP for Principal Photography, a hallowed day in every writer's calendar, because not only is it the first day of real oh-my-god-they're-actually-going-to-make-it-why-did-I-ever-think-that line-would-be-even-intelligible-let-alone-dramatically-significant shooting, but signals the release of the Subsequent Use Advance, which is basically a repeat fee upfront. Most important.

**Might seem odd, but at that moment the ideas didn't really exist in a concrete form, and my tortuous reasoning was that I don't want to get paid for an idea unless I really think it's going to work, and at the company concerned, because once you're paid for an idea it no longer belongs to you, and I needed it to feel like mine to make it concrete. Does that make any sense at all...?

How I Got Started

2007-01-17T12:55:00.000+01:00

Just the kind of information I vainly searched for when I was starting out, when all I could find was interviews with writers in the Paris Review, and I never really saw myself in the Hemingway/Faulkner/Parker league. And I write it once and don't need to again, which is very appealing, as 'how did you get started?' is the second question at social gatherings. The first being 'what have you written?', the answer usually greeted with 'never seen it, don't want television much.' So where are the 6 or 7 million who do watch these ruddy shows, then?

SO.

I always wanted to be a writer, mainly because the lifestyle seemed so appealing - peer respect, lots of time spent in cafes and libraries, nice bags etc.* - but never bothered to take the first and most essential step, which is actually writing something**. Except for a few stories on a creative writing module at college, which didn't do much more than give me THE FEAR, which paralysed my soul whenever I attempted to write a story - 'yes, but what does it mean?' - and put me off writers groups for life.

Flash swiftly forward past street theatre and community arts and fireworks and stuff, to a short story competition in Woman's Own.

Yes really.

I reckoned that most entries would be bloody rotten rubbish, and if I didn't get a positive response from that I should take it as confirmation that my silly writer dreams should remain in the foetid pipe where they were so firmly wedged. I didn't win, but I did get a nice letter saying how much they'd liked my story, along with three romantic novellas as a runners up prize.

What more positive omen could you get? A writer I would be, by god!

I read somewhere that it takes ten years for someone to get really good at anything, so gave myself ten years. I also read that radio was where everyone started, so wrote a radio play, which wasn't made, but which introduced me to a producer at Radio Scotland who did make the next one I wrote, which was transmitted on Radio 4. A writer by god I was!

I imagined the next step would be red carpets and interviews on review shows, but the next step was Radio 4 not commissioning any new drama for 18 months because they had such a backlog to transmit.

Mm. Ah. And my Enterprise Allowance year*** was running out.

I went to a 3 session screenwriting night class at an Arts Centre in Glasgow, where the guy who was supposed to run it couldn't make it for one night, and was replaced by Paul Pender, a BBC script editor disenchanted with the corporation, TV, and Tory Britain, who told our tiny group of freaks, therapy-seekers****, and wastrels to forget about the UK entirely, it was a dead loss getting anything decent on, and just write for Hollywood.

So I did.

And so did he, and went on to write and produce Evelyn, amongst other stuff.

And I wrote lots of scripts, and they were really not very good at all. However, I knew they weren't very good, which had two benefits; I could see I needed to improve, and I didn't send them out to anyone, and so didn't poison any wells.

I wrote more. And I got better.

I entered various short film competitions run by Scottish Screen, and had a few meetings with people who all made encouraging noises, went on a couple of junkets and 'training' schemes*****, got to know a few people, and with the assistance of some cash from Scottish Screen, got a place on the first North by Northwest******, a very unusual for the time screenwriter's training programme that brought USC gurus to Europe for three weeks over six months to help editors and writers develop viable scripts.

And on that programme I wrote a good feature script.

From the short story comp to here took about eight years of working in a corner shop and office temping.

Self-belief or sheer bloody mindedness must have been a factor.

The script got me an agent, Big H, and was optioned. Big H got me meetings, the script and meetings got me a commission for a treatment to adapt a crime novel for STV, and the script and contacts in Scottish Screen got me a gig on Tube Tales.

The STV crime treatment went down very well, but the project got gazumped. However, the developing producer there, writer/teacher/editor/producer/all round guru and fantastic man Philip Palmer, persuaded the Head of Drama that moribund Taggart needed an injection of youthful energy (not that I was youthful any more; the picture rots in the attic), and so got Danny McCahon, another writer who'd been encouraged by Scottish Screen, and I gigs on that.
And that Taggart got me another Taggart. Which, along with the feature script, got me Rebus. Which helped me get The Bill...

...And so it goes, my industry connections broadening and developing all the time - my first editor on Taggart went on to produce Life on Mars (and I had to turn down the first series, having signed up for a Lynley - one of life's little regrets...), editors from The Bill moved to the BBC and introduced me to the Lynley people, the company responsible for Rebus produced Afterlife, and on...

The feature script, the last spec script I wrote, now long buried in the British feature development swamp*******, still works as a calling card.

What next?

*which goes to show how deluded people who would like to be writers but haven't done any yet really are.

**probably because I feared that it would be rubbish and prove my ambition sadly misplaced. I suspect I was one of those 'but of course, what I really want to do is write' twats.

*** an odd sort of jobseekers scheme created to get the unemployment figures down, where you could set up a business for a year and get an income equivalent to the dole. Must have sustained thousands of people in the arts community at the time. Sadly defunct.

****amongst whom was someone who became one of my best friends and plays a significant later role. Not one of the freaks, I should point out. The freaks included a lovely man who wrote using green ink on maths exercise books. Oddly enough, he had the best idea for a project, but I doubt it got further than the scabby room where we met.

*****The screenwriting education system/industry was nothing like the shiny machine it has since become, and mainly consisted of seasoned pros saying 'not quite good enough, but do keep trying, you're doing very well'.

******Created by that same friend I met at the Arts Centre in Glasgow, who didn't write in green ink, but did go on to do mysterious stuff in film finance which I don't quite understand, but which never fails to impress me. So I had an in - plus a bloody good idea, and enough craft by that time to make the resulting script work well

*******don't make me go back, Wayne, not the swamp, I cain't stand it, the flies, the stench, the black sucking mud...

New Bloody Year for Satan's Boy Child

2007-01-11T15:22:00.000+01:00

That was the festive season, then.

Phew.

I've come out alive, but not recognisably human, having managed to seize conjunctivitis from our sweetie daughter. She recovered in two days, whereas decrepit I have so far spent seven days slathering gummy resin from my eyes over every available surface. Plus said eyes are bright scarlet, giving me the look of a minor functionary in the Devil's interventionary bureaucracy, Human Affairs Dept, Shambling and Incompetent branch.

Good thing was I was sent to bed for a couple of days, and with permission just to read and daydream a bit, did more constructive note-making type of work than I would have done in a week of furiously staring at the PC screen.

Another example of NOT FOCUSSING being a key part of the creative process. Look at something other than the problem/idea at hand and stuff bubbles up from the periphery until it demands attention.

At the moment feeling optimistic about the year and projects ahead. But then, haven't started drafting yet...

I started writing In response to Billy's comment on the previous post and decided it was probably better answered here.

Billy -

Who is your agent,

I'd rather not name Big H in case it results in him receiving a deluge of not especially good scripts (along with the downright dreadful), because he deals with enough of a daily deluge already, and I don't want him (or, to be more accurate, his assistant Little A) distracted from the vitally important business of furthering my career. He works for a big agency that's probably close to the top of your list.

they sound like they really know what they are doing.

I should ruddy coco. 10% is 10bloody%, mate

Was also wondering how a writer would go about writing for series such as Spooks, Torchwood, Robin Hood, Linley etc. Do companies expect you to write a spec ep for these series or can you just send in something original as an example of your work?

How to get a gig on the shows you mention:

1) Have a good track record on shows with a vague relationship to the genre of the one in question, and good word of mouth from the script eds/producers you worked with. Be great in the meeting.

2) Have impressed the company concerned while developing something with them (or having play or novel optioned by them) in a similar vein - or in an entirely different vein if you're really really good. And have a track record. And good word of mouth. Be great in the meeting.

That accounts for the vast majority of writing gigs. But, very occasionally, if the company want to take a punt...

3) Be a successful author of popular books in the vein of the show. Have good word of mouth. Be great in the meeting.

4) Be a successful playwright of plays in the vein of the show. Have good word of mouth. Be great in the meeting.

And that's about it. Sending in a spec ep is pointless and will get you nowhere. Sending in something that's original and brilliant and intriguing might - and it's an incredibly, almost impossibly unlikely might - get you a meeting, from which you might - might - start a relationship with a script editor and maybe even - and now we're talking just silly unlikely - some kind of development commission. But you will not get the gig.

Top-rating shows like the ones you mention simply don't commission newbies. Do. Not. Too much money and too much risk involved. My way in will be subject of a later post.

Handy stress-busting tip

2006-12-21T14:23:00.000+01:00

Run around on an empty Portuguese beach with a toddler for a week. Works wonders.

Came back to face usual Christmas sensation, which is mostly frenzied irritation. No time! Too busy! Too many people! And still that awful and habitual decision to make - now I've left it too late to post any Christmas cards, is it okay for me not to bother? Again?

Meanwhile at the wordface another seam has been opened - I returned to several phone messages from the script editors of the prodco I met with just before we went away which gave me the strong impression I was being stalked. I thought we got on well, but not that well... Haven't found them lurking in the wash basket yet, but I'm sure it's the next step. Spookily, while writing down one of the ed's phone numbers with a view to returning her call, she called again. I could take this unnerving coincidence to be either further evidence of stalking - they've got a camera in the room! - or a Positive Omen. Think I'll go for the latter.

Upshot is I'll meet them and their Head of Drama early in the New Year to talk about doing a crime show (a thriller, not a whodunnit, so I can further stretch my genre muscles) later next year, and developing a new series idea. It's quite high concept, and if they'll let me go dark with it I'd be keen to take it on, not least because it's got a strong female lead and I'd love to create a mighty woman.

Question is, will I be able to do all the stuff I'd like to ? On Monday I went up the Filth to meet my powerful contact re. the Very Different development projects, and walked out with a commission for 2 treatments and a script. Next day I got an e-mail telling me that a series I was involved in developing, that's been on hold for more than a year, has now been green lit. Can I fit it all in while keeping quality up and myself sane?*

To help me decide, I spent a very pleasant couple of hours purchasing a shiny year planner and a delightful selection of non-permanent markers in a variety of colours, so that I can waste entire weeks of my life painstakingly highlighting delivery schedules that will bear no relationship with the stressful, compressed panic of reality. Whatever the schedule is at the start, it's a big ruddy lie. If you appear to have four months to reach production draft, you will spend 2 and half months of that time waiting and worrying, and 6 weeks screaming as you bleed over the keyboard.

Buoyed by the promise of future work, I dropped in on my agent with a bottle of malt and a faint sensation of what it might be like to be Santa. The agency have moved offices from a warren of hutches separated by piles of yellowing scripts and piss-stained carpet* two floors up to something resembling the control room of Little Nikita. The decor is stark, black and white Guantanamo chic, complete with blinding overhead interrogation lights directed at the guest's chair in all the agent's cells. Nice to know I have Blofeld working for me.

Back to work proper in January, so this lovely interlude of meetings, excitable chat, and brainstorming will come to an end and I'll have to get used to a low hum of anxiety again**. Ho bloody hum.

*A dog, apparently, but you never know. These agents can be right frightening sometimes.

**That low hum may be the reason for all the recent offers - the gnawing worry that "it's not good enough" is probably what drives me to churn out decent work. The only thing I'm not worried about is not being worried about that, because I'll always be worried about that.

Impressed? Yes I was.

2006-12-07T18:16:00.000+01:00

Another series outlining day on the groovy project, me arriving an hour late after some poor devil suffered a heart attack on the train in front, and our driver kept us enthralled with a faintly ghoulish commentary; "the ambulance has arrived...the paramedics are stabilising the patient on the train...they're moving him on to the stretcher - oh no they're no-yes, yes they are... etc." That man could go far.

Arrived at the prodco's offices* to find a bubbling crucible of creativity, which fortunately included croissants and still-warm-enough coffee, and a sparkly gold statue of a slender lady balancing a delicate globe on her pinky in the middle of the table.

Just as well there was a lot of coffee available...

Expect short delays over the coming week or so. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

*we've moved from overnight at a swanky hotel, to a day at swanky but more central hotel, to a morning in the basement office - it's getting serious now...

What counts as work?

2006-12-06T12:58:00.000+01:00

I'd like to know. More than that, I'd like to know and put that knowledge into useful practice.

Because when I'm not in the middle of drafting a script, I can't help the sneaky feeling that whatever I happen to be doing, no matter how professionally constructive or helpful it might prove further down the line, it is Not Real Work.

I'm Scots, profoundly irreligious (what do you mean atheism is simply a different form of faith? THE ONLY GODS ARE THE ONES WE MAKE IN OUR IMAGE, YOU MORON*#), but carry the weight of my grandparents cultural baggage, i.e. Presbyterian moral righteousness**, certitude, and the notion that salvation is won through through work. Which goes to show that the cultural import and value of religion is far more lasting and significant than its core supernatural beliefs.

The upshot is, if I'm sitting in a comfy chair reading a book, or a magazine, or a script, or surfing the web looking at useful stuff, or going for a walk, if I'm not sweating, feeling vaguely anxious, harried by deadlines, and tapping that keyboard like my fingers are miniature Michael Flatley's legs*** I AM NOT DOING WHAT I SHOULD BE DOING.

Which is working.

This is of course complete rubbish, and that false belief is the bane of my bloody life. Here I am, with a few blessed weeks between gigs, with time to dream a bit, let stuff just grow, seed new projects, and what am I doing? Sitting writing this as a form of displacement activity so that I can get to lunchtime nursing a guilty feeling that I haven't done any real work. So I've got something to worry about. So I've got some pressure. So I can do some work.

Stupid.

Got a CD of scripts from the excellent Screenwriters Store, because I'm supposed to be developing something in simliar territory to an enormously popular American show that I've only ever seen about 20 minutes of. Enough to get the picture, but I felt I should do some research. Not that it counts as work, of course. The bonus was finding some interesting treatments and synopses, which for me are more useful than scripts because they are far harder to write than scripts.

And found something to slaver over. Mm, chunky and functional.

Which reminds me of this, one of the items I purchased (except unlined! Bliss!) during a very pleasant forty five minutes in Muji on Oxford Street. I know it's not a big thing, but it's one of those small bricks of pleasure that help me build a happy life. I just got it out to admire it again, then carefully replaced it in the drawer where it will doubtless remain for months, or even years (it's so nice and so special it can't be used for just notes, they have to be special notes), until I realise I don't need it and hand it to our daughter to chew and shred. And it will still have been a satisfying purchase.

*My that felt good. In these days of polite moral relativism, the done thing is to say "I respect your belief and your right to hold it." Well fine, I respect your right to hold idiot beliefs, but you know what? I have no respect for the belief itself at all.

And breathe.

I have an itchy throat and may have a cold coming.

**see *

***you've never seen miniature Riverdance? The Potty Time apotheosis

#or, as Mr. Hume more elegantly put it, 'the only necessary god is the vitality of the universe.

The Big Script Editors' House

2006-12-04T18:05:00.000+01:00

How come all the script editors know all the other script editors? They all seem to know everybody and have worked with most of them, whereas I don’t know anybody*.

I can only conclude that they all share a big house somewhere in Lisson Grove, something Georgian and a bit neglected, and every night they all pile back, cook a big steaming rustic stew, serve it in big earthenware bowls on their big scrubbed pine kitchen table, pour each other glasses of wine and have a bloody good laugh about the eejits they have to deal with on a daily basis.

Finally managed to do some genuine actual work on Friday and got a one-pager in for one of the prospective development projects. I sent a copy to my agent (Big H, let’s call him, because I think he’d like that**) out of politeness***, and because unusually I knew it was good. To my deep amazement he replied. Even better, he wrote “this rocks!”

I'm so low maintenance. That response will keep me happy for months.

*that’s a big lie. I had a great time with last week’s Broadcast counting how many of the hot 100 I know. Hot 20, actually, because it’s only the producers and writers that count (do editors only count the editors?). I scored 7, and immediately felt insecure. What if they’re just slumming? Am I their bit of rough? Should I be worried that I’m not on the list? Do I want to be on it? If I was on it, wouldn’t that create enormous pressure on following years as I slipped down the ratings, or worse, failed to appear at all? Wouldn’t that serve to increase my deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy? Shouldn’t I just give up this whole lark, because, dammit, they know I’ve no idea what I’m doing…?

**Who wouldn’t want to be called Big H?

*** Some agents apparently read and comment on everything their clients produce, complete with notes and suggestions. Weird. Mine doesn’t. I’m not entirely sure what he does do, but he is on the phone a lot, and writes fantastically terse e-mails that succeed in communicating not only the subject at hand, but give the impression of feverish activity on my behalf. I’m also in gainful employment, so I’m not complaining. He does deals. That’s what he does. He’s busy doing, you know – deals. That kind of stuff. Agent stuff.

Nurture your friends, and yes i am a geek

2006-11-30T18:38:00.000+01:00

Off up TAAAHN (or the Big Filth, depending on mood) yesterday for the latest in my series of what and who is out there missions, where I dodged Christmas crowds, surreptitiously tugged down tinsel wherever I felt I could get away with it, and muttered ‘bah’ and ‘humbug’ a lot.

Having blithely swanned from meeting to meeting over the years without pausing to wonder how exactly I came to be invited*, in the cause of research on behalf of you, dear reader, the last two meetings I did I asked why they’d invited me.

First one was through a script editor I worked with on a long-form crime show who now has a project at the company in question. They were looking for someone with a proven track record over 90 minutes who could do dark, with maybe a dash of gothic. That’ll be me, then.

Second came from two different directions – one of the two people in the meeting had come across me on The Bill and remembered me from that**, while the other had been pointed in my direction by one of his mates, a script editor on Life on Mars. They were looking for crime/action/personal/long-form/maybe a few laughs (aka. “A fresh approach”).

Spot the common denominator?

I can’t stress this highly enough; the script editor is your friend.

yes i am a geek

I’ll mention here one ace bit of geekery that amazed me during the office to home office transfer, simply because, uniqely in my experience, It Just Worked.

I wanted to network a couple of PCS, looked at wireless ADSL and soon realised that over a couple of floors and rooms, it wasn’t going to be particularly speedy or reliable. I read in some mag about these miraculous Homeplug gadgets that turn your mains electricity circuits into an ethernet network, thought I’d give it a shot, and you know what?

It only bloody works! And first time, too! Straight out the box! With Windows!

Help ma boab.

So I now have 2 desktops, one in the kitchen, one the office, and a laptop (via a portable plug-in wireless extender) all networked and all sharing the same super speedy ADSL link.

I was so chuffed, I had to tell someone…

*Well, see, what it is, is the editors/producers send little cards to all the agents saying they want a writer, and all the agents send little cards describing their clients to the editors/producers, and the editors/producers flick through the cards till they find someone whose name they like and then they invite them. Or they throw all the cards into a wastepaper bin especially emptied for the purpose and pick a few out at random. Or they pick the fourth and seventeenth cards that arrive on alternating days, put them in a pile till it looks an impressive lot and invite them.

**Fortunately I remembered her too. This is not always the case, because I have been forced to acknowledge that I have an appalling memory for faces. This works both against and for me. While it has led to me blanking the cheery greeting of a then head of drama series and serials who I’d apparently met a few times before, it has also led to the development of a handy defence mechanism – a broad smile and acting as if I know everyone in the room, which means I come over at best as a warm, friendly and decent bloke, or at the very least an unthreatening simpleton.

Quake and Tremble

2006-11-27T16:35:00.000+01:00

Sparked by Pillock's congrats on the Emmy from a previous post, in response to which I panicked, wondered if I'd missed a really important invitation during the house move, then realised with relief that any congrats are entirely due to Matthew, Ashley, Tony, and Chris (creators and writers of Life on Mars) and nothing to do with second series writer me, I made a disturbing discovery.

Quake and tremble, for I am mighty Showkiller! Employ my services and see your projects perish!

I write two eps of "Afterlife 2".

It doesn't get a third series.

Fair enough, these things happen, it was good while it lasted and Steve's finale was a great way to end.

I write an ep of "Life on Mars 2"...

...and there will be no "Life on Mars 3".

Mm. I do hope producers aren't reading this. Unless, instead of making the immediately obvious conclusion that by employing me they are condemning their cherished projects to the televisual knacker's yard, they realise that my powerful, curse-laden talents might best be used on FIRST series only.

A stretch I know, but otherwise I face an uncomfortable future as British broadcasting's equivalent of Typhoid Mary.

Quick! Run while you can! Wash hands and body in case this condition is contagious.

Now, writer stuff. A practice exercise for would-be professionals.

Over the house/office move/installation saga - too long, too long, my bones are weary - I was faced with another classic writer's dilemma; I could develop three projects, two of which I originated OR I could do an episode of a resurrected TV classic that would get loads of attention, OR a big two-parter for a good and well-established crime show (which would also be a huge payday). Needless to say, the development projects offer a fraction of the money of the other two*, but offer potentially greater long-term rewards in satisfaction and control**.

What would you do?

Context is that although I'm not doing any paid work at the moment, I have next January's tax bill covered, and two eps guaranteed on a new series that will occupy me from December till May. In other words, I can make a choice that doesn't depend on cash in the bank.

What would you do now?

My answer is that I'm doing the development projects, because they're closest to me, and even if they never go to script I'll have big fun researching and developing them.

Would I have made that choice if I didn't have those 2 guaranteed eps? Or tax money?

mmm.

*Ok, not if they actually got commissioned, but let's agree that's a leeettle bit of a stretch.

**No coincidence that those two notions should be linked, I suspect.

And breathe...

2006-11-24T19:24:00.000+01:00

And relax…

Aaaand - you're back.

Good lord. Has it really been a month? I think the time lag between entries gives you an insight into my working methods. Chaotic, haphazard, and pressured.

It's been a busy time. Mainly house stuff, a lot of which involved an apparently infinite number of boxes, and more of which meant spattering paint over most of my clothes, but I’m largely over that now because it’s BIGGER than our pokey flat, and we have a GARDEN. With decking and a shed, so slippers, golf buggies, and an abiding interest in laburnums clearly lie in wait.

I also moved my office into a room at the back of the house, which I naively thought would take 2 days, and has so far taken two weeks. However, I do now have a view of a holly tree and lots of space (once I’ve ploughed through some of the infinite boxes), and I’m sure that once I’ve actually done some work in it I’ll be very pleased.

Lots of other work stuff going on too. Afterlife 3 isn’t going to happen, which is a shame but no big surprise. Partly screwed by the schedulers I feel, something that I think was confirmed when the final episode of series 2 was sandwiched between The X Factor and Parkinson. Not exactly a seamless segue for your average Saturday ITV viewer, I’d have thought…

My swanky storylining session on the swanky new series at the swanky hotel was great fun and yes, the hotel pushed all the swanky buttons, including multiple shades of taupe*, and handsome staff dressed in metrosexual black.

2 execs, 3 writers and a development exec, with a basic idea, but basically starting from scratch. Brilliant! The two other writers are co-producing and intimidatingly full of good ideas, but fortunately they’re also generous, funny, and very good company. This team have worked a lot together so I was very much the new boy at school, but no-one pulled my chair away, and my satchel was still on the same peg at the end of the day. We all left excited, and me at least badly hungover, always the sign of a productive work session. Unless you’re English Dave, in which case it’s a sign of a valiant attempt at career suicide.

We’ve had another day since then, throwing out most of what we’d got excited about at the first session, but hey – that was a good thing. A couple more days to come, where we can throw out the remainder of what we’ve done so far, then to drafting in January.

I’ve also done a lot of meetings with other companies, which has been good fun. I don’t usually do that many, mainly because I’ve been lucky enough to be going from gig to gig without much time to spare, but the excellent decision to drop the last project has given me the time to see what else is out there. And to find out what just what it is that my agent does. Get meetings, it turns out.

Now the haunting smell of bacon calls, along with a shrieking toddler. Home office joys. More soon.

* or are we calling it magnolia, these post-ironic days?)

Moving office home

2006-11-09T14:27:00.000+01:00

Thank you for continuing to hold. We value your call. An advisor will be with you shortly.

Which begs the question, if they value my call, why don't they pick up the sodding phone and speak to me?

Heard that infuriating and pointless mantra a lot recently. Still moving. Lots of stuff going on, so much I don't have time to write about it, but normal service may well be resumed next week.

Perks! 2

2006-10-18T15:26:00.000+01:00

Our house move next week (the removal van bumping over the bodies of the incompetent solicitors and indecisive buyers who melted our souls with pointless delays over the last couple of months. I hope) heralds a temporary hiatus.*

Plus I will be spending the next two days at a swanky hotel being a swanky writer with other swanky writers as we swankily storyline a swanky new series.**

I have to stress (unfortunately) this is not the habitual lot of the UK writer, and the last time a production company put me up overnight I stayed in a glorified motel whose barman tried to poison me with the worst pint of Guinness I have ever tasted.*** Before that, maybe four or five times, twice in a great place in Glasgow I have limited memory of due to naughty actors with bar tabs, but otherwise nothing to get excited about.

However, I have to share this joyous titbit from the agenda...

#Vacate the room at 18.00 - continue storylining in the Games Room until 7.

...The Games Room?

The Games Room??

Ha. If they're trying to impress, I'm impressed.

*If nothing else, writing this blog has reawakened the simple pleasure that arises from finding exactly the right word. Hiatus, indeed.

**And the equally simple but less admirable pleasure of boasting.

***Still, stupidly, I finished it. Oh how I paid... it's hard to come up with brilliant creative ideas when you're calculating how many steps and how many seconds it will take to get you to a toilet and safety.

You Got The Power!

2006-10-16T12:57:00.000+01:00

There's a short period in every project where the greenest of writers has power. Blink and you'll miss it, but after the treatment's been done, the salaried never need you more than when you've just started, or are just about to start, the first draft - but haven't finished yet. It's a negative power, but still, the power of NO is mighty.

And it feels bloody good to say it.

Would I have even contemplated using it without having guaranteed work lined up?

Probably not.

If there's one thing more powerful than the mighty NO, it's fear of penury.

However, I was rewarded for my earth-shattering decision by an e-mail with some wonderful and rather scary news about the success of some pitches, which seem to be entering development proper. The Karma police are on my case.

If any one of these ideas reached production I'd be a very lucky and happy boy BUT...they're for someone higher up the food chain in the same organisation I just said no to. Will I be able to prevent frenzied vampire execs from sucking the life blood from my babies? Just think of me as Van Helsing wielding a Pentel P207 in place of a stake.

danny-k asked why this blog seems to have started two years ago - answer is I tried it for a while, but it turned into a diary along the lines of;

Didn't leave house till late. Got to office later than I intended. Felt guilty and inadequate. Frittered around doing nothing in particular thinking 'I should really start work now' for an hour or two, till it was so close to lunch I thought I might as well start after lunch. Bought lunch and paper. Read paper, realised another hour and a half had gone by. Felt guilty and inadequate. Got panicked about how little work I'd done (none), felt guilty and inadequate, decided to go for fast walk to get blood and creative energy working. Felt better. Sat down. Had overwhelming urge to see if there had been any more entries on metafilter. Wasted more time. Felt guilty and inadequate. Frittered around till it was so close to tea time I thought I'd be much better starting fresh and motivated the next day. Went home. Watched X Factor/I'm a Celebrity.../Hell's Kitchen/Big Brother. Felt guilty and inadequate. Woke at three in the morning from a panicked dream about failing exams, realised I now had even less time to meet deadline than I'd planned. Felt guilty and inadequate.

Next day got up and did the same.

It was as depressing to write as it is to read.

Just say no

2006-10-13T12:08:00.000+01:00

Sometimes you've got to be brave.

So my big decision is..... no.

If I'd known the drafting schedule was going to be nigh impossible, I wouldn't have signed up to do the project, and as the schedule has become nigh impossible for no good production reason, do I really want to put myself through hell to come up with a piece of work that will only be half as good as I could make it just because the original schedule was allowed to slip... and slip... and slip?

So I said no thank you. I've had enough. The brave bit is that saying no means turning my back on a silly amount of cash and maybe burning a few bridges, but amazingly, I find there are more important things.

Who'd have thunk? Family and sanity matter. A liberating discovery.

The blow is however cushioned by thoughts of the next projects, which include a really rather exciting - and Top Secret* - series, and TIME, blessed, precious, golden TIME.

Reading! Watching! Soaking stuff in! Thinking (or not-thinking, which is apparently more useful)! Maybe even coming up with those series ideas I get asked for, and respond to with an awkward "time..busy...mmph...not sure...quite like...don't really know...time...never mind..." type mumble.

Drinking coffee! Being outside! Idly wandering through the stationery shops of my dreams! Propelling pencils! Notebooks bound in waterproof leather with vellum pages! Felt tips!

Share my fetishistic joy...

*No. Sorry. Absolutely not. If I breathe a word my tongue will be wound from my head with a barbed wire roller.

UPDATE:

It's just occurred to me; I rejected them...

A writer?

Did the rejecting?

How cool...?

Ruled by Thetans

2006-10-12T11:49:00.000+01:00

More crises - none of which have been of my making - on current project. 7 weeks till shoot, during which I have to move house. Big decision to be made. I'll keep you posted.

Fantastically, it turns out there are such things as theta waves. I had no idea. It is faintly disappointing that they aren't used by the inhabitants of Mars to control our puny human minds and dictate our puny human destinies, but nonetheless it's an interesting article.

It precisely describes a mental state that I recognise and have talked about many times as being my most creative, that strange sort of mental suspension when you aren't consciously thinking about anything, but ideas just come. It's a step removed from daydreaming, which is a more active state, and often happens to me on train or bus journeys. I think it has something to do with the motion, the repetitive noise, the fact that the world passes you without demanding your attention, and that you have no responsibility at all other than to sit there. You kind of disengage from the world around you, and the next thing you know - POP! An idea bursts in your head as if from nowhere.

The real hook of the article is that by using a method called 'neurofeedback' you can train yourself to enter that state, or to increase the power of that state when you do.

I am by nature sceptical, and the fact that nutcase Scientologists bang on about "rehabilating the thetan" (presumably akin to one of those dastardly all-powerful Martians mentioned above) almost made me skip the article, but I read it with a real jolt of recognition.

How about you? Have you/do you enter that state? Is that one of the reasons why writers are supposed drink on the job, to artificially simulate that oxymoronic sense of active disengagement?

Hmm.

Beat sheets, keyrings and cheese

2006-10-10T11:21:00.000+01:00

In response to Dom Carver's polite request...

Beat sheets.

My phrase for what others may call a treatment, but as everyone I've met seems to have a different idea of what a treatment should look like, I call what I do a beat sheet, and define it if required.

First off, shows like Afterlife and Life on Mars don't have a way they want them done. The only show I've worked on that had a format for what I'm calling a beat sheet was the The Bill - they wanted a scene by scene step treatment - and I so loathed the idea of doing one that we came to a compromise format where I could see the story clearly and they still got a lot of the detail that made them feel secure.

The commissioning process works like this; you get a call. Would you like to write for this show? If no, you put the phone down, instantly regret your decision and have sleepless nights for a few weeks. If yes please thank you very much, you have a meeting, usually with the script editor in the first instance, sometimes the producer.

After the bad coffee and a nice chat involving weather, industry gossip and a mutual gripe about The State Of Television, they like you. They tell you the kind of thing they're after. You give a vague idea of a story world, maybe some characters, maybe even a plot hook or two. They like it (obviously).

Next step is to meet either the producer or the exec. prod. (you hope it's the exec., because they're the ones you really have to please). Bad coffee, weather, gossip, State of Television. They like you. They like it. They ask for something on a page or two. This I call an outline, and sometimes the other people in the meeting call it the same thing. It's a sketch of your story idea on 1-3 pages. More than 3 pages is too long - it's just an idea. Sometimes they don't like it, in which case you keep doing outlines till they do.

But they like it.

And then comes the question - "how shall we go from here?" In other words, the format of the next stage, contractually the treatment, is up to you. Every writer and every editor has a preferred way of working, and generally editors defer to the writer, because they understand we have a necessary process.

There are writers who write huge 20 page prose documents , or a detailed scene by scene step, but I don't like doing those. To me, a prose treatment is more of a selling document than a working tool, and by this stage you've done the selling. A prose treatment can disguise structural weakness through style, a sort of sleight of hand where the story can seem to make sense without actually doing so. The temptation is to put far too much character and location detail into it (describing the story rather than telling it), which for me steals some of the energy you need when you come to draft the thing. You need to make some discoveries as you write the script or risk watching it die of boredom on the page. *

So I do a beat sheet. The key structural element is the story beat - what is the key action(s) driving this sequence? Plus a sketch of the location and impact on the main characters. Here's a sample from an early beat sheet for Afterlife:

33. ALISON'S: Martin leaves message for Alison

Alison plays Martin's message - she's concerned about him.

34. CABLES: Martin cracking, tears house apart

Increasingly unbalanced Martin rips the house apart searching for the rot, fuelled by drink.

35. HOSPITAL: Robert's MRI scan

Robert goes under the scanner

36. CABLES: Ruth appalled by state of house and Martin.

His behaviour frightens Ruth. His despair makes him angry and incommunicative. He gets very anxious when Ruth takes the baby out his sight. Ruth increasingly alarmed. They row.

37. CABLES: Ruth experiences Simon - oh my god, it's real

Ruth hears crying on monitor, goes upstairs into the where she finds Martin brooding over the sleeping baby's cot - but not a tear on his face. She goes into nursery - and experiences Simon.

38. HOSPITAL: Consultant delivers Robert's death sentence

With an audience of junior doctors?

....and so on till you've reached the end. If it's for ITV, I'll indicate Part Breaks (very handy structuring tool - three ad breaks an hour - your story has four acts). A sequence could be a short single scene, or it could be a long set piece involving many scenes, but the key idea is that this is the necessary step to move the story to the next sequence.

I sometimes attach thumbnail sketches of the main characters to the first beat sheet, 1-3 paras indicating attitude and backstory if necessary, so that everyone shares my take on the all-important character motivations.

The huge advantage of working this way is that the structure is very clear, and any leaps in emotional or narrative logic can be easily identified (not necessarily by the writer; this is where you graciously accept the editor's brilliant ideas and make them your own. Ha.). It's easy to juggle sequences about, insert/delete them, and most importantly, you don't get wedded to a particular sequence just because you've got fabulous location in mind, or a line you just have to get in.

Another plus is that it gives people further up the chain less detail to niggle at - and believe me, if there's unnecessary detail, they will niggle. Some execs seem to prefer the comfort of a bulging document at this stage as if it was evidence of good work. Less is absolutely more. Don't dirty up your structure with superfluous words. I'm tempted to launch into an extended analogy about narrative scaffolding, mud, and the dangers of falling from great heights, but I can see it ending badly so won't.

Bad coffee, weather, gossip, State of Television. Do another one.

BadcoffeeweathergossipStateofTelevision. Do another one.

And then go to script.

Or BdcffewthrgossStteofTv. Do another one.

And then go to script.

Or Bcwgstv.... ad infinitum.

I should emphasise that this is not the way to do it, it's the way I do it - I've developed this way of doing things over several years without really analysing it. I feel comfortable doing it, and to do it any other way would make me sweat in an unpleasantly acrid fashion. Every writer finds their way of working. I hope you find yours. There are, after all, more ways to skin a rabbit than with keyrings and cheese.

*Stories have low attention spans, in my experience. And never, never give them chocolate before bedtime, or they'll play up and act the giddy goat.

**you've never used keyrings or cheese in your rabbit skinning room?

Never rains but...

2006-10-06T15:10:00.000+01:00

...it usually does, particularly if I've made the conscious choice not to take any form of water resistant clothing on a trip to the supermarket. As I did this morning.

Splish bloody splosh.

Plus professionally I'm in the unique position of having work lined up through to round about this time next year. On shows I like, and on at least one of which I'll get a creator's credit. Extraordinary, amazing, thank the smiling stars, who'd have dreamt a totie wee boy like me etc.

And so, of course, now the offers come in. Never rains but... Two in the last three days, one of which is an ohmygod at last, finally I get the chance to do it, this is what I've been waiting for, I knew it, all I had to do was keep churning it out, hoozah, the single of one's dreams...

...but I can't do it.

Because I'm already committed to one and half other shows in the same period.

Arse.

And this isn't the first time it's happened. It's the classic freelancer's dilemma - do you take the certain job that's on the table, one which offers financial security and the degree of satisfaction offered by a job well done... or do you turn that down and hold out, for an unknown and financially alarming period of time, in the hope that something more challenging and potentially more satisfying will happen along?

Of course you take the job on the table. The job on the table keeps the roof on the house (or helps buy the house, in my current situation), and the season being what it is (see aforementioned supermarket trip), roofs matter.

But for fuck's sake...

My current state of mind can be summed up by a long exhalation, a heavy combination of groan and sigh, and an acceptance that if fate arrives smiling at your door, when you invite her in she's guaranteed to tread dog shite on your carpet, break your favourite mug (not the daisy mug...) and embarrass you at parties by being sick in the fruit punch.*

Tom Bell died. I thought he was tremendous, very unusual for a British actor in his understated but compelling presence. I vividly remember him in the brilliant Out, even though I only saw a small part of it (too young) at the time. I think it was the first time I'd seen an actor convey a real sense of violence, not just the cartoon violence I'd seen on cowboy films or The Professionals, and I found it impressive and disturbing . He was equally brilliant as the father in the best adaptation of Sons and Lovers I've seen**, and was probably the best thing on the screen in umpteen other character roles throughout his career. I think only Gary Oldman has been able to bring a similar sense of menace and danger to his roles, but Tom Bell never needed to try as hard.

*not that anyone would notice, going by my distant and hazy memories of the 'fruit punches' that featured solely at student parties.

**and only now do I find it was adapted by Trevor Griffiths, which explains a lot.

Oh Execs, Execs, Execs...

2006-10-05T11:07:00.000+01:00

Dearie me. Dearie dearie me.

Oh dearie dearie me.

What IS it about them? Spurred on by posts on English Dave and Dom's World, I've been trying to work why Execs' agendas are so sodding impenetrable.

And I have absolutely no idea. Usually, and cynically, I put it down to ruthless ambition, but on reflection I think the deepest and most abiding motivation is probably fear.

They are, after all, the ones responsible for spending the money.

Much as writers grump and moan, our responsibilities do not include worrying about budgets. And, as my recent house buying nightmare has demonstrated all too well, money worry is absolutely the most gut-twisting-sweat-inducing-early-hours-torment of all. Of course they get over-anxious and lapse into micro-management when they have already made their most important creative decisions, which are casting the producer, writer and director - they're terrified. Have I done the right thing? Will these creative people, who are, let's face it, not known for being the most reliable or stable of personalities, and who seem so bright, enthusiastic and capable in my office, actually come up with the goods? Will they do their best work for me, or will they just post it in? Will they meet deadlines, or - ohmygod - will they startle the thoroughbreds*, who can play more twisted games than humans can imagine? And do they understand that if this goes 1% over time I'm screwed, and, biggest nagging mong question of all....

Will it be any good?

What if they just can't shake off that terrible nagging feeling that this project, the one that once seemed so exciting, so brilliant - is going to turn out to be a pile of shit?

Of course they're going to stick their oar in, and of course that will send the production boat*** spinning in circles rather than ploughing speedily on.

It's their responsibility if it does turn out to rubbish. They can't write it, they can't produce it, they can't direct it, act it or edit (though they give that one a bloody good try), but it's their responsibility. All they can do is let other people get on with their jobs and hope to god that it'll turn out ok.

Hmm. I'd be scared. Yup. I'm scared just thinking about it.

Amazingly, in the scribbling of this post, I'm beginning to feel something approaching sympathy.

And there are good Execs out there; I can think right now of four or five who stamp their singular vision on every show that they do, and all the better those shows are for it. Thing is, none of them are micro-managers. They hide their fear behind a mask of unflappable insouciance or inspiring energy, so that the fear doesn't ooze out and mire development or production in sticky black fear-mud.

Which is, of course, fatal to any show.

*Actors, who closely resemble pure-bred horses; point them in the right direction with the right jockey** on board , and boy, they're amazing, off like a bullet. But jesus christ they startle easy.

** that would be the director, to pursue the analogy. Ha

***they call her the Trixie-Lee, me hearties.

Ratings and Offices

2006-10-04T12:35:00.000+01:00

Big fabulous dominating and entirely unconnected to screenwriting news is that our house purchase has finally gone through.

Finally.

Took a minor nervous breakdown over the weekend along with a couple of - how shall I put it? - forceful phone calls to our hesitant buyers to get it through, but it's done.

And I've now realised there is a connection with my professional life, in that I can finally escape from my rabbit hutch and work from home again.

I always loved the idea of having an office when I was working from home - having space for pin boards, shelves, a reading chair, desk with a view, pleasant chats and idle banter over regular coffee breaks with the chummy souls who populate the other offices in the building, then shrugging off the stress of a hard day at the wordface with a gentle stroll home through warm sunshine.

Ha.

Took me about a week to cover the place with the detritus of the creative life, which involves storms of bescribbled paper, endless drifts of biscuit crumbs, a scattering of redundant stationery, and several intriguing stains. And also to realise that I would only ever encounter my fellow hutchees once or twice a year, and when I did, I'd wish I hadn't (especially the heavily set men with sovved up hands who ran some sort of phone betting operation at weekends for a couple of months - I don't know exactly what they were doing, but none of the horses they were recommending ever came in and they didn't respond well to friendly enquiries...).*

Instead of helping me separate work and home life, it feels like it separates me from life entirely, and I'm sure that can't be a good thing.

Great response to the Afterlife episode. Okay ratings; best of the series so far (oh yes!**), but still well down on the first series. Planning's underway for series 3, but ITV are still holding off on a final decision until... until...it's almost... almost... too late. If past history tells us anything.

AAAAND the Producer on my current project, who I've worked with before, like, and think is good, is leaving for an impossible to miss opportunity at an indie.

Great. Which is when I receive my first direct contact from the Exec producer, who reassures me that "we'll appoint someone equally good ASAP, this won't effect you, don't worry, all's well" (subtext; please don't walk please don't walk please don't walk). I won't walk because the script ed's good, I don't want her to sink, and because I've got hooked into the story (smuggling a thriller into the whodunnit genre), but ooh - am I tempted.

*Except for James P, who has the hutch opposite mine, who is on the EastEnders rabbit wheel, and is lovely. Who'd have thunk, two screenwriters in the cheapest and smallest offices available in the area?

** It's great getting ratings - they're like football scores, except that I care about them. At least I do now; I had no idea when I first started. I remember getting an excited phone call from my agent after the first bit of TV I did (a Taggart; red indians rob a security van, and a man gets thrown off a bridge into the path of an express train. Nice.), hearing him bellow "Brilliant! Seven point nine and 31! Isn't that great?" and having to pretend to share his enthusiasm because I was afraid to show ignorance in case he dropped me. I now know that with 7.9 million and 31% he was as likely to drop me as he was his trousers in Oxford Circus.

Watch afterlife this Saturday

2006-09-29T11:27:00.000+01:00

Because I wrote it and I think it's good.

Which I can't say about everything that's been made from what I've written.

Found myself in the odd situation of sitting in TV centre lobby yesterday evening at 5.15 tapping away frantically on the laptop and thinking - I'm sure I don't need to be doing this.

And of course I didn't. Producer and ed. stuck in long meeting with writer of episode before mine (suffering crises of its own - if you're getting the impression that much of the work of the professional TV writer is like firefighting without the sexy vehicles, uniforms, danger or sexy anything you'd be right), so have an extra day to make the reconstituted storyline work.

Meeting with Important Person was...

Well, actually, oddly, you won't believe this but - you know what?

It was great.

Inspiring, even.

And I can assure you that doesn't happen often. Big new job, big new brief, and the massively heavy, cast-iron hasped door that was very clearly locked against the kind of shows I'd really like to do, so firmly and clearly locked in fact that I stopped even bothering to think about them let alone pitch them, is now equally and firmly wide open.

Who'd have thunk. Genre's back, and the more fun the better.

I was so inspired that I even allowed thoughts of new ideas to float around my head. Maybe I can stick with this TV lark after all...

Returned home late to a phone call that gave me minor house rage, about 3.2 on the Apoplexy scale, (this ranges from 1.0 - vague irritation, to 6.0 - your body literally explodes with fury). So far with our house moving/limbo experience I have reached 5.1 on the scale, which does involve blood but isn't actually life-threatening.

P.S. WATCH AFTERLIFE THIS SATURDAY

Perks!

2006-09-28T10:24:00.000+01:00

Excitamente! A parcel! Book!

One of the very few perks of the writer's world is that books are tax deductable. With my limited understanding of accounting, as far as I'm concerned that means I'm getting them for free. I wouldn't care to explain that statement any further, but it works wonders as I attempt to justify random purchases. It also works with train travel, CDs, computer gadgets, software, DVDs and cinema tickets. All free. Gratis.

I prefer to think.

Today's (work) present to myself is the most recent edition of David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film*, which is a brilliantly entertaining, thought-provoking, affectionate and joyous book about film. Apart from David Thomson's Suspects, which is not only the best book about film, film narrative, American popular culture and criticism I've read, but the book I would have aspired to write if I'd persisted with the unhappy delusion I could be a literary author. And which, as you'll see if you click on the link, is finally and at last being republished. Yay for niche publishers!

Those two books are enough to usefully define the difference between critics - the David Thomsons, Susan Sontags, and Robert Hughess of the world - and reviewers, the people who write the snarky columns you see in newspapers, a job open to anyone with a basic command of grammar, over-confidence in the value of their opinion, and snarling resentment that they can't practice the thing they snark at.

Meeting with an Important Person at the Beeb today, whose job title seems to have changed three times since I first met him a couple of months ago, but which seems to be getting ever longer and more impressive. It'd probably be simpler if he wore a T-shirt with "I'm the fucking boss" written on it, in which case I could do as my agent's assistant suggested and wear one with "I'm the fucking talent" on it.

Which I could see drawing a few interested looks in the TV Centre lobby (by the way, have you seen where they've stuck series drama now? Miles from the impressive and rather intimidating lobby through vast sheds, past cafes and canteens, over zebra crossings, through huge warehouses containing stuff that seems to be junk but could also be the original Tardis. An indication of the esteem in which it is held...?).

It's one of those odd "get to know each other" meetings where you kind of prowl round each other working out whether;

they're any good,
you can trust them or not,
what you can get out of each other,

whilst not committing to anything concrete. Usually inconclusive, but occasionally they lead to something further down the line.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Because of the undermentioned Exec bombshell, I'll have to work on the train going up, which is obviously bad, but also quite good, because I can look busy and practice my "don't interrupt my creative concentration" look, a vital skill for the accomplished writer to master. Bulky headphones and a partial frown help, I find.

*Ignore Torbjorn W. Stornes comment; I reckon young Torbjorn was embittered because Mr. Thomson dissed his favourite director/actor. The joy of the book is its witty, hugely informed and informative subjectivity.

Rage

2006-09-27T10:52:00.000+01:00

And fulminating. I seem to have spent most of the last five days in a permanent froth of impotent rage. There is of course the house move (just don't, is my advice. Not if you live in Brighton. And come into any contact at all with solicitors called H*nn*ngs. **)

We joined the National Trust, thus proving that not only have I reached middle-age, but I'm white, middle-class, and with a sense of superiority over the rest of humanity. Great large spaces for our toddler to run herself into the ground, but even so... is there an excuse?

They provided me with a source of fulmination by creating a stunningly gorgeous water park complete with autumnal woods and sloping meadows that beg you to run down them trilling the theme to a French relationship movie (I may be thinking of "The Man Who Loved Women". Oh, you know; La la lala la, la la lala la, laa laa laa la la lala la. Is it that...?) and have idyllic picnics... except you're not allowed picnics. Not in the beautiful grounds. In the considerably less beautiful field with tables next to the car park, yes; but in the beautiful, perfect for picnics grounds - no.

Rage.

More house rage.

Then BBC Exec rage. True writing stories, the kind world weary pros tell with a tang of cynical venom before they get their fourth refill of the free red.

8 weeks into my latest project. 8 weeks and 4 LOOONG beat sheets (my phrase for step treatments; more bouncy, pointed and direct, don't you think?) into my latest project, and I'm happy, the script editor's happy, the producer's happy. Let's go to first draft. Here comes the Exec Prod. Can't do that story - another BBC show are doing a story in the same territory.

Right.

Thanks. Thanks very much for telling us.

Who else but an Exec can know that? Isn't that an important part of their JOB, knowing what the other in-house Execs are developing? As if that wasn't enough to make my eyeballs bulge...

The gripper. The real knock you out, I can't believe they said that comment; 'It's not special enough. Make it more special' (it's one of two episodes going out when there are usually four, so to market it without seeming like skinflints they're calling them specials. ha.) Without going to the reasonable extent of defining what special might actually mean in this context.

Whiteout. Whiteout, then red dots swirl in a wind of anger before BAM - a hurricane of scarlet rage. Good Execs have a clear vision of what they want to get, and the best ones give notes that help achieve that. The others don't. They make vague but kind of sort of creative sounding noises that obfuscate rather than clarify, meaning they avoid the difficult job of giving clear and constructive notes.

Rage, rage, fury, rage.

We recovered, and as is often the case, producer, editor and me had a panicked meeting fuelled by cappucino and chocolate twists, deconstructed the treatment, and came up with a new structure and story line salvaging about 50% of what we had already. This is all with 10 weeks to shoot.

Rage fury rage.

All so unnecessary.

After seven years getting paid for writing TV I'm finally beginning to work out what it is that Execs do; make the development and writing process an unnecessarily stressful nightmare. Except the good ones, and them you barely notice, because they've communicated what they are looking for so well at the start of the process that they don't need to butt in and start again from scratch with 10 weeks to principal photography.

Glad that's off my chest.

**I wonder if that's enough to stop them suing me for libel? Though they're so incompetently slow that if they did I'd probably be dribbling in a rest home before they got round to it.

It Lives!

2006-09-21T00:13:00.000+01:00

Brilliant. A treatment to deliver tomorrow and two hours to come up with a blistering idea for a prospective spooky television show someone asked for. Seems like the ideal time to start a blog.

Why? Because everybody else does it and I hate the idea of missing out on a party. Not that I actually want to be at the party - I hate parties - but I hate the idea of missing out on the party even more. It's the curse of the egotistical introvert. And as a writer I am nothing if not monstrously egotistical (a condition disguised, I like to think, by a charmingly self-deprecatory manner; I love it when writers get together and compete to point out the flaws in their latest work whilst managing to imply those flaws are but attractively humanising blemishes on what is of course, all present will understand, a master work).

Thing is, if a writer has a blog they seem more famous than me, and if they are more famous than me they must be better than me, and if they're better than me I must be rubbish, at least according to that snide, gnarly and entirely unnecessary inner mong voice that seeks to prevent me from doing any work at all.

Plus Steve "the Volkmeister" Volk, lead writer on afterlife has a whole bloody FORUM of people saying what a genius he is (slightly overstating the case I'd suggest, though not far off), and quite frankly I want some of that action (I wrote episodes 3 & 5 of the current series, 30/09 & 21/10, since you asked. I hope.). Obviously I will get no comments at all, or a single comment saying "your shows sucks my long pipe asshole!" and "japanese l0ltia PHamAZY waits to ex you aloysius teddy in out sex", but I'm prepared for that.

Meantime, I'm going to continue this morning's good work by going out for a newspaper so that subtle ripples of current affairs will permeate my work, the sun will refresh and inspire me, and I can put off actually starting for another hour or so.

Oh yeah - if anyone finds a burgundy wallet in the ball pit of the toddlers' play area at Drusilla's Zoo, it's mine. Thanks.