There I was this evening doing research, some people call it watching TV. Hard work either way. And there was a re-run of a Pie in the Sky episode and I was thinking about the feedback I'd had on Tec. The thing about Pie in the Sky is that, although the protagonist has an official police position, he's effectively no longer in the Force but does the odd (in all definitions) jobs that no one else wants to do.
As mentioned in the last post the biggest problem with Tec is that, as a private investigator (well, a PI's PA really), the protagonist is not really in a position to investigate important crimes, like murder. But it's necessary to make a show that's half decent.
And then it came to me. The solution.
It'll involve a page 1 re-write, the main characters remain pretty much intact and so does the crime but the protagonist's situation changes fairly dramatically. It'll work. It's good.
Trouble is that it's all happening at once.
I just received some necessary documents and instructions in regard to pitching for some audio story work for an existing TV property - I have until the end of September to come up with some story ideas. I'll have to do a ton of research, and the parameters on length and number of cast are quite restrictive, but I realised that this situation is perfect for using the 36 Dramatic Situations to pull out some unusual conflicts.
I have a meeting on the morrow with my Clones collaborator hopefully we'll move that along a bit. We've narrowed down the audition applications for Monsters and will be holding the auditions next weekend? (When I say "we" I mean the producer and director - they ran them past me for comment.)
As you may have heard Blake Snyder died unexpectedly a few days ago. Curiously I'd never read his book Save the Cat! though he does come under the heading of someone who's written and sold scripts in Hollywood so probably has something worthwhile to say. I've just finished going through Running but wasn't 100% sure where to go from there - my attention has been a bit dispersed - I thought what better test of the book than to see if it can help. So I bought it.
I'm just 10 pages in and I definitely learned one thing - the Save the Cat! thing - good.
The family sans moi is off to Edinburgh on Monday. I dunno, how many families have almost 12-year-old boys that come into the house singing "A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox"? Must be doing something right. The good thing about them going off, and the dog going into kennels (I'll be out for 11 hours each day) is that I'll have to time for writing.
Yippee.
What's on the turntable? "Hello" by Evanescence from "Fallen" - if you like Evanescence you should try Lacuna Coil
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