You deserve an update

It's been a fairly pressured few weeks - the day job, my contract at that time, was in a very bad location for travel, had an appalling work schedule in relation to my travel, and was improperly specced which meant I ended up working all hours to finish it. Even though I wasn't getting paid for those additional hours.

Harrumph.

Just as well it was a short contract. My new contract is in a better location for travel, has a better work schedule and while my time will be filled getting the job done I will only have to work during work time.

Which is much better.

Ooh, while I'm here let me just say the commentary track on J.J.Abrams "Star Trek" is excellent, we watched it again last night and I loved it again. So I thought I'd listen to the commentary while ironing (I do 99% of the ironing) and it was definitely worth it.

On the writing front

Once I finished that contract, I got back into my rewrite of Running which is going pretty well. Had a few sticky moments but I realised that with all the changes I'd been making - as a result of this - there was one further technique I needed to apply in order to smooth out the story and ensure the whole thing flowed logically.

I needed to plan it backwards, this is another Jeff Kitchen technique and it goes like this:

Your story needs to have a logical flow. Each element of the story must be a logical progression from the previous element. You can achieve that by writing the story backwards: Goldilocks jumps out the window and runs away; Because she is scared by the Three Bears; Because she's woken up suddenly by the Three Bears; Because she ate all of Little Bear's porridge; Because she broke into their house while they were away.

Like that. You start with your ending and work back to the beginning. If you can't, you have a problem with your story: it's not logical.

So I did that with Running and smoothed out the plot and now, as I write it, I'm marking off each because.

Good news ... or not?

Back here I was a naughty tease, but I will now reveal that a good scriptwriting agency (as opposed to a web developer agency, which I also use) has read several of my scripts and concluded that they would like to have a meeting. I have tried not to get too excited as there is many a slip 'twixt cup and lip.

Hopefully I'll be able to arrange this in the next few weeks. It is quite stressful being so close, and it being so likely that nothing will come of it.

Importantly they put in writing that they consider that I can write.

Which is nice.*

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What's on the turntable? "Aristillus" by Camel from "Moonmadness"


*No irony intended - we need all the affirmation we can get.

So ... Bolivia?

What? Bolivia? No. I mean, in a minute.

First things first. Writing. Oh yes.

The talented Bill Martell has a great screen tip, which was recently re-aired, about the Antagonist. He makes the point that there's loads written on the journey of your Protagonist, but very little about the Antagonist.

Which is odd because the Antagonist is the most important character in the story. Without the Antagonist there is no story. It's obvious, so obvious it's not regarded as important. But it is.

Case in point, as you know I've been re-writing Running and it's been going a bit slowly. So I've been yanking tools out of the writers toolbox and trying them for size. They've been handy, given me some ideas and so on, but nothing's really solved the problem.

Until this script tip of Bill's popped up again and I realised that this tool had lying buried at the bottom of the toolkit  under a layer of old sandpaper and blunt blades.

The story's Antagonist wasn't clearly delineated: Why was she doing what she was doing? What is her ultimate goal? I had got some of it but there was no real plan. So I sat down and had a good think - train journeys are good for sitting down and thinking - and I got it. I know what she's doing and why she's doing it. And as soon as I did that the whole story fell into my lap. (Yes, the Antagonist is female, so is the Protagonist, I might make Detective Sergeant female too, that would balance it out.)

I should probably mention that one of Jeff Kitchen's tools implies the importance of the Antagonist's actions but doesn't emphasise it as much as Bill does.

So that was good. It meant I had to change the beginning of the story, which was a shame because I liked the opening, but that's the way it goes. Sometimes you have to kill your babies.

Bolivia? Not yet.

I've started another blog but I'm guessing most people who read this one won't be interested in that one, it's a technical blog about Drupal 7 for people who know what they're doing.

Bolivia!

My daughter is going to Bolivia as a volunteer to work with the animals, to help with her own Zoo Biology degree. She needs donations so it would be really good if you (yes you! Noo not the person beside you, well that person too, but YOU) make it easier for her to get there.

She's got herself a part-time job, while studying at University. She's taken up running so she's fit enough when she gets there. And the person who contributes the most will get a Jaguar cub as a prize. (What? No jaguar cub?) Alright, well everybody who contributes can pat themselves on the back.

How do you do that? You go here or here.

She's got a way to go to collect everything she needs - and everything helps. Do something else good today.

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What's on the turntable? "Flowers never bend with the rainfall" by Simon & Garfunkel (I've lost my harmonica, Albert.) 

Death to characters!

Here I am having a jolly time in Brum.

And I've been getting some writing done, hurrah!

I've been doing more planning on my next TV series pilot, Tec, and I've disposed of another character. There I was busily using one of Jeff Kitchen's plotting techniques from Writing a Great Movie and lo! I suddenly went "Is this main character really necessary? Could I combine him with this other main character? Would it hurt the plot? Damage the story?"

And I could only answer "No". In fact it improves it.

So let me see, I have now chopped out: one series leading character, one supporting character and one episode main character. (Oh, and a murder victim who is now offed before the main story starts, instead of during, so that's another one.)

Curiously enough the technique I was using is a refined form of something Bill Martell wrote about in his Script Secrets post for today. The only difference being that while Bill tells you that you must write your scripts in a logical cause-effect sequence, Jeff has a nifty technique to make it easy to achieve.

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What's on the turntable? "The Deserter" by Gordon Giltrap from "Perilous Journey"

Planning

Must be my week for epiphanies.

There are two types of epiphany (in my humble opinion) first there's the "OMG! Of course!" epiphany, then there's the "Oh." epiphany. The latter is when you realise you have been rather stupid.

I had an "Oh." epiphany on Friday.

It goes like this: I have written two quite good scripts (Monsters and Air) I have also, in the last year, written three not-so-good scripts (Unit X, Running and Tec). In the not-so-good ones the dialogue and action are still good (so I'm told by those that know), the premise was fine in each case but the structure just didn't quite work.

So one has to ask: why? Or more accurately: what changed between the first two and the last three? What did I do differently?

So I had a think and epiphanied.

There is a writer who goes by the name of Jeff Kitchen and I used to refer to his book "Writing a Great Movie" ad nauseum on this blog - because it is an excellent book. And don't be fooled by the title, it's not just for movies, it applies to TV, stageplays - pretty much any storytelling.

Even the book's introduction contains amazingly useful storytelling techniques.

The point about this book is it contains stuff that you can actually use, genuinely helpful ways to analyse your story and turn it into something even better. He starts off with Aristotle's analysis of drama, and goes on from there.

If you're the sort of person who objects when you think someone is dictating a screenwriting structure - well, so do I but I can see what works and what doesn't. Jeff Kitchen isn't a guru and doesn't dictate. He does describe what has been shown to be successful and effective story structure (Aristotle), but you don't have to use it if you don't want to.

But the proof of the pudding is always in the eating.

When I wrote Monsters and Air I used this book extensively (it's the only screenwriting book that I've ever kept with me, and kept re-reading). And those are good scripts. When I didn't use the book I ended up with not-so-good scripts.

It was arrogance, of course, I'd done two good scripts so I thought I knew what I was doing. Ha.

So yesterday I sat down with the planned web series, Winter, and started applying the various techniques from the book to it. One and a half hours later I had something that was essentially the same, but now had a much better structure and various ideas had been expanded.

Winter will be a 6 x 5min web series and requires that each episode ends on some sort of cliffhanger - just like the old cinema serials. And this needs to be integrated into the overall structure of the story - which still has to have (in Aristotlean terms) Dilemma, Crisis, Decision & Action and finally Resolution.

And using the techniques in the book I should be able to manage that without it looking contrived or "constructed".

And that's important.

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What's on the turntable? "Phaedra" by Tangerine Dream from "Phaedra"

My body is my tool

(Title reference: "Not the Nine O'Clock News", Rowan Atkinson as the mime artist called "Alternative Carpark".)

Among all the forums, newsletters and blogs that I read about screenwriting, I've noticed a recent trend - the promotion and complaints about writing tools. Someone will say how a particular author's method for screenwriting is really great - so much better than Brand X. And then someone else will come back with how anything like this stifles creativity blah blah blah.

An instructive instance of this appeared on the "Artful Writer" forums only yesterday. I've just joined Artful Writer on a recommendation from James Moran , who had quoted an interview with Scott Frank. Someone had asked Scott whether any experienced and professional writers actually use the sequence approach to writing features, Scott was a little sarcastic in his first response. But a couple of postings later he said he'd check it out.

I use a lot of writing tools, mostly those from the book "Writing a Great Movie" by Jeff Kitchen. Apart from one, these tools weren't developed by him, they are things written by Aristotle, Polti and others. They actually include the so-called "Sequence method" but only as part of a bigger technique and without the more prescriptive additions that seem to have appeared.

I set great store by Aristotle (who never wrote a play), and this is why: Where Aristotle lived they had an annual play competition for which the subject matter was fixed - every play had to be about the same myth with the same characters. Aristotle observed that some plays were good and some weren't; and because they were all about the same storyline with the same characters he could separate out the plot elements to analyse them. Which is how he came to write the Poetics which describes the plot elements that existed in the successful plays.

I use writing tools that I know can help me put together a better story, and help me remove those things that won't work.

I remember when Desktop Publishing tools first appeared back in the late 80s. I was editor in a magazine publishing company at the time and our company was one of the first to move to computer-based layout. The layout and typography guys adapted to the new computer-based tools (mostly) and turned out better-finished work at a faster rate than previously. They were professionals and were now using better tools.

But the DTP revolution had another effect, obviously anybody could buy these tools - and they did - and they used them - but they had no training and usually no talent. And what they produced was garbage. They broke the rules of typography (like having a maximum of three font styles on a page) - because they didn't even know such rules existed.

Then companies began to include cookie-cutter designs with their software, for things like newsletters and pamphlets, so these untrained people could choose designs and fill them in - it meant that the designs looked reasonable. And yet, without a true comprehension of the rules of design and typography, these things are lacklustre. No sparkle. No real talent.

This is what happens with screenwriting.

You can follow McKee's monomyth for example and create a mythic story with all the right beats in the right places - even if you have minimal talent. The result will look like a proper story but it'll be lacklustre. No sparkle.

The thing is this: Each tool has its place, it has a purpose and an end product. But the tools themselves will not generate a good product. (You can't put an uncarved block next to a lathe and chisel, and expect to come back next day to find a beautifully turned chair leg. Not unless you know Rumpelstiltskin.)

If you are writing a story for which the monomyth structure is the way to go then fine. Utilise that tool to assist you in producing a better story. If you find that your story has illogical jumps and you can't quite make things connect use Jeff Kitchen's effect-cause tool to fix it. If you find that your protagonist does not engage with the reader, use Aristotle's Dilemma tool. Apparently the Sequence method is good for helping you through Act II and keeping things going.

But this requires you to know and understand the tools at your disposal. A professional does not reject a new tool out of hand, he checks it out, he sees if it will be useful. Is it a real tool, or just something someone's invented to make a quick buck? You can't know unless you look - which is why Scott Frank said what he said on Artful Writer.

I admit I do not understand people who reject all writing books, and other teaching, out of hand - it strikes me as ignorant. I have read Seger's books - I didn't like them and didn't feel they had anything to offer me. But I read them. Jeff Kitchen, on the other hand, provides a plethora of genuinely useful tools. (Apart from the character stuff - which I don't like and would never use. I have my own tools when it comes to character and have zero interest in pop psychology.)

I would contend that every professional writer (when I use the word professional I'm talking about attitude, not whether they've been paid for a script) has a toolbox. It might contain homemade tools, it might contain learnt tools, or a combination. But the toolbox is there - because writing is rewriting and when you are rewriting you're using something to analyse what's already been written and that something is a tool.

I must admit I have ended up saying something different to what I was going to say when I started - and I have convinced myself I need to read McKee and Campbell even if I never use them.

As a final note about the stifling of creativity: No tool will stifle creativity if used correctly. Just as woodworking tools are entirely safe as long as you understand them and how to use them.

In regard to Tec I didn't end up writing any scenes, I started an outline instead. I needed a different tool because stories of this complexity need to have their detail worked out first, otherwise they are not going to work.

PS: I'm not going to mention the Writer's Guild of Great Britain's special membership offer because everyone else has. (Doh!)

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What's on the turntable? The Boy is playing "Yellow Submarine" on the saxophone...

Unsettled

Here I am in my parent's house North of London. I've already had an argument with my Dad [sigh]. Had no e-mail for over 24 hours but now connected with the help of parent's neighbours - with their approval.

Came down on the train yester-eve, and spent the time figuring out the plot structure for Running using one of Jeff Kitchen's writing tools (called Sequence-Proposition-Plot - I'm not going to explain it - get the book). This is another tool for ensuring your plot is tightly focussed and doesn't have extraneous stuff lying around. It also makes you actually look at your plot.

I don;t know about you but I sometimes pretend I'm working out the plot when I'm not really, I'm just fiddling around.

I've signed in to ScriptFrenzy but need to get some pages written today - I'm currently on about 6 pages a day required to finish in time. If I write more than that each day then I'll make things easier as I approach the end.

Feeling a bit low because, though I am pleased for all the scribosphere Red Planet finalists who've been invited to Tony Jordan's masterclass - I'm not one of them. Disappointing.

Clearly: Must Try Harder.

Better stop prevaricating and get writing... (must just get the progress bar set up).

(The interview in Sheffield seemed to go okay, but I never seem to do well in the interviews up north - is it because I have a posh southern accent?)

Later that evening...

The progress bar isn't working ... perhaps Google have changed the interface.

Anyway, I've been writing like a man possessed and knocked out 5 pages in the last 90 minutes. With the pages I've already done that brings me up to 16 pages. So my average (for reasons of mathematics) has dropped from 6 pages a day down to 5.6 pages a day. But from now on I really must exceed that and write at least 6 per day.

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What's on the turntable? "Amarok" by Mike Oldfield

On the run

The 60th wedding anniversary party went off smoothly. I was required to make a speech as eldest child present. I was going to prepare but was shoved in front of 30 assorted relatives (20% of whom I had never met) before I got a chance to think about it.

So I improvised. According to the daughter people laughed in all the right places. Phew.

Families are funny things, aren't they? I always found the TV sitcom the Royle Family to be unwatchable - I thought it was really funny, but I couldn't watch it. Because it's far too close to the reality of my relations for comfort - even though it's set in Manchester not London.

Here's the thing: I'm a Londoner even though I've lived North of Watford for over 30 years. I've never lost my accent - kinda. Technically I'm a cockney. I lived in the centre of London (and I mean Westminster) for the first 5 years of my life: in two rooms in a family of 5, toilet down the hall, only cold running water (also down the hall), gas lighting - well, maybe not that bit.

Slums, but good quality slums.

Then we moved up and out. Straight to the suburbs. Detached house with 9 rooms. It would have been culture shock but I was only 5. My accent softened and when I went to university it went "posh". And still is. Unfortunately my poor northern kids have "posh" accents. Their school friends assume they must be rich. Stereotypes.

Anyway I have an enormous London family on my mother's side. It's a matriarchy, the women are strong - the men are - well - less so. They do as they're told. Of course it can go to extremes. I have a cousin (naming no names) she has four brilliant kids. No husband. Never had one and, as far as I can tell, she never wanted one. I'm not entirely sure how many fathers are involved but it's 3 or 4.

I had an uncle, rough London working-class bloke, loved opera - the real stuff.

So we had a relatively small gathering of the clan, my sister couldn't come over from Australia because she's just had an operation, my mother's brother is in the Far East on business. Only one of my father's sisters could make it, others being ill. Well, they are getting on.

I saw my wife and kids - first time in three weeks! Oh yes! Then four hours later had to say good bye again. Well, I'll be seeing them on Friday and for the next few days after that. Until I find the next contract.

The daughter is having her second audition for drama college tomorrow, in Oxford. It'll be good practice for her RADA audition in a couple of weeks.

So, I was at work again today, the website goes live tomorrow evening. Still a ton of stuff to do but my brain was seizing up by the evening. I felt a bit guilty about leaving when others were still working, but I had been there a good couple of hours before them. And work at least an hour a day longer than anyone else. Hmm, justifications not working, still feel guilty.

You might think with the pressure that I don't have time for writing - actually it's mostly the blogging that gets in the way :-)

If I get to be a professional writer I'm going to have to get a First Class season ticket to, say, York and back and write on the train. It's a lot easier. This evening, on the train, I got out my trusty notebook and decided I needed to figure out what's wrong with Running. So I did.

I'd been thinking about it and realised that, although I have a beginning and I have an idea of an end I really haven't got it straight in my head. So I chose a tool from my writer's toolbox: Writing backwards.

This is one of the excellent tools from "Writing a Great Movie" by Jeff Kitchen, and involves starting with the end and working backwards stating exactly what caused the step before - it helps you create a joined-up plot. Of course as I was doing it for the plot as a whole I only had about 8 steps in it but even then it clarified the sequence and made me think about some new ideas.

I also want to analyse it in terms of the 36 Dramatic Situations to see if there's anything interesting I can plumb into the story to generate more emotion. (I've already got lots of sacrifice - scacrificing self for an ideal, sacrificing loved ones, yummy stuff, but sacrifice is easy, what about Conflict with a God?)

I'll be getting my professional feedback notes on Unit X Wednesday or Thursday which is just fine as I'll be a bit tied up tomorrow with the website launch.

Anyway peeps, be careful out there, and keep on writing.

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What's on the turntable? "China girl" by Bowie from ... "Let's Dance"? Brilliant song, drippping with irony.

All the fun of the fair

Well I finally managed to stop procrastinating about 10:00pm this evening, because I really really had to start writing Which.

And I did.

Oh, what a jolly time I'm having - and I've chopped out one of the TV shows I was going to incorporate.

Just because I'm writing something fun doesn't mean that I'm not applying all the tools at my disposal, because it still needs to be good (hopefully).

The TV programmes I'm combining are Being Human and Torchwood. And I've started the story by echoing the opening of Ep.1 of Being Human (script). Cutting to a brief scene in the Torchwood Hub (Cardiff), then an all-action sequence in Bristol.

But the writing tools? As Lucy mentioned on her blog the other day, consequence is everything - everything in your script must flow logically, and as a dependent action, from the previous event. Aristotle, over 2000 years ago, warned against episodic stories, so this has been known about for a while.

In his book "Writing a Great Movie", Jeff Kitchen expounds a technique which helps you to write consequential plot lines. It involves starting at the end and working backwards. You write down the end you want and say "which is caused directly by...". You do this at a high level for the overall action. Then do the same for each sequence within the story. And then even down to individual scenes.

I applied this technique to Which as I came home on the train today. Obviously it didn't take very long because I'm only aiming for 10-15 pages. But the important thing was that I had planned to include The Sarah Jane Adventures in the story as well but, using this technique, it was found to be surplus to requirements.

So there we go. Fun fun fun.

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What's on the turntable? "Amarok" by Mike Oldfield (58 minutes in)

Only 36?

The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations is a book by Georges Polti written in 1868, available free in its 1916 translation by Lucile Ray (published 1924).

It was written by surveying a huge body of literature and classifying the dramas that Polti found therein. Apparently there was an attempt to disprove that there could be so few, but that only yielded 24 situations.

Jeff Kitchen includes the 36 Dramatic Situations in his book “Writing a Great Movie” as one of the techniques you can use to improve the drama in your work. As regular readers will know this is one of my favourite books on writing screenplays. Though most of it applies to any form of dramatic writing, not just movies.

The biggest mistake people make with the 36DS is thinking it is somehow proscriptive – by which I mean it is limiting. Or prescriptive - you must use one of these. Nothing is further from the truth. The people who make these criticisms obviously haven't read the source material.

Yes there are 36 major divisions, there are at least 3 subdivisions of each one, and some have sub-subdivisions. And you can combine two or more dramatic situations. Which makes the number of possible permutations a very big number indeed – far more than you’ll ever write.
So, to suggest it is somehow limiting is silly.

You can read any of the abbreviated versions of Polti’s work, but it’s worth reading the full translation, partly for Polti’s sense of humour and partly to gain a much better of understanding of his thinking behind the work.

Let’s take an example picked at random:

“Enmity of Kinsmen”, each situation lists the elements which make it up, in this case “a malevolent kinsman and a hated or reciprocally hating kinsman”. This is a dramatic situation which we’re all familiar with. He chooses several subdivisions: Hatred of Brothers sub-subdivided into one-to-one, several-to-one, and so on. (Not explicitly listed are all the different brother/sister combinations.)

Then there’s father-son (and all the versions between one generation, not explicitly listed); between two generations; between in-laws, he explicitly mentions mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflict; and then there’s infanticide.

But here’s the key: he doesn’t list them all and points out in his introduction that this is a survey of dramatic situations that he found. He states that this survey shows areas that have not yet been touched by drama.

In other words you could go through his lists and come up with something completely new and original that has never been done before. He wouldn’t mind.

There are some situations that seem a little odd, like 31: Conflict with a God. It’s important to understand that the “God” can be interpreted as anything that, compared to the individual is godlike – it could the State, for example: immortal and untouchable (effectively).

So what value does this have? Well, it’s a tool for the toolbox. If your story is lacking drama you pull out the 36 dramatic situations and see what you can add to the mix. Your overall story will be one (or more) of the 36 but, since every scene should contain drama, every scene will also have something from the 36, and if it doesn’t you can add it.

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What's on the turntable? "Go! Spastic" by Squarepusher from "Go Plastic", as I've said before my tastes are eclectic

Backwards into the future

You may (or may not) notice that, at the time of writing, the Unit X progress bar has not advanced. I wrote no pages yesterday, though I did fiddle a bit.

This is because I had come to a point in the story where I had an extremely complicated action sequence involving 5-6 viewpoints and that is not something it's easy to write off the top of one's head. I also had a number of key scenes to be included and the ending had to be quite specific.

So I spent much of yesterday afternoon planning, using a spreadsheet to create a kind of step outline, but just for the action. One column per main character and time as rows.

The obvious way to do it is to start at the beginning and work through placing each character's actions as you go along. In fact this is wrong, especially for complicated stuff, and I know better.

I am told there is a tribe in South America that believes we are travelling into the future backwards - because we can only see what has passed us, not what is to come. Luckily, as writers, we have the opportunity to know the future so don't have to write backwards (though I know some writers do).

Hm, that paragraph didn't quite come out right - but you know what I mean.

The best way to plan things it is to work backwards from the ending you want to see. This technique is covered in Jeff Kitchen's book "Writing a Great Movie" (as I've said before, it's a bad title, the book sounds cheesy, it really isn't). In the book this method is used for plotting everything from individual scenes up to the entire work. It's a method you can use to ensure that you have a logical cause/effect going on through the entire story.

I applied it to this long and complex sequence to ensure it: (a) makes sense; (b) says what I want it to say; and (c) stays focussed. Now I just have to write the damn thing.

Bill Martell writes action movies so he's another person you can learn a lot from, his take on revealing character in action sequences is very valuable - you might like to read his analysis of why Die Hard is the quintessential action movie. It's down to character.

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What's on the turntable? "Fading Away" by Vangelis from "Bladerunner CD2"

Script secrets

Bill Martell is great, he really knows his stuff. His daily script secrets are great too, that's where he reveals all the stuff he knows.

I spent the evening working on my One Page Pitch for Winter (see Adrian Mead's How to Make it as a Scriptwriter, Chapter 8 - honestly I don't get a commission).

Actually I am quite pleased with the way it's coming together, although the antagonist needs work.

You see it's like this: Bill didn't like Indy IV and I wasn't overly impressed by it, Indy II wasn't great either but Indy I and III were cracking tales. Why? Was it because I and III had Nazis in them? While II and IV didn't?

Mr Martell says yes and no. It's not because they were Nazis that they made great antagonists, it's because, as antagonists, the stakes were clear. The viewer understands why it would be really bad if Hitler got hold of either the Ark or Immortality.

In II and IV the stakes either weren't high enough (II, yes it was bad what they were doing to the kids but what would actually happen if they got all the stones?) or too vague (IV, so the Commies wanted psychic powers ... okay ... so what?).

This is one of the problems I have to fix with Winter, the antagonist has his evil goal but if he succeeds ... so what?

This is the "So what?" rule which is expressed by my other favourite screenwriting adviser, Jeff Kitchen in his "Writing a Great Movie" and I quote:

Harry Cohn, the founder of Columbia Pictures, ran his development process as follows: He would sit his writers down at a conference table and ask for their ideas. The first writer would lay out his idea and Cohn would respond, "So what?" The next writer would pitch his idea and Cohn would shoot it down the same way. An idea had to pass Cohn's "So what?" test before he was willing to pursue it.

I need a motivation and consequences of the antagonist's actions that answer the "So what?" test. Currently it's way too vague and ephemeral "something bad will happen".

The other thing that needs dealing with is the theme. Now it's true that theme often doesn't reveal itself until you've finished. But there are ways to divine the theme without writing everything, in this both Bill Martell and Jeff Kitchen agree:

1. How the protagonist resolves the story.

and

2. The main philosophical difference between the protagonist and the antagonist.

Which, for reasons I can't reveal, makes working out the theme in Winter quite hard, but I'm sure I'll prevail.

It's funny how things work out I had been wondering about theme (because Adrian Mead suggested I should for the One Page Pitch) and then I looked at Bill Martell's daily script secret which, if you don't know, you do by going here and then just waiting (don't click "Enter").

I got tip #144 which didn't excite me, so being a naughty hacky type lad, I deleted the "1" from the URL and pressed return. And lo! I got Bill Martell's take on Theme. The fates were with me this eve.

Writing blogs is a great way of prevaricating when you don't have anything to read.

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What's on the turntable? "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell from "Hits". I love this song.

Patience, Prevarication and Planning

I originally entitled this blog "impatience, prevarication and planning" but I thought having three "P"s sounded cleverer.

I just got very excited because, stuck in Reading again this weekend as the launch of the website is only days away, I have been working on my next work.

This is not my "One Night in Paris" because I got some very poor feedback (the feedback was good, the opinions expressed were unpleasantly accurate) so it needs more time to ferment. Plus the fact my wife made a suggestion last week that suddenly turned the whole idea upside down and would make it super-cheap to produce. It needs fermentation or possibly extended composting.

So I'm working on Air. (snigger)

"Air" is the working title for my kids fantasy TV series -- as I'm still waiting for responses from all the agents and TV Companies that are reading Monsters.

Air is inspired by a 70s TV show called Sky (see what I did there, with the name) and while it has some similar concepts it's a very different tale. Sky was seriously scary but totally amazing, and had a profound effect on me.

But to the point of this blog (finally) I'm very impatient when it comes to writing because I really do just want to get in there and get some words down, let's face it I'm not going to write all 12 episodes, this is just a spec, so 30 pages is something I could just throw together. Right? Wrong. That would be fatal.

I sat down last week and got some ideas into a concrete form, tried to do some planning following the suggestions in Adrian Mead's little tome How to Make it as a Scriptwriter as I like to try things out. I also used the excellent Writing a Great Movie by Jeff Kitchen - don't be fooled, this book is excellent for all types of dramatic writing, and it's the only book on screenwriting that I come back to time and again and actually use as a reference.

All this meant I had to think about the protagonist's dilemma in detail, and then attempt to derive the theme from that. All good stuff, because getting a handle on theme can really provide a depth to what you're doing.

I did all this, wasn't really happy with what I'd produced and then the day job intervened for a week.

I got back to it this evening. Walking back from the day job allowed me some thinking time and I realised how I could structure the whole 12 episodes with overlapping 3-episode plotlines that would result in a sequence that would demand continued watching because so much would happen and keep on happening.

I probably didn't explain that very well, so here's a picture to paint a thousand words...

It's like writing 8 features, 2 x 60min and 2 x 30 min, except that obviously the A plots get more time than the B plots which get more than the C plots.

This might seem very formal but as I began to fill in what the storylines would actually be it all came together very nicely with each plot idea contributing to and complementing the others.

It's all very well saying that I'm going to only write a 30 minute episode but unless I know what's happening in the rest of the series in reasonable detail that episode will be shallow.

As I worked on the plot ideas another thing happened. The real reason I am very pleased with myself: The theme suddenly hit me. Something simple, easy for children (and adults) to identify with and something that has real emotional impact.

Oh yes, I'm a real smarty-pants.

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What's on the turntable? "Live Bed Show" by Pulp from "Different Class". Jarvis Cocker is another great writer, his songs evoke real characters and tell definite stories.

A Writing Process #3: Making Drama out of Crisis

Last Friday I was on the train back home. I'd found a "standard" class seat that allowed me to use my computer (I usually have a problem where my portly form doesn't allow enough room) however, as it turned out I didn't use it. I was still at notebook level.

I'm working my way through some of the tools provided in Jeff Kitchen's screenwriting book "Writing a Great Movie", illustrating as I go. My new work-in-progress has the working title of "Running" and it may be set in Canada but the city is not too important at this stage.

In the last blog on this subject I looked at Aristotle's first principle of Dilemma. After that he observed that the situation becomes steadily worse until you reach Crisis where the Dilemma reaches breaking point, at roughly 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through - the Second Turning Point of some gurus.

Looking at Back to the Future, the dilemma is that Marty must get back to the future (and now he's on a time limit) but he can't go back until he's fixed his parent's relationship. So where's the crisis? No idea, I'm making this up as I go along. Clearly it's at the "Enchantment under the Sea" dance. He kisses his mother ... that's not it ... Biff pulls her from the car ... his dad gets some backbone and floors Biff ... none of these things are Marty's Crisis. He must make them kiss, if they don't kiss he disappears in a puff of unsmoke. This is the Crisis, he's out of time and out of choices.

After Crisis, says Aristotle, comes Decision & Action. The protagonist has been squeezed by the dilemma and must make a decision and take action to deal with the crisis. Marty makes the band play by taking the place of their injured guitarist. They play and just as Marty is fading out his parents-to-be kiss.

At this point I have to mention a film that Jeff Kitchen mentions in passing on the subject of Crisis, Decision & Action: The Firm. The dilemma is that the protagonist is working for a firm of lawyers who work for the Mob. But the only way out is to betray client/lawyer confidence for which the protagonist would be disbarred (and the Mob would chase him down and kill him). Yet he can't stay. As you expect with a John Grisham story, the Decision and Action are tense and exciting while the final resolution is brilliant.

Finally there is Resolution. The Decision & Action don't completely solve the Crisis, they just handle the situation, the Resolution finishes off the Crisis for good.

So I went through my ideas for "Running" and applied these concepts to my protagonist, Rebecca. I had already analysed the dilemma so, using Jeff Kitchen's suggestions, I followed this through amplifying the dilemma, imagining ways that it could get worse and worse until it reached that Crisis point. Events that make the dilemma worse are the ways you fill up the second act while staying on track.

So I created a Crisis using these ideas, plus the earlier ideas I'd had, and from the Crisis comes Rebecca's Decision & Action and the final resolution of the whole situation.

The end result is that I now have a story, end to end. Some of my ideas have disappeared in the mix, while new ones have arisen. And there's a coherence to all the concepts which means that I won't be wandering off all over the place.

I have to say that I find a lot of this planning very tedious because I really want to get on with the writing, but all my experience tells me, and so does David Mamet, that the time and energy spent in re-writes is more usefully expended in planning. The more you prepare, the less rewriting you have to do.

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What's on the turntable? "The Kids are Alright" by The Who from "The Ultimate Collection". It's all the fault of the CSI programmes, 40 Who tracks, lovely.

A Writing Process #2: Running with Aristotle

I have given my new work-in-progress the working title "Running", I always like to have a snappy title I can use to refer to things.

Although "Running" is intended to be a collaborative work I'm really liking the way it's shaping up and it'll be fine even if the company don't like the idea. (I'm all fired up and can't hang around for their response, the muse has grabbed me by the short and curlies and shoved me in front of the computer ... well, notepad in this case.)

Because of the way this story came about I'm working my way through Jeff Kitchen's writing tools from his "Writing a Great Movie" book. Yesterday I attacked with the 36 Dramatic Situations which began to give me a handle on character and relationships.

This evening I started reading through his introduction and came across his reference to Aristotle's "Unity of Action". This comes up in other guises when people talk about scenes, characters, dialogue, sequences and so on being irrelevant. The idea is that the work you create must have a "Unity of Action" every part of it must be part of the whole such that if you were to remove it it would damage the whole.

If something can be removed without affecting the whole then it's redundant and should be cut. (In "Une Nuit a Paris" I have a redundant character who's for the chop next draft.) But you can apply this rule right from the start, Jeff Kitchen expresses it as: "A Single Action; A Single Character; A Single Result".

But my conception of "Running" has two lead characters, I could break the rule but I've learned that my expertise is not yet sufficient. So I decide the protagonist will be Rebecca while her brother, John, can serve to express the next bit of plot construction.

Writing gurus often talk about things like "turning points" particularly in reference to the switch from Act 1 into Act 2. Aristotle doesn't. He has "Dilemma", the two lemmas. The best way to express it is the "damned if you do damned if you don't" situation.

Lots of screenwriting books use "Back to the Future" as a superb example of screenwriting craftsmanship. Jeff Kitchen doesn't, so I will to illustrate. If you take "turning point" as your move from Act 1 to Act 2 then most people would suggest that when Marty McFly goes back to 1955 that's the turning point, his world is upset. As Speilberg puts it his life's equilibrium is all messed up.

Of course he thinks that the Doc has been shot and he needs to get back to save him, but time is not an issue at this point, he has all the time in the world.

But that's not a dilemma. All he has to do is find the Doc and let him get the car running to send him back. Not easy, but not a huge challenge. But what happens shortly after? He screws up his own past such that though he must get back to the future, he can't until he fixes the relationship between his mother and father to be. Dilemma. Complicated by the fact that his mother wants (in the biblical sense) him.

A dilemma is also measured by its stakes: and in BttF the stakes couldn't be higher: If he fails then he ceases to exist.

So, I read through the use of Dilemma as a tool (which can be applied to an existing script as well as used when creating a new one) and applied it to Running. It's another brainstorming exercise identifying the dilemma and then working out all its ramifications.

As a result I've got a really good idea about the main character, Rebecca, and her dilemma (John will dramatise one side while she can express the other). And more plot ideas have been falling out into my lap. This is good stuff.

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What's on the turntable? "Incantations Part Two" by Mike Oldfield from "Incantations". Part Two (and Part Four) feature Maddy Prior, the singer from the folk-rock band Steeleye Span (who also recently reformed - along with Pentangle - for their 40th anniversary tour).

I may have mentioned my fondness for 70s Prog Rock. This isn't really Prog Rock, it's something else. Mike Oldfield wanted to create "classical music" in a rock mode (a bit like the 70s/80s band Renaissance, only less "pop"). It's not "easy" music; he loves strange rhythmic patterns, and so do I.

A Writing Process

Every writer is different, of course, though there are always features in common - like prevaricating (an important part of the process).

I've been toying with a feature idea after I failed to meet someone at SWF - we'd arranged to meet up but never quite managed it. He has a production company and is looking for scripts based around specific concepts. It's a collaborative thing = no upfront money. But that's okay, after all I haven't exactly proved myself in the writing arena as yet.

So, I've been toying. And prevaricating. But the prevaricating time is now over because the idea was finally beginning to take shape and had got to the point where active participation on my part had become necessary.

Off and on I mention Jeff Kitchen and his "Writing a Great Movie" book which is one of only two screenwriting books I'd personally recommend (the other being "How not to write a screenplay" by Denny Martin Flinn). I recommend them because I have found them very useful.

Jeff Kitchen's book contains tools for screenwriting. It's practical. Like hammers and screwdrivers.

Some people don't like screenwriting books because they feel they are too prescriptive (you must do this only) and/or proscriptive (you mustn't do that ever). Perhaps some are. This one isn't.

Merely owning a tool doesn't dictate what you make with it.

One of the tools in Jeff Kitchen's book is the "36 Dramatic Situations", this is not a proscriptive list of the only dramatic situations you're allowed to have; it's just a list of 36 Dramatic Situations (plus a lot of sub-categories). It originated in the 1700s and was expanded and expounded on by Georges Polti in his 1916 book.

(None of the tools in the book have been devised by Jeff Kitchen, he has collected useful ones together for you to use from excellent sources like Aristotle, Carlo Gozzi and others.)

On this occasion I had some characters and a basic idea for a plot but no real meat. So I pulled out the 36 Dramatic Situations and brainstormed using them, seeing how they might be used in my story. In doing so my characters became fleshed out because I had situations they could get into like "An Enemy Loved".

It's a tool for creating new ideas and new possibilities in your script. You don't have to use any of them, or you might use all of them. And how you actually get the ideas into the script is entirely up to you ... well, me, in this case. The process gave me ideas I hadn't previously entertained that would wring every last piece of emotion out of the story.

It's just a tool and, as with any tool, its effectiveness depends on the wielder's skill.

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What's on the turntable? "Three Part Thing" by Pentangle from their "Light Flight" double CD compilation.

Pentangle are a folk-rock-jazz-blues combo using mainly acoustic instruments who started life in the late 60s. I was introduced to their music when their "Light Flight" track was used as the theme to the BBC TV series "Take Three Girls" in the 70s (and one of my sisters bought their "Basket of Light" album). They recently reformed and I saw them, totally unexpectedly, on Jools Holland's "Later..." show a short while ago. Fantastic.

The No. 1 Writer's Guru and screenwriting books

I promised I'd write something about Jeff Kitchen and his book which I found to be the most useful of all the screenwriting books. There was a session at SWF about screenwriting books too.

But this isn't that blog.

This is about a different screenwriting guru. It was the Monty Python philosopher's drinking song that suggested that Aristotle was very quick with the bottle. And he may well have been. But he was also a genius.

The concept of a scientist being a specialist is very new, barely 150 years if that. Before that specialism was not even considered, if you studied life you studied everything.

And so it was with Aristotle, if something piqued his curiosity then he studied it -- more than that: he studied the hell out of it until he understood it.

It just so happened that in Aristotle's home town they had a playwriting competition every year, the organisers would specify the subject (a standard Greek myth or story) and then judge the results. Aristotle noticed that some plays were enjoyable and some weren't. Obviously. But he's a scientist so there's one thing that occurs to him: Why?

He wanted to know why some plays worked and some didn't. And the fact that he had the perfect scientific situation where the variable of subject matter was removed so he could concentrate on what made a good play good.

And he did. Frankly he nailed it. What screenwriting gurus tell you today, he wrote 2500 years ago. He was the first screenwriting guru, even down to the fact that (as far as we know) he never wrote a play in his life.

And you can read Aristotle's "The Poetics" online here. I should warn you that it's not the easiest of things to read. At the start there's a lot of background information which sets the scene for his analysis but it's not entirely necessary to read and it's mainly applicable to the style of play.

On the other hand you could read Jeff Kitchen's book "Writing a Great Movie" which encapsulates and uses Aristotle's main points, as well as some others.

As I mentioned there was a session about screenwriting books at SWF. I didn't go to it. Some people object to them, some people are vehemently opposed to them. That is a viewpoint I find slightly ludicrous after all, nobody forces you to read them.

Books are good for a few things: format, industry insights ("How Not to Write a Screenplay" is invaluable), a description of "principles" which you can actually use to make sure that your work is of a reasonable standard (by which I mean things like "Enter late, exit early" for scenes).

I think those who vehemently object to screenwriting books have this odd idea that they somehow interfere with creativity. I am of the opinion that the only person that would be so affected is one that had limited creativity in the first place.

Every art form has principles which, if followed, ensure a certain level of technical ability from which creativity can blossom. Once someone understands those principles, they can then break them. Picasso was a superb artist who's early landscapes and portraits were "standard". He was a master of the principles before he struck out on his own.

The contents of some books are less useful than others, but that depends on your own personal level of skill and experience. What I find useful may not be useful to the next person, it could be too simplistic, or too advanced.

But the first is Aristotle, he analysed structure and what he said applies as much today as it did 2500 years ago. He's the man. Give him a go, and see what you can learn.

Of course, there are the modern writers who aren't "gurus" but as experienced professionals their words are worth listening to. And for that I can only recommend Script Secrets by Bill Martell with his blog and daily script tips. These are absolute gems.

As an example, just this evening, I finished adding extra material to my Monsters pilot, under the guidance of script consultant Philip Shelley . Then I read today's script tip from Bill and realised that I needed to make my protagonist more sympathetic in the opening, then the audience will empathise with her, and her later actions will be more believable.

Excellent.

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What's on the turntable? "Sensual World" by Kate Bush from "Sensual World". I have this thing about female singer-songwriters...

How to write a feature

Or, more accurately, how I write a feature. Specifically the Bohemian Project which I now have two weeks to write a treatment. If you're not sure what a treatment is sexy Blogette Lucy has explained over here.

To write a script you start with an idea. The idea might your own, or it might be something you're told to write about (as in the Bohemian project). Either way, it's the spark, the starting point.

What then? Plot or Character? Which is most important? What do you work out first?

That depends mostly on what your idea is. Ideas are usually ideas for a character or ideas for a plot. For "Une Nuit a Paris" I had a setting and concepts suggested by a song. So I thought about a plot, and characters that would fit that plot: What if a man is on his stag night in Paris and falls in love with a prostitute? Which led me to the character of the man, and the prostitute, thence the wife, the brother, the brothel madam, her son, the other prositutes and the antagonist.

For the Bohemian Project I had to use certain fictional characters, and the request was for a "character piece" not CGI action, something that will achieve critical acclaim. Plus it had to be written for specific actors.

But these characters require a certain type of plot. I researched, got some ideas, and started building a plot that would create the necessary interactions to make this a character piece while still representing the fictional characters.

But there's only just so far that this can take you, somewhere you have to start getting into the nitty gritty of the plot structure, scenes and so on. At this point you would have a good idea of the characters you're using, not necessarily all the details but a decent concept. You'll also have a pretty good idea of how the plot's going to work.

So when I reached this point with the Bohemian Project (this afternoon) I used a trick that paid dividends on the Blockbuster Project (although I didn't use it for Une Nuit a Paris) and it looks like this:

Name of character:
External conflict:
Internal conflict:
Fatal flaw:
Key scenes: (a) (b) (c)

You don't need any kind of fancy form, you can just write them down on a sheet of paper, 7 lines for each character. I'm not sure where I got all this from, certainly not one source, it works for me.

Drama is based around conflict, no conflict = no drama. The "External conflict" is the obvious thing that a character is trying to achieve which is being prevented by something/someone else. The "Internal conflict"and "Fatal flaw" go together, for example a character might have a fatal flaw of being unwilling to work with anyone else, but must work with someone else to solve their problem so, to overcome their internal conflict, they must overcome their fatal flaw. Ideally the fatal flaw/internal conflict should also relate to the external conflict. Bring them together.

A secret agent who always works alone, who cannot work with another because of their fear of bringing harm and because they've been betrayed in the past, is in a situation where they must depend on someone else in order to succeed and save world.

So what about key scenes? Think of three key scenes which exemplify the start condition, the point where things change internally, and where the character has reached their final emotional destination.

You do this for the protagonist, the protagonist's friends, the antagonist and the antagonist's cohorts. Of course possibly either the protagonist or the antagonist might not reach their end point because of the plot, just fill in what you can.

How many main characters have you got? For the Bohemian project I have four. Three key scenes each (oh yes, I make sure there is no overlap of key scenes, that's cheating) = 12 scenes, each of which is, say, 4 minutes long = 48 minutes. I've already written half the movie. (It might be suggested that 4 minutes is too long for a scene nowadays, but these are key scenes, with emotion and action.)

So that's my first step, in the next blog on this I'll go into how I use Jeff Kitchen's "Proposition, Sequence, Plot" to build action.

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What's on the turntable? "Under the Ivy" by Kate Bush from "Hounds of Love" (extended CD)