The Sharps End, or, the End of Sharps

I didn't mention the fact that I had completed my BBC Sharps script and zoomed it off on Thursday evening. If you're planning to enter it's too late unless you can deliver by hand (or have access to a Royal Mail sorting office that does collections on Sundays).

I was quite pleased with the result, fairly light dialogue but with a solid drama base. A bit like a lemon meringue pie. I watched the "niceness as a disease" episode of House last night, the case of the week tasted everything as lemon meringue pie.

It's quite funny I suppose: The setting for the story is a community group of people giving up smoking. I smoked for two weeks in my entire life (it was a very stressful time). My parents never smoked, nor my sisters, nor my wife, very few friends I've known for years have ever smoked (except one but he has special dispensation).

So what right do I have to write about people wanting to give up smoking?

My mother's family are hardcore Londoners, and when I was younger every single one of them smoked. Whenever we went to visit we entered an atmosphere of tobacco. I've always been a people watcher, I saw the way people handled cigarettes, pipes, and roll-ups.

I always ended up with a nasty headache from breathing air heavy with cigarette smoke. And yet, the smell gives me some comfort. Scarily enough I realised a few years ago I was a closet smoker even though I never bought a pack (except for that two weeks). How does that work? I breathe deeply of other people's smoke. Laughable really. But an intense smoke-filled atmosphere still makes me sick.

So I have some experience of the matter. Plus the fact that smoking is an addiction just like any other, and that was the theme that I worked to in my script. Creating characters where the outer conflict of trying to give up smoking reflected an inner conflict of what they were really addicted to.

So, we shall see.

I didn't get any additional reading of this script partly because I ran out of time, although the actual writing only took a few hours. It only took a few hours because I did my planning, even down to the scene level.

I decided on the setting first (since that was the part that was prescribed by the "opportunity") then I populated it with people who might want to give up smoking, although one character was actually my wife's idea. Then I took the three main characters and constructed their inner conflict to mirror their outer one.

Finally I spit up the scenes very mathematically with #1 character getting most of the time in the story, #2 getting half that and #3 getting half again. So we have A, B and C plot lines, one clear leader and the others. Knowing how long the script needed to be (30-35 minutes) and knowing that scenes needed to be around 2 minutes each I could allocate actual page counts.

Of course, when I came to write it other scenes occurred to me and often scenes would be shorter than the plan. This is fine, after all we don't want 15 scenes of exactly 2 minutes each. That would be silly. Also how the supporting characters influenced the main plots became clear and a new character appeared that I hadn't thought of originally.

This was all good. And it meant my first draft was almost spot-on.

I then read through it and tidied up bits (there was one thing I wrote later that needed to be mentioned earlier, for example) . There was one scene I disliked when I wrote it and I realised that I was actually repeating stuff that had been mentioned in a previous scene. So I ripped that out and replaced it with something much better, which then played into an extra scene I had written later on.

All three plot lines intermingled and played off against each other. The characters were good, each had his/her own voice (I hear the characters talking as I write but, let's be clear, I don't write what they're saying, they say what I'm writing); the scenes feed nicely one to another, there's tension, there's action, there's humour. Yup, I like it.

(And I should add, the script will easily convert into a stage play so if the BBC don't want it I know what i can do with it.)

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What's on the turntable? "Toss the Feathers" by The Corrs from "Forgiven not Forgotten"

Oh my word!

I recently paid for additional notes on my TV script "Monsters", I decided to splash out a bit and used someone with a huge amount of real TV & Film experience. I got the notes back on Wednesday and they were generally positive, and some nice compliments.

Although I don't assume people are "just being nice", I am a bit of a cynic and wasn't sure exactly how to take the compliments and positivity (was he just being nice, or did it really mean something?).

I'm not the sort of person who spends time in internal debates, it's a pointless waste of time. So I asked him: was he being nice or did it mean more? (I was slightly more diplomatic than that, I can do diplomatic if I have to.)

I'm still rather in shock from the reply.

Apparently it meant "more". He really did mean that I have talent, in other words I am writing as well as people who get paid to write for British TV*. And this is someone who knows (his resume is impressive, including being Head of Drama Development for a major British TV company).

It hasn't sunk in really.

Of course this doesn't mean I will ever get paid for scriptwriting (I'm a cynic and a realist), but at least I know. There is an additional bit to this which is that this gentleman (and he is nothing else) also says he will use his contacts to assist any good writers he finds. And in a business where contacts are everything that means a lot. So, being me, I specifically asked whether I would fall into that category, and once again he responded with an unequivocal yes.

Nothing like being sure about things.

Now what? I have some hard work ahead of me. I need to get a handle on the changes needed in "Monsters", as I shall be meeting him at the Cheltenham Screenwriters Festival to discuss it. Plus I need to get pitch documents sorted for all my other scripts and ideas, business cards I already have, though not 100% correct in what they say, they do have my contact details and that's the main thing. And I can be so much more confident, I know I'm sufficiently good to get paid work, now it's up to me.

With my 50th** birthday coming up in September let's see if I can't get a commission for something.

* My darling wife made a cynical comment at this, implying that British TV writing is not necessarily good. Harrumph.

** Why is this important? A survey of British writers showed that the majority of the successful ones are male and over 50. Clearly, my time has come.

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What's on the turntable? "Mr Blue Sky" by ELO from "Out of the Blue" ... how apt is that?

Writing novels

I had to comment because English Dave wrote this here and Charlie Williams commented here...

Novels I can do. Not published I admit but my third almost got me an agent, and my fourth was just easy-peasy. So I thought I'd do something harder, like write scripts.

But it was English Dave's Parthian shot that got me.

Parthian shot? Well, that's where "parting shot" came from. Okay there's actually (apparently) no proof but if you read the complete Sherlock Holmes you'll find Conan Doyle uses it in exactly the same context. I shall never use "parting shot" again, and have to explain myself every time.

So what was his Parthian shot?

I'm dusting off a few old movie scripts and digging out a thesaurus.

It was the thesaurus comment that put me in mind of an anecdote: I have been a professional book editor in my time, unfortunately I have never had the pleasure of editing anything that was any good.

There was one book where the storyline actually had potential, but the person who wrote it was not very literate -- not illiterate, he just didn't have a wide vocabulary. And occasionally, through the text I'd come across words that did not fit. Just completely the wrong word, except the meaning would be vaguely similar.

It finally dawned on me. The Microsoft Word Thesaurus. God 'elp us.

Yes indeed. From time to time he would realise that there was probably a better word and he would highlight the offending one and right-click his lil ole mouse. Then select the cleverest-sounding word in the thesaurus selection. Without having a clue what it actually meant.

It was sad.

In fact if he could have learnt to write a bit better his lack of vocabulary would not really have mattered that much.

I know English Dave isn't going to do this.

In fact it is possible to make money writing novels, I know a chap who really has given up the day job: Roger Ellory. I'm happy to say he is a good friend. And he writes literary crime fiction, and it's bloody good stuff.

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What's on the turntable? Nothing, but I was pining for Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield today.

Celtx at version 1

The free scriptwriting and film production package "Celtx" has reached version 1. I've been using it for over a year, and I like it a lot though it's unlikely I'll ever use all the film production facilities.

It allows you to create screenplays, stage plays, radio plays, comic scripts and AV scripts. It's intuitive to use and allows output as PDF. It also allows collaboration and sharing of scripts online with as many or as few people as you like. It will print scripts as either A4 or foolscap.

On the production side it generates all the sort of stuff needed by the various departments in as much detail as you need, depending on how big your production is.

It's not perfect, my biggest problem is that the PDF formatting is not absolutely identical to the on-screen formatting so in a feature script there's a few pages discrepancy between how many pages you think you have, and how many you do have.

But this is not too serious. And it's free!

If you haven't plumped for a specific scriptwriting application, plump for this one.

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What's on the turntable? I'm listening to an unabridged reading of "Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham. What a genius.

Cheltenham Screenwriters Festival and First Class

I have booked for the Festival though I haven't got anywhere to stay yet, it's a toss up between going for something comfortable and expensive. Or not.

It's a bit like travelling first class on trains, which I have started doing -- I'm not made of money but just having leg-room, not being overcrowded and having the opportunity to write in comfort for 3 hours is not to be sniffed at.

You can usually get a cheap upgrade on weekends (and bank holidays), you just have to find an unreserved seat and sit in it. Then ask for an upgrade when the conductor comes around. Plus you get free coffee (with real milk) and free food.

Plus if you buy sufficiently in advance you can often get them at silly prices - £26 single for Reading to Manchester. Which is just nuts because the standard single is £52. The standard return is £64, (so £32 each way) and a £15 upgrade, but I can't do that on Friday afternoons.

It's worth it.

So, do I go for comfort or cheapness? I haven't decided.

(First class on Friday allowed me to get to reach 20 pages on my "Sharps" short, and I'm liking it.

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What's on the turntable? "Starlight" by ELO from "Out of the Blue"