How many Red Planet finalists?

Being the "why bother wondering when you can ask" kind of guy that I am, I asked.

And the answer was...

We have just over 70 finalists.

The standard was excellent this year.

So there we go. The Scribospheric Bloggers make up just under 13%.

Reasons why I'm unlikely to win: Lots of people are better than me (and clearly a lot of them entered); and my dystopian future world involves a 'flu'[1] pandemic that decimates (literally, I know what the word means) the world's population. Unfortunately who's going to want that after the Survivors remake?

Best get back to Winter and Air, and I have a premise for next year's competition to get started on.

[1] Misplaced emphatic apostrophes just for the Dancing Arnopp.

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What's on the turntable? "Haunted" by Evanescence from "Fallen"

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.

The Morning After

I must be turning into a real writer. Having a couple of days off work I went out this morning into Reading town centre and sat in a coffee shop planning.

I wanted to go into a coffee shop in a bookshop, there's a nice Waterstones in Reading, but surprisingly they don't have a coffee shop. I paused to admire Roger Ellory's paperbacks in the crime section thinking "He's my friend, he is, and he's got books in a bookshop." And he's got a redesigned website I notice.

Then went to WHSmith's which has a Costa Coffee.

I then made one of the biggest mistakes of my entire life: I had a large Mocha Flake. If any beverage deserves an OMG that certainly does: It's huge and very chocolatey with four flake chocolates on the side. Oh dear. And after the celebratory bar of 70% Green and Black's last night I am completely chocolated out. I alleviated the richness slightly with an Innocent Smoothie.

Anyway sitting in the coffee shop I got out my notepad and thought about the thing I need to create for the BBC and managed to get a few ideas down. I've based it on a short I did a treatment for a few years ago but never scripted (let alone had produced). It's got some tasty emotional opportunities, it's quite twisty and turny (like a twisty turny thing) and I added an extra antagonist to make it longer. It's a bit "coincidental" currently so that will need work. The code word and title for this project is "Winter".

(Originally I, very derivatively and very cornily, called it "A Winter's Tale" but I won't do that now, too many words. I like evocative single word titles.)

Now I need to send an email or two, send off the full script of Monsters to Red Planet along with the other bits they asked for and get on with some new writing.

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What's on the turntable? "Weightless" by Mike Oldfield from "Tubular Bells 2"

Oh. My. God. #3

Thicker than the thickest of thick things, the OMGs do march upon the Earth.

The real OMG is listed further down the page but first things first...

Had my meeting with the BBC person today, nice person, nice meeting, nice soup. I really can't say much because even saying a little would instantly give away the subject but I seem to be in a very good position because of my experience, both in writing and other areas.

However the next stage is to translate that experience and knowledge into something that the BBC want to take forward. That's the real test.

They're talking to a few writers, then they'll select some to take their ideas forward to script (and pay them for it) and then choose one to produce. So, we shall see.

I have to say that Adrian Mead's monograph "How to Make It as a Screenwriter" (Chapter 17), was a huge help. It gave me sufficient understanding of the process that I didn't feel too nervous[1]. The meeting lasted about an hour which is a good time for something that informal and over lunch. (From previous experience in another life, formal meet-and-greet meetings are good if they run from 1-2 hours.)

The real OMG: My script "Monsters" is a Red Planet finalist. (I haven't quite absorbed this yet.) Loads more info at Jason Arnopp's Bloggery-Pokery: In The Red.

Wow.

[1] Who am I trying to kid? I wasn't even slightly nervous, I've had enough meetings to last me a lifetime. It was just another one. But Adrian's stuff did help.

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What's on the turntable? "Rain and Snow" by Pentangle from "Light Flight"

Tension rises

Hopefully next week we'll find out who is and who isn't through in the Red Planet.

And tomorrow I have my meeting with the BBC person. Couldn't get more exciting.

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What's on the turntable? "Quest" by Gordon Giltrap and the Birmingham Philharmonic, from "Perilous Journey". The CD has some interesting additions like GG playing Heartsong without just one guitar (except it sounds like three), Quest with the orchestra, and a 20 minute version of the entire album on Guitar and Piano. Cool stuff.