October « 2009 « Graham Does Writing

Archive for October, 2009

Against Nature and asorted sketches

Friday, October 30th, 2009

We have a format at the London Comedy Writers that goes sketch, sitcom, sketch; occasionally we will play with the format and it is a success – such as Sketchageddon. Sometimes we bend the rules for regular members and read a play or the first 30 pages of a film script and for reasons that are not clear, it never works as well.

This week we bent the rules and allowed the first 40 pages of a feature length screenplay and it didn’t work. The main reason appeared to be that it was not a reading script, it was a shooting script loaded with shot after shot of visual details that were insignificant to the plot. Narrators kill the pace of scripts as actors rarely had a chance to build a back forth before being interrupted with more visuals. Furthermore because “smoke rings kissing the skylight” was given the same weight as water ski washing up on the shore which turn was given the same weight as pubic hair plucked from the couch the audience have no idea what is an important detail and what is glitter.

As rule people watch films and listen to TV, so it is understandable that a film script will include far more visuals than a sitcom. However, unless you are a great writer and in demand neither the director nor the actors care when you think someone should put their arm around someone else or when the camera should focus on a skylight. If you feel so strongly about these choices then you might as well direct.

The other problem with film scripts in this forum is that the audience does not get a full sense of the story, even with the last 100 pages summed up, it is not as satisfying as a reading where we get to hear the ending performed. In a way it’s sad, but we will close the door on feature scripts, it is still something I would like to explore in the future, but the LCW just is not the venue for such ventures.

Sketch wise we were on form with the tightly written Pirate Day, it knew the ending and wasted no time getting there. PC Hulk explored too many ideas and doing so lost its sense of purpose.

An interesting meeting to be sure and the feedback from those in attendance was some of the best thought out and delivered I have see in a long time.

Tags: feedback, london comedy writers, production, reading, screenplay, Script, sketch
Posted in London Comedy Writers Meeting | Comments Off

The Fallen Soldier

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

For many months we all worked together every day, bashing out ideas, storylining, brainstorming, writing, editing, arguing, fighting, stabbing… well you get the picture. The important thing is that we were working as a team. Then we assigned individual episodes and we went our own way. We all locked down to focus on our own scripts. The expectation was that one of us would rush ahead, speed write and return with a Lord of the Rings style epic, one of us would plough through without proof reading leaving a script that might have been 5 pages longer had all the missed out words been included. The final one would be slower going, but practically perfect in everyway.

The reality wasn’t too far from this, the first was finished ahead of the others, the second was missing words and the other… well that was taking time, because perfection takes time. So when second drafts were being produced for the first two scripts, a first draft was still in the writing for the third and but then life was getting in the way with the most selfish acts of nature adding an extra burden. What does it matter when the first two scripts are going great with third drafts and rehearsed readings on the horizon?

So episode 3 arrived, and you can read about the issues here. Put basically the main story wasn’t working and although there was no finger pointing at the time, as the episode headed for its first rewrite it was noticed by everyone how quickly it was getting re-written. This script was receiving a 75% rewrite so why something that took months to originally write was now nearly finished in a fortnight was turning heads and causing us to ask, “Why wasn’t it this fast last time?”

The truth is, as we know, the main story didn’t work and writing a story that doesn’t work is nearly impossible. So as the writer fell further and further behind, there was no cry for help because they should be able to fix this problem. Meanwhile the other writers running ahead didn’t look back to see why the fallen soldier was struggling to keep up, maybe that writer is just lazy or procrastinating.

After months of working together on everything we split apart and became selfish about our own work. We didn’t ask each other for help, but then no one asked if we needed help either. Episode 3 arrived after a heavy rewrite and there was no doubt that it was much improved. The new storyline worked a treat, the characters and the action was more active and although it was not practically perfect in every way, the fallen soldier was up and running with comrades either side giving a helping hand to mount the obstacles.

———-

Of course things are not always as simple as they seem and I have left many nuggets out of this story to make it palatable for you readers. I am sure my writers in crime have a slightly different opinion of what took place before, during and after; but they can bite me.

Tags: feedback, help, process, Script, writing, writing partners
Posted in My Writing | Comments Off

Misanthropology and more pronouncable sketches

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

It was the smallest gathering in some time, but I put that down to only week passing since the last meeting; that aside, the numbers still kicked ass compared to what they were like when I first wandered into this group 6 years ago.

We kicked off with a sketch by Gareth, he normally has something in his back pocket and today it was a tribute to X-Factor sob stories, well observed, but climaxing in his usual dive into the gutter and an ending someone pointed out was similar to Little Miss Sunshine (I didn’t have the heart to say that the film had now been ruined for me), but it was an enjoyable way to start the meeting.

Jon Neale stepped up next, following his last effort which was perfectly criticised for being a series of great jokes in search of a sketch. This week he was much more focused with a simple phone call. In the sketch we only hear one person’s voice and it was pointed out that in general people don’t handily repeat everything they are told and some other devices to reveal what the operator was saying would work wonders in what was another well observed and funny sketch.

Our third sketch ‘Where Have All the Bistros Gone‘ came from Robin Bailes who has a known dislike for the style. Intended for stage, the sketch was based around the town and country divide. Main criticism was levelled at the slow start and the half page of additional material that followed a passionate and funny speech.

Finally we come to our main feature, ‘Misanthropology‘ by self confessed Seinfeld addict Alex Papakyriacou. Pulling no punches Alex was quick to confess that although the names were changed this was his attempt at a Seinfeld script, from the situations, locations, characters and running jokes. This is a situation we have never had in the group before, we have never had what is, in almost every sense, a ‘spec script’. This made criticism that slightly more complicated as people tried to rack their brains about what use such a script would hold. Although it is possible to get on a show’s writing team by producing a great spec script, it helps if that show is still in production. Taken on its own merits, people unfamiliar with Sienfeld were lost under the weight of so many characters, those familiar however, could follow with ease. While this might be deemed a success in the tribute box, it means it was failure as a pilot. The three plot lines were given almost equal weight which made it hard to identify an “A” story or a primary perspective. Structurally the characters were kept apart for too much of the script and the non-recurring characters thrown into the mix were given as much screen time as the main characters. Anyone who was in the group at the start of the year would have remembered the ending from an earlier short from Alex. Sadly this ending in the new context was too convenient, relying on series slightly implausible events followed by a gross misunderstanding to get the pay off. With the loose theme of meat to tie everything together Misanthropology was an interesting exercise, but I doubt much can be done with the finished product.

One thing I do need to address, because I hear it too often, Seinfeld did have plots and was a very well constructed sitcom. Just because they built episodes around small things like buttons, toys and spare keys does not mean there was no plot. I thank you.

Tags: feedback, london comedy writers, sketch
Posted in London Comedy Writers Meeting | Comments Off

Writing for Deadlines and Writing for Fear

Friday, October 16th, 2009

When author Anthony Burgess was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and given a year to live he turned to writing to give his wife some royalties after he died. He figured out that if he wrote just 1000 words a day, in a year he would have 3 and a half novels.* Motivated by this death sentence Anthony Burgess wrote The Doctor is Sick, Inside Mr Enderby, The Worm and the Ring, One Hand Clapping, The Eve of Saint Venus and most famously A Clockwork Orange. As you may know, Burgess defied the doctor’s diagnosis and went on to live for another 30 years, and remained a highly prolific writer.

One of the toughest things about writing the way we have is that we don’t have deadlines. There is no producer standing over our shoulder telling us we need to have a finished script done by next week. So what does it matter if next week turns into next month? It matters because we know we can do better. This week we set a goal to do a rehearsed reading; 3 weeks to get 3 scripts up to scratch. Now we have a deadline. But is it really a deadline? We have been here before, every time we start to panic that we are taking too long, money is running short or another project looks more tempting. We know that if we miss this deadline no one will get fired, instead the deadline will be moved and we will conclude that it is in the name of quality.

So dealines have issues which brings us to fear. We can’t organise a reading in a couple of days, this takes a couple of weeks so we have to start now and with the actors in place we can’t cancel. These scripts will get read no matter what, plot holes, character inconsistencies and typos; hopefully they won’t be there, but we will have to accept it if there is. We need to hear these scripts, have an opportunity to step back from the computer and enjoy the fruits of our labour as it is brought to life.

A deadline we cannot move should give us the fear to meet it.

Despite the death sentence looming down upon him, Burgess quickly discovered another motivator to help him get those 1000 words a day down faster. He discovered if he set down to work first thing in the morning he could have his quota done by lunchtime, he would then head down to the pub and spend the rest of the day drinking beer. This is I a guess a really good example of “the carrot and the stick”. Fear is the stick and helps to get you off your ass, but don’t forget the rewards because we are suppose to enjoy this process.

Look out for my next blog “The Fallen Soldier”, due early next week.

* I have 3 copies of A Clockwork Orange and one copy of the play, annoyingly the copy that has the Burgess introduction where he tells this story is missing so the 1000 words a day is from my memory, it might have been more, but 100,000 words for a novel sounds about right. It is also worth noting that while he wrote all the books during this time, he did not actually finish and publish all of them in that period and some were based on earlier works. Still, it is impressive what you can do under pressure.

Tags: deadlines, process, procrastination, writing, writing partners
Posted in My Writing | Comments Off

The Daily Grind & other sketches

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

Another packed meeting, so let’s get down with what we had.

First up was Joel Soetendorp two-part sketch “Drawn Together“, a clever title that was actually not mentioned (but also shares the name of an cartoon reality hybrid show ). As is often the case with sketches, they go on too long, they are built around a single joke and then padded out because a one page script looks a little sad. However when the script is built solely around a single idea, one page is plenty, any more than that and you have to have worthwhile characters who your audience invest in. Joel’s script fell into this trap with an early punchline that was never matched by anything that followed, but it was a great early gag.

So, speaking of character led comedy, next up we had Brett Snelgrove’s webisode idea “The Knot”. The 5 minute scene presented us with a unique couple in a fun situation, sure it was saggy and needs some rewrites, but he is definitely on the right track. The question is, was it a sketch or was it webisode? Tough to tell, right now I am leaning towards sketch because I got no sense of an over arching storyline for the future, but this could change.

Our last sketch came from Jon Neale and his script “Miss World”, packed with some great gags, it was best explained as a bunch of jokes in search of a sketch. The sketch jumped around all over the place and while it got laughs, the inconsistencies in structure makes it useless in it’s current form.

Our main feature “The Daily Grind” by Shereen Docherty was warmly received following a passionate reading from our actors and as usual it generated much debate. One of the things that gets thrown up in feedback is correct formatting, since Shereen’s script was 1.5 spaced, the 30 pages took just over 20 minutes to read, shorter than a sit-com should be. The page a minute guide is a good one, but personally I don’t care that much on a script which is coming to the group for feedback. I expect them to be too long, or too short because it’s a draft. Even when it comes to correct formatting these are many different styles and at the end of the day as a long as it looks like a script you will be just fine. Of course formatting on Word can be hard, so if you are looking for a free script writing program try out Zhura or Celtx. Next up was the use of named music tracks, this falls into the same category of putting in named products. There is this myth that a prospective buyer of your script will look at your choice of music or use of a name brand and bin your script lest they have to pay out the big bucks to licence them. In reality they don’t care because hopefully your great story, snappy dialogue and fascinating characters will out weigh the mild inconvenience of changing “Coca Cola” to “cola”. This is not to say that you now have a green card to ram your script full of product placement and hit songs, a good rule is only put it in if it helps enrich your script, if you can cut it, cut it. That might sound like I am going back on myself, but that “cut it” rule should apply to everything in your script; if it serves no purpose, cut it.

On the character front Shereen had succeeded in creating some interesting characters, although it was disappointing that on the rare occasion where we have a female scriptwriter we were still lacking in good roles for women. As a pilot the ensemble piece was a little confused since we did know who’s story we were really following. Something we see often in a script at the LCW is the main character just seemed to be along for the ride, things happen to him and around him without him having to make any decisions. The inactive protagonist is a common problem in event led scripts, remember let the characters lead the story, no the events.

Well that is all for this week and just in time as we have another meeting in 3 days.

Tags: character, feedback, london comedy writers, meeting, sketch, webisode
Posted in London Comedy Writers Meeting | Comments Off

Back to the Drawing Board

Sunday, October 4th, 2009

I started writing this blog after countless months of character studies and storylines, so I never got write about those head banging processes, just the tasty side of writing, the dessert if you will. But this week we were hit with a depressing revelation, one of our carefully crafted storylines in episode 3 (also know as the Widow maker) just wasn’t working and what hoped would be a quick fix turned into rewriting the storyline from scratch. On the down side we had to go through that stressful process again, on the plus side it is fresh in my memory so I can write about it.

Day One

We identified problems with the main story, the ending wasn’t working… and the beginning was struggling, luckily we all agreed on those points… this consensus would be rare treat over the next few days.

Day Two

Realising that there would not be a quick fix we turned to our trusty whiteboard (quite possibly our most useful tool in writing this series). We started by writing up the beats of the current storyline, brainstorming ideas what we could do to the fix the problems. We examined character motivations, looking for a way to make a story about subtle manipulation more active, we threw in new devices, altered the story around the plot points we liked from the original. There was loud debate as we all tried to inject our emotional bias into the story. After several hours of head banging we finally ended up with something 2 out 3 of us were relatively happy with. However, this is not how we roll, if there is a dissenting voice, that voice must be heard and quelled. On this occasion it was my dissenting voice, I looked at the storyline and could not get past the fact that what we had ended up with was half our original story and half an all new story. At that point we were at the end of the day, tired from fighting and decided to pick it up the next day.

Day Three

Sitting down we looked at the board, we read out the story and since nothing had changed from yesterday I still wasn’t happy. Whether we like it or not we needed to start from scratch rather than building a new storyline on the bones of an old one. So we started again, this time we knew our in point, we knew the emotion of the our end point and we knew that we could only use 3 characters, since others were busy with their own stories. We wanted Character A to have something over Character B that would be so powerful it would make Character B do Character A’s bidding. We had really struggled to find something we were all happy with, then someone remembered a storyline that we tossed around in the very early stages of the game. The device was perfect and from dissent came universal agreement. The storyline very quickly wrote itself, with the same heated and passionate discussion, but with an agreement that we were all heading in the right direction. It had been another day, batter, bruised and tired, but we were certainly feeling better about it.

Day Four

We looked over the storyline again and were feeling pretty good, it was certainly better than the one we had before, more active, higher stakes and more personal. The ending still needed work and again heated debate came out. One of us can get particularly passionate guy and in the heat of debate he doesn’t phrase himself in the best way (we all have this problem, so I’m not picking on him… well I am, but just in this instant, to even it upm one of us can sound condescending and I sit silence being negative or not contributing anything… apparently.), so sometimes two of can find ourselves arguing with a passionate person who sees is projecting their own feelings on to another character who would not act the same way. In arguing with him about that character we ignore that genuine concern. In this case he could not understand how Character C would not be angry at what Character A had done to Character B, but Character C is mellow and forgiving, it says it right there in his bio next to “hugger”. This was an obvious win for us, but their was a point. Character B would not understand how Character C could be so forgiving and that would need to be conversation those two characters would have to have and it was a beat we had ignored and were not hearing.

And Finally…

Ultimately the writer had mixed feelings at the end of the day, she knew the story was better, but she now faced a 70% rewrite of her script. It is bitter sweet, but hopefully endemic of why this writing has taken so long. Never settle. No matter how frustrating it maybe, we don’t settle, we don’t fudge, we don’t turn a blind eye. When all is said and done this should be the best we could have made it.

Tags: character, process, Script, storyline, writing, writing partners
Posted in My Writing | Comments Off