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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
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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
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The First 10 Pages

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

The first 10 pages of the script are the most important, here you have to introduce your characters, your world and hook the reader by not making it feel all expositiony. When dealing with an ensemble piece like I am the temptation was to start the script with a cluster fuck of characters, ram a whole bunch of info in the audiences face as soon as possible and throw in a few jokes to hide it. So when I read it back, I’m happy, “look at that,” I say. “9 characters introduced in 5 pages”. The problem is, having lived with these characters for almost a year, I know them very well, but the audience isn’t so lucky. There is too much info for the audience to pick up on, plus I also needed to start the story.

Back to the drawing board and on the advice of my co-writers I started to construct a new opening that focused on a couple of character journeys. First the new girl, since she is fresh on the scene she has a little more to learn, so she can guide us into the world before a more experienced character takes the reigns and kicks it up a notch. Around page 10 the first act ends with shocking news which has a knock on effect for the rest of the story.

It is not quite there yet and still needs work, this current draft plays host to the 8^th incarnation of the first 10 pages and there is a good chance there will be a fair few more before we settle on something that is clever, informative, funny and engaging. I still suspect that there is too much going on, too many characters and not enough focus, there are darlings that need to be murdered, but we are close.

The first 10 pages can be a bitch, interestingly endings can also be a bitch and the middle, well that has its own problems.

Roll on Draft 4.

Tags: feedback, process, Script, writing, writing partners
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Procrastination – A Masterclass

Monday, September 7th, 2009

One of the hardest things about writing is actually sitting down to write. At times I feel this blog should be re-named “Graham Does Procrastination”. Anyway other not getting much done, today I discovered that procrastination can actually get you into a world of trouble.

I was browsing through Facebook, one of the world’s most common and basic procrastination techniques when I stumbled upon a message from a friend, saying that one his friends was going to be appearing on the fourth plinth as part of Anthony Gormley’s One and Other project. That sounds like a laugh I thought and so signed up thinking that with little more than a month left I would have little chance of getting randomly picked by the magic computer. Excellent I thought, 5 minutes wasted, that is some quality procrastination. Then the phone rang. ‘That’s odd.’ I thought, no one calls me.

Me: Hello.

Abi: Hello, is the Graham Trefler?

Me: Trelfer, yes.

Abi: I’m calling from the One and Other project and we would like to offer you a place on the fourth plinth… on Wednesday.

Me: This Wednesday.

Abi: Yes, someone dropped out at the last minute.

So with 48 hours before I ascend the fourth plinth I have no idea what I am going to do. So rather than continuing to finish the script, the brain trust and I must brain out something reasonably awesome, inspiring, amusing and not as pointless as the girl we watched having a party by herself.

So there you have it, 5 minutes of procrastination has been spread out to three days.

Any ideas of what you would like to see on the plinth please let me know.

Tags: performance, process, procrastination, writing
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Feedback received – thank you very much

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Lest my last comments stand alone as testament to my frustrations, I thought I better update with the results of said feedback.

As it happened we both had the same concerns, although the solutions differed somewhat. My instant reaction was to cut the first half of the script, but writing partner, script reader and all round wheat intolerant demi God said, “no, refocus on this character.” Oh, it makes sense when you say it, but this character was hardly in the storylines, so I blame that, rather than myself. This character is the audience’s eyes and we want people to discover our world through her.

Great I can finally get back to work, but the play station is looking at me. Damn it, it is much easier to procrastinate when you can blame it someone else. So now I am off to the park with a print out to look at this character’s journey to see what I can do to make it more interesting.

Tags: character, feedback, procrastination, Script, writing, writing partners
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Waiting for Feedback – The problem with writing partners

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

So you slave on writing a draft and hand it over to your writing partners for feedback. The next day I get the thumbs up and thumbs down on a selection of first draft jokes – I’m sure it would have been more in depth but performance and a holiday got in the way for more detailed feedback. But hey, that’s why we have three of us… oh, she didn’t get the script and is living it up in Bristol. Damn it! I need to write. My fingers are itching and for once I’m not looking up from my laptop towards my Playstation, but up from Playstation towards my laptop.

So here in lies the problem with writing partners. You rely on them. Sure there are lots of good things about writing with others and I promise I will get to those eventually, maybe even by the end of this blog. But right now all I need is someone to say “right track there buddy” or “abort abort” and no one is around.

I am alone in the wilderness. My concern (not really a concern, more of a suspicion) is that the first 50% of the script goes nowhere fast. It is lots of great character stuff, the odd joke and more character stuff. It is not my fault the substance seems to be missing I used the storylines we slaved over for months and months. You know if this was my script, that I had toiled with for months I would have no problem scrapping huge chunks to drive the story, but damn it, those storylines are there for a reason and I can’t just abandon them. If I do when they finally read the script they will say…

“but what happened to xyz”.

To which I will reply “oh, you have to kill your darlings.”

To which they will reply, “but xyz”

To which I will reply “You should have a read the damn thing.”

Then we will fist fight till dawn.

The script is now being read, so stress over… at least until I hear the feedback I have been dreading – “right track there buddy” or “abort abort”.

Tags: critic, feedback, process, Script, writing, writing partners
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Procrastination

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

The hardest thing about writing can sometimes be actually writing. That’s the reason anyone who has written a script gets a slap on back for doing so by those who have not. However just because you have splurged onto the page does not mean it’s going to be good. So on top of the patience you need to write a script, you also need the dedication to do all research and story-lining first.

This brings me to procrastination. As you know (if you read my other posts) I write with 2 other people and at this stage of the writing we have separated to write different episodes. I say separated, but we still meet up to write and yesterday I was reminded why. With one partner having to work to pay bills, the other two of us were planning to meet up. But due to issues with showers and plans for the evening this fell through and we were to write on our own. Suddenly I had no reason to venture out my bedroom. No one asking me “how it was going” and all those little jobs like fixing the bin lid and watering the tomatoes became very important. 6 hours later I realised that I had done no work, I looked at my computer screen and couldn’t even read the first line before jumping on the net to check e-mails and the latest news on Obama’s health care plan.

That was it. I already knew my evening would be taken up the London Comedy Writers and so I grabbed a print out of my script packed a bag and headed down to London Bridge where I found a nice spot by the river and worked without distraction.

I obviously can’t be trusted to work at home alone and no matter how far I think I have come in these last 8 months without someone watching over my shoulder I still find very hard to focus on what I need to do.

Anyway a special shout out to Jude who took sympathy on me when my pen ran out and gave me a new one. Had it not been for that pinked hair angel my efforts to get out the house and write would have been scrapped before they really got underway.

Tags: process, procrastination, Script, writing
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It’s all about character

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

I read the first draft of what is surely going to be a script subjected to an intense bidding war. 6 pages too long, crammed with on the nose dialouge and the feeling that there are way too many “fucks” for a pre-watershed sitcom. That said, I was not bored reading it, but I do have notes… lots and lots of notes. Draft 1.2 is in the works now with each scene receiving suitable scrutiny.

How did we get so far.

The fact is you are walking in at the end of an 8 month process. Almost like a dinner guest watching me drop the parsley on a finished dish. You don’t know the hours slaved away in the kitchen mixing spices through trial and error to find that perfect blend.

So here we flashback to the early days in the process. It was late last year, the markets were crashing as moved quickly towards the recession, America was in a fierce one sided battle for the presidency and I was out of work. My writing partners and I were looking at maybe 4 months to write the next big sitcom… This would be the first of every deadline we set and missed.

We all ready had a setting… lets say it was a school (it isn’t, but the setting is a closely guarded secret and I want to share without giving too much away). So now we need to populate our world with characters, different characters. We want all our characters to have different voices, see things differently and solve things differently. Confronted by a mugger one character might hand over the their wallet, another might run away, another might fall to the floor weeping like a child, basically not every character would do what I would do (Go Jackie Chan on their ass). So with a list of characters we then explore them, who are they, where did they come from, what do they want and how will they get it. 2 months later we had 6 Characters maps and 6 in depth biogs — One of our characters got it on with a rugby player at university and another collected PG tips trading cards; the audience will never know this, but we do. We were ready for the next stage… although at some point down the line biogs and maps were going to rear their ugly head once more.

Tags: character, process, Script, writing
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The Writing Process

Friday, July 31st, 2009

For the past 8 months I have slogged away with my to co-writers on crafting an epic comedy. Does it really take 8 months to write a series? Well it turns out that the answer is yes… yes it really does. Well maybe not if you take into the account the amount of time wasted because we all arrived late, or spent 3 hours watching ‘Whose Line Is I Anyway?’ or life tragedies, of which there seems to have been every kind, from medical, to car, to lack of money to the death of a dear friend. We have come so far, but it is easy to see why people give up or not dedicate the proper time in prep. Writing is hard work and preparation to write is fucking hard work.

This week I finished the first draft of the first episode. Episode 2 has a first draft and although we have not read each other’s work there is a sense of accomplishment and a sense that the past 8 months where we fought over story lines and character quirks is really starting to pay off.

Tags: preperation, process, writing
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