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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
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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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Please Help Me, Toilet Humour and Porn

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

While the turn out at the meeting was high, we were quite short on the ground for ladies when it came to the reading. Sad really, as this was a rare occasion when we actually had roles for them (as a male dominated group, female characters only seem to rear their head to provide a companion to the males in the script.)

Anyway, our main feature tonight came curtsey of Martin Price and Lawrence Scholey, their script entitled Please Help Me saw a group of flat mates throw a party. Warmly received by the group for its humour and creative events, there was of course plenty of ideas for improvement. Although the script flowed quite nicely, many considered it to be a series of sketches rather than coherent plot. A slave to the devices, the script failed to set up any of the events before they happened, this left audience surprised, but missed out on the trick of building anticipation. The idea of throwing a party although a fine idea does not work for a pilot or spec script. Since a party involves so many people it does not give a good idea of how the series would play out, we don’t know who are the regular characters, and who are just around for that episode. The originality of the idea was also questioned, it is well known that every writer has a flat share script in their back pocket, right next to their heaven and hell script, there would have to be something special in that script to make it stand out in the crowd. Being Human after a year in development solved this problem by making one character a werewolf, one a ghost and the other a vampire.

As writers we will often draw on our own life experience when writing a script, the mistake we often make is to take just the events and characters that we fondly (or not) remember and forget the emotion behind it. We hide our deeper feelings behind the visual, but it is that emotion which makes real characters that the audience connects with. Inside we share many of the same vulnerabilities and fears and we can sympathise when we get to see it in others. Since Please Help Me was based on many real life experiences it could have benefited from revealing a little more depth and brutal honesty in the characters.

Sketch wise we had The Flush by Mark Leeson a charming piece of character interaction on the serious matter of phone etiquette. The visuals needed Porn Sketch by yours truly brought up interesting debate, but from my point of view the visual nature of the sketch could not be captured in a reading, so I am still not sure the best way display what I believe is a very strong idea.

ComComedy had a weekend full of filming, a series of office sketches were produced using material supplied by members of the group and call has been put out for sketches based in a park. You can find more details on ComComedy here.

Right, back to writing for me now. Until next time.

Tags: ComComedy, feedback, london comedy writers, meeting, pilot, sketch, writing
Posted in London Comedy Writers Meeting | 1 Comment »

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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Sketchageddon III

Friday, September 11th, 2009

Well it has been quite the exhausting couple of days, not too much sleep and stressful days, but duty says I have to comment on our last meeting or this blog is a bit pointless..

Sketchageddon III was yet another mighty success for the London Comedy Writers, at least when I remembered to cast the scripts. Whoops. Anyway, lets see what we had.

Acceptable Discrimination?, Body Harvest, and Big Issue by Gareth Moore, – The winner of last months blog contest hit the floor running three sketches, general consensus was tighten them at the top… except the last one which at 3 lines was short enough. Debate rages about whether you can still take the piss out of ginger people.

The Art of Wally by Olly Allsopp, – Equally well received and with one person even commenting that it was one of the finest Wally based sketches he had ever heard.

The Present by Sally Ingrey, – Not so much a sketch, but scene from a film, wonderful dialogue, interesting characters.

Owning a Break-up and Carbs and Bombs by Ahmed III – The first sketch pulled an excellent slight of hand on the audience, while the second one that paired an airhead and a suicide bomber had an interesting mix emotions, but ultimately very funny.

I Was Also Thinking of Writing a Script by Anon II – In response to last week’s anonymous script, another was submitted, a fantastically funny homage to the original. If only we knew who were writing these… maybe it was the same person….

Absolute Weakest Link by Luke Llyons, Class Conscious by Jeremy Davies and John’s last minute submission were all well received, however all suffered from similar ideas being done before. This lead to an interesting debate about the originality of characters and ideas, or whether once they are performed, even be it over 20 years ago can no one else go there? Deliberate or not.

The Lamb and Lion by Douglas Hooker – again this was less a sketch and more a scene from something larger, there were nice moments, but ultimately most felt that this was character exploration for the writer rather than a story.

Cuba Libre by Sally Sheringham – Two men in Cuba, this script had some great moments, although as is quite often the case, was over written at the start and the ending didn’t quite work. Some thought it would be better to explore a longer version, perhaps a feature film.

Middle Earth and Drone Controllers by Joel Soetendorp – Two short nicely written if somewhat surreal pieces, great take on the military and Middle Earth.

Finally Matthew Jessee presented the first of what I hope will be many webisodes from the group. Sadly by the time we got round to this everyone was tired, while we are normally done by about 9.30, in an effort to get everyone’s sketches in we had over run and it was nearing 10.15. The energy had left the room and reading came out oddly flat. Comments were fairly positive although the script still held too close to a scene from a sitcom rather than a single self contained story. Since the script Desperate was originally written as sitcom, it now needs a lot of changes to make it work in significantly different medium. This means cutting down on locations, telling smaller stories and focusing mainly on a single character.

Well that is all for now. At some point when I have processed my thoughts I will comment on my Fourth Plinth disaster, and thank you to all those who offered such kind words of support. Like they say, life goes on and it doesn’t matter how you fall, but how you pick yourself back up.

Tags: feedback, london comedy writers, meeting, Script, sketch, webisode, writing
Posted in London Comedy Writers Meeting | 1 Comment »

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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