Sort of inspired by BBC 4′s new show about British novellists, which I suppose is more Listening to Writers but the principle is the same.

We all read the work of other writers (I assume) but I think reading about how they write can be rewarding too. Though not all of them want to talk; PG Wodehouse is one of my favourite writers but in is his Over Seventy, which is the closest he really comes to an autobiography, he dismisses the idea of talking about writing completely, claiming that the actual process is boring (as was much Over Seventy i’m sorry to say). Now, for the average person he may well be right, (I discovered early on that, while ‘I’m a writer’ is a pretty good chat up line, following it up with a description of what that entails is whatever the exact opposite of a chat up line is.) but for other writers it can be fascinating. Wodehouse’s last unfinished book ‘Sunset at Blandings’ comes with notes in the back showing how it might have panned out and talking about how he worked. From this I learnt that all wodehouse’s country houses (and there are many) are based on real places to ensure that their geography remains consistent throughout his books. How is that not interesting?

In a completely different type of writing I saw an interview with composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim explaining how he uses the metre of a song to time a joke. And that the famously awakward ‘love farce’ line in Send in the Clowns is deliberately awkward so that the actor is forced to enunciate the words, contributing to the needling nature of the song.

This very morning I caught the tail end of an interview with a novellist on BBC Breakfast (annoyingly too late to find out who the hell he was) who said he spent two years planning a book then 50 days, 6 hours a day, writing. It works for him.

I’m not saying that I read or listen to all these people and adopt everything (hell, they mostly disagree with each other) but it’s always interesting to hear whatever successful writers have to say; maybe you learn something, maybe it’s just another point of view. The advice Terry Pratchett gives young writers is to create a pair of characters then let them talk and interact until a plot comes out of it. That’s basically what I did with my last sitcom script.

And that’s a huge thrill, for me at any rate, when a writer you admire recomends something that you already do.

It’s a little early (or late) for new year’s resolutions, but my mid year one is to read more of what writers have to say about their work, about the process and the inspiration behind it. There may well be absolutely nothing to learn because, God knows, you can’t emulate inspiration, but that makes it no less interesting to read about.

Well not exactly stolen.

It’s like this; when George Lucas wanted to show some of his film school buddies a rough cut of his film ‘Star Wars’ (back when it was just called ‘Star Wars’) he famously filled in the gaps where the spaceship effects were not ready with footage of dogfights from war films. I feel I could do similar with songs from musicals to fill in the gaps in my musical.

With no prior experience of writing musicals (pantomimes don’t really count), I am inevitably going to take inspiration from musicals I am familiar with. I am not a musical expert so that is a relatively small pool, which may be just as well as it ought to lead to at least some consistency in the songs.

Of course musically none of this matters since I’m not writing the music, it’s more the role that the songs play within the narrative, how they sound in my head and of course how I describe them to the composer.

So, for better or worse, when I consider my opening number I hear a combination of Double Talk from City of Angels and Bobby from Company. My leads’ first songs bear a resemblance to Where I Want To Be from Chess and Who Knows from Westside Story respectively. Interestingly, where I am unable to make this comparison, I find the songs to be a bit thin, and they are all the better when i have a think and find something to take as a point of reference.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I really don’t know. Having so little experience means that I am playing it by ear and I probably won’t know until some way into the process whether or not I am doing it right. That said, it seems to me that as long as I am not the one writing the songs, and as long as I do not mention my inspiration to the composer or exert any undue pressure on her to push a song in a certain direction, it can’t do any harm. We are all inspired bywriters we admire. I freely admitted that the film I wrote which started this whole blog thing was inspired by Frank Capra’s films and the writing of Robert Riskin. While the sitcom I have been working on is more than a little influenced by Galton and Simpson.

Based on those examples I do at least pick my inspirations well. The writer who has most influenced my musical must be Stephen Sondheim, thanks to his character based songs and brilliant lyrics. Sondheim (best known now for Sweeney Todd, courtesy of Tim Burton’s adaptation) celebrates his 80th birthday this year and enjoyed a special Prom in his honour on Saturday night. If you missed it I would heartily reccomend the BBC i-player, it was on radio 3 as well so you shouldn’t have too much difficulty in finding it. If you have even the meanest interest in musci you will not be disappointed.

Very exciting week; the composer I’m writing my musical with has sent me a rough version of one of the songs. Of course it’s not perfect, music goes through drafts like any writing does, but it’s pretty damn good! Perhaps most importantly it is not what I would have imagined, not what I would have written (if I could write music) which means that the finished article is going to be a genuine collaboration.

Regular readers will know that I don’t collaborate much. And people who know me can probably guess why. One of the main problems I have had with the musical so far is letting go of the reins, I’m just not used to sharing responsibility and my instinct is to plough ahead as if I’m the only one working on it. One way I have alleviated this is bt sending regular (roughly bi-weekly) updates to the composer so she can comment and so on.

And that’s just as well because I’m seriously re-editing the opening scenes. Two of them have bit the dust completely, one song has gone and the scene substantially changed. And the more I change at the start of course the more needas to change later on. It’s a big job, this is my first real attempt at writing something historical and I think my primary instinct was to stick religiously to what happened when and include everything. My writing instincts are now kicking in and I am turning the events more into a story (without changing the fact s of course).

It’s also the first time I’ve written something serious for the stage, on screen or in a book you have so many more editing options, half the challenge on stage is to be able to keep events natural while being forced to work within a very limited number of scenes. I think I’m doing this better now than when i started, hence the major re-think but it’s still tricky. Subtleties which I would montage my way through in a film need to be addressed with intelligence, and there are days when that just doesn’t feel like an option I possess.

At the moment it feels like the ideas are just pouring out of me, I could probably change every single scene, and for now that’s a good thing. I’m not writing yet so I just note all the ideas in the structure and see how they play out. Which of course brings me back to my collaboration problem again because keeping track of all these changes must be a complete pain in the arse.

In conclusion; I’m glad I don’t have to work with me.

Despite a horrifying week at the day job I’ve managed to find the time to type up my sitcom notes into the fastest written pilot I’ve ever produced. I now plan to let it sit until the read through is imminent, and then do a quick polish. I want to know what people think of it in it’s current state; largely unpolished and with few writery flourishes. To be honest it’s little more than a conversation which (hopefully) exhibits similars peaks and troughs as a more action oriented script. I genuinely don’t know, all I know is that I like it and it’s fun to try something new.

So, with that out of the way I can concentrate on the musical, and it has really been brought home to me this week how much of a pain I must be to work with. Because I tend to write alone I have built up my own method whcih involves writing down every idea that occurs to me and slowly paring back to the essentials. But this is somewhat problematic when you have a partner trying to write songs which I keep cutting/moving/completely changing the meaning of. I am now sending regular updates to my composer so she is kept apprised of what is going through my head, which may not be useful but will at least prevent me from wasting more of her time.

The songs are getting under way now and we’re trying a couple of methods of writing. I’m writing lyrics for one of the songs which she will set to music, with another I’m providing detailed notes on what the song is supposed to be saying and she will write both lyrics and music. At this stage it’s very much trial and error to see what works.

The story is in place but I am now unhappy with some of the early scenes, they are too expositionary. Were it a film I would edit away the problem but onstage a scene needs to be a certain length. I need to give the scene more of a direction and then filter the necessary exposition through it. At the moment the lead comes on, he is told some stuff to take him into the next scene and the scene ends. That won’t do.

Some of you will have heard me talking about a film I have in developement called Wake Up. Well, unfortunately it is now on hiatus for at least the next year, it’s subject is deemed too close to Philip Nolan’s Inception and a low budget film can’t hope to compete so the production company does not want to risk it. And they’re right, i don’t want my story (which is infinitely superior to Nolan’s!) to be thought a poor relation, or worse still an attempt to cash in. It sucks, but I’m happy to wait if it means getting the film right.

I haven’t had a lot of luck on Learning to Fly (that’s the name of the musical I’m writing, not a ridiculously unrealistic ambition), but then I’ve been out of town for the best part of the last week.

On the other hand I had time to spend a day on my sitcom. As regular readers may remember I was having no end of trouble with this one, I had ten minutes of it from a competition but was having problems expanding it to a full episode. My big problem was not being able to impose a story structure on what was essentially a character piece. When I tried to make the story more dominant I lost everything I liked about the idea, but having no story seldom works over a full half hour.

So what did I do? I pretty much ignored all of the above and let the characters talk in my head for a few hours while I went for a walk. By the time I got home I had everything I needed to complete the episode. I still don’t know if it will work, perhaps when i type it up (at the moment the entire episode is handscrawled across three sides of A4 in unfeasibly tiny writing) all the problems will leap out at me, I’ve certainly done a lot of things that I usually criticise other people for doing. And yet, as it stands, I like it. This pilot script was always about introducing the characters (the situation is little to shout about) and there’s no doubt that what I have does that.

Which is great because I seldom write like that. I’m a diligent planner who tries to avoid what Michael Stipe referred to as ‘vomit writing’. But sometimes it just comes, and that’s usually an indicator that the characters are strong; they won’t shut up. Which is good, although it can make for dialogue heavy pieces.

So, I’ll type it up (which will take time as it’s Summer Sale fortnight at Next), polish the dialogue, and get it read through at LCW. It will be interesting to see what other people think.

Incidentally, still nothing on The Infernal Comedy. I don’t know if  ‘no news is good news’ but, for now at least no news is not bad news. Which will do.

I’ve been working hard on my musical over the weekend, trying to fix the end of Act I/beginnng of Act II (in this context I mean Act I and Act II in a theatrical sense rather than Act 1, 2 and 3 in a story sense, it becomes confusing when writing notes). I solved the problem with an excellent new opening to Act II. And then realised that it makes a far better ending to Act I.

Does this ever happen to you? You come up with a great idea that is perfect, but necessitates massive changes in what you’d already written. You can’t ignore it because in the back of your head would always be the knowledge that you let a superior piece of work go. So you have to knuckle down and change the stuff that was locked months ago, re-work the structure (and in this case the songs) and add a couple of weeks to your schedule. By which time you’ll probably have come up with an even better idea.

Good ideas are not a problem with the sitcom formerly known as My Sister; I don’t have any. That’s not true; I have one. It’s too good to throw away but it’s proving unbelievably difficult to spin out into an episode. the annoying thing is that I can write dialogue for these characters till doomsday, but until I have a story there’s very little for them to say.

Remind me again why I want to do this for a living.

First up; no news on The Infernal Comedy, but it would be a bit much to expect anything less than a week in.

So, if you remember, I am working on two other projects, both of which I have found the time to work on in between earning a living in the Next stockroom and watching the tennis.

It’s interesting to look back on some of my summer blogs on The Infernal Comedy from last year, I remember it as a very pleasant and enjoyable process, but with the blogs to remind me I can now recall that actually it was like getting blood from a stone. There were problems which seemed insoluble which I puzzled over for days on end. And it’s good to be reminded of that because The Infernal Comedy turned out just how I wanted and I am now going through similar hell with both my new projects.

The sitcom (formerly known as ‘My Sister’, now in nameless limbo) I spent an afternoon on and achieved a big fat nothing. The ten minute version works so well and is such a great idea for a pilot that I don’t want to lose it, but expanding it is proving far trickier than I thought. I’m in danger of forcing it and I absolutely don’t want to do that. i want to keep it out of traditional sitcom territory by making it fluid and almost entirely character based. Harder than it sounds.

I’ve had a bit more luck over a weekend of working on my musical but it’s still troubling me. Partly the problem is that it is based on real events and they don’t always pay attention to dramatic necessaity or the point I’m trying to make. I find myself writing lines of dialogue to make the point and that’s never good, if the audience need to hear one specific line to get the meaning of the whole show then the rest of it has gone astray somewhere.

But that’s what the planning stages are for. i guess I’m feeling a little impatient. At this stage of  The Infernal Comedy my time was my own to spend long days contemplating the problems. Now I have a job and my time is restricted, I have a writing partner for the musical who wants to know what i’m doing and the sitcom I meant to start ages ago. It all combines to make me rush and I don’t write well that way, I force things. I have to be ready to accept that this will take a while to get right.

First up a big ‘Hello’ to people on The Word Cloud who can now read this as well as my 2oth Century Cinema blog. You’ve missed about a year so try to keep up.

As of four o’clock this afternoon The Infernal Comedy is out of my hands and into those of an agent (via the Royal Mail anyway). I spent time choosing the right agent to approach and then more time researching them so I could spend a day writing the best covering letter I could. I spent another two days writing the perfect synopsis.

I hate writing synopses and I’ve always assumed that it’s because of the difficulty of cutting a big story down to a page and half. But I reckon i could do it with ease to someone else’s story so that’s not it. I now think it’s that, however much we want others to read our work, we really write to please ourselves. But the synposis is just a tool, designed to appeal to someone else. To us it is just a watered down version of something that has already achieved perfection.

Anyhoo, It’s done, it’s gone, I refuse to worry about it.  Yeah, right.

The best way to not worry about soemthing you can’t change anyway is to work on something else. I have two other big projects in the pipeline. The first is a sitcom which reached the semi finals of the sitcom trials last year and which was read through at LCW earlier this year. That version was only ten minutes long but it seemed to go down well and I like the charcaters so I’m expanding it and seeing how it goes. It’s one which i genuinely enjoyed writing so I’m looking forward to getting back to it.

A more difficult but arguably more interesting prospect is the musical which, as regular readers will know, has been in various degrees of gestation since last November. The story is now locked and the title is Learning to Fly. Everything else is up in the air. It’s a while since I worked with a partner and for this it’s a necessity because I can’t write music. It should be good for me but in some areas we have very different ideas.  I also hadn’t really thought about how much I give away; in a musical the major moments, the dramatic beats, are underlined in song, if they weren’t it wouldn’t be a musical, so i am having to come to terms with the idea of taking the moments over which i would usually expend the most time and sweat and giving them to someone else to write. It’s weird. There are going to be problems, there are going to be fights, but it is a great story and one which I really feel will work best as a musical. At this point however I have too much material (the story is historical and largely true), I have to find a spare few hours and pare down the material to a clear and concise story. Which can be agonising but it’s also one of my favourite parts of the process, the longer I do this more I prefer storylining and structuring to dialogue.

The name 90 pages for this blog has ceased to be really appropriate, since a sitcom is 25 pages and the musical I have no earthly idea, but I’ll keep the title, I like it. And I’ll keep you up to date with developments on The Infernal Comedy, don’t hold your breath, I sure won’t.

I started writing The Infernal Comedy when Wimbledon started last year as I needed time to think and there was no chance of me doing any actual writing during that fortnight. Although I already had the basic idea, that was when I started developing the concept into a story. And now, at just after 4pm today, I finished it. I have finished the final excrutiating line by line, word by word examination and I think that further work could only damage it. It’s done. I’m done. And as Wimbledon starts again next week, it’s safe to say that it’s taken me about a year.

And I’m happy with it. Which is the best you can say when you come to the end of a script. ‘Good’ is a subjective term which differs from person to person, all I can say is that I like it, in places it still makes me smile (which after a year is a feat and a half) and it is exactly what I wanted it to be, exactly what i set out to write.

So what now? Well I will continue this blog for two reasons, firstly because I have two major new projects on which to work (of which, more next week), and secondly because now that the writing is over the hard part starts; selling it. Writing this blog has informed the way in which I wrote the script, explaining to you why I have done things has forced me to examine my writing and my writing process for myself, perhaps the same will be true of the selling.

I am hoping to use the Infernal Comedy to secure an agent, something I have been trying to do for some time. I’m approaching it differently this time, since my usual technique has proved fruitless. perhaps it’s risky but I am taking a more offensive tack; I have a good CV, I have one film in post production and another in development, I make regular (though not substantial) money as a writer, and I believe I have a commercial product in this latest script. Basically, rather than begging for them to represent me (which is effectively what I usually do), I am generously giving them the opportunity to represent me. I probably won’t put it quite like that.

I think it’s worth continuing the blog to chart this part of the process which, God knows, we writers don’t like to think about because suddenly our months, or even years, of work is being harshly judged over a period of minutes by a distant and unfriendly eye. Not everyone realises that a rejection letter is a heartbreaking thing to recieve, however professional it is, it feels personal because that’s a bit of your soul on the page.

So yes, I hate rejections, but I’m steeled to their possibility, I’ve been doing this a few years and I can accept them with only a few hours of angry screaming afterwards. I am also steeled to that most unpalatable of possibilities that, The Infernal Comedy may never get an agent and never get made. In that instance would I think it a waste of time? Hell no. I have loved writing it. There have been bad days for sure, times when I never thought the problems would be solved, but when it’s been good it’s been very good. A moment of inspiration where it all comes together is a beautiful thing. And at the end of it I have a bouncing baby screenplay of which I am very proud; it looks like me, it sounds like me, and I daresay that no one but me would have written it in this exact way. It is Robin down to it’s twisted DNA. And like all parents, though i would love for it to be a huge success, I’ll still love it even if it remains an abject failure.

It seems like an age since I wrote a blog on The Infernal Comedy so imagine how long it feels since I worked on the script. But things have calmed down a bit, the final (Ha! some fucking chance!) draft of my other film is delivered and I can get back to The Infernal Comedy and, I hope, finish it in the next fortnight.

I’m now at the nit-picking stage, it’s hard to tell how many, if any, of the miniscule changes I am currently making will have any effect on agents reading through it. But on the other hand, why send anything less than your best? Who knows what tiny thing might tip the balance in your favour.

One thing that needs fixing and which I’m doing as I go, is the preponderance of bit characters, who have one line at most, called simply MAN or GIRL (Sometimes WOMAN, but for some reason never LADY). This makes for dull reading and a confusing cast list. They are barely charcters so I do not describe them beyond what is necessary for the plot. But what if I could include a description in the name? It would make them more interesting, lift the text a bit and make me look inventive. Call a character MAN and you give the reader nothing, call them CHAP and that small change suddenly makes him more of a character; someone Oxford educated who played rugger at school and has a name like Lucien (though his friends probably call him Mungo). In my script HANDSOME CHAP will make a move on UNDERDRESSED HOTTIE (I considered UNDERDRESSED JAILBAIT but you never know who’ll get upset). Suddenly these feel like people.

Now on the one hand this may seem slightly fatuous and on the other it may seem like a writer, bored with anal nitpicking, making the final draft a bit fun for himself. But I maintain there is a point. It differentiates these characters; MAN 1 and MAN 2 are essentially the same person, but HANDSOME CHAP and FIT BLOKE are clearly different people, their descriptions mean the same thing and yet we see different men (or I do). Reading scripts, even for people who do it for a living, can be a dry experience and anything in the staging that creates a picture in the head of the reader must be a good thing. Suddenly they are not reading about the lead character and an anonymous MAN, but are reading about the lead character and another character, equally nameless, but a character none the less.

I should point out that I’m saying all this with no evidence whatsoever of its truth, for all I know agents may find such names distracting and annoying and I’m doing myself no favours at all by using them. But, for me at least, writing, in any medium, is about creating a picture in words, stage directions should be short and to the point so I certainly cannot spend a paragraph on a character as I would in a novel, but a paragrpah’s worth of description can be encapasulated in a mere 2 words, if they are the right words. I also think the same holds for locations and… well everything really. We are told that stage directions should be concise, and so they should, but concise does not mean colourless. The reverse in fact. Concision accompanied by imagination= atmosphere in a single line. Concision without imagination is boring.

Now if you’ll excuse me I must return to my thesaurus and to my bemoaning of the fact that there are relatively few synonyms for MAN. ( if  ‘synonyms’ is the word I think it is)