Between the Pavement and the Stars

Resolute

2010-01-03T14:55:00.007Z

A lot of people are using the start of the new year to set goals for themselves. Many are publishing these goals on their blogs.

This is fine and good. Stating a goal publicly gives you a real incentive to finish.

But there's a worrying trend I've noticed in a lot of these goals. I'll throw a couple of common examples at you.

Goal for 2010: Get an agent.
Goal for 2010: Get a radio commission.

The problem with these goals is this: They are not under your control.

You could be a bloody brilliant writer, with a fantastic script: but if the agent's books are full that year, or if Radio 4 has already commissioned a play on the same subject matter, you're going to be shit out of luck. And you'll spend the year striving and striving, and next year you'll be sad when you haven't achieved a goal the success or failure of which had not a damn thing to do with you.

Instead, if you're setting goals for yourself, choose something that is in your power to make happen or not. F'rexample...

Goal for 2010: Write three scripts this year.
Goal for 2010: Direct a short film.
Goal for 2010: Go on a writing course.
Goal for 2010: Trade notes with other writers to get better.

Or for the two goals we started with, rephrase them so that the thing you promise to do in 2010 is in your control, not someone else's.

Goal for 2010: Send every script I finish this year to at least ten agents.
Goal for 2010: Pitch potential radio plays to at least ten producers before each offers round.

Because those actions are exactly what you'd need to do in order to get an agent or get a commission anyway.

The difference is this: You're in control of whether or not you achieve them.

There's no-one to blame or praise but yourself. And there's no way, at the end of the year, that your sense of achievement will be dependent on whether or not someone else has a bad day.

And maybe you will get that commission, or that agent. That'd be a nice bonus. But that's what it is: a bonus.

If you're setting goals, make them something that you have control over.

Don't put your happiness in the hands of someone you don't know.

Let's Twist Again

2009-12-17T13:39:00.005Z

More good reviews and a healthy box office means that my adaptation of Oliver Twist has been extended until the 24th January 2010.

Hoorah! Gin-and-water all round!

Find more info and book your ticket here.

Selling the Sizzle

2009-12-04T13:14:00.003Z

The above is the sizzle reel for a new SF show called Slingers produced by sleepydog. Looks interesting, no? Lovely sexy Rat Pack vibe, a nice look-and-feel, enough obvious pros to feel comfortable with the people behind it, and enough meat on the bones for me to think it has legs.

OK, going a bit biological on the metaphor at the end there.

I've not heard the term sizzle reel before, but it's a great phrase. Something to make you salivate, to look forward to the main event.

Problems with a sizzle reel? If it's released too early market anticipation (ie us wanting to watch it) might drop off. In which case when it does come out then it'll be "Slingers? Old news. Didn't we see that last year?"

So there needs to be a careful drip-feed of information after one of these comes out. Not too little, so that we still know it's a go project. Not too much, so that we feel like we've seen it all already. Look to Doctor Who over the last few years to see how good management of information can really help a show.

You can find more detail about Slingers on writer Mike Sizemore's blog, including some yummy-looking concept art, and promises of more goodies to come. So it looks like that's been thought of too.

They're looking to shoot the full pilot (90 minutes) in 2010.

And I'm already hungry.

Buy now, while stocks last!

2009-11-16T23:04:00.004Z

So I've adapted Dickens again.

This year's Christmas show at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in Kentish Town is Oliver Twist.

Already, more tickets have been sold before opening night than for any other show since Giant Olive moved in a year ago. And there's still a fortnight before the show goes up.

There's a great cast, including Eddie Kingham (who starred as Scrooge in last year's production of A Christmas Carol) as Fagin, and I can tell you now that man is doing sterling work. Watch him before he gets famous. And Ray Shell is again working wonders with the directing.

Also? Wipe the memory of the musical from your heads. This is going back to the raw source material, and it can be a dark and nasty place.

Previews start on Monday 30th November at eight of your earth pounds, going up to twelve quid a couple of days later, and tickets are on sale now.

Girl Number 9

2009-11-09T23:19:00.003Z

I didn't want to blog about these episodes until I'd seen them and could truthfully say "Yes, I recommend this."

Yes, I recommend this.

Girl Number 9 is an original drama made for the web by Television's James Moran and Dan Turner of Splendid infamy.

Each of the six episodes is about five minutes long (not exactly, though, and not all the same length - we don't have to worry about hitting timeslots on the web), and shot using professional kit and crew with strong, well-known talent in the three lead roles.

(That would be Tracy-Ann Oberman, Joe Absolom, and Gareth David-Lloyd then.)

Over the last week, they've been releasing an episode a day onto the Internets, and you can watch all six episodes - at least until the end of November - online. After that, in order to view them we're talking a nice shiny DVD with oodles of bonus material. And there may also be pay-to-watch online or sponsored viewings.

Shall we call it the Horrible Model? It has a certain ring to it, and this way of monetising new drama may well be something that we see more of over the next few years.

So, most importantly, what's the series like?

Dark. Darker than you expect. And then a bit darker than that, too.

And also, very very good.

Watch all six episodes for free while you can at at www.canyousaveher.com.

Enter. Enter. Zero. Stop.

2009-10-22T10:10:00.000Z

Hoorah!

I'm happy to be able (at last) to officially say that I'm one of the writers on 0110: Twisted Tales & Glorious.

It's a new series that's inspired by and touching the disturbing, the odd, and the strange. And it has a unique, fractal production, with individual short tales twisted together in many different ways.

The writing starts in the next few weeks, and the pilot will be filmed in early 2010. We'll be keeping you informed of the process over on the 0110 website and, of course, on this here blog.

A new writer is being revealed each day this week, and announced so far have been Laurence Timms, Helen Smith, and Michelle Lipton.

I'd tell you who the others were, but then I'd have to kill me. You can find out the names of the other two writers tomorrow and Saturday as they're revealed on producer Lara Greenway's blog and the 0110 website.

There are some seriously talented people on board this project.

It's going to be a blast.

Go on, say hello.

2009-10-21T14:41:00.005Z

I'm off to Cheltenham next week for the Screenwriters' Festival. You can find my thoughts on previous years by checking out this handy-dandy magic blogspot tag thing.

Executive summary: it's excellent, and well worth the money. You can still get tickets from the festival website.

If you're going to be coming along too and it's your first time at the festival, you might be a little nervous about meeting people, especially if you're going on your own.

Fortunately, we have a solution.

The lovely and talented Michelle Lipton, Jason Arnopp, Phill Barron, and myself will be holding our now-traditional go-on-say-hello-what's-the-worst-that-can-happen networking do on the Sunday night.

By which I mean:

We'll be down the pub, and we'd love for you to join us.

You'll be able to find us in the bar of the Queen's Hotel on the evening of Sunday 25th October from about six o'clock onwards.

It'll be a chance to put names to faces and get to know people before everything kicks off in earnest on the Monday.

Hope to see you there!

Letters From America: Jobs for the boy

2009-10-17T11:39:00.003Z

originally posted 2nd May 2004
--

Well, my second spec script is finished.

As with the first one, we're having a table read in my apartment block next Sunday. A bunch of actors and writers will come over, sit around our ping-pong table, and read my words aloud.

During this, I get to see where it sucks most, and fix it.

I'm pretty happy with the two scripts that I have now, so after the read-through and a final dialogue pass to remove any words that the actors have problems with, it's time to go into phase three of the plan.

For the next two months I'm going to be job-hunting.

This will basically involve calling and/or writing letters to a) agents and b) producers which basically say this:

I write. I'm very good. I'm professional enough to know that I need to show you two specs, and to be working on another now. Would you like to read my stuff?

If they do (oh, and that's a big if), and they like it, then I get either a) representation or b) a meeting.

Meetings are good. Meetings let you put a face to people so that you can interact properly when you call them up next and try to sell them stuff.

I need to get meetings.

Cookie Monster is not having any of your nonsense

2009-10-02T09:47:00.004Z

As you probably know, characters on Sesame Street will often sing songs naming, for example, things that begin with the same letter.

Here's Cookie Monster's take on the issue.

The other writing secrets

2009-09-18T14:45:00.010Z

Danny Stack did a brilliant series of posts last year called Professional Screenwriter. It's ten blogsworth of advice about how to succeed as a writer and it is, as the kids say, full of win.

If you haven't read them already, you can get 'em here:

Reading
Writing
Networking
Industry Insider
Get an Agent
Discipline
Attitude
Choosing Work
In the Know
Doing the Do

In addition to that, James Moran has revealed the big secret of how to be a writer. It's four words long, and it's answered in the very first question of his enormous writing FAQ.

So, there you go. Those eleven posts are all you need to read about how to become a writer.

But there's a whole bunch of other useful stuff, too. Things that you can do to make your life easier, that aren't exactly about writing itself, or how to make a career of it, but will come in really useful over the years ahead.

So, in no particular order, here are the other writing secrets.

Learn Proofing Marks

When you're working on a draft, you need to mark it up with your notes: delete this, move that to there, add in a whole bunch of stuff here.

The typesetting industry has a standard set of marks, which are easy to read and which anyone in the print industry can understand - once you learn them then you'll be able to mark up changes to your own drafts quickly and clearly.

This page introduces the basic marks and links to a two-page PDF which you can print out and keep next to your desk.

Learn to touch type - preferably using a Dvorak keyboard

Touch typing is faster than pick-and-peck, which means you can get the words out faster when you're drafting, and change them faster when you're revising. There's nothing more annoying than having the right words in your head and simply not being able to get them written quickly enough.

There is one problem with learning to type, though, and it's that the QWERTY keyboard is not a good design for touch-typists.

The Dvorak keyboard was created in 1932, and was specifically designed to make touch-typing easier. As well as increasing your typing speed, it's easier to learn. And as your fingers don't move so much across the keyboard (because the keys are in sensible places), many writers (myself included) have also found that it reduces symptoms of RSI.

It takes less than five minutes to switch your computer to a Dvorak layout, and you can find Dvorak typing tutors here.

Buy a laser printer

You might have had a printer thrown in when you bought your computer. Probably a colour one, these days.

But scripts aren't printed in colour. And you're going to be printing an awful lot of scripts.

You can buy a laser printer for less than a hundred quid, and it'll save you money in the long run.

A laser printer cartridge is more expensive than an inkjet one, but it lasts longer. A lot longer. And over the life of the printer, that means it's actually cheaper to have a laser printer.

Get a sensible email address

While I'm certain that cat_lover573@yahoo.co.uk is indeed a lovely email address that expresses your personality perfectly, it doesn't exactly scream Scriptwriting Professional.

firstname.lastname is a good bet. It's also easy to remember.

In an ideal world, you'd have your own domain (the .com thing) and maybe even put a website there saying who you are. Failing that, the largest free email providers are Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.

Act

As a screenwriter, actors are going to have to read your words and perform your actions at some point.

Taking an acting class or performing in some amateur theatre productions will give you an excellent grounding in some of the joys and problems of that.

A little bit of acting experience will not only help you to understand how an actor constructs their performance around the text, it'll help you to provide character and, yes, even motivation.

Stand up

If you're a comedy writer, do a couple of sets of stand-up. Many comedy clubs have open mic nights where you can get up on stage and perform for five or ten minutes. (Five minutes is more than long enough for your first set.) Performing your own material is an excellent way to hone your skills on seeing where the laughs are, and getting more.

You're not going to be as good a standup or actor as anyone who does it for a living. But what you will get is new tools for your writing toolbox.

Learn basic typographical design

The Non-Designer's Design Book is a book which teaches the basics - and just the basics - of print design.

We're not talking about anything fussy or fancy-schmancy here. Just some easy ways of laying out your text on a page to make it look nicer.

It won't help you with scripts - they have a standard layout for a very good reason - but for things like covering letters, show bibles, or pitch documents, being able to lay them out in a sensible, beautiful, easy-to-read way will set you ahead of the pack.

So there you have it. Seven useful writing tips that have nothing to do with writing.

Letters from America: Words, words, words.

2009-09-01T18:00:00.004Z

originally posted 11th April 2004
--

So I attended the Game Developers Conference in San Jose a couple of weeks ago.

We know a lot about engendering emotion through novels and films. While telling a story in a game uses different methods of presentation (via cut-scenes and in-game dialogue, for example), we don't need new theories to talk about how to make characters and story affect people.

Most of the writing presentations at the conference were concerned with emotion through story and character, but one looked at the emotions you can experience through gameplay itself.

The speaker was Nicole Lazzaro, President of User Experience Research company XEODesign. If any of you are thinking of developing games any time soon, I highly recommend you get in touch with her.

A large portion of the talk covered the emotions that you probably know about already: anger, frustration, wonder, awe, excitement, relief, amusement, and schadenfreude. All can be brought in via gameplay or design rather than story or character.

In a way, she's proved that it's simply not necessary to have a compelling story to have an emotionally involving game. But I guess those of you who've played Tetris or Solitaire already know that.

The most important things I took away, though, were two words.

Fiero and Naches.

Fiero is an Italian word. It's the emotion you experience when you finally overcome adversity, or solve a problem. It's the thrill you get from filling in a clue in a crossword puzzle, or beating the end-of-level boss. It's the moment when you clench your fist and say: "Yes!", or throw your arms above your head.

Naches (the ch is pronounced as in chutzpah, or reich) is from the Yiddish. It's the emotion of pleasure or pride at the accomplishment of someone you've helped or trained. It's the feeling you get as a parent, teacher, or mentor, when someone is able to succeed because of what you've shown them.

Now the point is, we've all experienced these two emotions.

But before now, I had no way to talk about them. I had no way of defining these emotions, or discussing them with other people. I had no way to consider how to analyse or engender these emotions, no way to understand or discuss them.

Without these words to define the concepts, I had no way to even *think* about them.

Today I can do things that I couldn't do before, have thoughts and experiences that I simply couldn't have a fortnight ago, just because I know two new words.

And now you can too.

Splendid!

2009-08-21T13:08:00.001Z

Hoorah!

The Splendid trailer is now available for your viewing pleasure.

Do the clicky thing with the arrow. You know you want to.

A serious flaw with the standard SIZR model of zombie infection.

2009-08-18T17:38:00.004Z

While the recent publication of When Zombies Attack! Mathematical modelling of an outbreak of Zombie Infection [1] represents a great step forward in our scientific understanding of the process of a zombie outbreak, their model posesses a flaw which must be addressed before we can truly say we understand the process of infection.

Their model assumes that ζR represents the number of Removed who subsequently become resurrected. Any undergraduate student of Zombie Virology would realise that there is a further state T from which the Removed may become Truly dead, viz. when their brains are destroyed.

As this T state would remove a certain number of individuals from the R state, the transmission rate for the virus would necessarily proceed at a lower rate. This would inevitably lead to a slowed increase in the number of active zombies, thus increasing the length of human survival to a period of time longer than the standard SIZR model would predict.

In addition, in the SIZR-Q model, zombies and the infected would almost certainly be moved to the T category within the length of any serious outbreak as those quarantined are killed permanently by brain-destruction.

Surely this is something that peer-review should have caught.

1: Munz, Hudea, Imad, Smith? 2007

Here Kitty Kitty

2009-08-09T17:00:00.010Z

After the success of his recent adaptation of the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, m'brother Rafe has now directed a new play, Kitty and Damnation by award-winning playwright Joseph Crilly.

The show opens tonight and runs until 12th September 2009, Tuesday to Saturday at 7:30pm.

You can buy tickets via ticketweb or on the door.

Running with the Bulls

2009-08-08T18:45:00.005Z

I went running with the bulls in Pamplona this year.

If you're not aware of this particular pastime, it's like this:

Six bulls run through the streets of the town.
You run in front of them, until they catch up.
Then you run alongside them and let them pass.
That's it.

It's known in Spain as the encierro, and the original purpose of it was to move the bulls from their overnight holding pen to the bullring for the day's bullfighting.

My girlfriend was born in Pamplona, the site of the largest encierro in Spain during the festival of San Fermín. (He's the patron saint of the town.) The Sanfirmines encierro is broadcast live across Spain throughout the festival.

So I thought it would be nice to run with the bulls one year.

Why not? It looks like fun, it's something that brings me closer to Loli's culture and, let's face it, bullfighting will probably be outlawed within my lifetime. Might as well experience this while I still can.

I'm only planning to do it the once. It's a young man's game, and I'm not getting any younger.

There are generally about two or three hundred injuries per year, and a death every four or five years. Unfortunately this year was one of the ones when someone was gored to death by a bull.

Anyone can run with the bulls provided that they're

Over the age of 18
Not drunk or otherwise incapacitated
On-site before 7:30am

As Laurence Olivier famously asked Dustin Hoffman, is it safe?

Well, provided you take a few simple precautions like knowing where not to run (the outside of the bends - the bulls can't turn very fast, and might run into you) and what to do if you fall over (stay still - if you move they'll try and gore you, but if you stay still they'll ignore you), then it's actually fine.

The run takes about four minutes. You choose your spot to wait for the bulls to come by, start running before they get to you, and finish when they pass. Don't wave anything at them, give them room, and don't touch the buggers. They get riled.

Personally I'd recommend Estafeta. It's a nice street, quite wide, and there are various shop doorways to duck into should you have to. That's provided they're not full of cowering people, of course. It's actually more difficult to run safely at the edge of the street, as there are more people there for you to stumble into. Took me a while to figure that out.

Through the duration of the festival, it's traditional to wear a white shirt and trousers, a red neckscarf, and a red sash used as a belt.

When I say "traditional" I mean "practically everyone is wearing this". You'd better too, if you don't want to look weird.

So, would I recommend it to you?

Well, yes. There's a small amount of danger, but not much provided you do a little bit of research beforehand and don't do anything obviously stupid. And it's an experience I can carry with me for the rest of my life.

And I think you should try something different, too. Something that you've never tried before.

It might be running with the bulls, or skydiving, or rock-climbing, or living in another country for a few months. Each of these has risks - but every day you risk death or injury crossing the road. Life is risk. And all of these risks are manageable.

New experiences make us better people.

Letters From America: Rubber, Drugs, and PVC

2009-07-26T09:26:00.002Z

originally posted 26th March 2004
--

So, here I am in San Jose for the rest of the week.

The day before yesterday, I read a post on a screenwriting message board. It said "I have free tickets for the Game Designers Conference. Who wants some?"

So I said yes, emailed Susannah to check that I could crash at hers, and jumped in the car.

About an hour down the freeway, there was a loud bang and the car started shuddering. I made it to the side of the road safely, and started checking to see what had happened. Turned out my left rear tyre was shredded.

At this time a Highway Patrol officer pulled up and, after telling me to take my hands out of my pockets and return to my vehicle, asked me who I was and if I was transporting drugs from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

Fortunately, he seemed satisfied when I told him I wasn't.

After limping on three wheels to the nearest garage I found an entrepeneurial member of the rescue services who offered to take my tyre away and have it fixed for the bargain price of $200 (down from $260). Having a rough idea of what a tyre costs, I drove slowly and carefully for another 14 miles and got it fixed for $40.

It's an interesting environment at the conference. There are about 9,000 games developers here: programmers, designers, artists, suits, and even a few writers.

The general opinion of the writers is that writing in games gets no respect and Something Must Be Done. That's about as far as they've got, though.

So there I was in the hotel bar speaking to the representative from the BBC (turns out I know him) when a little man came up and said:

"You don't want to be drinking here. Why not come across the road to the PlayStation party, where all the booze is free? Use this to get in."

So we did.

It turns out that a party sponsored by PlayStation is - well, just about exactly how you'd imagine.

Huge paper sculptures, coloured lights flashing all over the place, delicious food, free bars all over, and a fashionable band.

The band was called "Crystal Meth", or perhaps "The Crystal Method". An orbital-a-like. I know they were good because a) I liked them and b) Young People around me kept calling friends on their mobile phones and saying "Dude! You won't believe this, but Crystal Meth are on stage, like, *fifty feet away*!"

But my favourite part of the evening had to be the fact that when the band weren't on stage, there were Asian girls in short PVC dresses, fishnets, boots, and chokers dancing in cages for no good reason.

Fair made my evening, that did.

It's people like you that spoil it for everyone else.

2009-07-14T17:39:00.004Z

So I go away for a week to visit my girlfriend's family and run with the bulls - I'm fine, thank you for asking - and manage to avoid most of the Torchwood spoilers.

Some of which will likely appear in this post. You have been warned.

So I come back, gulp down the lot, and check out some of the reaction on the Internets. Why not? See how everyone else likes it.

(Very good, I thought. Nice work from all three writers, the director, and the actors. Reminded me a lot of the classic British TV SF of the past in style - A For Andromeda, the various Quatermass series and so on.)

And what should I find on the Internet but a bunch of fucking half-wits yattering on about how the writers have destroyed their favourite series.

Now, let's be clear here. I'm a fan myself. I go to conventions, I read tie-in books, I'm watching all of Doctor Who in order from the start. I. Like. Science. Fiction.

The clear difference here is that I don't consider someone else's work to belong to me.

It's known in psychology as a sense of entitlement. I love this series, therefore it belongs to me. I love these characters, therefore a threat to them is a threat to me.

And there seems to be a particular contingent of this madness in SF fans. I don't know why. Perhaps they're just more vocal about it than the average EastEnders fan when, for example, Tiffany Mitchell suffered a tragic road accident on New Year's Eve.

So when a well-loved character died in episode four of the latest series of Torchwood, these people were outraged. And they have made their displeasure known.

Some of the opinions which I've read have included "I'm never watching Torchwood again," - quite a common one, this - and promising never to spend another penny on Torchwood merchandise.

Possibly my favourite has the line "Thanks for your contributions to this fandom" in it. This fandom. Not the television series. Apparently it's all about the fandom, and the series just happens to be vaguely associated with it.

But you know what? Fair enough. You can't please everyone all the time, and a bit of polite disagreement never hurt anyone.

And then there are the others. The name-calling, the accusations of homophobia, of deliberately trying to hurt fans. The stupidest of the dumb.

Let's be clear: you have a right to think whatever you want, whether it has any basis in reality or not. You might, for example, claim that "George Lucas raped my childhood" when he released The Phantom Menace.

No. He did not. He made a bad film. And taking it personally is not going to do anything other than make you feel bad about yourself. Because then you are granting power over your own happiness to something that you have no control over.

Because you are not in charge.

"They're alienating the fans! We've supported them all the way! We should be consulted/informed/listened to!"

No. You do not get that right.

You took it personally. You decided that your sense of well-being was bound up in the lives of characters you have no control over. You.

You did this to yourself.

And to then attack the writer? To say "You didn't do this the way I wanted to, so you're at fault"? To insult them? To lay the blame on them for you not liking something?

For the last few years, Torchwood writer James Moran has kept a blog. In it he shared his journey from aspiring to professional writer, sharing what he's learned, trying to give a little bit back.

Because, you see, he's a fan too.

And now, thanks to the comments from fools on the Internet, he's having to scale back his presence. To be a little less open, a little less helpful to those who are also trying to learn, trying to enjoy.

And you did this.

You.

God preserve us from people like you.

Letters From America: A good day, on the whole.

2009-07-02T15:33:00.002Z

originally posted 8th March 2004
--

Draft Zero of the Enterprise spec is finished.

It's not a First Draft. It's not at that level yet. What it has, is enough words to fill fifty pages in screenplay format.

Now that the final "Fade out." has been typed, I've printed it out and read it end-to-end for the first time.

The first act is pretty good, in my humble opinion. Unfortunately the other three-quarters of the script sucks big-style. Genuine queue-up-to-avoid-it type writing.

I read the whole thing for the first time a couple of hours ago. When writing the Zeroth Draft I try to not go back at all if I can avoid it - the temptation is too high to spend your life re-working the bits you know are wrong instead of finishing the damn piece.

But now, reading it end-to-end for the first time, I had my Editor hat on. And the *structure* is mostly there. It's just the words that need changing.

If I was a showrunner who received this script, I'd fire the original writer and pass it on to the person on my team that was good at dialogue to straighten the damn thing out.

Unfortunately, I'm on my own here.

But I can see where the problems are. Looking at it now as a final piece, I can see what the original author is trying to do in the script. Despite the fact that everyone wears their hearts on their shoulders and baldly states their point-of-view.

So what I'll be doing over the next couple of weeks is taking the scenes apart and attempting to re-build them with real characters instead of the cardboard cutouts currently serving duty as place-holders.

Then maybe it'll be worth showing to someone else.

But having said all that, finishing Draft Zero is worth celebrating. It's a cut-off point, a waystation, a milestone.

So I treated myself. Since I moved into this apartment building, I've had my eye upon the big switch in the elevator marked "Emergency Stop", and I've been saving it for just the proper occasion.

Worth the wait.

Where there's a Will

2009-06-18T12:30:00.004Z

William M Akers, writer of Your Screenplay Sucks! is going to be in London in the next couple of weeks.

Anyhoo, turns out he's doing a workshop at the Met Film School on the evening of Thursday 2nd July at 6:30pm. Looks like it might be interesting.

Fifteen quid cash on the door to get in, and you need to book a ticket beforehand. Details are here.

He also has a blog.

Good christ on a bucket, you don't mean it's actually happening?

2009-06-17T12:05:00.003Z

Trailer for Just For The Record, the new film from our very own Phill Barron.

Looks like fun.

Writers' Social, 16th July 2009

2009-06-16T22:44:00.005Z

It has been pointed out to me recently that a Writers' Social has not been organised for a long while.

So the delightful Sara Baroni and I have organised one.

It's in the Knights Templar pub in London on Thursday 16th July from 7pm till closing. In this pub at this time we will be drinking beer, and talking about the UK screenwriting industry.

Why not come along and do the same? All welcome.

Hope to see you there.

Second Stage Launch

2009-06-12T13:37:00.003Z

So I was at the launch do for the Screenwriters' Festival last night. This was actually the second launch. We reckon they can probably fit one more in before the festival itself, which is October 26th to 29th.

In addition to a glass of free wine (which always cheers me up) and some starspotting in the BAFTA bar, we got to see a few people talk including a couple of agents, two writers who are at the end of the beginning of their careers (or possibly the beginning of the middle), and Christopher Hampton.

The common theme running through all of these presentations was this though: it takes hard work to be successful. A lot of it.

Christopher Hampton hasn't done too badly for himself. And he's got a pretty good hit-rate for features - fully one in three of the films he's written has actually been made.

Both of the new writers are several features plus change (sitcoms, dramas, etc.) written before starting to get any traction at all. And even now they're only just starting to emerge from the fray.

So: Work hard. Repeat until successful.

The helpful advice is all really in aid of promoting the festival, though. I mean, that's what a launch is for. And what you really want to know is: is it worth the cash?

In my opinion, yes. I've been for the last few years, and I'd say there's two main reasons to go.

Firstly, there's getting to hear from writers who make a living at this. A lot of them, in the same place at the same time. Learning what they did right and wrong helps you to avoid the mistakes they made and make brand new ones of your own.

Secondly you get to hang around with other writers at the same stage as you are. It's as much of a social event as it is a learning one. And to be honest, that's the most useful thing of all.

Other bloggers were at the event too, and I'm sure they'll chuck in their two'pennorth over the next few days. As of right now, the only post available is at Phill's place. It has the advantage over this one in that it also contains a diagram of sperm.

If you're thinking of going, don't forget that you can get funding from your local screen agency.

Hope to see you there.

Josh Friedman on the bubble

2009-06-04T09:54:00.004Z

Creator/Showrunner/Sometime Blogger Josh Friedman of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has posted about what it's like being on the bubble.

Sadly, the show didn't get renewed.

"Everyone says having your show cancelled is like a death but I've been dead before and at least when you're dead you don't get thrown off the Warner Bros. lot for haunting your old parking space. They probably mean it's like the death of a friend or a family member but that shit only hurts when it's YOUR friend or family member and even then it's mitigated by age, lifestyle and whether that person was a Hollywood friend or a real one and whether that family member left you money.

"Losing your show is more like a surprise divorce where you get served papers in the morning and your (ex)wife is fucking Human Target by three in the afternoon using the same time slot your child was conceived in and also where she did that one thing that one time on your birthday."

More at Josh's blog.

The same act of writing, but in real time.

2009-05-30T08:53:00.003Z

Stephen Gallagher has written a post about how the freelance writing process works in US TV.

And there's a promise of another post on the Writers' Room system coming soon.

Well worth your time.

SAG negotiations

2009-05-23T15:52:00.004Z

I don't have a horse in this race, unlike the WGA strike.

But the members of the Screen Actors Guild are now deciding whether or not to accept a proposal squeezed through by 53% of the SAG Board. So, not exactly a roaring endorsement.

You can take a look at the highlights, together with arguments for and against, in the SAG Referendum Packet.

Time for the members of the SAG to decide. I wish you all good luck.