Cursed

Cursed by Sandra Bendelow. Image by Boz Groden
 

Cursed is an interesting one, a short play produced for the EarCandy project, an audio drama project from a web platform.

It was a really exciting project to be involved in, 13 writers exploring audio-drama, learning what works and doesn't by writing, recording and then presenting the plays. And also very importantly having the plays available so that anyone, anywhere can listen to them - for free.

But Cursed as a short audio drama was created from frustration. A story I'd wanted to tell but hadn't been able to find a way to tell it. It had been bugging me for a really long time. The story of the Bells of Santiago which I'd discovered on one of though random journeys on the web. You know the ones where you click a link and then click another, drawn along a pathway by interesting stories until there it was the Bells of Santiago.

Now bearing in mind that one of my writing obsessions is how objects become imbued with the history around them, a story about a set of bells that hung from a tower in a church in Santiago until a fire which killed over 2,000 killed destroyed the church in which they hung, at which point the bells were transported to the Gower to hang in a church for several hundred years before someone realised their origins and shipped them back to Santiago - yes that's a story which is going to interest me.

Izzy Rabey recording Cursed

It's a story about a horrible tragedy, fire and bells, so it always seemed to be a radio play.

I took the idea to a writing workshop with Kaite O'Reilly and used it as a base for writing exercises, imagining myself as the bell, voiceless, thousands of miles from my home, haunted by a memory of thousands of people screaming when they burned to death.

And yet still I couldn't find the way to tell the story. I still haven't. It's still there waiting for me to find a way in. I'm almost there but it's not quite there yet.

But in the meantime as I tried to think of an idea for a short audio play, the story of the bell came to me and I found myself creating a version of it, drawing some of the elements from it - Swansea, a church fire and then drawing some elements from one of my other writing obsessions - magic.

And so here it is a play about a girl and a bell, both cursed by a tragedy.

The bell magnificiently played by Robert Harper and the girl and every other character played by the amazing Izzy Rabey.

Objects as inspiration

Collection of shells
 

As writers we often find the same themes and subjects feed through into our work. For me I know that always my work has to have a strong female character either as a protagonist or antagonist, the flaws of relationships feature predominantly, female friendship also heads up many ideas but also too there is subtler repetition of themes and metaphor. Feeling isolated from ones environment, not being able to find your voice, suppression of abilities occur as themes regularly in my work and I know that nature, my garden, water, accent and bodily functions have been plundered for metaphor quite regularly.

Recently I have found myself very specifically on a course of repeating either a theme or a source of inspiration. The flooding that wiped out so many villages near to me last year in particular Talybont started a creative bent that made me feel almost guilty that I had sourced so much inspiration from something that caused so much heartache. A feature film, a radio play,  a short theatre play and a full length theatre play are all in development in either my mind or on my desk as a result of it. The themes of flooding, destruction, hopelessness of man against nature just kept sparking more ideas and offering more for me to write. But then I think that is what we do we look at the senseless things about us and rewrite them so that we and hopefully others can make sense of it.

My last few projects though have found a repetition in a different form. I was approached by an artist Ruth Hogg to work with her on a piece for the Crash Test scratch night. She had an idea for an interactive performance theatre piece and she wanted me to write in response to her idea. Her idea was to create a mandala of objects that the audience could select and build. Each object would have a part of a story linked to it and based on the placing of the objects would be the presentation of dialogue. The audience would thus control the order of the performed pieces and also the emotional impact of the story. It was an interesting challenge to write in response to objects - those objects being a dead lightbulb, butterfly wings, shells, pigments, pebbles, driftwood, feathers, petals and seaweed. Ruth talked to me about stories she had thought of and then I went away and created two characters, and because I didn't have long then I inevitably pulled from my bag of writing tricks one of my predominate obsessions and a relationship in the process of breaking down emerged. I found writing around the objects a really useful exercise though, something that held the dialogue together, created metaphor and added layers to the piece.

The object focus continued though as I found myself writing a short audio drama for the Scriptography Productions project. I love the idea that objects are imbued by the history that surrounds around them and so I created a play with the ability to see the history of an object if she touches the object - she sees the joy and also the pain of thousands of stories embedded in objects and as such is cursed because there is not enough joy to overcome the pain the fills the world.

Then objects haunted me again when I asked to write for the Dirty Protest Theatre play-in-a-bag project. The remit being all the props for the play have to be in a bag. After a moment of inspiration about this I began a search to find the objects that people treasure most, the objects that they would save in a fire, the objects which with their loss would cause emotional devastation. And so again I've found myself responding to objects.

So if you're stuck for inspiration and trying to find an idea or maybe even trying to add more depth to a character try this as an exercise. Think of five random objects that your character would hate to lose, write about why they would be a loss, what is the importance of the object to the character. or if you're struggling with a scene, place a random object into it and let the characters talk about the object. Or take a look at the mandala objects - create two or three characters and create scenes which features each of the objects.

But also though think about what are your recurring motifs, themes and obsessions. It's important to know what they are and either embrace them as strengthening your voice as a writer or avoid them as a challenge to push yourself onto a new pathway of writing.

Cursed, my short audio drama for the EarCandy project will be available to listen to from 2nd June after 1pm here

Fairly random thoughts on scripts that are a pile of shiny shit and 50th birthday parties

So I jumped and now I’ve been writing full-time for two months.

My script for the Red Planet prize made it to the top 25 but unfortunately no further which was good but not good enough. The script, after a thorough re-draft, also made it into the top twelve of the BBC Drama Wales Award but also no further and though it’s great to think my script put me in the top 12 in all writers in Wales (strictly speaking – all writers in Wales who submitted but if you’re a writing in Wales and you didn’t submit to such a huge competition then you’re a bit silly and frankly worth ignoring) it still didn’t put me in the top six which leaves me with two issues which I’m contemplating as I sit at a very large table in a very large house we’ve hired to celebrate my friend’s 50th birthday. So along with contemplating my two issues I’m wondering when I got so old that I have friends who are celebrating their 50th birthday.

It seems only yesterday I was dreading my 21st birthday party arranged by my mum in the hall above the local snooker and pool club hall and wondering if anyone was going to come because I was horrible and everyone hated me. But now look at me I’m 43, I have friends who invite me to spend a week with them celebrating their 50th birthday so I mustn’t be horrible and they mustn’t hate me. Must they?

Parties are on my mind– firstly because I’m at one and secondly because I’m writing a short play for the Sherman Cymru Scriptslam on the theme of After the Party which has to be sent by the end of today. So better get back to the point which is my two points or issues.

Firstly, writing a script which is better so that next time I make it to the final hurdle rather than falling over just before the finish line. I didn’t fall flat on my face at least which is my usual experience of competitions. Flat on my face in a pile of cow shit. The script being the cow shit though at the time I didn’t think it was a cow shit I thought it was a pile of perfect gold.

Secondly, what the hell to do with the script that is good but not good enough because I absolutely love the idea, the characters and the story and if it did so well, it’s clearly not a pile of cow shit though also it’s not a pile of gold.

So firstly making sure the next script is a pile of gold. Let’s start with not forgetting the things that have been learned through the process of writing the script – write scripts which are fun for me. That is certainly the case with the next script as it’s a subject that has been percolating in my head for about 10 years, almost as long if not longer than the last one.

The idea for the next script is well into development, characters, structure, narrative, plot have all been developed. I’ve already written the first twenty pages. I have started to redraft the first ten pages to ensure that the start of the script has that very special attention required to make it shine like gold amongst the spec scripts. After a brief break to complete the draft of a theatre play, I’ll be heading back to write the first draft through to the end. Then I’ll redraft it as many times as is needed to make it what it needs to be, to make it better than the last script to make it the best script it can possibly be. The fundamental part of all this is the fact that I making sure that the script of finished well ahead of the next Red Planet competition. I want to give myself months to think about it, write it, redraft it, think about it some more. Because the main thing I learned from my flirtation with success is that it’s better to give yourself twelve months to write a script than one month. Pretty obvious really I know but the simple fact is that though the script was made into what it needed to be and was better than my last script it wasn’t the best it could possibly be.

This slides me nicely into the second of my issues, almost like I’d planned it. What to do with the script now? It’s getting there but it still isn’t the best it could possibly be and that’s going to take some more work. But it is still a good script, clearly because it made it into the top 25 of the Red Planet competition and the top twelve of the Drama Wales Award. Sorry - but just thought that was worth repeating.

Once it is the best script it can possibly be then I plan to send it as a spec script to a few places that accept submissions, maybe a few agents, maybe a few TV companies, maybe it can open a few more doors.

But what’s more I’m going to think how I can tell the story in other mediums I genuinely believe that the story could work as a radio play, as a novel, as a film – telling the story differently or telling different aspects of the story but it’s possible and a challenge and I like the challenge of trying to write the story for different mediums. And I don’t like stepping in cow shit.

Running through open doors and jumping in without armbands

Recently I’ve had cause to reflect, in far more serious terms, on my writing career. In general the last few months have been a series of - doors opening and doors closing – shall we say. So the doors opening have been all writing related, I’m through to the last 20 of the Red Planet Prize, I was chosen for the Spread the Word Emerging Writers project, I’ve had interest expressed in several projects, the production side of my work with the Writing for Performance Group has been expanding – all great and all positive momentum. The only frustrating thing has been the lack of time to be able to get on with projects and make the most of the open doors.
Don’t get me wrong I do write in all the available time I have, I’m not one of those writers who whinges about having to write when working full-time and then sits watching 6 hours of television of an evening and a bit more at the weekend. I write every evening and at least one if not two days at the weekend (largely dependent on hangover, occasionally gardening). I use all of my holiday time for writing. I have not had a holiday since...you know I really can’t remember the last holiday I took. I take time off to write around deadlines and the only away time I allow myself is Ty Newydd writing courses. So when I say not enough time to write I really mean, not enough time to write.

But then we get to the door closing - notification that the non-real-job will be coming to an end and I’m being made redundant. I have to admit I never saw it as a bad thing although I should have done. I spend all my time wishing that I had another job (scriptwriter of course) so it’s never going to be that bad when a job you do to pay the bills, that gets in the way of the job you really want to do, comes to an end. But I have a mortgage to pay and a very expensive vodka habit – by that I mean I drink a lot of cheap vodka not limited amounts of expensive vodka which would just be silly since it’s been scientifically proven that some of the cheapest brands of vodka are actually the purest!

Immediately my decision was to take a few months – or however long my severance package allows – to write. It will only be a few months but a few months that will give me those extra spec scripts I need, the proposals written up, the outlines finished.

For so long now my book of ideas – ideas written down onto pages in a notebook, usually in the form of loglines, occasionally in little flowcharts of ideas for scenes, sometimes notes of images, often a character description – has been overwhelming me. It has felt like an overloaded in-tray and an overloaded brain. I’ve wanted to push them from the overloaded brain/in-tray and into the nicely organised portfolio of ideas ready to be pitched or written.

But now I can do that. There is probably a very valid argument about me looking for a job and keeping the money for a really rainy day, after all I’ve been at this writing lark for a long time, and a few bits of good luck in competitions doesn’t really amount to an indication that you might earn actual money from writing, so maybe I should just keep at it in my spare time....but could those people (mainly my Mum) just be quiet for now.

I basically had a choice of jump in or keep paddling and I’m on the verge of jumping. I am at the end of the diving board but I’ve never liked jumping in out of my depth so I’m holding my nose and checking that there are people watching out for me in case it goes wrong.

So here’s to making a big splash end of July. I’ll drink a vodka to that. But then I’ll drink a vodka to anything!

Writing in different mediums

I write in different mediums - radio, TV, film and theatre. Each time I write a new play then I fall in love with the medium in which I’m writing and swear of all the others as lesser relatives – until I get an idea in a different medium and then I go through the whole process again.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the differences between each medium and more importantly the differences in process for each one.

I spend a lot of time testing out working processes for one medium and seeing if they transfer.
I believe very strongly that they are each a very unique medium and when writing is at its best they are vastly different creatures which require different processes. I think very few writers are genuinely masters across several mediums. There are a few examples, Abi Morgan is one that leaps out because I’ve recently seen The Hour, watched Lovesong and read Shame.

Also just for the record I want to state the obvious, TV, film, radio and theatre are all different.

I know it’s obvious but I get really frustrated with writers who don’t seem to notice. Yes, it’s all telling stories BUT it’s telling stories in very different ways. And yes you can pull some elements from one medium to another specifically to add something to that script. So yes, write a very filmic script for TV but know that you’re doing it as opposed to writing a film script and calling it TV. I see so many people saying things like, I’ve written a theatre play but someone said it would be good as radio so I’ve changed it a bit and sent it out and they’ve rejected it. Well yes, they would reject it because it isn’t a radio play. Or, I wrote this feature film but now I need to send something to a TV writing competition so I’m redrafting it a bit and sending it in – and guess what, surprise, surprise, it doesn’t win. Well yes it wouldn't win, as it’s a feature film crammed into a TV screen. Laughable I know but more than anything it makes me angry. As someone who loves all the mediums with equal passion I get very angry with people who have so little respect for the medium that they are writing in that they think, ‘changing it a bit’, will make it work.

Each of the mediums requires incredible and particular skills of writing, skills that are unique to that medium. Yes, some of the skills are transferable but some of them are very specific.

Even things that seem transferable are not - writing dialogue maybe? No. Dialogue for theatre, film, radio and TV are all very different.

A story demands to be told as well as it can possibly be told. As well as it can possibly be told in that medium. ‘Changing it a bit’ isn’t going to do that. Delving back into the core of the story is required, searching for the truth of the story, finding how that truth can be brought to life as either radio, theatre, film and TV. Each medium will demand very different things of the story and very different things of the writer. Listen to those demands.