Watching sunrise over Hackney Marshes

Since the end of September I've done a workshop or conference or training event every weekend except one; Dirty Protest workshop with Tim Price on structure, Ty Newydd Mentoring project with Kaite O'Reilly, Radio Writing masterclass with Alan Harris, London Screenwriters Festival and Radio Writing masterclass with Dan Rebellato. In the midst of this I've launched a production company Scriptography Productions, organised the first scratch night and been dense in production preperation for the first Scriptography Productions project a new full length play by Catrin Fflur Huws called To Kill a Machine. With all this going on there hasn't been time to even write a blog let alone creatively write. Every single one of the events has been brilliant.

Tim Price, writer of Radicalisation of Bradley Manning for National Theatre Wales amongst others and also writer of Switch on ITV2 at the moment (if you haven't watched Switch then do, immediately), talked about inciting incidents, mid-points and obligatory scenes that really made it click for me in terms of using it in theatre structure. I realised that a play I've been struggling to end was a struggle because it either has the wrong beginning or I need to write a different play.

Kaite O'Reilly, well she's Kaite O'Reilly, and as a seasoned attendee of many of her courses at Ty Newydd I knew what to expect and as always she delivered beyond my expectations - she was as always a goddess of writing tutoring, the weekend was the usual rollercoaster of exuberance, genius and straight-talking. I would not be the writer I am without her, her mentorship and her friendship is immeasurable and she's just so bloody lovely, and amazing and inspiring so yes that was an incredible weekend.

Alan Harris, writer of A Good Night out in the Valleys for National Theatre Wales and also many other plays and also writer of one of my favourite radio plays Gold Farmer came very highly recommended. Everyone I know who has been tutored by him sings his praises and always he's described as being really lovely. Yes, he was both a great tutor and really lovely. So I was very happy to have given up my Sunday afternoon for him and also to have stayed sober on a Saturday night so as not to be hungover. That's high praise indeed. He shared several of his radio plays with us and made us analyse the beginnings, think about why they were commissioned because of how the idea was pitched - he didn't actually tell us they were his plays though - sneakily entertaining.

London Screenwriters Festival was a jam packed weekend of whizzing about from room to room. Simply too many highlights to delve into in any detail but favourite talks were Eran Creevy, Frank Spotnitz, Katie Himms, Kate Leys and all of the writers at the writing for soap session who really made me want to write for serial drama.

Dan Rebellato, writer of My Life is a Series of People saying goodbye who shared some real insights into the process that went behind writing several of his plays for radio and also made radio writing seem even vaster than I already thought it was.

So there you have a crash course in my crash courses. Not a one of them I would of missed but I got to the end of it and thought fantastic - some time to write, finally. I decided that I needed to stop going on courses not because I know it all, because the things I really know about writing you can write on the back of a postage stamp, and because I think we can always learn more from writers talking about their writing no matter how experienced we are. But all this training is bloody pointless if I don't have time to write, so I've banned myself from courses because the only way I will ever learn anything from these courses is if I use them as ways in to learn from my own writing. I need to remember that I am, after all, the expert tutor of my writing.

The other thing I came away from all those courses thinking is that my favourite thing about being on writing courses and events is that I really love talking to writers about writing. Take the London Screenwriters Festival, the thing I really loved was spending more time with people I'd only briefly met before like Rhys and Anne-Marie from Wales Screenwriting Posse and Janine who I briefly met at the Dirty Protest workshop and being able to spend even more time with the Aberystwyth posse, Julie, Sean, Debbie and Rachel. But I also need to stop talking about writing and get writing because though I dearly loved the chance to spend more time with friends, talk to old friends or meet new ones unless I'm actually writing new plays I won't have anything to talk about.

Then one final thing, learned from the last few months, came from the thing I did whilst at the London Screenwriters Festival - I met up with a very good friend of mine who I've not seen for about three years. I stayed with her on a house boat in London and loved it so much on the Friday that on the Saturday I stayed there again. It was an amazing experience that made me see London in a whole new light, literally a new light on the Sunday morning as I watched the sunrise above Hackney marshes. Whilst on the boat I had at least two if not more ideas for plays which made me think, (I challenge anyone to go through Islington tunnel at almost midnight on a houseboat and not come away with some ideas), that yes as writers we need to be writing but we also need to be living. And yes it is possible to sit at your desk day in and day out imagining worlds but surely we need to occasionally lift our heads from the laptop and watch the sunrise over Hackney Marshes?

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.

Spread The Word 4

We started the session with a Noel Grieg exercise on creating instant stories.

Three words – daffodil, cat, kitchen. Tell a story starting with the words, yesterday, using each of the words in the order given.

A few more variations;

Banana, football and telephone starting with I don’t understand why.

Computer, crocodile and toast starting with the phrase, today I would like.

Television, chicken and bed starting with, the world would be a better place.

Then we looked again at structures, talking about 3 act structures, classic five act structures which are still around but not seen very often. We talked about the conventional and obvious reason for breaking up a play into acts like change of location, or time – or the need for an interval. Also there are non-linear and disrupted structures. Within the acts are the scenes, where breaks need to be there for a reason not just because.

We then looked at action within the play and we were asked to think about our idea and describe it focusing on the action. Within that description we had to think about the conflict so something is happening but something is stopping it. Maybe it’s the main action of the protagonist but the antagonist is causing the conflict.

After a while of playing with sentences I came up with;

Hedydd is trying to get her therapy clients to talk dirty but a man with a gun wants them to come clean and admit the truth. I’ve tried to sum up the play lots of times but it was definitely easier to simply focus on the action of the play and the conflicts, and definitely good to find the “but” of the idea.

If we think about the action as how it plays into the structure then we have to think how to keep the action pushing the energy through the acts.

Moving swiftly on we started an exercise on finding the axis of the play. This is about finding the two opposing principles in the play that cause the conflict. eg justice/injustice. This is harder than you might think because though it might be easy to find two opposing words what you’re trying to do is to find two word that not only express the conflict of your play but express it in a way that is unique and also expresses why your idea is distinctive.

Then finally as we approached the end of the end of our sessions we talked about beginnings and endings. The beginning – get in there, explain what’s happening without exposition, set it all up then interrupt it all with an inciting incident.

And then endings – think of the ending as another beginning, the new status quo. Is
it a comedy or a tragedy? Does it need to end well or end in punishment.