Damn, I love writing

Sum total for today: short description of a scene that happens about three quarters of the way through a 60 min TV drama that I haven’t started drafting yet.

But it’s a bloody excellent scene. No dialogue. One character. 30 seconds. Intense, moving and so bloody simple.

I can see it so vividly it’s like I’m standing there behind her.

Damn, I love writing.

The Dawn of Music

I’m enjoying some rare grooves from the Dawn of Music.

That is to say, 1980.

That was when music happened to me. When I stopped hearing music and really started listening.

Necessarily I listened to whatever was lying around in my dad’s record collection. I was 11, and not flush with cash. I couldn’t pop out to Andy’s Records and buy the latest seven inch singles or LPs.

So I immersed myself in the prog rock and electronica that was in the cupboard below the JVC separates system. To wit:

• Tubeway Army – Replicas
• Pink Floyd – The Wall
• Supertramp – Breakfast in America
• David Bowie – Scary Monsters and Super Creeps
• Jean Michel Jarre – Equinoxe
• Fleetwood Mac – Rumours

Those of you just a little older than me will groan and sigh. Yeah, you were old enough to have some cash. You brought into the punk revolution. So what? It was a musical dead end anyway; a couple of years later New Romantic dandies such as Adam Ant and Simon Le Bon were strutting on the stage as if superglue hair and safety pin noses had never happened.

I was happy with my prog rock. I was happy with my electronica.

Until I first heard The Smiths’ How Soon Is Now? on the John Peel Show.

Then all bets were off as far as music was concerned. How Soon Is Now? was a six and a half minute epiphany that made me realise that there are no real hard and fast rules in music. Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law.

Ever since then I’ve listened to whatever the hell I like, when I like, as often as I like. I’ve refused to be lead by consensus popularity. More than once I’ve been ahead of the curve in terms of musical taste. Often I’ve been off the beaten track altogether.

But I do like to come back and pay my first loves a visit now and then.

What’s on the player right now? Child of Vision, the last track on Supertramp’s Breakfast in America.

The internet is fab and full of wonder

You know I’m right.

Not convinced?

Consider the evidence:

Everything you need to know about the BBC Radio 4 commissioning process, thanks to Michelle Lipton

The shiny new UK Writers social network, thanks to Joanne Smedley

A big list of who’s commissioning what from whom, thanks to Broadcast

and a bloody great list of web resources for writers, thanks to Michelle Goode.

I rest my case.

Dear Internet

Dear Internet,

I just thought I’d ask you what you think I should do.

See, at some point in the not too distant future I’m going to start work on my spec feature script. And I was just wondering which story idea I should pursue.

One is a black comedy that condemns the consumerist society via the metaphor of Zombie Cake Addicts.

The other is a straightforward bioficpic set in 1969 that traces the meteoric rise and tragic fall of the British rock band The Rocketmen.

(You might, dear Internet, recall The Rocketmen from my earlier blog entries, back when I was still writing The Novel)

I feel that Zombie Cake Addicts are probably more saleable than a rock’n'roll movie. But have Zombies had their moment? Did the Lesbian Vampire Killers put the final nail in the genre’s coffin?

And, well, I’ve got 169,000 words worth of Rocketmen material just waiting to be adapted for film. But turning a novel into a screenplay is far from easy.

Oh, I don’t know. What do you think?

Laurence

An Interview with a Comedy Producer

The estimable Mr McIntyre has posted an insightful and thought-provoking interview with Baby Cow producer Gill Isles.

By which I mean to say that Gill Isles is a producer who happens to work at Baby Cow.

Not that Gill Isles is a Baby Cow.

At least, I don’t think she is.

No, I’m sure she’s not.

Sally forth this very instant and read it with alacrity, I implore you.

Tell you what, why not try getting the hell over yourselves?

I know that the idiot ‘fans’ who insulted TV’s James Moran are unlikely to be reading this, but I’ll say it anyway: get over yourselves. Go and do something constructive.

Oh, and unplug your televisions. Clearly you’re having trouble differentiating between real and pretend.

Phill Barron said it better than me, and with way more expletives per paragraph.

CBBC silence meaning fail presumably

No word at all from writersroom on my CBBC script. Some people have had a note to say they haven’t made it beyond two reads. Maybe this means I didn’t get beyond the first read. Or possibly the first ten pages.

Maybe it means that I did the envelope up too tightly and they couldn’t get the script out.

A simple ‘no’ would have been very nice, writersroom. Just a ‘no’.

Still, 700 scripts in a week, eh? Crikey. In a way I’m surprised that anyone apart from the chosen 20 heard anything at all. A major reading feat.

Well done to Michelle Goode and Lucy Vee for getting a second read of their scripts.

All I can liken my own experience to is dropping a stone down a well and waiting for the splash. And waiting. And waiting.

And waiting.

Hm. Perhaps my stone bounced off some moss and hit a rat. Yeah. Something like that.

Right, back to the writing.

[fx: does a little dance around the kitchen to get over himself]

Oh, and wasn’t Torchwood just some of the most excellent drama you’ve ever seen? Stone the crows, that was good. I cried! Big fat man tears!

Hang on, that came out wrong. Man tears that were big and fat. Not big tears from a fat man.

Right? Right.

Writer’s Block? Write something else.

Writer’s Block: myth or truth? No idea. I’ve never had it.

Then again, I’ve never had bubonic plague. Just because I’ve never had it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

(Mind you, I don’t think that Writer’s Block can be caught off fleas.)

Still, last night I sat down to write and bugger me if I couldn’t get the words down onto the page in anything like a satisfactory way.

I’m at the Diving into a Cold Swimming Pool moment that lives between the end of planning a script and the blank, ugly stare of an empty Final Draft window.

Last night I stared into the face of Final Draft and blinked first.

I know all about first drafts, okay? Dash it off, just write the sodding thing. Get to the end, start again, throw 90% out of the window, doesn’t matter, you’re on the road. I know all that.

Still, I couldn’t proceed. I’ve probably been planning this one for too long.

It’s a bit like rehearsing an opening phrase in your head before approaching a useful new contact at a networking event. By the time you’re face to face with Mrs Important Person you’re gabbling like a coked-up loon and the well-practiced words are slipping down the inside leg of your trousers and into your sweaty shoes like greasy fried eggs.

It doesn’t do to over-plan.

So I shut the laptop and called it a night.

Best thing I could have done by far. As I went to sleep the old grey matter was churning in an unpredictable way, throwing up the dust and stones of less-travelled neural pathways.

This morning, on the way to work, an utterly new story popped into my head. A perfect little short film script, ten or so minutes in duration.

Just the very ticket.

This lunchtime I turned the scribbled notes (made at rest, not whilst driving, officer) into a first draft script. It got more wonderfuller in the writing, which is always a joyous thing.

So, you can chalk me up one short film script to the good. It’s called Witchcat. I’ll tell you more about it when it’s had the corners knocked off it and been buffed up to a decent sheen.

Now I can head back to what I was meant to be writing last night and just get the hell on with it.

In other news, today I are mostly have been listening to Zooropa. That’s the suburb of U2 where my musical taste house is.

Screenwriter’s Career Guide

Attended a course hosted by the fabled Adrian Mead on Saturday and I’m pleased to report it did what it said on the tin.

Now I have a bigger, cleverer range of tools that I can use to scale the screenwriting career mountain.

And I also have a much better idea of how hard the climb is going to be.

Still, much better than slowly circling the mountain crablike a mere 50 feet off the ground, which is what I’ve been doing so far.

I met up with David Bishop, Lucy Vee, Michelle Goode, Kai Savage and other luminaries such as Alexandra Denye (who is shortlisted for the Alfred Bradley Bursary Award this week – good luck, Alexandra) and Kulvinder Gill. Plus a whole bunch of other writers who are all chipping away at their personal coalfaces. Hi everyone.

Hi especially to all those people who said “Laurence Timms? Don’t I know you from somewhere? Don’t you write a blog or something?”

I’m not going to regurgitate everything that I learned there. The ever-efficient Michelle and Lucy have already done that in spades.

What I will do, though, is share my new goals. We did some work on goal-setting in the course. Here is the fruit of my endeavours.

Short Term – One Week

• Re-read Making It as a Screenwriter
• Revisit my unfinished feature script, Yummy Mummy
• Stop planning and start writing Magick, the script I’m lining up for RP this year

Medium Term – Three Months

• Have a target shortlist of agents
• Have polished drafts of Bailiffs, Bones and Magick done and dusted
• Have a revised version of Yummy Mummy planned out

Long Term – One Year

• Have a polished draft of Yummy Mummy done
• Have a television credit to my name
• Make myself irresistible to agents

These objectives are meant to be entirely within my control. Achieving them should not depend on anyone else’s say-so. Clearly the last two absolutely do.

But writing for television is what I’m all about, so it’s damn well going on there as an objective. Otherwise this is all just so much farting in hurricanes.

As for getting an agent…yeah, I know it is not utterly utterly necessary, but at the same time there’s a shedload of stuff agents do that I don’t want to be doing myself. Mainly because they do it a lot better and more persistently.

Bottom line: be prepared for a lot of hard work. Heh, that’s never bothered me. In fact, the only thing that scares me is doing a lot of hard work on the wrong thing. That ain’t going to happen now.

If you read this far down this blog entry you’ve got to the good stuff. Well done. Now I’m going to give you the 37 most important things that I discovered yesterday. Use them wisely, young padawan.

The 37 Steps to Screenwriting Success.

1. Success as a screenwriter is in your hands. Nobody else is going to do it for you. Get up off your arse. Work hard.
2. Keep writing. Don’t be afraid of rejection. You will get rejected, many times.
3. Improve constantly. Seek feedback. Learn from your mistakes.
4. Anyone who picks up your script is going to ask themselves “Why should I read this:?” Don’t give them any reason not to.
5. Don’t, whatever you do, ever ever let anyone see a script with speellling or grammer mistakes in it.
6. If you are sending your stuff to the same small list of mainstream contacts over and over again and you’re getting nowhere, then find some new targets.
7. The film and television business is not just the US and the UK. There are film agencies and production companies throughout Europe. Find them. Ask them if they’re looking for scripts written in English. You might be surprised.
8. Try to do things that other screenwriters are not doing. Have an alternative plan. Research. Be creative.
9. This is a referral business. Producers and script editors are very unlikely to read unsolicited scripts that appear out of the blue. Get recommended.
10. Don’t be an arsehole. To anyone. If you are, it’ll be noted and you’ll be marked out. As an arsehole. In a small industry. That works on recommendations. Think about it, sunshine.
11. Be indirect. Don’t doorstep big producers. Get in touch with up and coming DoPs who want to direct. Find people who are into the same stuff that you’re writing. Cultivate relationships. Offer short scripts for filming.
12. If you’re writing for film, get yourself to festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Galway Film Fleadh. Plan ahead, organise meetings, beg for five minutes with people. Be in the minority of writers who get out of their pits and deliberately put themselves in front of people.
13. Learn how to network. It’s not as hard as it looks. Get in quick, say hi, ask for a little time, don’t pitch. Even give the impression of being busy. Everyone is fascinated by people who appear to be busy.
14. After meetings, send a thankyou postcard just to cement the relationship. Even if the meeting ended in a ‘no thanks’.
15. Repeat after me. What do agents want? Product they can sell and writers who are ready. Is your product sellable? Are you a one-script wonder or a goldmine? Are you prepared to work hard, be presentable, turn up on time and not be a wacko? Tick these boxes and agents will pay attention to you. Eventually.
16. Get onside with Agent’s Assistants. They do all the hard script reading work. Not just the slush pile, but all the submissions from writers who are already on the books. They work long hours, evenings and weekends. And yeah, guess what? They often become agents themselves. That assistant you were dead polite to on the phone last year? She’s an agent at ICM now. Hmm. How about that? Wonder if she remembers you?
17. Agents will ask you this: “What kind of work do you want to do?” Have a well-thought-out answer prepared. “Get paid millions for my first draft blockbuster feature script” is not a well-thought-out answer.
18. Script Editors are worthwhile contacts. Their responsibilities often include finding new writers for their shows. That could be you, eh? Identify the script editors that work on the shows you’d love to write for.
19. Script Editors generally don’t take unsolicited scripts. They don’t have time to deal with a slush pile. Get a strong referral or get an agent.
20. Write yourself one big balls script that you know will never be made. It’ll be massive, shiny, expensive, cast of thousands. Make it utterly brilliant. Unfeasibly expensive, yet brilliant. Could be a feature, could be a series, could be a one-off. Make it good. Showcase your craft. Think big. It’s your calling card.
21. Don’t screw up meetings by being a nutter, being unprepared or putting an early draft script on the table. You only get one chance. Make it count.
22. Do something that makes you stand out from the crowd as a writer. Collaborate. Make a short. Sell yourself. Think about what you have to offer, what you know that nobody else knows. Be a runner on set. Cultivate contacts. Go to courses, enter competitions.
23. Think of yourself as a one person business. Always ask yourself why anyone should pay you to write rather than all the other writers.
24. There’s only one of you. You haven’t been cloned. Therefore you have a unique viewpoint. Sell that.
25. Make sure you have a strong spec script library: a low budget short or feature script that could be made collaboratively; a factual-based drama with unique perspective; an adaptation (avoid rights issues by creating a contemporary version of an ancient myth); a script aimed at younger age groups (hard to do well, but a lucrative market); a broad appeal feel-good family feature.
26. Diversify your writing. Theatre. Online. Games. Radio. Research, ask, investigate. There are hundreds of theatres, theatre groups, commercial websites, webshows, games producers, radio stations, radio production companies. Someone, somewhere, needs something writing.
27. Learn how to pitch.
28. Contextualise your pitch. Don’t just describe your script in stark terms. Sell the sizzle, talk up the brilliance, make it your own by talking about the experiences that led you to write it.
29. Make sure you demonstrate that you are the only person who can write this script, that you are the only person who knows this subject in sufficient depth to deliver the goods.
30. When pitching, you will be asked these questions: “Why do we need this story now?” “What can we make this story say about the world?” Have an answer. Think yourself into their shoes.
31. Put energy into your pitch. Believe in your story. Maintain clarity.
32. If it’s a formal pitch meeting rather than an ad hoc chat, use visual props to leave a lasting impression: mood boards, handouts, posters with character names. Do not suggest actor names. Do not use actor photos or even stock photos of people in your pitch. You are not the casting executive.
33. Stop emailing people. Pick up the phone. Emails can be deleted. A voice on the phone is harder to ignore.
34. Be polite and gracious.
35. Be persistent.
36. Do your research.
37. Be tenacious.

Cooling Off

Damn but this is unpleasant weather. What purpose does it serve? Who thought this was a good idea?

Weatherpersons who describe this oppressive heat as ‘glorious summer’ should be made to work in an unventilated non-air-conditioned office at 30 degrees celcius all day long like me.

Then they’d understand the truth. This weather stinks.

You lie on your beach if you want to. You turn yourself into a leather walnut if you like. I’ve got things to do, and this weather is not helping.

If it weren’t for the dire state of their economy, their prediliction for unsavoury offal-based comestibles, the significant risk of being killed by sudden unexpected pyroclastic flow, their impenetrable language and LazyTown I’d move the family to Iceland.

Okay, that’s the weather sorted.

Now will somebody please give me a deadline. I’m begging for one. Having the CBBC compo deadline worked for me. Focussed the mind. Now I’m kind of floating along with three projects, none of which have hard deadlines.

Don’t get me wrong. They all have clearly defined ‘next’ tasks. I know what I need to do. It’s just that…well, I need targets, objectives.

I’m going to have to set myself some deadlines. I can see that.

Hm. Perhaps I ought to wait until after this Saturday’s Adrian Mead seminar. I suspect I’ll come out of that with a metaphorical rocket up my fundament and a very clear idea of what the hell I ought to be doing, and by when.

Yes, that’s a plan. Prepare for Saturday. Set objectives thereafter.

Bonus: just found out that the esteemed David Bishop will be attending on Saturday. I’m looking forward to putting a face to the winklepickers.