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The Perfect 10
- 6 Jan 09, 10:53 AM
Happy New Year!
And swiftly on to instalment 5:
Emotion
In Character is Everything, I talked about engaging with characters on an emotional level. But I think emotion is worth a discussion all to itself, because it is the thing that makes great stories resonate with us for years to come, and it is the thing that can be lacking at times in a lot of the scripts we read.
The strength of your characters, and our emotional engagement with them, will make an idea stand or fall. Without this glue of empathy between character and audience, you ultimately have very little. You might have form and content, but you won't have something meaningful. And this is still true for the craziest of comedies as it is for the deepest of tragedies - if we don't feel emotion, then we don't feel anything.
A mistake often made is that writers have a big idea, a concept, a conceit, a world/universe they want to explore. They then set about creating suitable characters through which they can do this. But given the power of genre and archetypes in storytelling, it's very very rare that a writer will come up with a wholly original concept or conceit that has in no way been shown or explored before. And unfortunately, it's very very common for writers to come up with stereotypical, two-dimensional characters that fill out an idea. If you want to explore a concept, you need to do it through the strength of your characters and our emotional connection with them, otherwise what you will have is a cold, cerebral, intellectual conceit that has no emotional impact, and therefore no real impact at all. Memento is a complex and sophisticated essay on memory, time, and the meaning of action within a temporal vacuum. But really, it is the tale of one man trying to work out how to live his life day to day, moment to moment, with a unique condition that appears to take him further and further away from what he has lost in his life, while never allowing him to forget the pain of it. The first is a concept. The second is a story with emotional impact.
Great stories, and great scripts, should always aspire to have a real, physical, emotional effect on an audience. It's what I've seen/heard referred to as the 'squelch principle'. Put another way, and depending on what kind of story you are telling, it should be so poignant it makes us cry real tears, so funny it makes us laugh so hard we develop a painful stitch, so scary it makes us nearly wet ourselves, so excruciating it makes us sweat, so embarrassing it makes us want to shrivel up, so thrilling it makes our heart beat at twice it's usual speed. It should be so effective that it makes us feel real, powerful emotions - so good it makes us 'squelch'.
And why is all of this true? Because great stories, whatever the genre and tone, matter on a human level. Stories are about people; people need stories. Humanity developed the storytelling gene so that it could laugh, cry, love, fear, hate and hope for characters, and, by extension, humanity itself. Your script needs to make us laugh, cry, love, fear, hate and hope.
Recent entries
Happy New Year!
- 5 Jan 09, 05:49 PM
Hope you all had a lovely Christmas break.
I'm back in the office now, and sorting through some of the interviews done before the holiday break in order to decide what to type up first.
In the meantime, though, here's the script for The 39 Steps, as adapted by Lizzie Mickery.
Other than that, we've just managed to lock down the date for the BBC writersroom unsolicited roadshow in London, which will be on Thursday 15 January.
There are still a few places left for the Hull Roadshow on the 7 January as well, available from the same link - but not many, so apply quickly if you'd like to go to that.
Finally, as some of you may be aware already, the BBC writersroom now has a facebook group, so if you use facebook, feel free to pop in and say hi on the wall or discussion board.
The Perfect 10
- 19 Dec 08, 09:53 AM
And here's instalment four:
Character is Everything
I could have started with this. It's the beginning, middle and end of what makes or breaks a great script - and a great writer. You can have everything else, but if you don't create strong, vivid, compelling characters then you ultimately have very little.
We need to engage with your characters on an emotional level. We don't need to like them. We can even despise them. But they must have a human, emotional life. Even if they are a robot - there's humanity in Arnie's Terminator and Wall-E. Frank Gallagher is a disaster of a father who does terrible things for terrible reasons, but there are enough human shaped chinks in his armour to make us engage with him - for example, when Debbie is being pressurised into losing her virginity, he melts, realising she is still his little girl.
We have to want to spend time with your characters. We need to understand their desires, soak up their energy, feel their pain, fear for them. The vicarious thrill in wondering what Frank Gallagher or Richard III will do next is just as important as wondering whether two romantic leads will in fact get together at the end, or whether Tom Hanks will get Private Ryan home, or whether David Brent will ever realise just how embarassingly bad a boss he really is.
To be hooked by your characters, we need to feel compelled to go on their journey with them. It sounds neat and tidy, but if we don't know what they want, then we won't care about what they have to do to get it, and enjoy the ups and downs of them doing so. Give them a journey to go on - whether that's Basil Fawlty fending off the hotel inspector or Sam trying to get back to 2007 in Life on Mars.
The crucial thing, therefore, is to make them active. Passive, reactive characters just don't hook us. The problem with many scripts we receive is that the central character doesn't drive the story forward. If we know what they want, and see them having to make decisions and take action to get it, then you set up a dynamic and momentum with your character and their story.
If you're ever stuck with your character in a scene, sequence or plot point, then try asking these questions of them: What do they want by the end of this scene? What do they want when they wake up the next morning? What do they want in a years time? And what do they want by the end of their life? They might not know or fully realise all the answers, but it will give you a way into your character, and help give them a life that is perhaps outside the action of your story, but crucial to who they are in any given moment.
And of course, they need to be individuals rather than cliches and stereotypes. So invest time in working out - and then showing - what it is that makes them truly distinct and unlike any other character we've ever met. They may have an archetypal quality to them - but what else do they bring to the archetype?
A useful way to clarify what makes them an individual, is to try to look at the world they are in from their point of view - and therefore allow the audience to do the same. Show us their window on the world. Allow us to see their desires, insights, feelings, opinions, prejudices, fears and misunderstandings from their own point of view. If you can do that, then the character and the world they inhabit will be much richer.
Christmas creative wishes
- 17 Dec 08, 04:16 PM
For those of you who will be scribbling away at your ABBA entries over the Christmas period, I thought I'd address a couple of questions which keep cropping up in the comments from the blogs and in the radio drama masterclasses.
The big question I keep being asked is does your script have to be set in the North?
The answer to this is no. We don't want plays simply set in the North. We just want good, original, strong writing which reflects, gives voice to and comments on all the richness of life and thought that's going on in this part of the world in contemporary Britain. Even in the area we've outlined there's huge diversity of culture, landscape, voice - so you can't possibly identify what the Northern voice is because it is so diverse. The fact that we are looking for a Northern voice shouldn't be a limitation or something to try and write within the boundaries of, in fact, it should be the other way around. Just having roots in the area or living here now will inform that voice naturally.
As to whether your play should be happy or sad, again that depends on the writer and the writing. The ending of your play should be truthful to your story and your character's journeys. Quite recently a drama-documentary went out in the afternoon play slot which focused on suicide and the emotional impact a suicide has on loved ones left behind. It was quite hard hitting and extremely sad, but it was engrossing drama, which we received lots of positive listener feedback on, showing that a difficult subject matter, if dealt with effectively by a writer, can work extremely well in the afternoon play slot. Life doesn't always have a happy ending, and as drama makers it is really important that we reflect this (as well as the happy endings).
I also mention at the masterclasses a couple of subject matters which I suggest writers should give a wide berth to - one of them is talking animals, another is guardian angels - this is entirely my personal opinion and I would love people to prove me wrong by writing an ABBA winning play with a talking animal as the lead character who is also a guardian angel. There are always exceptions to any rule, so it would be great if writers take my 'I probably wouldn't write about' list as a challenge!
For those of you who are in the process of writing a radio drama for ABBA, then I wish you a very productive festive period. I've got quite a few masterclasses coming up in January, so I look forward to meeting those of you who will be coming along to them. We still have places for the Keswick and Hull masterclasses if you haven't yet had a chance to book on. Until that time, have a very merry Christmas and a happy and creative new year.
The Perfect 10
- 15 Dec 08, 10:19 AM
Apologies for the late arrival of instalment three, it's been an extremely busy couple of weeks...
This time, it's about Coherence:
A major problem with a great many scripts is that the piece as a whole simply doesn't hang together. There might be brilliant characters, dialogue, scenes, ideas ad infinitum, but if they don't cohere into a whole, then your script won't hit the mark. The key to this is to know your world and story. (Preferably before you start turning an idea into script form.) This clarity needs to come early on. So make it clear what your world is, and what is the story you are telling. There's an adage (perhaps more myth than truth) that when the writers of Twins sat down each day to write, they would turn to one another and say: "What are we writing?" The answer was: "It's about twins who look nothing like each other!" With that always in mind, they were able to stay focused.
The other thing you need to know is your genre and tone. New writers frequently collide various genres and tones. Sometime they claim to be reinventing genre - or are refusing to be limited by it. But you need to be able to master a form to do this - and often it's more likely because they're not sure or clear. Genre isn't a bad thing. Genre is how we decide as an audience whether it's the kind of thing we thing we'd like to see. So use genre. Be clear about what your 'show' is. Then you can challenge, play, subvert it.
Give us a focused way in. A big problem can be the desire to give the audience a snapshot of all aspects of the world at the start. But remember Shameless - a 'gang show' about a wild family squashed into a very small house. Opening credits aside, series one, episode one could have spent the first ten minutes of the story giving us glimpses of the whole family. But in fact episode one is focused through Fiona's POV, and is filtered through her meeting Steve for the first time at a nightclub away from the Chatsworth estate. Then they go back to the Gallagher house. Then they spend the night together. And then he meets the family properly. This gives us a focused way in to the world.
Following on from this, writers often try to do too much in their opening ten pages. But you don't need to set up every storyline, every strand and every character straight away. Again, find a focused way in so that you can then open back out again.
Beware beguiling distractions. It's easy to write characters, dialogue, scenes that you love. But do they need to be there and do they help cohere the opening of your script? What you leave out is as important as what you put in. And it's very hard to un-write or cut things that you like. So try to have a clear sense of what needs to be there before you start writing.
The surgery is open
- 12 Dec 08, 03:31 PM
In the past couple of weeks, I've met a lot of new or relatively new writers, first when I went to talk to the MA students on the television writing course at De Montfort University, and then at a rather overwhelming Writers' Room drinks. Many of the same questions cropped up, so in the spirit of giving, I thought the pre-Christmas blog could be devoted to comedy writers' FAQs. Bring them on and I'll try to do answers.
Newcastle masterclass
- 5 Dec 08, 01:04 PM
I'm now back in the office after spending Wednesday evening at Live Theatre running my first masterclass with Katherine Beacon. Thanks to everyone who attended, especially those who braved the snow to get there and a big thanks to Gez at Live for letting us host the event. Katherine and I stayed behind a bit in the bar after the masterclass to let people pitch to us potential ideas for ABBA and it was really exciting to hear some fantastic pitches which I'm sure will make really interesting and fresh sounding radio dramas. I just hope those writers do write their plays and send them in.
As part of the masterclass I played the opening of the 2006 winning play Abigail Adams by Mark Shand and it was great to see how much everyone seemed to really enjoy it. Katherine and I talked a lot about the openings of radio dramas and how crucial the first ten pages of a script are in really gripping an audience and bringing them into the world you have created. This is incredibly important in radio drama as if you don't hook your listener in the first four minutes or so they won't keep listening - they will turn off the radio or switch to another channel, so you need something to pull them in from the beginning. If you want to read the opening of Abigail Adams, or indeed the whole script, then it is up on the Writersroom website in their script section, along with some other stand out radio dramas. They are well worth a look.
We have confirmed a couple more of the masterclasses now so if you would like to attend any of them then all the details are on the opportunities page. Places are limited so you will need to book. Hope to see you there!
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