What keeps you watching?
Isn’t it great, those times you can sit through and episode of Holby, Casualty, Eastenders or Doctors and not have to glance at the clock? It’s why I watch a lot of telly in the first place - to be merrily carried along through a small window into these characters lives. I don’t want to be bored or hopelessly confused waiting for the hour to end. If an episode is dull or plain bizarre - the answer is to switch over.
Of course I don’t do that - I’m in the business to try and deconstruct why I felt a sudden urge to make a brew 20 minutes in or flick through my daughter’s issue of Kerrang. I have got bored reading my own scripts before now, but sometimes (cos I know what’s going to happen… ) I’m eager to reach a particular scene so I can read it and feel a thrill of pleasure - ooh, that felt good - wonder what it’ll look like when Connie says it on screen at 8.20pm etc.
The boring bits in my scripts are often troublesome ‘time standing still’ scenarios or a scene similar to a previous scene where nothing much has changed, despite the ambiance and subtle or witty lines. Who as writer has not heard the “Get in late come out early” maxim? (A thing I do in fact have trouble remembering correctly .. I get in early for everything, meetings, train journeys - and that’s a good thing - you see my confusion?).
When I wrote my one and only Eastenders episode to date, my opening scene was at the breakfast table chez Pat with Kev, Libby, Denise .. well just about everyone .. eating obligatory cardboard toast with lots of witty banter. The previous episode’s cliff was recapped and Denise made her feelings about Libby seeing Darren very clear. It rambled on. For ages. I liked it, it read well. Had it been transmitted as such, I may have found myself with Kerrang on my knee thumbing through the pages. As I worked on this script and processed my notes - too long, repetition, use 3 words instead of 23 - I slowly began to understand about writing from the point of view of ‘me the viewer.’ Did I really want to see Kev at the breakfast table with people chipping in their prejudices over tea and toast? Not really .. I wanted to see the ‘lovers’ Darren and Libby in the aftermath of the previous cliff (they had been caught with condoms). Dammit I wanted Romeo and Juliet!
So that’s what I did - I had Libby in the house at a window, Darren on the street looking up. A glance, a lover’s moment and then wham! Denise stormed out and laid down the law - the two star crossed lovers were never to see each other again!
Much better. And visual.
Paring it back and keeping it visual has been my mantra whilst writing this current episode of Holby. I got in late for most scenes - left early. So much so in some cases, that very little was said and the script was taking on a rather ‘Becket’ feel with people starting scenes mid sentence and leaving before they’d finished. It was like writing the script in shorthand - ‘trust me’ I was telling myself, the sense will be revealed! Yeah - if the viewer could wait long enough before giving up.
My first draft completed, I had a pleasant surprise - it was ‘short’ and coming from a writer who always overwrites, this felt weird. Now in its draft 3 stage, I realise I had given myself room to expand and work up the story in subsequent re-writes, by holding a tight reign on my verbiage initially. Now I’m tending to write what I see (that TV screen in my head) as opposed to words on a page (the dialogue in my head). I have subtly adapted the way I write, because it works, it came naturally and feels right.
Some episodes of medical dramas leave me with a headache and slight nausea - not so much the severed limbs or the pints of bile - more the stedi-cam work, fast paced action and overlapping dialogue. Frenetic! I long for a ploddy scene with medics mulling over dialogue sitting down, not marching. There’s ‘narrative drive’ and then there’s just Drive! I find it’s a difficult balance, but ultimately it’s the story that will keep me watching.
I like the story I’m telling in my current Holby, I want to tell it in a way that’ll make you feel the same way about it as I do - excited, moved and curious - wanting to watch next week, putting off making that brew until 9pm.
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