Archives for October 2008

I've been stopping by a few other writerly blogs recently, good to read and I like the notion of a writing 'community' (I'm a fantasist I know), we need to keep in touch, talk to each other.

I used to go to my local writers group in East London once a week - we'd listen to each others work, drink tea, eat biscuits then sometimes retire to the pub.

Good times - it also gave me a deadline to write to, in the absence of any commissions. Some writers can be quite suspicious of new writing initiatives and training schemes, it seems.

I see my time as an Academy Writer as an apprenticeship - on the job training, and no you can't teach 'writing' any more than you can teach 'art'. But Da Vinci had his apprentices and he too was an apprentice himself once - there's a lot to be said for learning structure and technique, especially if you want subvert it, grow, become innovative etc.

So back to my innovative Holby episode that fell onto the doormat in DVD form recently. It has a title at last. I've posted before about how difficult it can be to watch my own episodes, it does get easier the more TV hours you clock up. I managed to get through this first viewing of 'We Said Some Things' without squirming too much or without having the script on my knee thumbing through the dialogue to see what they'd cut.

Holby City can be montage Heaven or montage Hell depending on whether you happen to love or loathe the device. Personally I prefer to montage at the beginning middle or end of an episode rather than montage twice or indeed in all three - there you can be heading for montage overkill.

Montages do have to be written, I don't just write 'Montage with music' after the scene heading and hope for the best. It is a compressed chunk of storytelling and needs to be planned and structured like the rest of the script. I always hope to marry certain lyrics with particular on-screen action, choice of music is very important. I did manage to get a Monkees track into my montage for one episode.

I'd really enjoyed constructing the final montage for this last Holby - it encapsulated my themes, it had some dancing, wonderful music, a period costume change.. (I kid you not).

My montage was cut.

True - my producer had phoned and warned me that once they'd come to filming they didn't think they could do my montage justice - given the budget and scheduling constraints. I had to make do with a trimmed down version and different music was used given that my overarching montage theme had been excised.

I was disappointed I have to admit, but the rest of the episode was really quite good - Hey ho, maybe it was just as well the ep wasn't upstaged by all singing all dancing montage madness.

Another problem with montages is that they eat up scenes. I'm writing a Holby at the moment that is quite pacy - lots of scene cuts, 4 story strands, lots going on - a nice meaty episode. I'd notched up quite a few scenes already by the time I'd finished. Then I found a wonderful place in the storytelling where I knew the only way to get the most out of the story was to tell it in pictures with music - I penned a montage sequence that promptly added another 6 or 7 scenes to my already bursting scene count. Granted each scene is probably only a sentence or two long .. but it may take some negotiating with scheduling.

Best montage? The end of Donnie Darko to 'Mad World'. Has to be.

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So here are some thoughts on dialogue, which are more a meditation than a structured article.

In essence, the purpose of dramatic dialogue is to advance plot and illuminate character. In a comedy, dialogue should also be funny. Audience sitcom demands that it should be laugh-out-loud funny several times a page. Non-audience sitcom needs to maintain a level of funniness, and while one expects laughter, the frequency of laugh lines can be less. (If a non-audience sitcom is incessantly hilarious, then it should probably be made with an audience).

In thinking about the basic elements of comedy as the college scheme progresses, I find it impossible to avoid falling back on tradition, and the traditional view of dialogue is that every line should advance the story, just as every scene should have a point. In her talk to the last workshop, Susan Nickson cited John Sullivan as saying that if a show over-runs, cut the jokes, not the story. So it's worth considering the difference between funny lines and jokes.

At a commissioning meeting, discussing a script that I'm developing, I was told that there were too many jokes. This seemed a rather odd note for an audience sitcom, but what the comment meant was that there were too many obvious 'jokes', designed to get a laugh, rather than funny lines which would make an audience laugh, be true to the characters, and advance or comment on the story.

It should be absolutely clear in a script which character is speaking (there's an old reader's trick of blocking out character names and seeing if one can work out who is who from dialogue alone). Many new writers haven't quite mastered the art of different voices, so it feels that every character is speaking in the writer's voice, and that the characters have not been defined clearly enough. They are pawns rather than people.

Good dialogue is economical, with not a word wasted, and while dialogue should obviously convey information, it should be information with attitude rather than information alone. People telling each other stuff is dull, and people telling each other stuff that they should already know is just bad. Attitude is crucial.

The novelist Anthony Powell felt that one of the keys to avoiding the exposition trap was that questions should never be answered directly, which is a handy tip.

Clear characterisation leads to clear voices which allows actors to understand, and even add to, what they are being asked to play. Workshopping a script with a well-known actress was a tedious experience since she wanted to keep trying accents. The reason wasn't because the actress was being a diva, but because she couldn't grasp the character from the writing. When actors understand, they sell the words, even though they may not deliver them the way the writer heard them. But that's another story.

I think a useful thing to do - because I think it's very useful for people to analyse for themselves how things work - is to take a show that you like and that has worked for an audience - and examine the mechanism. Think about how characters have different voices, look at attitude, look at where the laugh lines come and look at how dialogue works with action and the physical.

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A new script! Huzzah!

New Tricks, a show about three retired cops who reinvestigate unsolved crimes, is one of the UK's best-loved programmes. It's been growing in the ratings series to series, and this year was the most watched show on British TV three times.

We've got the script of Mad Dogs, the last episode to air, available in our Script Archive. It's written by Roy Mitchell, who also created the series.

Enjoy!

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While having a hunt through the dustier corners of the site archive, I've found some video interviews we did with various BBC Execs.

Some of them have moved on since then, but there's still lots of useful information for writers in the interviews, so I've put them up.

Jane Tranter - Head of Fiction (to 2008)

John Yorke - Controller, Drama Production and New Talent

Jon East - Head of CBBC Drama

Jon Plowman - Head of Comedy (to 2007)

Oh, and the clips are in RealPlayer - if you're having any trouble with 'em, try BBC Webwise to download a free player.

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It's notable than on websites frequented by aspiring writers, the vast majority of broadcast comedy gets a resounding thumbs down. This is hardly surprising - if people trying to break into a profession felt they couldn't do better, then they would never have a go. But there's a certain meanness of spirit on these boards, which is rarely found among more established writers, who know just how hard it is to get anything commissioned, never mind create a show which is universally liked or respected.

In my time at the BBC, I have been associated with the two longest-running and highest rating comedies on their respective channels - Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps on BBC3, and My Family on BBC1. Both are execrated not only by aspiring writers, but also by critics, although they are embraced by audiences, suggesting a certain snobbery is at work. I often wonder if writers who want to break into television feel that popularity is to be avoided, and a puff in the Guardian Guide for one series with no viewers is worth more than eight series of success.

Oddly, nostalgia seems to kick in after a while. When I worked on Birds of a Feather (more than 100 episodes were made), no one really had a good word to say for it, apart from its audience. Now I see people anxiously awaiting DVDs.

So how, speaking from the perspective of an executive who works in the BBC comedy department, does a show get made?

To state the bleeding obvious, it begins with an idea and, preferably, some writing to flesh out the idea. Some ideas are immediately rejected, either because it feels as if they don't work, because they are areas of life which commissioners and channels shy away from, or because a similar idea is already in an advanced state of development.

But let's assume the idea seems promising, the supporting treatment or sample scenes are persuasive, and I or someone like me feels excited about trying to get a show commissioned.

The next step is meet the writer and talk about the project in more detail, followed by a script commission. I and the writer will work through probably two or three drafts before I take the script to our quarterly departmental discussion, where all the projects we want to offer for commission are assessed. At this stage there will be a script, a brief description of what a series would contain, casting suggestions and an idea of how best to promote the piece, either by reading it with an ideal cast, or by shooting an extract. There may well have been an 'internal' read along the way, by which I mean hearing the script read by actors in a closed session for the writer, me and selected colleagues.

If the response is positive at this stage (where projects can be rejected, or sent back for more work), the package is sent to our colleagues in commissioning, and discussed at a meeting where the commissioner outlines her response. Again, a project can be endorsed, rejected or sent back to be worked on and re-pitched. But if the commissioner likes it, then it will go forward with her endorsement to a meeting with the relevant channel controllers and their teams - generally the channel executive and scheduler.

There is no set timetable for demonstrating a project. Sometimes we will organise a cast read for the commissioner and channel before the channel meeting, sometimes afterwards in the light of their comments. Sometimes we will shoot something to pitch, or shoot something after the meeting to reinforce a pitch.

Ideally, one wants a series to be ordered straight away, but sometimes we are asked to make - or we pitch to make - a pilot. Pilots can be either transmittable, with all the bells and whistles, or non-transmittable, a cheaper method.

A pilot enables an assessment by the producer, the commissioner and the controller of what works and what doesn't, often guided by research which can lead to recasting, rethinking, or a feeling that it seemed like a good idea but is an idea which doesn't really work.

So by the time a new comedy series arrives on television, it has gone through several stages of approval, and been subject to notes and thoughts at every point in its upward ascent.

Despite all of the stages, and the different kinds of expertise involved, some shows work very well, some work moderately well, and some become car crash television. The audience decides, and the only way really to judge whether or not your show works is to sit at home and watch it go out. And if it doesn't work, it's too late by then.

The excitement of comedy is its imprecision. No one can guarantee a hit, and an identical writer and production team can follow a massive success with a complete turkey.

That's why we keep trying. And that's why aspiring writers might be a little more generous in their responses - next time, it could be them.

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Congratulations to Suzy Clements, who won the Windsor Fringe Marriott Award for New Drama Writing, as chosen by judges Kenneth Branagh and Iqbal Khan.

Suzy came to the competition via a listing on the BBC writersroom opportunities page - why not see if there's something good there now? And do let us know how you get on...

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Russell T Davies has got a new book out, all about writing Doctor Who, and he's put up his six Doctor Who scripts from the most recent series on the Internet to go along with it.

You can download Russell's season four Doctor Who scripts here.

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