In addition to the dates I mentioned last week, the BBC Writersroom Tour has added an extra date, this one in Norwich.
It’s on Wednesday 16 September at the Norwich Playhouse, and runs from 5:30pm – 7:00pm. As is usual, the way to get in is to get yourself on the guest list, but it is free, and all you have to do is send an e-mail asking if you can attend.
Full details of the Norwich date, and other forthcoming Writersroom sessions, can be found here.
Priding myself of being ahead of the game in many regards (reading Watchmen as it came out in monthly chunks in the 1980s, listening to Dido’s No Angel CD on import before we all got heartily sick of it), I also often try to avoid things when they’re atop a wave of publicity, in the hope I can experience them without being distracted by the attendant hype.
Well, anyway, that’s my excuse for only recently having watched any of Battlestar Galactica. As recommended by pretty much anyone who likes it, I started with the mini-series (or backdoor pilot, as some people prefer to call it – oh, the cynicism), and I thought it was good stuff. I’m told, though, that the series meanders and rather loses focus a bit in the middle before coming to an unsatisfyingly deus ex machina ending – can anyone tell me if it’s worth pursuing?
The thing is, though, that whilst watching it, I didn’t feel that I was watching a science-fiction TV programme, but more a drama which happened to be set in space. Oh, sure, the conflict and drama was ultimately rooted in technology and the like, but the main focus is frequently on emotion and interaction, which is why I suspect it’s popular – the backdrop may be unfamiliar, but there are people loving and hating and scheming and being heroic in ways that all of us are familiar with. It’s probably the reason why Shakespeare’s plays are so popular and perennial, despite the changes in society – going even further back, it could well be why Jesus’s parables still resonate.
Anyway, it occurred to me that, in a broader sense, stories such as Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek are effectively contemporary dramas but with different sets and costumes; no matter what the setting, the story tends to find a wider audience when it doesn’t require an in-depth, in-universe knowledge of made-up interplanetary diplomacy, but instead shows people acting and reacting in ways which we could imagine we might.
So, taking this a thought-step further, it occurred to me that if the most successful SF is that which most resonates with our current emotional and interpersonal states, the same may well be true for fantasy, and indeed costume drama, which, though invariably set in the past, tends to deal with relationships and disputes which we all recognise. One example of a costume drama which went down very well in recent years was Bleak House, which emphasised the drama as much as the costume, and even played to our modern sensibilities by being presented in a format akin to that of a soap opera.
I say all this because it’s occurring to me that some story ideas I have could work just as well if I set them in the past or the future; my natural tendency is to set stories in the present day (I said earlier I’m prone to miss trends until they’re over – it may well be that I’m a New Puritan a decade late), but I’m now feeling that certain tales might be more effective if set in other eras, be they historical, imaginary or a combination of both.
Mind you, a combination of future and history, or science fiction and costume drama, isn’t impossible either; case in point, the forthcoming (and superbly-titled) film Pride and Predator…
Please forgive the acronym-laden heading for this post, but hopefully it’ll prove useful; if, like me, you’re planning to send something to the CBBC Writing Opportunity I posted about here, you may be interested to hear that the BBC Writersroom are holding a Q&A event with the Steven Andrew, the new head of CBBC Drama.
It’s being held in the evening of Monday 15 June, at the Royal Court Theatre in London. Exact time is to be arranged, and you have to send an e-mail to get on the guest list, but it is free to get in, and could prove useful… even if attending does mean a risk that one might realise that the draft script needs a complete and utter re-draft in the light of things which might be said.
Still, worth attending, I’d say, and you can get all the information here.
I’m planning on going – anyone else game for it ?
There’s a fairly interesting article-cum-review on the New Yorker magazine’s website this week, about the history and nature of creative writing courses in US academic institutions.
The article’s essentially a review of a book on the subject, but it’s opened and closed by some interesting history of the growth of such courses, and of course a fair amount of discussion of the time-honoured question in relation to creative writing, and indeed one might say writing in almost all its forms: can it be taught?
My personal feelings in relation to this are mixed, and you’ll be unsurprised to learn that this is very much a result of my personal history; my grandfather was a very good storyteller, and my parents encouraged me to read from an early age, and so it was that at about the age of 13 or so I found my brain bent out of shape by reading the work of Alan Moore, Harlan Ellison and Dennis Potter, and the growing realisation that you could do pretty much anything with words.
Just by arranging words in a certain order on the page, or saying them aloud, you could elicit reactions, hold people’s attention and convey information and more, and this still appeals to me to this very day. It’s pretty common for people to say that school wasn’t very supportive of what later becomes their passion, but I have to say that my secondary school, whilst sorely lacking in many regards, was never actively un-supportive of me wanting to do creative writing; there were two English teachers who helped me to do the creative writing option which was available to do as an adjunct to the English Literature A-Level, though with the 20-20 vision of hindsight it’s clear to me that I should have strayed out of my comfort zone a bit and taken English Language as a subject instead of Literature, even if that meant doing the class at the ‘rival’ school down the road.
So I started to write things, mainly for my own amusement at first, and then I started submitting scripts to comics (a bit of the reason for that is given in this post), and I guess that was when I started trying to think about writing in a slightly more technical way, as I guess might be taught in classes and courses.
Much of my approach to writing remains kind of instinctive and gut-level, stemming from basic ‘what if..?’ ideas, but the actual practice of it is a bit more technical now, with conscious decisions about character development, actions being consistent with characters’ personalities, and stuff like that. But as these are usually the fancy icing on the instinctive cake, I suppose I have some kind of uncertainty about whether creative writing courses will focus on the creation or delivery of story, which I tend to see as two different (and at times potentially opposing) things.
That said, I think it’s entirely possible to sharpen the saw, as it were, and there are many very good books written by popular and successful writers about the business of writing (as well as books written by people who’ve arguably been less successful as writers, but some of them are very astute on the technicalities of what works and the like, so they shouldn’t necessarily be dismissed too speedily). I’ve read a few of the good ones, and a couple of the bad ones, and in a strange way the latter are still kind of useful in an way, as they make you feel a bit more certain about your approach to things, even if it’s only because as you read and disagree with the text you’re forced to articulate to yourself just why you don’t agree.
As the New Yorker article alludes to, a ‘workshop’ environment is often used in Creative Writing Courses, and I have to say it’s not something I’d feel necessarily comfortable with; people can take courses for a lot of reasons, and have very different beliefs about what a specific assignment is, or should be, trying to achieve, and so you can end up with a document not written by, but instead critiqued by, committee, which is … well, not necessarily an entirely productive position to be in. And it’s a fairly stark contrast to the TV Writers’ Room environment, which many writers (myself included) would like to see increase in the UK, even if it’s very much a production- and economically-derived situation, for the simple reason that it’s a room full of people who are meant to be pulling in the same direction (oh, and the more important reason that it would make writing a less solitary activity).
I have my doubts about the environment, then, and as I don’t know exactly what’s taught on these courses, I’m rather vague on the content too; the article suggests there’s quite a lot of introspective work, perhaps even adherence to the maxim ‘write what you know’, and having written enough ropey self-absorbed poetry as a teenager (by which I mean a handful of poems, but believe me, that was more than enough), I’m not sure if that’s the way to go. But that’s probably my ignorance of what’s involved manifesting as suspicion.
So, I’d be interested to hear of your experiences of creative writing courses, and assessment of whether, ultimately, they were a good thing for you, and were well-run by people who knew a lot about the nature of storytelling and the like. I’m unsure whether I think they’re best for nurturing a nugget of innate writing tendency or not, really (not that it has any material impact on things; I’m not currently proposing to quit work and take a writing course), so input from people with proper experience and knowledge here would be welcome.
In relation to the sprawling narrative above, I was thinking about my one and only experience of attending a writing group. It happened when I was on the dole for a while, and a friend suggested I come along to the writers’ group arranged by her partner; I did so, and the way it panned out amused me at the time, though I suspect it’d now turn out quite differently.
After a number of people had read out their pieces, many of which were about emotional traumas or relationship upsets or staring out a train window and wondering what life was all about, I read out my offering, a short tale of a man coming across a book which detailed the events of his life, including events yet to come. It was a slightly fantasy-based piece (and might even qualify as ‘magic realism’, though that’s not a term I have much certainty about), and as such it was greeted initially with a slightly awkward silence, and then with some guarded and uncertain but polite comments, leaving me feeling that I’d rather misjudged my offering (and this muted response may well be why I didn’t go to any of the group’s meetings ever again).
Imagining this taking place in the very-different present, though, and given the way that fantasy and science fiction are seen as mainstream if not quite cutting-edge in terms of fiction, I suspect that the person who’d be stared at blankly in such a group today would be the one who read out the emo-style poem about their depth and sensitivity, and the way that the world just doesn’t understand them.
Mind you, being treated as the pariah would be good fuel for that day’s journal entry. Or perhaps even another poem.
… by which, of course, I mean that you can go out tonight to a roadshow event hosted by the BBC Writersroom. It’s rather short notice, I know – which is why I’ve taken that inappropriate and peremptory tone, to attract your attention – but you may be able to make it.
It is, in fact, one of a number of events which the nice folks at the Writersroom are holding over the next few months – here’s a list:
Tuesday 2 June
Plymouth Theatre Royal
Wednesday 17 June
Sheffield Lyceum Theatre
Wednesday 1 July
Liverpool Everyman Theatre (part of Festival)
Friday 3 July
Nottingham Broadway Cinema (part of festival)
As is usual with these events, you need to make sure that you e-mail in advance to get on the list, but they’re all free, and in my experience of the bashes they’ve held here in London, well worth going along if you can.
Full details – including more info on times and the addresses of the venues – can be found here.
… although looking at the page count of Kanye West’s humbly-titled forthcoming book, it seems he’s only got half a book in him; he involved a co-writer.
For a book which totals 52 pages.
Is that even a book? More like a novella, surely. Then again, releasing it in a spiral-bound format will make it look a bit more substantial an item.
Coming in August, order now. It’s clearly the perfect Christmas gift!
For people you don’t really like that much, I mean.
Seeing as how I haven’t heard anything yet about my entry into the Guardian’s
competition to write the first 150 words of a novel, and the notification date is almost past, and Laurence was kind enough to hassle me to share what I sent them, here it is.
The title of the novel was given as a springboard, so this is my first paragraph of The Letting Go…
“Life’s not about holding on,” her grandfather had once said. “It’s about the letting go.”
Years after his death, when she finally got round to sorting through his possessions, Heather realised that, in his life, he had let go of very little.
At the bottom of the fourth box, in an unmarked manila envelope, she found it: a curl-cornered black and white photograph of her grandfather, aged about twenty. With a full head of hair and an impish grin, he stood in front of a terraced house, with his arm around the shoulders of a woman who was definitely not Heather’s grandmother. And standing in front of them, scowling at the camera, a serious-looking young girl.
Her hand shaking only slightly, Heather flipped the photo over, hoping for a date or other explanation. There was a short sentence in her grandfather’s handwriting.
Don’t tell her you found this, it said.
As ever, comments are welcomed (though do bear in mind it’s too late for me to make any changes which might increase my chances of winning the competition).
An interesting call for scripts over on the BBC Writersroom website; they’re after “the next generation of CBBC writers with fresh perspectives, original voices, and the ability to create unforgettable characters”, and they’re asking for 30-minute original TV scripts.
Once you’ve filled out the online application form, all submissions should be sent in hard copy, to CBBC New Writers, BBC writersroom: 1st Floor, Grafton House, 379 Euston Road, London NW1 3AU by 5pm on Wednesday 1 July 2009. There’ll then be a masterclass for 15-20 shortlisted writers in July, and then eight of those writers will attend a residential week in late September, and then the finalists out of the eight will receive mentoring and £300.
Full details are here, there’s a Frequently Asked Questions page here, and if you want more information on CBBC generally, cast your eyes and mouse here.
My immediate feeling about it? The deadline’s a good six weeks or so away, which seems feasible time-wise, and overall it sounds worth having a go. In all honesty, I’ve never really thought about writing for the 6-12 age range, but on the other hand I’ve not discounted it either, and I can readily imagine that writing for a younger audience is often more of a challenge than, say, writing for one’s peers.
So I’ll definitely have a think about it, and see if I’ve got any stories, or even story ideas or loose structural notions, which might fit the bill.
Anyone else likely to enter this?
Edited: to add in details about the online application form. Whereas I am often forgetful, Piers has a solid memory. Thanks, Mr B!
Strangely enough, the older I get, the less certain I get about many things, but I often find myself getting more and more convinced (some might say dogmatic) about aspects of the whole business of storytelling (and from that, writing).
One such conviction relates to the notion of ‘playing fair’ with the audience, especially in tales involving a mystery or last-minute twist revelation. This isn’t a new notion by any means – S.S.Van Dine wrote about it over 80 years ago – but I think it’s one that remains key, especially as we reach a stage where ever more complicated and convoluted layers of bluff and misdirection are required to surprise an audience.
In murder mysteries, it’s pretty poor form to reveal that the killer was someone who we’ve never met before the final page; for this reason, due to only partly paying attention, I thought that the end of Jagged Edge was a cheat, as I thought it was revealing the killer to be a minor background character – not the case, but that’s the kind of thing I’m driving at.
Interestingly, I think that this is an expectation which audiences have carried over into general expectations of narrative, and I’d say that this is why hardly any (I’d go out on a limb and say none, but there’s almost inevitably an exception or two on a global scale) of the people who are voted winners of Big Brother are contestants who came into the house towards the end of the show’s run: you shouldn’t be able to win the game with a piece which hasn’t been on the board for the duration. For this reason, if you’re doing an exam which features a scenario with characters called A, B and C and you have to write about the scenario, you tend to get pretty short shrift (or, as it’s known in academic terms, crappy marks) if you introduce characters D and E and take the story in a direction more in line with the areas you’ve revised.
Also in murder mysteries, there’s pretty much a tacit rule that you will, at some stage, reveal the identity of the murderer (or murderers). It’s rare to have a story where you can get away with hooking the reader in with a ‘whodunnit?’ mystery and then get away with not stating who the killer is because another, more compelling storyline intervenes. David Lynch apparently didn’t want to reveal who the killer of Laura Palmer was in Twin Peaks, and as much as I love that show, I’d have felt rather cheated if the mystery hadn’t been resolved; similarly, the opening scene of The Wire sets up a murder scene, and whilst I haven’t watched enough of the show to know if we find out who killed the delightfully-named Snot Boogie, I rather hope so, though I guess one might argue that in the more naturalistic vein of that show, an unsolved murder may be more part of the setting than a narrative thread in its own right.
In fact, now I muse upon it, I can’t think of any entirely satisfying stories that end with a murder left unresolved; I’m perhaps being stupid, but I was left uncertain as to the killer’s identity at the end of Grant Morrison and Jon J Muth’s The Mystery Play, and so for me the story – unfortunately given its themes – ended without the appropriate Revelation. I have a feeling that the end of the Polanski film The Ninth Gate may have ended with some of its plot threads left dangling, though that might just be my memory playing tricks; I have a vague recollection of it ending with the protagonist standing before the place he’s been seeking, and the film just rather ending. On the other hand, that in itself is rather like the end of Browning’s poem Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came, which ends in a similarly ‘sudden’ fashion; no wonder Stephen King was inspired to write about what happened when Roland arrived at The Dark Tower.
I suppose the most famous example of a story finishing with a murder left unsolved would be The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, wherein the death of the chauffeur Owen Taylor isn’t solved. Legend has it that when they were making the film version, the screenwriters realised that this wasn’t explained in the novel, and sent a telegram to Chandler asking who had killed Taylor… only to receive the reply that he didn’t know either.
Anyway, all this sort of thing has been on my mind lately because it seems that the good people behind Emmerdale appear to have decided to just let the Who Killed Tom King? storyline drop away, despite the fact that the murderer has not been brought to justice. Granted, the audience knows who killed him (unsurprisingly, one of his family), but given the publicity that surrounded the murder itself when it was screened in December 2006, it feels a little like a joke without a punchline for there not to have been some equivalent narrative closure, to my mind. In the same way that I as an audience member didn’t feel raging hysteria when John Hannah’s character recited Monty Python lines in Sliding Doors, for me as an audience member it doesn’t quite ring true that people who live in such a small village would be content to go about their lives in the pretty certain knowledge that a killer still walks amongst them.
It’s often said – again, I refer you to Mr Van Dine’s article linked above – that in a mystery story it’s only right that the audience is at an level of knowledge equivalent to that of the detective; that seems fair to me, as it allows you to play along and try to solve it, which adds to the enjoyment and involvement. However, it occurs to me that it’s not just that the characters shouldn’t be privy to facts which the reader is excluded from, but that the reverse is equally true; unless you’re seeking to display the disparity between what characters in a story believe to be true, and the actual situation (as in, say, Peep Show), you probably don’t want the audience to be privy to knowledge which, if the characters were aware of it, would make them see things in a very different way. Or, at least, not for a sustained period of time.
It may well be that there’s a plan to bring some proper in-world resolution to the Tom King murder storyline in Emmerdale – though I have to hope they’re not going to wait until the traditional big-story time of Christmas to wheel it out, as that would make it two years since its inception, including many months where it’s not been given much airtime – because at the moment it means that I’m watching the programme with a feeling that something major’s going unresolved.
Whilst it’s established to the viewer that the death was an accident, a crime of passion unlikely to happen again, the characters living in the village don’t know that, and so within the reality of the show it’s something that would cast a shadow over their daily lives. What it does, more than anything, is remind me of the artifice of the programme, as if I’m constantly able to see the strings and hear the plot levers moving things, whilst a elephantine item in the middle of the room goes ignored.
And one of the things I’ve always been sure about, when it comes to the telling of stories, is that you want to utterly absorb your audience in the story; if you’re going to tell a tale of events which never happened to people who don’t exist in a made-up situation, you want avoid reminding your audience of this by jolting them out of the story, especially on something avoidable and fundamental.
Am I over-thinking this? Very possibly, but I wanted to provide a bit more of a meaty post today by way of balancing out the recent tendency towards just supplying you with links, and it was either this or a rather more facile post about the way that EastEnders seems to want to present the Mitchell sisters as alluring sex kittens but completely blows it by having them spend most of their time either shouting angrily or crying. Perhaps I’ve got strange tastes, but I don’t find that particularly appealing, on my TV screen or in real life.
Final Draft, the software much used by writers (and especially screenwriters) has now come out in version 8.
Ignoring the fact that the design of the box makes it look like a washing machine, I’ve found it slightly odd that I haven’t seen many reviews of it – in fact, when I was looking for information on the new features, Amazon’s page for it seemed to have more actual data than FD’s own sales pages, which seemed strange.
I’m vaguely thinking about investing in a copy (I gather v8 is Vista-compatible), but was wondering if any of you lovely people had heard anything (good or bad) about it- or even have first-hand experience of using it – which you could share.
As I say, I’m mulling over the possibility of thinking about considering buying a copy, but if it’s riddled with bugs – oh, I’m sorry, I mean undocumented features – then I’d appreciate being told before I spend any money. Thanks!
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