damn you, actors!

Last year I went to a script development workshop - a chance for writers to have their work dissected by actors and see what happens. I was there, I thought, under false pretences. My 15 minute script was already pretty great. I knew it was great because I'd seen it performed in Camden and it was amazing. Clever and funny and a little bit political.

So when, some uppity actress in the workshop had the cheek to tell me one of the characters was underdeveloped and the other one didn't half go on a bit ('wanking' all over the script as she memorably put it) I did what any sensible writer would do and completely dismissed all critiques and advice.

A year later (now) and I am in Budapest. I've joined a new writing group. I take this script, because it's the only script of mine I have printed out, and also I really want to impress people, and this is fucking dynamite.

And of course, I haven't looked at this script and it's a cold read-through and these people are great but not professional actors and OH MY GOD it's a mess. Character one is completely underdeveloped. Character two is totally self-indulgent, saying lots of clever lines that show how *great* I am at being a writer.

Sigh.

This is what I've learned then: don't judge your script from the version where brilliant actors and directors have taken it and made it work, because that is their job. Don't assume that your script is is brilliant, just because it's had a good performance. And, as ever, editing is a million times easier after a good break away from your script, when you're less embroiled in the amazing cleverness of it etc etc.

The good news is that the rewrite is going well, and who knows? Maybe one day soon I will also have a new idea or two which would be very welcome and all that.

the ideas phase

And so it transpires I am now in the ideas phase. I've finished a short piece, there are some rewrites to be getting on with, but there's a gap in my writing schedule for the main event. The thing I have to write. The one that gets under my skin right the way until completion.

The ideas phase is a dangerous place to be.

The best plays you (n)ever write are those ghostly, fantasy plays that get written entirely in your head, and never make it to the page. You can spend hours on them - imagining dialogue that is heartbreaking in its poignancy, side-splitting in its comedy. They will bring a profundity to the British stage never seen before or since. You are dazzled with the brillance of your ideas.

Almost without exception, these plays don't work. I don't know quite what happens, but when it comes to putting them down on paper, everything is lost. The dialogue, that was so brilliant in your head comes out stilted and unconvincing. The plot doesn't make sense. That character, that amazing character that was going to have Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart fighting to play the part? Yeah, turns out he's a total wally, and dull to boot.

The solution - the only solution I've come up with to all this - is to write it down first. When the first inklings of a work of genius arise, I get me straight to my notebook. And I know, pretty quickly, whether it will work or not. But honestly, some of these plays I've written in my head.... It is no exaggeration to say they could have been literally better than Shakespeare.

please please please let me get what I want

Something else to add to the list of things I'm learning about myself through the medium of trying to be a writer: if I can leverage in a gratituous Smiths reference in, I will.

(If I can leverage in a Belle and Sebastian reference, I'm flipping ecstatic. But it's a bit more challenging).

And so, with crushing predictability, I'm giving in to the inevitable and rewriting some serious heartfelt words and reworking it all as a laugh every few minutes (I hope) comedy. Honestly, this is an absolutely last ditch attempt to make use of all these sodding scenes I wrote and liked, and tried to make into a play and failed entirely.

So we'll see if it works, or if this writing quite simply belongs down the dumper (copyright Smash Hits circa 1992).

And with a startling lack of imagination, I've been listening to the Smiths as I edit, and so I'm calling it after one of my favourite songs they do.

The fact that I'm sitting in on a Friday evening writing and listening to the Smiths probably tells you everything you need to know about the chances of me ever please please please getting what I want.

But that's another story.