story (again) - some good news

I did a playwriting course in 2008 where I was lucky enough to meet Sir Lord Roy Williams, playwright extraordinaire, and very nice chap.

One of the many interesting things he said was that before he writes a script, he writes the whole story out as if it were a novel first. (This from memory, so I may not be remembering it exactly right, but this was the gist.)

At the time, I remember thinking this seemed a very labour-intensive way of writing a play - to start off in prose before you get to the script. And I thought no more of it.

Until I gave it a try, whilst lounging louchely* on a foreign beach mere weeks ago.

And do you know what? It works. It really works.

This has been my problem: I start writing in order to find out who my characters are, and where they, and what the story is. And this works, to a point. It makes dialogue the starting point, and I feel like the characters come to life from the off. And it works much, much better than when I try some 'A loves B, C is having a sex change, D is taking up darts' kind of plotting.

Because in that 'A does x, meanwhile B does y' scenario of outlining, I get bored. And it feels like I'm trying to get some people to do some stuff for no good reason. And my dialogue goes to shit.

But my approach naturally has some drawbacks: namely, I get half-way in with no idea of where I'm going. (And, as other more sensible writers have pointed out, this is not a good place to be in.)

So I found that by writing something, properly writing it, a story emerges through the prose much more strongly, but in a natural way. That keeps me interested enough to want to write the script for it.

And the proof that this works? Well, I managed to write a wee 15-minute script over a couple of days. When you consider the last 15-minute script I did took about 18 months (in a very torturous route, but still, I'm not even kidding), this is a RESULT of the highest order.

So I'm a convert. That is to say, I'm going to be giving it a go from now on...

And refreshed from foreign climes, I actually have some ideas again, so this is all to the good...

In fact, I think my darts/sex change epic farce melodrama is on course to be better than Pinter. Much better.

(Joke. I can joke again! Thank god for holidays, eh...)

*By lounging louchely I mean, of course, sitting with half the sand on the beach stuck to me because of tons of factor 50 sunblock and gallons of DEET which does absolutely nothing to stop the little bastard mosquitos biting me on the ankle. And looking awkward about the whole thing. But still, you get the point.

of little consequence

Ah, the blogs I was going to write...

On Pitmen Painters (brilliant) and War Horse (more brilliant in some ways - puppetry, camp nazis - and less in others).

On discovering a proper, actual story in my script a mere 18 months after I started scrawling (yes, I learn quickly).

On finally writing something new.

On exciting theatre plans for 2010. (Very excited about Midsummer coming to Soho. Very.)

On the importance of theatre-going buddies and fellow writers.

On the difficulty of finding any spare energy to tip stuff out of my brain and onto paper and thence to screen.

But instead... Well, work got in the way. Not just in the usual way of keeping me busy. But in a new way of infecting my every waking minute and hour and not, generally speaking, in a good way. Even now, in the midst of Xmas hols.

And there, in a nutshell, is also the reason I haven't been doing this blog as regularly as I could have. Because it would be one long, tedious moan. And I don't really want to inflict that on the world, any more than I am, um, doing now.

Some good news? I'm off on my holidays in a couple of days. A proper holiday. To a far-flung destination. Where my poor tired brain will hopefully recover and regain some cheer. Some much-needed cheer.

In the meantime, can I just wish anyone who has taken the time to read these meagre ramblings a very happy new year. And although I don't do new year resolutions as such, I will strongly attempt to be less moany in 2010. And, who knows, I might even write a review of a play in the opening week, as opposed to the closing week like what I have been mainly doing this year... But I'm not making any promises...

btw

Further to my last post, when I was having a little moan about various confusing bits of advice I received, I wanted to clarify that I'm immensely grateful to people who can be arsed to read my random nonsense. I'm just a bit not sure what to do with it all sometimes.

But hell, I need to get a grip. My job is all about frickin' editing. No reason I can't edit my own stuff. Just need a bit of clarity...

Next up, when I have some spare brain, an exclusive review of the latest show in town!

(Not really, it's this, which has been on for a million years, but I'm not going to let that stop me chipping in my two-pennorth. Whatever a pennorth is.)

confused

What not to do when you return to writing a script after several months of not writing:

Don't under any circumstances get over-excited by your own brilliance and show your script to other people. And definitely not to more than one person.

And if you are foolish enough to do these things, don't encourage people to give you advice or comments on what you've written, because they will inevitably provide contradictory and downright confusing advice along the lines of:

'I love your main character don't you think you should change the entire narrative arc because the ending doesn't work...'

AND/OR
'I love the narrative arc but why doesn't your character have a more distinctive voice?'

AND/OR
'Your main character has an amazingly distinctive voice but why don't you set it in Grantham?'

(I don't why I said the last one. Clearly it's not real. Who would give you this kind of advice? Unless, perhaps you were writing a script about the early life of Margeret Thatcher and thought it would be thrilling to set it on Mars in a brave stab at a kind of counter-historical/fantasy genre. In which case it might be sensible advice.)

So when you sensibly haven't shown your script to anyone, and haven't had the remains of your brain power utterly scrambled by bucket loads of advice, you presumably won't feel confused and unsure and generally a bit stuck about where to go next.

I imagine.

Comedians by Trevor Griffiths

Comedians was written in 1975, but it's a very timely revival, what with the recent Jimmy Carr/Frankie Boyle nonsense.

It's a play that looks at the purpose of comedy and what the things we laugh at say about us. For a comedian, what is the real cost of going for a cheap laugh?

It's brilliantly structured over the course of an evening: firstly, the nightclass where a number of aspriring comedians prepare for their big break - a showcase at a local club attended by a talent scout/agent. Then, the routines themselves, then the post-mortem of how it all went.

There's one pretty compelling reason to see this production, namely the cast, which includes Matthew Kelly, Mark Benton and Reece Shearsmith (ex League of Gentleman, total genius, and disturbingly attractive in full 70s get-up, including greasy moustache. I digress.)

I don't know if Keith Allen is a deeply unpleasant individual or an exceptional actor, but he's certainly very convincing as the arsehole agent.

I was going to have a whinge about how David Dawson hadn't had enough recognition for his frankly amazing performance as Gethin, but then I read the reviews properly and it turns out everyone thought he was great, not just me. So that's alright then.

This is an intelligent, thoughtful production that generates some decent laughs along side some genuinely uncomfortable moments as racist jokes of (hopefully) yesteryear make the audience wince.

After the mystifyingly well-received Punk Rock at the same theatre, this is a play that has something to say, and says it well.

This is the latest in my continuing series of reviews that go up just as shows are about to finish, but if you can get tickets for the last week of the production, it's well worth seeing.

shuffle

Sometimes I like to do a spot of fortune-telling via my ipod nano. It's pretty simple: as I sit barely awake on the bus on the way to work, I hit the shuffle option, and decide what the day will be like depending on the title of the song that comes up.

It's a fairly inexact approach to predicting the way the day's going to go, but it amuses me.

One memborable morning, the signs weren't looking good. This is what came up:

Welcome home, Loser (Broken Family Band).

Not great. Sod it, I thought, I'll skip, and see if it gets better.

Snakes in the Grass (Essex Green).

Still not great. Skip!

I see a Darkness (Bonnie Prince Billie)

Oh, for fuck's sake...

I decided to give it one more shot. Yes, my music taste tends to the downbeat, but surely, I'd exhausted all the titles on my ipod that portended doom and gloom. Surely.

The fourth song that came up was a very nice tune by Roddy Woomble, off of Idlewild. The title came up:

As still as I watch...

Oh well, I thought, that's alright. Pretty harmless. Then the title continued scrolling across the screen.

...your grave.

As still as I watch your grave.

Brilliant, just brilliant.

Of course, when the day turned out to be only averagely bad, it felt like a real result. Yay (ish).

commitment, lack of

There are people, apparently, who sit down to do a task and do it. They plan it, and then they start at the start, and they keep going until they finish.

I think this is true. It sounds a bit like an urban myth to me. But apparently it happens.

I sit down to write something. And if I'm lucky, and I have a lot of ideas they all spill out in a big mess on the page and I get really excited.

This can continue for several weeks.

And then I look at it all, gathered up, and become overwhelmed at the thought of sorting it all out, and not really having any big purpose or reason to keep going.

And so I start something else.

And I end up with 5 beginnings of potentially interesting stuff that I'm not really sure of what I'm going to do with.

Which is more or less where I'm at right now.