A Grand Day Out

Twelve miles west of Central London lies the beautiful leafy suburb of Sunbury-on-Thames, home to the Riverside Arts Centre the venue for  Jan Etherington's Comedy Writing Course - Spring Workshop (click on the link for details).
Jan, a successful comedy screenwriter who has penned many sit-coms for ITV and BBC, and her associates Frankie and Heather ensured everybody had a warm welcome and was made completely at ease in what was an intentionally small group.
Small is beautiful and because each one of us were able to get personal attention from Jan and her invited guests,  television actor John Bowler and Comedy Screenwriting agent Dominic Lord.
Jan gave us a useful talk on the ingredients necessary to construct a successful situation comedy.
I had submitted part of my script Ushabti prior to the course and this was superbly brought to life by a reading from members of the group. I can't describe how it felt to see my main characters brought to life for the first time, an experience I will never forget. This was followed up by a critique from members of the group and from the people who know, Jan and Dominic.
I found the day inspiring motivational and most of all enlightening for me in how to pitch and who to pitch to.
A grand day out and I most certainly will return. The next spring workshop is on May 15th for anyone who is interested.

More on Structure and Motivation.

The 'journey' I used to have, until recently, during my unstructured writing days, which I firmly believed was an exciting mystery trip has not been lost. It has been enhanced by the use of my beat sheet and story board. 

I said all this already, in my previous post on this subject. However, I feel I must update my blog now that I am a little further down the line with my new project "Midnight at the Alhambra".

The feeling of waking up in the morning wandering what is going to happen next? in my story is stronger still. Why? Because I can see my scenes at a glance. Answers to what happens next are more evident now I do not have to backtrack though huge clumps of text. My creative momentum is maintained and does not drift off into limbo for days on end like it used to.

I have rewritten my beat sheet since the earlier post. Its no big deal. The beat sheet totals 6 pages, and yet it is the whole story for a 90 minute feature. The index cards are in place...all forty of them each representing a scene. If the scene does not arc and there is no emotional change then the scene will be taken out because there is no point to it. 

My characters are now clearly defined. I feel like a concert pianist having shuffled my sheet music, I am poised at the keyboard ready to play my heart out.

FADE IN

Wish me luck x

The Wall

The Wall
Leave a message on the Wall. Laura Crane Youth Cancer Trust
http://www.lauracranetrust.org/thewall/

Back from Conference

What a day at my 2nd Get Writing conference at Hatfield University, organised by the good people of Verulam Writer's Circle. So now my creative batteries have been recharged for another year, filled with inspirational and motivational speaking from publishers, agents, buyers and of course the writers.
The difference between last years and this years is the rapid growth of technology. I cannot recall Twitter being mentioned at all last year and yet this year it was not just mentioned but indeed promoted. One speaker went so far to say "if you're a writer and you don't use Twitter...why?" Personally I don't get it. I haven't got to grips with how to use Twitter in a functional way in terms of networking with people within the literary world and having to do this within 140 characters. When it comes to words I can't see myself being that economic. I have a Twitter account, and I use it to promote this blog, but I'm not reaching the right Twitterers.

Kindle has taken the book world by storm, with millions of people giving them as presents to their loved ones at Christmas. I was no exception. Indeed I received my Kindle in November for my birthday. Today,I came away from the conference with mixed feelings about my newfound boy toy. As I have said in a previous post, I have been on a massive binge-read since November, but I now share the guilt that our beloved bookstores are seriously under threat.
I have not turned my back on P-books or tree books as they are now described, and have purchased real books since having my Kindle. I think readers, writers and booksellers have to think seriously about how we can all benefit from this change. Waterstones, WHSmiths and other retail outlets need to look at how they can    compete with Amazon. One delegate suggested bookstores need to remain in the High Street so readers can browse and handle the books physically and then decide whether to purchase the paper book or download to a flash drive in store. I for one would prefer to do that than online.
It has been suggested that there could be an alternate market for writers who may want to think about writing specifically for the e-book  market, with shorter 'Kindle-sized paragraphs, short stories, novelettes and perhaps serialized stories. Instead of waiting for the Tsunami, the booksellers should by all means embrace the change and go with it, but not without finding a way to preserve the printed page.

Get Writing 2011

I forgot to mention, I am going to Get Writing 2011 conference on 19/02/11 (this Saturday). I went to this event last year and got to meet crimewriter Mark Billingham. Interestingly enough, crime is a favourite genre of book reading for me, and I don't generally read comedy although I write it. Mark Billingham said, "don't write comedy, it is too difficult," but although he's an award winning crimewriter, when he's not writing he does stand-up comedy on the comedy club circuit.

This years keynote speaker is writer/broadcaster Sue Cook. There will also be publishers and agents addressing the conference and some handy workshops too.

I know its late in the day but there are a limited number of spaces left..

http://www.verulamwriterscircle.org.uk/getwriting2011.php

Structure and motivation.

From time to time I do correspond and meet with other writers. Whenever people mention structure and planning to me I go quiet. When forced into a corner I will mutter something about my writing being a journey, and that the journey is a mystery tour because sometimes even I don't know where it's going. I have come to believe if it's a good trip for me then it will be a good trip for my reader or audience.
Editing this somewhat haphazard modus operandi of writing can be an arduous task, because I am trying to establish some structure, shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
A screenwriting friend recently Skyped me from NY and recommended "Save the Cat" by Blake Snyder, which is supposed to be the last word on screenwriting.
I got my book delivered from Amazon with 3 days and within 3 days more I had read it. Snyder's book left me so motivated I felt like an athlete poised at the starting blocks.
I rushed out to Ryman Stationery and bought a large notice board, index cards and coloured pens. I then produced a template for my 'Beat Sheet' and wrote the story divided into 15 specific beats which were so specific they reserve in advance what page number they will be on.
I'm at the 'Board' stage now, that's Board and not Bored, which I have sectioned off into Acts 1, 2 and 3, (2 being sub-divided into two parts) and then commence to write my Scenes on the index cards. When they are all on the board, all 40 of them, then I can adjust my structure at this stage, a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, which is a whole lot better than rearranging whole chunks of writing, as you cannot see a whole script in one glance.
Blake Snyder says a lot more about scene writing and character development, but you'll need to buy the book to find out more.
I haven't lost that 'journey' experience I previously had in my writing. The journey happens for me in putting my beat sheet together and then on the storyboard.
None of this is writing, but boy the writing will flow so much better when I know where I am going. I hope my fingers can keep up.
My partner read my beat sheet, and said "It's not your usual style of writing, and there is no comedy there." I pointed out to her that it isn't my writing at all until I go to the laptop and  bring the story to life by adding richness and depth to the characters, location and storyline.
Comedy is absent from my story at the planning stage, because story is paramount, and comedy is my preferred style of presenting my characters as the story unfolds. I don't plan comedy.
I'm writing a film script this time. I don't expect it will ever go into production because it involves location expenses and no producer would do that for a new writer. It is a story I have wanted to tell and for me it's a worthwhile project in my mission to develop into a writer in my latter years.
Its called Midnight at the Alhambra, and I will post a sample in the near future.

Finding a balance.

I have spoken about my experiences of constructive criticism from the screenwriters group I go to once a month.  I have sent another post to this blog about editing. Well I have had  good criticism from my group. There are some good writers there who really know what they're talking about, which sent me on my way back to my computer to edit, then edit and edit.
Hey I think I've found another condition to rival Writer's Block. I'm going to call it Writer's Locked-In Syndrome. It is when you are thinking about what you want to say and keep changing it, until it reaches a point that unless you release those words soon you're never going to be heard. Does that make sense?
So I've had my proof reading, and I think I've polished my script so much that any more polishing and I am likely to rub it away. It's time to submit.
I am so agonisingly slow. Goodness knows how I'd cope should I ever become an established writer and have to work to deadlines. But then I could give up the day job which would unburden me of a major distraction.
I know you shouldn't rely too much on friends for criticism, because friends have difficulty with pointing out errors or anything that as a reader they do not understand. The tendency being they only want to tell you what they assume you want to hear. But last week I thought, what the heck, and passed my electronic reader (which I had uploaded my script on) to two co-workers. The first reader, (Daspikster, one of my followers on this blog) is a young man who does stand up comedy in the Comedy Clubs around London, and also is writing some comedy himself. My second reader, Omesh has written a self help book, so as you can see I have chosen my readers carefully.
The upshot of all this was, I can honestly say is, from the feedback that was given was that they had been entertained. "I was laughing out loud" was one of the comments which helped convince me, my script is now ready.
I have now printed the final draft and will be sending it to the BBC Writersroom, in the hope that I can avoid the slush pile. Having had Henley's Ricotta rejected by them without any feedback, I have since improved that script enormously, but, alas, the rules of the BBC are that I can never send the same script to them twice. This is probably the reason I have sat on Fairfax Goes to Ephesus for so long, because you only get one shot at it.
The reality of the situation is that the BBC Writersroom receive, on average, 10,000 scripts per year, most of which only have the first 10 pages read, so I have to expect rejection.
My rejection plan this time will be to see if I can get myself an agent, who will advocate for me and try and get in that way. There again, I'm up against it as like the BBC, agents  also handle thousands of scripts and manuscripts per year.
Oh, why can't I be normal and do something else with my spare time like grow vegetables.