Skip to main content

Chipping away

This week I've been concentrating on a TV pilot I've written as part of my Masters.  I had a tutorial on Tuesday where I walked aways with 2 pages of scribbled notes and a head full of ideas.

I normally leave those meetings in a state of panic, never sure where to start or how to take an axe to a draft of work that has taken me weeks but now needs refinement.  I let the panic rage for 2 days but as always it's started to settle and today I'm looking at my pen pot of red biros and highlighters and wondering if I should just start tackling the great reshape. 

The structure is almost there but the characters need condensing.  I need to cull at least 3 peripheral voices and make the survivors more distinct.  I need to cut my slug lines down from poetic theatrical essays to 2 lines of action.  I need a tagline (I should've had this before I started writing) and a definite genre - not the 3 that I'm interchanging at will.  But most of all I need a definite reason for why what I've written would happen.  A MacGuffin.  

My tutor cannot say this word enough.  He spent the first 3 months of the course repeating this word but somehow it still I haven't completely got it. 

All of the characters need to be working, to the point of exhaustion, towards this element regardless of what it is - it just has to be something and I have to know what IT is. 

So I'm sitting here wracking my head.  I have 2 options and they would both work. 

But I want a third option.  One that will make me confident that I'm right to base everything around it.  And until I've found that my script is going to feel slightly wobbly and wrong.    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Big Days

I'm in the middle of planning my best friend's Hen night and it's got me thinking about how many days of my life I can actually remember.  Odd I know.  I don't remember the majority of the hen that she threw for me as I rather predictably drank too much and was very ill by the end of it.  But until the drink flowed we had the best day ever running round Brighton in teams on a scavenger hunt, eating fish and chips by the seafront and generally catching up with my best friends in the whole World (apart from 1 who had to be in San Fran for silly work but I did think about her while I was dashing down side streets laughing all the way).  I also don't remember most of my actual Wedding day.  Snippets of emotions, the man looking at me as we exchanged vows and shock at the whole thing actually happening.  Before the day took off, my most amazing Bridesmaid had to stitch ribbon onto velcro that had arrived with the flowers, made me cups of tea and looked after my mini
Post a Comment
Read more

Night

The night crawls on bended legs and searching fingers at the foot of my bed.   I can hear it wheezing and muttering in its hollow soul.   I can smell its presence and jealousy and hate.   It reeks of cold and damp and Victorian evenings swirling in fog.   I try not to make a single noise.   Any utterance would trigger its awareness and I would be its prisoner all alone in my single bed. I cannot see it.   This sense is deprived.   Cut off from neurons racing down my spine.   Black dilated pupils roll around scared sockets and settle on no physical thing.   Between parted lips I am aware of a sour aftertaste.   I have been kissed in my sleep by the mutant lurking in the corner and now it has had that first fatal taste there is no escape. My hands know that in painfully close proximity a light switch aches to be flicked.   To banish the intruder beyond the walls of my bedroom and into the world to find someone else…anyone else. But my arms are paralysed.   They refuse to mov
Post a Comment
Read more

Slackness

I've been so slack.  Slacker than a pair of middle aged pants around the ankles of a slack jawed tight rope walker.  I've been writing a few pages here and there and thinking many writery thoughts in my head.  But it feels as though I haven't been doing enough and this is my eternal problem. So here I am writing something tangible and bankable and making you read it because it will make me feel as though I've actually done something with my day.  As opposed to all the stuff I really have done with my day which is very impressive actually I'll have you know. It's just not in the general theme of writing or anything I might enjoy doing.  And in other news it's been a stunning day in London town.  Almost makes me happy to be here. Almost.
Post a Comment
Read more