Today it was baking hot outside, and people were heading for the country and the beach, but I had to stay inside in my office because there’s still a lot of work to be done on the website and pre launch for the Screenwriting Goldmine Ebook. I know it’s worth doing, but, wow, it was hard to watch the people outside in the sun!
One of the main reasons I had to stay in was that from Monday I’m back to the grindstone with a script I am writing. It’s for a big continuing drama here in the UK, one of these hour long shows that fills our screens season after season, and I’m behind on the storylining process. It’s actually an interesting example of how the process can work you round and round in circles before you ever get to write a word of a script.
One of the reasons I agreed to do the show in the first place was that they all seemed keen to do an unusual episode. The show’s been going through an unusual renaissance recently and is as looking as creatively strong as it ever has been in its history, with some cracking episodes lately that have pushed hard at the boundaries of what the audience would expect.
When they got me in they were very up for a very special episode – they have to write an actor out, mainly because they felt he wasn’t really delivering on screen, and so my episode was given two jobs. Reinventing the character and making him more interesting, and kicking off the serial arc that will lead in 10 or so eps to his character quitting his job onscreen and leaving the show.
Fine. And at the commissioning meeting the exec, the story department, the script department, the researchers, they were all very keen for me to go whereever I wanted with the character – make the entire episode told from this character’s point of view (pretty unique in this show, which is normallly heavily multi-stranded), use flashbacks, use any narrative devices I thought I might need.
In fact more than fine. Fantastic! What a fabulous opportunity!
The one person who wasn’t keen was the producer. He sat in the corner saying quietly “It’ll never work. The actor isn’t strong enough. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
He was so quiet, but, oh man I should have listened to him.
These shows have about a 14 week turnaround time from initial commission to final draft, and we’re now about 5 weeks in. I’ve had tremendous fun writing, and rewriting different storyline documents.
And each time everyone but the producer has been keen, and wanted to push forwards. The producer has quietly, but effectively, canned each document. “The actor isn’t strong enough.” “The story isn’t working.” “It’s too ‘out there’ for the show.”
I really should have listened to him at the meeting. We all should. He’s very quietly spoken, but he’s clearly got a massive pull over the others, including the executive producer, who outranks him, but isn’t winning this battle.
And now I’m a couple of weeks late and I still don’t have a story document signed off, and things are looking a little tight on the whole schedule.
The producer has apologised like crazy for pulling the plug and taking it back to scratch, and a few years back I would have been really annoyed with him, but nowadays I’m just a little more zen. It’s all part of the process, and the process of storylining is fun in its own right. Besides, he’s a very nice guy, and we are going to spend as long as it takes on Monday, just him, me, the script editor and a whiteboard, working out an episode shape that he is happy with.
It’s going to be a fun day. But it is going to lead to a very traditional episode.
Ah well, such is life.
How To Write A Screenplay