The First Time

You never forget your first time. And if we are talking about the first time you write a script, well, the script will probably never get made, but it will always be special.

Mine was a piece that I’d written as a short story years before and tried to sell to any place I could find that was publishing short stories. (I did manage to sell the occasional story back then, say 1 every 2 or 3 years, so you can see I was going places) but I couldn’t place this one. Everyone thought it was too wierd. But I couldn’t leave it alone.

It was a story I felt deeply about – very very autobiographical, all about my difficult relationship with my own family, fed through a kind of Ray Bradbury October Country eerieness.

It was, looking back, of course a typical writer’s move – write about yourself, and feel the process give you some therapy while you’re at it. But this one kept nagging at me, and though I couldn’t find a magazine to publish it, I kept on tweaking, and rewriting.

I had two big break throughs. I was driving somewhere, and I literally had a flash of inspiration. I realised that it was too short. And what’s more, there and then, the whole story for the part of the story that I would later know to be called the Third Act flooded into my mind.

A couple of years later (yeah, my career happened over geological time at the start) I had another big break. I decided, for absolutely no good reason whatsover, (because I didn’t seriously think people like me wrote for the TV or the Movies) that I would try writing it as a movie script.

I kind of invented my own layout, cobbled it together, worked on it for a couple of years whenever I got the chance in between the day job and the children, and finally, out of absolutely nowhere, sent it in as support for a random job application in the BBC drama department.

And, what do you know, something about the story impressed them enough to call me in for interview.

Amazing. Incredible.

Seriously?

Yes, they were serious. And the interview worked out well, and suddenly I was quitting my office job and heading off for a 40% pay cut and the chance to refill the photocopier and scrape the mud off actors on a 12 hour per day basis.

But I was in!

So what’s the point of this blog? Well, I still read that script occasionally, and it still impresses me. There is something you have when you are writing from bitter experience. There is a monstrous vividness to it all.  And, yes, despite the fact I had had no formal instruction, there is a solid, clear structure underneath it to support all the strange events.

I managed to find that structure myself, but if i look back, it took me six years of writing that story before I managed to knock it into shape.

I’m still in two minds. Obviously I wish I’d had someone show me how to do it at the very beginning. It would have saved a lot of time. I could have got a lot further a lot quicker.

On the other hand, the writing took me so much effort, and was nearly as arduous as the events it contained. I will always love it more deeply than almost any of my other scripts.

Which makes it special. I’m almost glad it has never been made. I can’t imagine how a director would ever capture the wonderfulness of the way it has played in my mind over the years.