Screenwriting

Preface

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I have been working with writers and on scripts for over twenty-five years - Iand this book is a response to that hugely enjoyable experience. Through my teenage years, I had always been passionately interested in dramatic writing through television, cinema and theatre and then, as a struggling actor, I started writing myself. A screenplay, then a stage play which I submitted to Paines Plough theatre company. The literary manager at the time, the excellent Robin Hooper, let me down gently and with great kindness and took me on as a script reader and occasional dramaturg. It was reading my first script professionally and then beginning to talk to writers face-to-face about their work that introduced me to the possibility of script-editing as a career.

Trying to balance the dying days of my thirteen years as a professional actor with an ever-increasing pile of script-reading work eventually led to my first two-week contract in the Granada TV drama department offices in Golden Square, London.

The bridge from life as an actor into script-editing was through this reading work for theatre, TV and film. One of the most interesting jobs I had was for Anthony Hopkins' acting agent, reading and assessing the scripts he had been sent as job offers. One script I read for this was Dennis Potter's adaptation of Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I remember to this day as a dark, brilliant, inspiring piece of writing (sadly a film that never got made). Among many other companies, I read for David Puttnam's Enigma Films, Film 4, Paramount Pictures and the First Film Foundation.

This was pre-internet days and script-reading work often meant coming into London for meetings in which you hand-delivered your (paper) script reports, returned the (paper) scripts and discussed your feedback with the (flesh and blood) development person at the company in question who had hired you. This face-to-face time with such industry luminaries as Laurence Bowen (I remember Laurence talking to me about what 'structure' in dramatic storytelling was all about!), Kate Leys, Allon Reich and Tony Dinner at the old BBC Script Unit - the less publicised forerunner of the current BBC Writers - was invaluable. (Tony, for instance, was a brilliant supporter of new writers and budding script editors, one of those people that the industry relies upon.)

I sat at home, between acting jobs, reading scripts - of variable quality - for the best part of two years; and it was the most brilliant grounding in scripts and story, particularly having to write a report on each script - synopsis, comment, verdict - trying to make sense of the pros and cons of every story, and thinking about why the good ones were good and the other ones not so good.

It made me realise that you learn at least as much from the bad as the good scripts. It also made me appreciate the power of genuinely excellent dramatic writing. There are scripts I read in those two years that I remember to this day - or I remember at least the thrill I felt in reading work that was outstanding.

On arrival for my two weeks at Granada to research a drama series idea about missing people written by Paul Abbott (another show that never got made) I remember what seemed like the extraordinary novelty of having my own office. It was a great first job to have as my introduction to the world of TV drama. My wonderful, eccentric bosses, Sally Head and Gwenda Bagshaw, ran a department that created and produced such seminal shows as Cracker (Jimmy McGovern), Prime Suspect (Lynda La Plante) and Band of Gold (Kay Mellor). My first script-editing job was on a long-running 9 p.m. medical drama series, Medics, working with many outstanding writers including Neil McKay and Sarah Daniels.

The world of the drama departments at ITV companies, Granada TV and after that London Weekend Television (again with Sally and Gwenda) was incredibly exciting but, in retrospect, something of an emotional whirlwind. Although people probably behave with greater circumspection and courtesy now than they did when I first started, I think this is still to some extent true of a lot of film and TV drama development and production in the UK.

Most producers get to where they are more often for their creative than their organisational skills. To this day, there is too rarely in the production of TV drama a really well-organised system to support the creative endeavours of writer, director, actors, etc., but that's a whole other story.

I still remember (at this distance, with a smile) some of the more emotionally jagged moments. For instance - the first ever script meeting I attended as junior, observing script editor (after the script editor I was replacing had fallen out with the producer and been summarily sacked), consisted of a writer declining - politely but firmly and with no real creative explanation - to address every single note the script editor suggested in a two-hour meeting. After the writer left, this script editor (understandably) burst into tears. The following day the meeting was reconvened with writer, script editor and - this time - executive producer present and giving the notes. On this occasion the writer enthusiastically agreed to address the exact same notes they had declined the previous day. I can see no evidence that this writer ever worked in TV drama again! (Not that there was a witch-hunt, just that this writer must have decided collaboration was not for them.)

I remember a meeting in which a head of department threw a very weighty script at a producer in some argument over a minor story point; a stand-up row between head of department and producer at a read-through in front of the assembled cast; leaving the office at 8 p.m. one evening and returning next morning to discover my fellow script editor and producer were still in the meeting I had left and had been working on the script through the whole night; and an 11 p.m. meeting with a (drunk) executive producer who praised my work and promised to pay me a substantial financial bonus (which was never mentioned again, let alone paid, in the sober light of day).

It can be an intense, difficult process - but it can also be incredibly exciting, creatively rewarding and a lot of fun.

The lesson from all of this is that creating a TV show or film is an emotive business, particularly in production where all the deadlines are locked in and there can be no stopping (or leaping off) the runaway train that is production. When a lot of egos come together in a creative undertaking, there are bound to be occasional clashes and disagreements; creative decisions are personal. It's sometimes hard to find that distinction between the story you're trying to tell and your own personal feelings.

I think it's true of all of the best writers that there is a huge amount of themselves in their work. Writing and delivering any script is a personal act of courage. As a writer, even if you're not intending it to, your writing will reveal a huge amount about you. Writing is very exposing in what you reveal about yourself and even more so in the way you open yourself up to instant judgement. To put yourself through this, you have to need to be a writer, it needs to be a huge part of who you are as a person. Writing - and screenwriting in particular - is for the brave and the resilient.

The other side of that coin is that there is of course enormous fulfilment in writing a script of which you're proud and seeing it being launched into the world; of seeing people responding positively to it; and sometimes through your script, changing entrenched attitudes and the world around you (campaigning TV films like Jimmy McGovern's Hillsborough, Nicole Taylor's Three Girls and Jack Thorne's Help are outstanding examples of what can be achieved socially and politically through great screenwriting).

But, in trying to sustain your morale and your career, you need to have some method, technique and storytelling principles to call on. Much of writing is instinctive but instinct needs to be supported by craft and guiding principles.

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Part of the purpose of this preface is to make the distinction that I am not a screenwriter (a lot of my professional life is spent writing - but not screenwriting), but that what I can bring to the table for you as screenwriters/dramatic writers is the fact that, for such a long time, and continuing right now and into the future, I am one of those industry people to whom you will be submitting your script. And through years of thinking about story and observing and working with many successful writers, I have developed strong views as to what it takes to gain success as a professional dramatic writer, both in terms of the craft of dramatic storytelling and the more pragmatic areas of building and sustaining a career - and this, I hope, is how I can be helpful to you.

In both regards, my last fifteen years as a freelancer, running my own independent script consultancy and the Channel 4 screenwriting course, have been particularly valuable.

In my work as a script consultant, I have now fed-back on over 2,000 different projects.

The Channel 4 screenwriting course is now in its fourteenth year. More than a hundred and fifty writers have come through the course and many of the course alumni are among the hottest properties...