When I haven't been busy with all the other stuff I've had to do since Edinburgh I've been trying to knock together a 30 minute (though due to ads only actually 22 minute) sitcom episode using the characters from "You Can Choose Your Friends". Partly due to the gabbiness of that title and the fact that people never managed to remember it correctly and partly to trick the people who didn't like it at ITV (by no means everyone) into thinking it's a different project it has a new snappier name - Relativity. I which I'd thought of that before. It's much better and also you can employ the tagline - "Harder in practice than it is in theory."
Anyway it has been coming together pretty quickly given how much else I've had to do. It's great to revisit these characters and having the actors in mind is also a massive help. There's no guarantee that the same actors will be available, but it's still very useful having the excellent bunch we got the first time in mind. But the episode has to work for people who didn't see the 90 minute (actually 75 minutes due to adverts) comedy drama, so I've got to almost start again and it's pretty tough introducing eleven major characters in 22 minutes. Its odd to think that this episode will be about the length of a slot at a stand up club and yet has to have a narrative and a beginning, middle and end and involve probably 20 actors in speaking roles.
For these reasons I thought it would be a tough job, but having to keep the scenes short and punchy and have every line work for its place in the script seems to have made the task a bit easier if anything. I had been hopeful of getting the script finished today, but that would mean pretty much writing the entire second half of the script in a day. I knew how I wanted it to end, but I wasn't sure how I was going to get there. Indeed at about 2 o clock I thought, "Ah well, it's not going to happen - might as well pack it in," but then I steeled myself and decided to just try and complete the two scenes I had been working on in the morning. Suddenly having done them I came up with a slightly radical and surprising (to me) way of wrapping things up. Some writers like to plan out their plots meticulously in advance. I quite like making it up as it goes along and then any twists and turns are actually properly surprising because they are not so contrived. It doesn't mean I can't go back to alter something later, but it has often led to some interesting ideas.
Anyway by five o clock, somewhat miraculously and almost anti-climatically I had a finished first draft. And it seemed good. But it felt like it had been too easy. Having really struggled with my writing over the last few years it felt somehow inappropriate to have written a script so easily. But then maybe it says more about the me of the past rather than the me of now. Whilst writing isn't easy exactly, it is, has been often said about application - the application of the seat of the pants to the chair. I had so nearly got up and walked away from it today thinking there was maybe days of work ahead of me, but by taking it bit by bit and getting on with it I discovered that three hours was all it would take.
Of course this is just a first draft and there's a lot more work to be done, if the powers that be like it. But after years of feeling sorry for myself and maybe being a bit scared of the work, I am increasingly beginning to realise how lucky I am to be doing this job. It is frustrating that so few scripts make it through to being filmed and screened, but not aqs frustrating as it would be to have no work at all. I get paid for this work and though my fear is that I might get to the end of my life, having made a good living, but having next to nothing I've written put on TV, that is still better than not writing anything at all. And as with my live work I am getting better and better at writing scripts and doing the work outside of public scrutiny, so if I get a break then hopefully I will be in a position to produce something great.
Partly I fear working hard on a script because you put a lot of yourself into it and get it to a place where you think it's great and then it's just heartbreaking when it is rejected. And having finished this draft I do feel very strongly that it's potentially one of the best things I've written. But I think it's very unlikely to actually get made, due to various behind the scenes politics. I really hope it does, but then I felt the same about Absolutely Scrabulous and Double Act and they only exist on my computer hard drive and in my imagination.
Whatever happens it is very encouraging that this script came together so well and that I have completed it two weeks ahead of deadline (almost unheard of). It also means I can take it a bit easy next week and try and recover. Though tomorrow Stew and me are going to have to work out and learn our act for the Lyric show, which will take a bit of work, so sleep will have to wait.
It's pleasing to be back in the right frame of mind for working and there's a definite feeling that things are moving my way again (but I've been here before, so let's not get too excited). And back when I was young and keen and when I had no choice I managed to write nine episode of Time Gentlemen Please from start to finish in nine consecutive weeks. So when I'm in the zone and when I have no choice I can work quickly. I caught a couple of episodes of TGP on Sky 2 the other day and I was very impressed with the way it was put together. I couldn't imagine that I had written something so neatly and artfully constructed. But I had written it, somehow. If you haven't seen it or dismissed it at the time then I would really encourage you to give it a chance. It is a rich and rewarding comedy show, and in that case there are about 20 major characters all struggling to get their say in a 22 minute episode.
And I am still managing to walk the streets largely unrecognised, though tonight in Earl's Court I had an uncomfortable moment when a young man passing by leaned in towards me and aggressively shouted, "You are one fucking... funny guy." That could have gone in a whole different direction, but thankfully it was the aggression of like rather than the aggression of hate.
