Fan Fiction

Apparently, so they tell me, there are only two ways to get work as a writer on American TV.

The first is to get an Agent in America and the second, reliant on the first, is to move to L.A., get a job working as a floor runner, get your name known by the crews and slowly over a number of years get to a point where someone you already know by now is willing to read your work.

Over here in the UK things aren't much better - the BBC recently reviewed its policies on accepting spec scripts and they now only accept them 3-4 times a year instead of continuously and even then there are some fairly tight restrictions on what you can and can't submit for series - IE not a lot if the series is already showing.

So much for my game-changing ideas for Doctor Who, Big Bang Theory, Eastenders (surely its time a vampire or a werewolf stalked the Queen Victoria pub?  They're everywhere else on TV right now)

I once wrote a spec script for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  This was back in the day when it was actually possible to submit such a thing and have it read.  It was, in retrospect, totally awful - but in fairness, so was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (or as we called it in our house Star Trek: Deep Space yaaaawn Isn't There Anything Else On?).  The basic premise was to try and fuse the Federation as seen in Star Trek (cute, fluffy and intolerably so far up its own arse it can presumably see its stomach contents) with the Federation as seen in Blake's 7 (an evil conglomerate of power hungry dictators, more than happy to show you the contents of your own stomach as they fall out onto the floor)

Still: as a frustrated writer watching my favourite shows and thinking "I could write better than that" I can understand why so many people out there turn to Fan Fiction....but then again, having seen some of it - no, I really, really can't.

Fan Fiction websites have been in existence for some years now - basically they are forums much like blog posts where fans of a particular series of programmes, books, films etc effectively take certain aspects of plot or character and pose the question "so what happens next"

All very well so far.  Let's face it Series Four of Blake's 7 could do with some serious re-writing, the whole aliens-from-the-future thing was best avoided in Star Trek: Enterprise and the less said about the Twilight series the better (if ever anyone invents a machine that allows you to step into a book and meet the characters please give me a call - i will be first in the line to slap Bella Swan)

So fan fiction is a forum for people to take shows off in their own direction - only from the limited exposure I have had to such sites (in researching this post I managed nearly a full five seconds before losing my will to live and having to spend two hours in recuperation with the cats) it seems that what they mostly are is sexual fantasies.

The web, it seems, is full of stories where Kirk and Spock cement their friendship in ways that Gene Roddenberry never envisaged, where Penny from Big Bang Theory falls hopelessly in love with Sheldon Cooper - and so on.  Presumably this also happens with other programmes, but to be frank I didn't have the will to continue looking.

The site I visited when looking into this post was for The Big Bang Theory - in my humble view the funniest situation comedy on TV for some years - but from the tearful goodbye and lost love missives that seemed to dominate the site you'd be hard pushed to believe the site had anything to do with a comedy.

Which is, if you ask me, all rather sad - suggesting perhaps that the people involved have a) little originality and b) something rather missing from their own lives.  Whilst I can understand the interest in the programmes (I have my own Geek Membership Card mounted on the wall) and even a desire to carry on the stories I can't really understand this aspect of it.

Don't get me wrong - I'd love to submit a script to any of the above shows and have my name appear on the TV beneath it as the writer, but I think there is a long corridor to walk between that and endlessly pairing up the characters in this limp and rather soulless way.

Still, it has worked for some - currently the best selling book in the UK started its life on a fan fiction website.  True the book has been described by some as the death of the written word and is unlikely to ever win the Booker prize (unless they release a gratuitous sex category)

As for me - I think i'm going to save my creative energies for the National Novel Writing Month in November - this year will be the third year I have sat down and attempted to write 50,000 words of a totally original novel in 30 days.

Quite frankly - i can hardly wait

Oh No!!!! It Isn't?? (The Revenge Of The Killer Panto)

I'll be honest and say that the last time our speakers club did a Panto I really though, "Oh God, I hope we never do one of those again!"

I'd pretty much given up my brief career as an amateur thespian some years before meeting Herself (much to the relief of the theatre going public) and was bemused to have found myself volunteered for a part in the pantomime.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with British culture a pantomime is a very peculiar type of theatre production that traditionally occurs between November - January.  It is usually based loosely on a fairy tale, such as Cinderella, Babes In The Wood, Puss In Boots - or else stories like Dick Whittington (thrice Mayor of London and never once introduced a congestion charge, or bid to hold the Olympic Games)

The main characters are usually:
Principal Boy - we'll take the story of Ali Ba-Ba and the Forty Thieves (which is a Panto staple as well).  The Principal Boy (in this case Ali Ba-Ba) is always played by a woman

Principal Girl - the main love interest.  As wet as a flannel left in an overflowing sink.  Also played by a girl

Adding to this rampant tale of lesbianism (although for the purposes of the play we all take for granted that the woman playing the principal boy is a boy - don't ask) we have:

The Villain - usually a wicked step father or uncle, sometimes a wicked witch.  The key thing for any actor playing the baddie is to start with hamming it up, work from there to dangerously over the top and keep going until you have achieved the type of villain last seen tying damsels to train lines in silent movies - and then take it one step further.  The first time I was in a panto it was as Chief Weasel in Wind In The Willows - a performance that was so over the top that i had trouble staying on the stage

A Man In Drag - usually the Panto Dame.  Sometimes this is the mother of the hero, sometimes the Ugly Sisters dependent on the story

There's usually a lot of slapstick humour for the kids, a few minor celebrities,  innuendo for the adults, outrageous costumes and a hell of a lot of shouting "Oh No It Isn't" - or "It's Behind You!"

But yet again the hand of fate reached out and slapped my jowels as my long term friend and partner in musical crime Argent decided that it would be fun to revive the Speakers Club Panto and that she was going to write it.

This changed the situation from "Ye gods, no!" to, "Hmmm, now that could be fun..."

She came up with the idea of Ali Blah Blah And The Forty Thieves (which eventually became The Forty-ish Thieves, due to keeping numbers involved in the panto to achievable figures - and explained in the story as being due to the thieves being outsourced to another country)

About half-way through the plot Argent found herself a bit stuck, so I chipped in with some jokes quietly inspired by Monty Python's Flying Circus (four years training in the sound effects centre in Barrow In Furness...just for a sodding door bell) and about rival speaker clubs in the area (I bet they can afford proper nuts at their club - they've got plenty of nuts from what i hear) - and added a few songs (mostly re-worked famous songs).  Argent set about making it all make sense and suddenly we had a very funny and very well written story

Also, and due largely to a concert that both Argent and I had attended in December, we also had two more advantages than the last Panto - two Ukelele's

We had given ourselves the roles of Thief #1 and Thief #2 (my only regret being that I couldn't think of an easy way to get T-shirts with this on, a la 1960s Batman) and In-house musicians - IE the most fun parts in the show

Also - in order to save anyone the pain of actually learning lines we decided to do it as a Radio Show - ie to pretend that we were all radio actors recording in front of a live studio audience - I even built a couple of pretend mikes and covered them in silver foil

And rather amazingly - it all worked really, really well.  Our President, as the constantly complaining Sound Effects Technician was suitably enthusiastic, our villain had clearly turned her amplifier not just to 11 but to 12 (see Spinal Tap if you don't get the reference), and the undisputed star of the show was our "man in drag" as Tinkerbell - with his high-pitched voice that kept (deliberately) breaking into a low baritone

No one threw anything, no one lost any limbs and no one died - all vital signs of a successful show and people laughed in most of the right places - plus everyone seemed to enjoy the Ukeleles - so a good evening in all.

NaNoWriMo - What I Learned This Time

It's very hard to explain to someone who is not a writer why on earth you would want to put yourself through something like NaNoWriMo.

For those of you that don't already know NaNoWriMo is NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, a yearly event that challenges writers around the globe to sign up from the 1st to the 30th November to write a minimum of 50,000 words (1,666.6r, or 3-4 A4 pages per day) during that time.  The novel doesn't have to be Shakespeare when finished, nor does it have to be finished during that time.  The only rules are that you can't start writing the novel until the 1st November (although you are allowed to do planning if you so wish) and you have to write 50,000 words and submit your word count by the end of November.

I first took part in this two years ago, during November 2009.  At the time I had just finished a project that had taken 4-5 years to finish and was still stuck in endless re-writes for another two (one of which is still stuck in endless re-writes after 8 years).  I was becoming very frustrated with the whole process of writing: I was struggling a lot to get the story out partially because I was more than aware that there would be no one who was particularly interested in reading it when finished.

Anyone creative who is part of a loving but not especially creative family and circle of friends will appreciate the frustration of working for months on months on something only to pass it to a beloved person and for them to either a) not understand it or b) be unable to extend their comments beyond minor punctuation issues.

So when I heard about NatNo - I think via Blogland - I decided that it might be just the thing I needed.

It has, after all, been said by more than one writer that the one thing that a writer is unlikely to do when left alone is to do any writing.

And a funny thing happened: by sitting there every day, often with no idea what I was going to write that day, I found the ideas coming a lot easier, I found myself thinking in ways that I might not usually have done and, most importantly, I found myself freed of the endless issues that had dogged my stories - if you get stuck in a plot or character problem and you are up against a deadline to reach a certain amount of words then you have no time for going back and starting again, or for getting bogged down: you keep writing through it.  This was a great catharsis and allowed me to re-discover a love of writing that had got lost somewhere along the way.

What resulted was a fast paced, rather violent Sci-Fi romp, but it also freed me up to go back to one of the longer projects with new energy and finally finish it (this became my longest and best work to date)

Of course all of this was two years ago when I was going through a period where I had a lot of free time on my hand.  This year when I came to do it again I found that the main times I had free for writing were weekends and two evenings per week. That meant a lot of sitting in front of the computer for long periods, just plugging away.  At times I will admit that this became something of a chore, but it is a worthwhile exercise - inspiration cannot always be relied on, but exercising those brain muscles increases the chances that it will arrive sooner than later.

It also helped to know that my friend Argent was also doing the challenge - we constantly exchanged word counts and comments about problems we were facing: the fact that I knew someone out there who was rapidly catching up with my word count kept me going through some of the more difficult stages.

If I'm brutally honest about the work I did this year I would have to admit that there is a lot of running-about in search of a plot - but what did I learn this time?

Plot - when I went into NatNo last time I hadn't done any preparation, but I had a very clear idea of what my story was and what it was trying to achieve right from the start - I think that was missing this time.  I had a great start: but I hadn't completely worked out where that start led to.

NatNo forced me to keep going and be quite inventive - split the story into two parts for a while, think about the way I used language: could I expand my language?  My writing style tends to be quite focused on getting the story told and I sometimes forget to describe where we are or talk about other stuff like emotional reactions, character development etc - so although I think that was missing from this I am more aware of it now

Characters - I had a lot of what can only be "cardboard cut-out" people in my story - characters that I didn't know the first thing about and were only there to add to the body count.  Only two of the main characters, maybe as many as three or four, actually had a personality after that - so my advice to myself for next time is that your main characters in a story should always go on a personal journey and change during the story and that you should decide one or two things about your secondary characters that roughly define how they will act

Empty space - pretty much each day I was thinking "how am i going to expand this load of nonsense to be 50,000 words" - and yet I made the target with two days to spare.  I think one of the things that has often held me back as a writer is that concern that I won't be able to write something that is long enough to be called a novel, so I think that this has reminded me not to be afraid of that space on the screen that is sitting empty and flashing at you.

Finally I am glad that I did it because now I finally feel able to go back one final time to my 8-year old project.  Writing in such a focused manner for a month has left me with a few thoughts around the characters in that and their reactions that I'm hoping will be enough for me to get it back on track.

It will take me longer than a month to do this - the last long project I wrote (after my previous NatNo) took twelve months to finish the first draft, but only 3-4 for the second - and I know that if I hadn't done the project two years ago then I would never have been able to finish it.

So what next?  Well, I'm thinking NatSoWriMo, or NatAlWriMo - these are my own invention - to write as many SOngs, or an ALbum in a month

Who knows what might come out of that?

BTW - final word count: 50,108

Re-write, anybody?

I hate writing second drafts.

No doubt there are people out there who can look at a piece they have written and with no more than a flick of a computer key delete, add or amend their near perfect prose.  These people are, no doubt, called Professional Writers.

The likes of us mere mortals, aka me, need a bit more notice.  We can't just sit there with a pen and calmly cross through and add willy nilly.  Oh no, that would be far too easy.

For whatever reason my brain needs time to warm up, to get into the story so to speak.  This inevitably means printing out my first draft and starting from scratch, typing up what is showing on the paper until such time as Mr Brain kicks in and starts telling me what needs expanding or re-wording.

I think this may be linked to my approach to writing.  One of the things you constantly hear from writers and writer groups is that it's all about using the strongest word at the appropriate time.  Weak words must be illiminated at all costs as this shows weak writing.

And to be fair, to an extent i agree - using the right word or an interesting phrase can raise writing above the crowd and make it come alive, but it can also scream to the reader "look at me, i'm being clever at you"

For me personally writing is more about the rhythmn and flow.  Really good writing should be like a background piece of set - you know it is there, it helps to set the scene and makes you feel that the place you are at is real - but if its a really good set then you probably shouldn't notice it in the first place because it's done its job of getting you there.

And in order to achieve that flow - well, you can't just jump in can you?  You have to be there, in the scenery and feeling what the characters are saying to you.

I guess life is the same in many ways: you don't have much right to comment until you've been there yourself I guess...