There’s a new argument dividing our household? Forget Brexit, Trump or whether social distancing is a hoax, this is the big question of the day: Philharmonia, love it or hate it? OK, let’s be honest…
GETTING GOOD AT PERSUADING This message was intended solely for writers and film-makers, until I realised that pitching and persuading is something that everyone in the media has to get good at. And then I…
What sorts the Austens from the Dan Browns? The Truffauts from the Ed Woods? It’s not using clever words. It’s not making a political statement. It’s not even necessarily creating a dazzling plot. This is…
Last Sunday, the voters of Ukraine elected a comedian president. Volodymyr Zelenskiy won the election despite having zero experience of politics, aside from taking the role of president in a TV series. We voters are…
This excellent book on Writing for TV by Yvonne Grace has already taken up a permanent place on my bookshelf. Let me declare first that I’ve met Yvonne twice in the real world, and many…
Were you made red with range over the ending of the often excellent mini-series Amber – or did you feel it was fresh and realistic? Is it possible to break the rules as much as they did?…
Do you find it difficult to structure a treatmentso that it grips the reader as strongly as the full script? Join the club. I don’t think any writer enjoys distilling their exquisitely crafted scripts down…
OK, let’s face it, it can be tough writing a good treatment, cramming all the important events in a 99-120 page screenplay into a fraction of that length. But the point of a treatment is…
I’ve been running my Exciting Treatments workshop for over ten years now, and one of the first questions I’m asked is alway, How long is a treatment supposed to be?
It’s true screenplays don’t offer a great variety of style or voice – but that doesn’t apply to treatments, synopses and outlines. There are far fewer style rules for such outlines of your story.
A true story can be a massive elephant trap. I know, I’ve fallen in more than once. Like pebbles straight out of the sea, true stories seem so gleaming and fresh and full of potential…
It was great seeing so many people last night at Euroscript for the conversation I had with Linda Aronson (writer and guru!) – she was in good form and full of useful advice on all…
I see loads of well-written scripts (and a fair load of badly written scripts too) and I’ve seen just about every fault that writers have ever invented. But there’s one flaw that stands out as being the real killer.
Having a problem writing a drama script? Do you find it’s full of wonderful character development but somehow it just doesn’t come together? Or you like it but your story isn’t getting across to the people who read it?
I’ve got many ways that I use when I’m stuck, some wonderful tools for character development that I’ve picked up over the years. Here’s a very simple method which can have very profound and surprising results.
I know that the point of lists is to argue with them, but come on! Who in their right minds could put Prime Suspect eighteen places above The Shield? – the Guardian, today, that’s who…