Some Self Imposed Rules For Reviewing

I know quite a few people who are professional stand ups, actors, writers and directors. Occasionally, they are all of those, and more. What unites a great many of them is their shared hatred of reviewers. If it’s not hatred, then it’s a sense of bored dismissal, an agreement that reviewers generally don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Their dislike includes the reviewers who actually like them, and give them positive write-ups, which seems at least fair. Another thing that all these performers share is the knowledge that I myself am an occasional reviewer, which as you might imagine, comes up reasonably rarely in conversation, presumably in a failed attempt to avoid any awkwardness.

What then, is the point of a reviewer? Or perhaps more crucially, what is the point of being a reviewer? Is it just to see shows for free? Absolutely not (Obviously it is that a little bit). Is it a misplaced confidence in the importance of your own opinion and voice? Ditto, and (ditto). For me, it’s increasingly about my own learning. I myself am an actor, director, writer (at least that’s what I tell myself), and it’s fascinating to see what other people are doing with the same ideas that I’m working on in any given year. Plus, it’s just interesting to have a conversation about whatever it is you’ve just seen. It doesn’t even matter that, in the whirlwind of the internet, not many people are going to listen. Let’s be honest: that’s how usual conversations work, too.

There are certainly different types of reviewers, ones that are funny, ones that are incoherent, ones that simply retell the plot of what they see, and ones that are desperate to show off how much they know. I’m still trying to work out what kind of reviewer I want to be, and I suspect that up until now I’ve been all of those things. Well, perhaps not the first one. What I think a reviewer has no choice about is that they have to be interesting to read. That’s all a review is, after all: a collection of words in the same space. And as such, the only purpose – the only point – is to have those words read. So they may as well be at least not boring.

To that end, I try to impose upon myself certain rules when writing a review. These rules do not (and should not) apply to every single reviewer, and indeed I’m pretty sure I’ve failed at a couple of these rules in more than a few reviews, particularly when it’s the middle of the fringe festival and I’m trying to write six reviews in half as many hours and my thesaurus has given up trying to give me alternatives for ‘compelling’. But as self-imposed rules go, I think they’re pretty sound, and I share them with you now in the interests of making myself a better writer, and possibly filling up another blog entry.

·         Say Something Nice. I think it’s extraordinarily rare that you’ll sit through something that doesn’t have something to recommend it. It may be a production that has somehow missed the central message of its own script, but there may be a supporting actress that is always magnetic to watch. I’m not saying that you have to lie – after all, there are potentially audience members who are reading your review in order to sway their decision as to where to go tonight, and it won’t do anyone any favours if you say only good things when it’s actually a pretty shoddy production – but if you can’t find something positive to say (even if it’s a piece of backhanded hackery like ‘I liked what they were trying to achieve’), then you’re probably in the wrong job. Your parents managed the old ‘well, the set was impressive’ lie at your first production of Jocasta Baby Killer, so you can find something nice to say about the LX design. Oh, and by the way: when I say that you might be sitting through a bad production – do sit through it. Until the end. Yes, I know audiences say that life is too short for bad theatre, and if you leave early you might get hold of the good bratwursts before the stall sells out, but they have the excuse of being the public, and the public are expected to be rude. If you’re reviewing – for a newspaper, or for an online blog read only by you – you stay until the bows. It’s the only way to write an accurate review.

·         Say Something Quotable.  This gets at the heart of what the point of a reviewer is, I think. Your words are your stock in trade, even if you’re an unpaid freelance. I have read plenty of beautifully written reviews, full of fulsome praise, excitedly claiming the show as the best thing the reviewer has seen … but the review itself is useless. Because of the way that the sentences are structured, there’s nothing that the media team can cut and paste to use on posters. And, despite what you may think, most groups are wary of editing quotes from reviews to make more sense in shorter form. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, however. It still has to be true, however. You need to tread a very fine line between being nice and quotable, and just hacking out a line that’s so relentlessly positive that you know it’s going to be used on the poster. Just remember, if it’s on the poster, your name is attached to it.

·         Say Something Funny (Or Interesting). I have problems with this, I admit. Despite that, I think it’s the most important of my own self-imposed rules. Local press are notoriously bad at filling up most of their word count with a bland synopsis of the plot. That’s not a review: that’s a bland synopsis of the plot. What I try to do in my reviews (and probably increasingly fail at, the deeper into a month long fringe I get) is to have a discussion. There are plenty of reviewers who are excellent at reporting what happened on stage, or how successful the costume choices were, and on occasion, I will be one of those reviewers. But I also like to be a bit chatty in my reviews, veer off subject slightly (as much as my editor will allow me), and discuss my own, personal reaction to what I’ve seen. I don’t mean that I’ll use the word ‘I’ in my reviews (the reviewer is the least interesting aspect of their own review), but I like to treat the reviews as an extension of the types of conversations I imagine audience members to be having on the way out of a show. At the most extreme end of this rule is benign arrogance: I would like to think that one day, some readers are reading my reviews for my voice, regardless of what show I’m reviewing.

·         Say Something Helpful. This is probably the most contentious of my self-imposed rules and certainly the one that I do the least. It again hits back at the heart of what the point of being a reviewer is. Is it liking the sound of your own voice? Or is it being some sort of half-assed dramaturg? Those two possibilities, I admit, are not exactly alien to one another. There is certainly some kind of arrogance in anybody – a reviewer, an audience member, an uninvited harasser on twitter – telling you that you ‘should have done it like this’ Presumably the stand up, the writer, the actors company, whatever – has spent several months making their show the best it can be. The last thing they need is some hack (who hasn’t spent several months making their show the best it can be) coming in and giving their unwarranted opinion. And yet. If there is an aspect of the show that frustrates you – pace, a sexist script, or a confusing ending, for instance, then I think it’s appropriate to discuss that in your review. After all, it is entirely possible that you are absolutely correct in your judgement, and if that’s the case, it’s only fair on both the audiences, and more importantly, the performers, that you bring it to light. If you’re wrong, then fair enough, all the other reviews will highlight that, and you will be ostracised as you deserve. But if you are correct, it may well be that your review is the first time they’ve had a problem that has been nagging them all through production defined, and your critique may be the thing that jumpstarts them from a mediocre show to a great one. And you will have helped, perhaps. Just remember point one. Say something nice.

·         Don’t Say What It’s About. I hate spoilers. I have a whole essay to bore you with another time about spoilers. It’s cheap, nasty and lazy. Essentially, by giving away parts of the plot – particularly the surprising and exciting bits – you are highlighting that you don’t actually know what to write about, that you don’t have an opinion. When you give away plot points in your review, you are filling up your word count by basically cutting and pasting the good work that someone else has done, and passing it off as your own. This is very cheap writing. I understand that some reviewers want to show off that they’ve ‘got it’, or that they have understood the more obscure references (I myself have sailed perilously close to this more than once), or indeed to communicate to the performer that they laughed (or cried) in all the right places. I understand also that it’s challenging to talk about a show that you’ve really loved (or hated) without discussing what’s happened onstage. But, not to labour the point too much, if you are telling me what the story is, then you are not discussing the production. If you are telling me the plot (Prince’s dad gets killed, he fails to do anything about it for three hours), then you are not telling me anything that I couldn’t read in a script, or probably in the company’s own flyer. I recognise that you don’t want your review to be too opaque or obscure, but if you can’t write five hundred words without giving away the ending or blowing all the best jokes, then perhaps reviewing isn’t for you.

So. Those are the rules that I attempt to impose upon myself in each review. As I’ve indicated, I more than occasionally fail. But I do try. It’s important to remember that reviews are not disposable and throwaway, despite what my performer friends might say and hope. It’s important to remember that the reviews one writes will actually be read by at least one person. And as such, there’s a certain responsibility. Now, that’s a rather portentous and pretentious line on which to end, but it has the ring of truth to it. Reviewing isn’t just about the sound of your own voice and seeing lots of shows for free. (I’ve already told you it is, a bit.)

Monday 8th June 2015

In my final year at college, studying theatre, we were told to write and direct our own play. I can’t quite remember what the criteria were, but I know that we were required to come up with at least ten minutes. In a response that was to typify the majority of my writing since, I found it difficult to keep mine from sprawling over half an hour.

That play – which would have been produced in the spring of 2001, I think – was generally well received (certainly it was very well acted). It was a murder mystery with four actors playing four parts each, and – although I didn’t get the chance to write this – the chance of four different endings. It was therefore almost inevitably called ‘Four Play’. I did consider a whole lot of other titles before going for the pun, but nothing else sold the concept quite so well. A lot of the humour of the piece was inspired by watching far too many screenings of the Tim Curry film Clue (which also had multiple endings, and a frenetic, breathless final act), the acidic humour of Mad magazine, and – now that I think about it – an experience I had on another play in a previous drama course, back in Croydon.

I was in a farce called An Italian Straw Hat, and found myself playing two fairly sizeable roles: an aging grumpy old man, and an immaculate, humourless waiter. I’d like to think that this was to explore my very obvious and significant range as an actor, but it’s more likely that there simply weren’t enough men to fill the parts. I don’t remember it as a particularly joyous production – more skewed towards bombastic performance rather than acting – which, even in a farce, is leaning towards tedium. But there was one moment where I had to leave the stage as the grumpy old man, and then return as the immaculate butler in roughly the same amount of time that it’s taken you to read that sentence.

Much of my ego obviously got a kick out of this – managing to switch between two entirely different characters, as well as a complete costume change, in under 40 seconds. In the event, I’m not entirely convinced that anybody noticed the effort I was putting in, and that includes my fellow cast members. I’ve chosen to conclude that that proves just how devastatingly impressive my character switch was. Or something.

So, anyway. All that was in my writing DNA in early 2001. In the week of the show, the course co-ordinator took me aside and mentioned that a student on another theatre course hadn’t gotten around to writing the hour long play that she was meant to for the Edinburgh Fringe that summer. Each year, a select few of the college were able to ride of coat-tails and get a show on at the fringe. Except that this girl didn’t actually have a play finished. ‘And this,’ my course co-ordinator intoned, ‘is fringe material.’ He asked if I’d be interested in taking the ‘Four Play’ up to the Edinburgh Fringe. I was, despite never having been up there, and not truly appreciating the magnitude of the offer. However, the lazy playwright got wind of this idea, and pulled out all the stops to hack out her play (which I increasingly now think was the whole point of my job offer). Her play went up to the fringe, where it was reviewed with the classic line ‘the worst thing on the fringe this year’ (which, as is the contractual obligation, they blew up to a huge size and plastered it all over their posters). ‘Four Play’, meanwhile, was liked well enough that the cast repeated it the following year (after I’d left the course) for a revival. A shaky video of that exists somewhere. I always knew that I’d want to write the play again to full length, and establish the four different endings. However, as is often the case when somebody does a drama course, I entirely avoided acting for about seven years. Once I’d moved down south, I scoped out a few local drama groups, most of which at that time had no interest in producing new work (and certainly not one from a writer they didn’t know). One of the most promising was the New Venture Theatre, and so eventually I posted my colours there. I knew that I’d still have to play the long game -  there was no way they were going to offer a directing / writing gig to someone they’d only just met – and so I had a couple of fun years as actor, and directing a short play (by Mark Wilson) for a new writing showcase. After a while, I felt able to submit my proposal for a production. I’m sure that there were probably a couple of people who raised eyebrows at the idea of a writer directing his own work (quite often a pretty strong signal of self-involved self-satisfaction) but somehow I managed to get it through the gate.

And for the second time, I was blessed with an excellent cast, and a truly amazing back stage crew. There were around 120 complete costume changes, and on some nights, it felt like half of those changes took place in the last twenty minutes. Most audience members seemed to have a great time, some said that the play clearly had a future beyond the confines of amateur theatre, and many gently pointed out that it was a bit long. On this last they were absolutely correct.

So, while it needed a pretty savage edit, even people who had criticised the length said that it didn’t really feel that long – it was just, in order to make the whole thing commercially viable, it needed a chop. This was true, and I was content to leave it alone for a while as my mind attempted to solve the problem without my interference (due to the complicated nature of the set up, it was never going to be as simple as, say, cutting the third scene – each moment was stacked on the other like a house of cards). Meanwhile, almost in passing, someone asked me if I’d heard of a thing in London called ‘The 39 Steps’. I said that I hadn’t, and the conversation drifted elsewhere.

In the five years since, I have of course heard of ‘The 39 Steps’, and I’m aware of the similarities  between that production and ‘Four Play’: both are period pieces where a limited number of actors play multiple parts. It seemed like someone had got to the joke before I did, so I was intrigued enough to check out the London show to see if ‘Four Play’ was a lost cause, or if it was entirely different.

Well. It’s not entirely different. I found myself in London recently, and had a chance to see ‘The 39 Steps’ for myself. ‘Four Play’ does indeed share a very central gag with 39 – that there are four actors (why did it have to be four?) playing lots of different parts. A lot of the joy of both plays is that they are fringe shows done big – unashamedly punching above their weight, and we can see the actors working hard just to keep up. There’s even a joke in both plays that is essentially the same, when the script ‘cheats’ with an apparent fifth cast member in order to facilitate a plot point. Understandably, I spent much of the production squirming between enjoying the show and seething with annoyance. Seems like I can still switch between personas really quickly.

I did some homework to see who had their original production first, and – perhaps surprisingly – I was actually pleased to discover that ‘The 39 Steps’ had beaten me to the punch, in their original fringe production, by about four years. I think I’d rather that than the alternative: that I’d written and produced something, and then did nothing with it for nearly ten years while someone else managed to get in first. That would have been upsetting.

And yet. Although there is clearly a lot of shared DNA, there are marked differences. 39 delights in the impossible task of creating a Hollywood movie on stage, complete with planes, trains, and car crashes. ‘Four Play’, on the other hand, gets overly complicated by getting trapped by its own form and set up: actors aren’t able to arrive on stage as one particular character until they have the opportunity to leave the stage as a previous character, and as a result there have to be additional narrative quirks to facilitate the entrances and exits, as well as some humour coming from the actors/characters forcing the others on stage into ever quicker and more difficult changes.

The humour in 39 (I would claim) is also slightly broader: they have fun with breaking the reality of the staging once or twice, and the joke I spoke about earlier, the one about the fake fifth cast member, is actually somewhat different. In ‘Four Play’, it occurs relatively early in the text, and is reasonably subtle: all actors are on stage, interrupted by a knocking on the door. They are momentarily confused before shrugging it off and continuing. We didn’t explain the gag any further (it’s the first time the play implicitly references the number of actors), and I knew each night that if the audience laughed right away, then they’d got the gag, and we had them for the rest of the night. And so it proved. In ‘The 39 Steps’, they lampshade the joke a lot more, having an actor yell out in frustration ‘This is meant to be a play for four actors!’ (again, why did they have to have four?). The audience enjoyed it, but I felt it laboured the joke. That said, it was an indication that, no matter how much ‘Four Play’ and ’39 Steps’ appear to have in common, they are actually quite different.

However, I’ve spent a lot of time since undecided if I want to be all depressed about the whole thing – throw it all away – or take comfort in the fact that there’s clearly a market for this kind of thing. Nowadays, it’s all about the money: when I was able to produce ‘Four Play’ the first time round, doing it with a local theatre group – complete with its own studio space, etc, easily saved me thousands. Now, if I was going to produce it myself, it would be beyond me. So I consider the possible thought processes of any potential producer – will they react with ’39 Steps already did this,’ or ‘if people liked 39 Steps, they’ll love this! ..’

In the end, I rather think I’ll strap myself in, complete the edits, and then hawk it around to any possible interested producers or agents. Because, after all, I rather like this script. And after all, if ’39 Steps’ really did get to my idea of four actors playing multiple parts, I can take comfort in the reality that we can’t possibly have been the first.  

Sunday 31 May 2015

Tomorrow, I start a new series of acting classes at the New Venture Theatre, for all the Mondays in June. Before, the classes have mainly been centred around improvisation and confidence in performance, but this time around, we're going to have a look at script work. There's a line that I now quote in my classes - and annoyingly, I can't actually remember who I'm stealing it from - that goes something like, the script is just the blueprint, not the final product. This is something I think a lot of us could afford to bear in mind a lot more keenly.

 

Obviously, we should have a lot of respect for the writer's words - hell, I write myself, I know how much time, effort, and low level depression I put into an average script - but I notice that a few actors and directors feel really handcuffed by a script. Sometimes, admittedly, that's the playwrights fault, when the script is too exacting in its directions, saying that an actor should exit stage left when there's no real reason for the actor to leave in that direction. I remember a good chunk of rehearsal time being sunk because two characters were meant to be having a private conversation, but another character was in earshot. That third character had no more lines, no more narrative relevance, and was clearly not meant to be on stage anymore. But the director refused to have him leave the stage, simply because there was no stage direction dictating that. They were allowing the story to get trampled over by a stray LX cue.

 

But I like the idea of a script being your starting point for a production, rather than the end game. For many that's obvious - nobody pays £70 for a West End show simply to pick up a copy of the text and read it in silence - but like many obvious things, simply re-stating it in slightly different language makes us reassess and realise it anew. Plus, if the script is any good, it can certainly put up with a little punishment. Shakespeare is particularly good at this, and it's one of the reasons why his plays still get performed 400 years later. You can rip them apart, dress them in Gulf War fatigues, and make them continually relevant to the audience watching.

 

Obviously, not everyone agrees. I remember talking with a director as they prepared to take on Romeo And Juliet. He was keen to do an entirely original, refreshing production, unlike any that had been done before. I mentioned that I'd enjoyed the 90s film version (the one with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio), at which he sniffed, and muttered: 'That's not Shakespeare.' I knew then that this was a conversation that wasn't going to last much longer, and in any case, I didn't quite understand it, coming from a man who habitually did all his Shakespeare productions in non-Elizabethan dress. If you're going to make such an absolute criticism, at least commit to it absolutely.

 

Anyway. Five acting classes at the NVT in June, all to do with fear of script, and using it as a blueprint. I've got one more Iron Clad Improv class (tonight) at the Cricketers in The Lanes, and then we're back to the DukeBox Theatre from next Sunday.

 

Writing has been going well this week, but I'm mournfully aware that I've just had a week off. Check in this time next week, and you'll see if I've kept up my word count.

 

Acting Class details here and improve drop-in details here.

Saturday 4th October 2014

Wonderful rehearsal during the week for The Snow Queen.  We introduced a couple of the songs to the cast, all of whom seemed be on board with it from the get-go (there was even a bit of foot tapping, which is a pretty good sign). At the start of this year, I didn’t know that I was going to be writing a play, much less a Christmas play, much (even more) less one with songs in it. I have no sense of tune or rhythm, so this was a pretty hubristic move on my part. But I seem to have managed to write a decent batch of songs with most of my dignity intact – or at the very least, I’ve managed to surround myself with enough people who are able to spot the tautological errors in my lyrics and nip them in the bud before less forgiving eyes see them.

I imagine this is the same for anyone who writes a song, but there is something very humbling and actually disconcerting about listening to a group of people sing something that previously was just a collection of words on a page, wrestled from my sleep-deprived imagination. Of course, I have previously already had people perform words that I’ve written, but that’s always been prose, and –as far as I can remember – always directed by myself. There might have been an occasion that someone else has directed one of my plays, but if there is, I have managed to forget it. Whatever way you read that, it doesn’t say a great deal for my relationship with my own ego.

I guess another reason why I was so fascinated and discombulated by hearing the songs was that I hadn’t had any involvement whatsoever with the music. As I’ve indicated, with absolutely no degree of self-deprecation, but a decent dollop of actually telling the truth, I don’t have any real musical talent whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that the songs I’ve written are terrible (PLEASE COME TO OUR SHOW), but I can’t write a single note of music. It’s lucky then that I find myself working with two fantastic women who have been creating original music for the songs. They give my songs credit, if that makes any sense.

I suddenly realised (if I hadn’t already realised it at some other point in time, and then promptly forgotten it) that I seem to always take on projects that will frankly terrify me. I don’t say this as some kind of humble brag (well, maybe I do a bit), but more as a slightly confused observation of wonder. The fact that I’m adapting The Snow Queen, attempting to do something vaguely unique with it (of which more another time), and sticking some songs in it is ridiculous, to say the least. Good ridiculous, I hasten to add, but still. One of the (many) things that was breaking me out in cold night-sweats was the songs. Since I (and I know I’ve banged on a lot about this, but there’s a point, honest) have very little previously measured talent in that department, it was certainly a thing that, if it all stuttered and coughed up blood, could be well levelled at me as fair criticism – reaching beyond my natural limitations. But I’m not entirely sure that there’s anything wrong with that. Why play safe?

We have yet to go through all the scenes, but once we do, it’s a bit of a rollercoaster. Not that I’m trying to have a scene with a rollercoaster in it (but now that you mention it ..) I’m asking for quite a bit in the way of special effects and props (the snow alone is giving people pause), and we’re very soon going to be starting a crowd funding campaign (yeah, it had to happen eventually), and there’s an atmosphere of something very special around the corner.  Frankly, I can’t wait. 

Tuesday 29th July 2014

Going through the sixth / seventh / eighth draft of The Snow Queen. I don't even know anymore; the drafts have all sort of blended into each other; fixing the problems in one as I reprint out the next, printing out the next knowing already that such and such a scene has to be swapped with another, except that there's no real way of doing that yet ... and at least three characters haven't been fully sketched out yet .. All the usual stuff that happens around this time of the rewrites. 

At the moment, I'm far too close, scaling the sheer cliff face of the script to know if it's actually any good or not (I'm going to have to have another sweep of the original Hans Christian Andersen before I do too many more rewrites, that's for certain). But on one thing alone, I appear to be in pretty good shape. Currently, I have almost all the story that I need to tell down on paper - in about half the pages that I need. This is very good news. The last script I produced clocked in at over two hours. People didn't mind too much, but they didn't mind with the qualification that, yes, it was too long. Plus, this is a kid's show. There's no way that I'm going to be able to get those kids to sit still for a hour and a half, let alone over two. I was initially slightly concerned, because as well as all the actual plot and narrative stuff I'm writing for this thing, I'm also writing songs (yeah, I know. Shush). I thought that perhaps that once I'd come up with the songs, there would be room for only the lightest and flimsiest of plots. I've been watching a lot of Disney, to see how they get away with it. Turns out there's a lot of swinging from tall buildings. 

The other thing that's been a bit of a challenge this week is the casting for our next batch of short plays - for CAST IRON 3 - in September. We always knew that we would lose some of our regular company this time round, to the likes of Edinburgh, summer holidays, and 'a life' (yeah, me neither), but it's been a particularly tough call in terms of casting and the like. I think we've almost got it sorted, but it has meant that our various casts have significantly less time to rehearse their plays. 

I Can See Clearly Now

My contact lenses finally turned up this week, almost exactly three weeks late. They come through the post, and are monthly disposoables. Annoyingly for someone like me, they get sent in batches of three months at a time, which normally means that at about week eight, I've either lost a pair, accidentally ripped a lens while taking it out, or fallen asleep with them in. Usually all three. That was certainly the (lens) case this time round. 

I normally wear glasses day-to-day, so it's not actually that much of a problem, except that I was in a play for two weeks that was set in a time when plastic, black-rimmed glasses were almost certainly not a common sight. Anyone that saw you with such a modern affectation would have attempted to have had you burned as a witch. Now, whilst it's true that the play was all about witch hunting, I'm not sure the director would have been willing to go with me on such an abstract reading of the text. 

Which presented me with a bit of a problem. Without my glasses (or lenses), I'm pretty much blind. Look up, now. You see that bit of writing that's in front of you? There. No, there. Well, alright, behind you. Work with me on this. That bit of writing. Yeah, well, without my glasses, I couldn't read it. I'm not absolutely convinced that I would be able to even see that there was writing there in the first place. 

It was frustrating. I was convinced that my acting (whatever that is) was being eroded by at least 60%, simply because I couldn't really see anyone. And most of acting is reacting, right? I couldn't see what (or, occasionally, who) I was meant to be reacting to. It was a promenade performance as well, which meant that every night I had to address a character on their arrival, despite being completely clueless as to where exactly they were arriving from. Luckily, I'm apparently not one of those people who, upon removing their glasses, has to do a comedy squint for the next two hours. Allegedly, when im not wearing my glasses, I don't look at all like a man who has lost his glasses. At least, that's what I've been told. Perhaps people are just being kind. Or, even more likely, perhaps people are just saying that to me, safe in the knowledge that I will then take off my glasses, trusting them. They can then spend any downtime pointing and jeering at me, confident that it will never rebound on them, because I will never be able to see their cruel and derisive mockery. See, that's the trouble with nice people being nice. Can't trust them. 

It was a pity, because lots of the rehearsal had gone so well. I'm not claiming that I was doing any particularly great acting during the rehearsal process (and indeed, this is not the blog entry when I get into detail about quite how much I was doubting myself), but there were a couple of times when I was able to relax and feel the sense of the scene, the emotion. There's been a lot said about how you should just relax and let the character come to you. I think that's far easier said than done, because you either don't trust the advice and build a character that, while convincing enough, is still fairly fake. Or you relax too much, don't put the effort in, and become passive, which isn't interesting to anyone. Obviously I'm over-generalising massively here, but you see the point. But there's a lot to be said for how much you can discover from your character simply by how the other characters (or, more precisely, the other actors) demonstrate their perception of you. 

This is pretty much how it was in rehearsal. I'd be floundering around, not really knowing what I was doing, then catch the eye of another character, reacting to me. And if I was open enough, responsive enough, their expression would give me everything I needed. On more than one occasion, whatever they were doing would completely blindside me, and I'd find myself overcome, not entirely sure how I was going to end up at the end of a scene. For an actor in week eight of rehearsal, that's nothing short of glorious. 

This was all down to the person opposite me. So when, in production week of all weeks, I couldn't see a damn thing, it was actually quite worrying. There were at least a couple of scenes when I was having to throw brooding glances at someone about twenty feet away. Someone who due to my near-blindness, I didn't know for a fact wasn't actually thirty feet away. And three yards to the left. Basically, I had to trust my fellow actors were looking after me, and not pointing in derision at my pathetic blindness. Which I'm almost entirely confident didn't happen. 

Wednesday 4 June 2014

Oversaw my first rehearsal for Return To Steyning last night. It's a short play by a local writer - Richard Hearn - that's going to be performed in our next 'Cast Iron' night of new writing next month at the DukeBox Theatre. Yes, that's next month: but I haven't had a chance to do any rehearsals with the cast yet, mainly because I was fully committed to another play until the middle of May. People have been asking me what I'm going to be doing with all my evenings back. Other people, people who actually know me, haven't bothered to ask. 

I was late for rehearsal. This is both highly improbable, and virtually impossible, given that the rehearsal space last night is only about six minutes away from where I live, and it's pretty much a straight line from one to the other (indeed, if you veer too much to the left, you end up in the sea). But I still managed to be late - in fact, I'd already walked past where I needed to be. By the time I eventually arrived, my cast were already deep into rehearsal. In real terms, they didn't really need me. This is both encouraging and mollifying. 

They were doing so well, in fact, that I was loathe to interrupt them. But I did anyway, because this will be a very quick turnaround of rehearsal. Normally, I like to give my actors a bit of elbow room, and not straight jacket them into a limited character that I've already decided to pen them into. I'm not always successful at that, possibly because I like the sound of my own director-y voice too much, but I was very chatty last night - hopefully more chatty than I will be at any subsequent rehearsal, partially because I'm having to abandon at least some of my high ideals as a director and give the cast fairly limited parameters to work with. My justification is the limited rehearsal time: we don't have a helluva lot of time to try things out and go down weird artistic blind alleys (which of course, are the very best kind of blind alleys to wander down). The cast understood this, and accepted my constant interruptions with great grace and intelligence. 

Haven't had a chance to do a rewrite on the next draft of the current script yet, despite the two ideas that I had to insert into the text yesterday. I have, however, managed to scribble some notes on the most recent hard copy. I always find that the more time you spend away from a WIP, the more difficult it can be to get back on board - leave it alone for more than a few days, and it feels more than overwhelming to attempt to get anywhere near the script, like it's some kind of monotholic beast. But as long as you're checking in every so often on the days that you're not able to fully commit to the writing, then you've still got a leash on the monster, and it shouldn't escape you too easily. 

Have managed to do a bit of writing today that didn't involve actual writing. Now, that sounds like the sort of half-assed excuses that people who don't want to go through the actual tedium of third, fourth, and twelfty drafts come up with (and, indeed, it is a little bit), but I had two sudden solutions to plot problems (or more specifically, dialogue problems) on my way to work. In fact, while I was cycling to work. In the rain. It's true that I very often come up with writing ideas while in the shower, but I guess not so often when getting caught in a shower of a more natural type. 

Not only was I on my bike (not exactly a pen and paper to hand), but I was on my way to work, where I knew that I wouldn't be able to write any of this up for eight or so hours. And I know what I'm like - what loads of writers are like - it doesn't take too much for those really good ideas to go fluttering away on the wind. The good side of that is that you can kid yourself that the novel / short story / sketch you've finally hacked out would've been so much better if only you hadn't gotten distracted at just the critical moment. The bad side, of course, is the rather disquieting assumption that you will now forever labour under, that whatever it is you've finished, could have been so much better in some alternate, never to be realised, reality. There is a third possibility, of course. Equally as likely. But since that mainly involves managing to rescue your initial ideas and discovering that they - and so, you - weren't that good in the first place - it's probably not a thread that we want to pick at for too long. 

So, I found a post-it note (other informational reminder slips of paper with a mildly sticky strip on the back are available), and scrawled a couple of words on it, so that I would remember what the hell had occurred to me w hen I got back to the writing proper. They were 'FRIEND' and 'POWER', which, out of context, don't seem like particularly original words - and, indeed, they're not. It's just the clever-clever scenes that I've got bubbling under that make them relevant. (Of course the scenes are clever-clever: I haven't actually written them yet. Once I've got to work with my writers pen with all the elegance and subtlety of a caffeine-addicted spider monkey armed with a claw hammer, I'm sure I can reduce my works of potential genius to works of actual mediocrity. Oh, you don't believe me? Ye of little faith).

But I've been burnt by this method before, and not just by single words on Post-Its. On more occasions that I care to admit, I've scribbled eight pages on the way home, my fevered and over-excited mind working far faster than my penmanship can keep up with, only knowing that the words burning onto the bits of A4 have genuine wit, clarity and emotion. Only to get home and discover that the scribblings are literally scribblings, and I can't decipher what most of the words say.  

Apart from 'TURNIP' and 'MUSEUM'. 

I mean, what the hell? Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea after all. 

Monday 2nd June 2014

Gearing up for the next lot of short form improv sessions, which start again this Sunday (the 8th), now that we've had our break during the Brighton Fringe. We're doing something ever so slightly different with this block of sessions. When you've been doing improv for a while (and it doesn't have to be a particularly long while, not really), it's somewhat easy to fall into certain 'traps' - maybe you're often going for the gag, or taking over scenes, so that everyone else on stage has to follow your lead, whether they like it or not. Or maybe it's the exact opposite - perhaps your mind goes completely blank, and you can't think of anyway to progress the scene, and so you prefer to let someone else do all the hard work. At some point, all of us have been guilty of that to some degree.

These next four workshops - over the majority of June - take this into account, with a series of drop-ins that we're calling 'Iron Clad Surgery'. The idea is that each separate session will take into account one of these challenges, and tailor the exercises accordingly, to help performers begin to sharpen the tools in their toolbox. Perhaps the best thing about this is that most of (if not all) the exercises and games we'll be using this month are still the ones that will be familiar to those who have been popping into improv over the last year or so anyway: so it's not like that the unsure or inexperienced are going to be thrown a curve ball. The drop in sessions are as open to beginners as always, it's just that the content of each workshop is going to be more heavily weighted toward whatever particular challenge we're tackling that week. Anyway, for further details, you can have a look at [embed]http://andthisisandrewallen.weebly.com/ironclad-improv.html[/embed] . 

There, you'll also see details of our upcoming long form course, which starts at the end of June.

Tonight, a few of us rocked up to the DukeBox Theatre in Hove to take a few photographs of a regular improv session (not that there's any such thing). It seems we might get an article in the local Argus at the end of the week, so it was thought a good idea to get some photos done, on the off-chance that they might end up accompanying the article. I'm not all that fond of having my photo taken, so it was a bit of an effort not to be openly grimacing in each one. This, by the way, might seem a little difficult to swallow, since - as the person who runs Iron Clad Improv - I made a concerted effort to make sure I was in each and every photograph, and more to attempt to look like I knew what I was talking about. We'll see how successful I was if any when any of the photos get published on Friday. 

In real terms, I didn't get all that much writing done today. In fact, it was close to zero. I managed to think of a single rhyme for a song that appears in Act 2 (however improbable, I am still considering sticking songs in this thing), and scrawl a few notes in the margin for Act 1, but other than that, I've produced nothing today. I'm OK with that - first day back at work after a writing holiday away, after all - but I can't afford to let this happen too many more times. It is always so easy - so seductive, even - to allow a day to go past without any writing whatsoever, and to tell yourself that that'sOK, because you'll always catch up tomorrow.

You never will. 

Sunday 1 June 2014

Had a haircut and shaved the beard off in the last couple of days, and it feels like I've lost something roughly the weight of my own head. When the beard first started growing, back in January, it was mainly down to laziness, but then I got a part in a play in which the beard seemed to quite suit, so I kept it for that. And while enough people seemed to like it, there came a time that I was pretty keen to be rid of it, particularly as I was beginning to look like Serpico by way of Jesus (the Robert Powell version, obviously, not one that actually existed). 

And now it's gone, and I look concenviably younger. Only by about three months, but hell, I'll take what I can get. It's a good enough novelty while it lasts. The thing is, I'm not usually one of these people who gets their hair cut on even a semi-regular basis. (and yes, I realise while typing that last sentence that I could simply have replaced the phrase 'one of those people' with the shorter, and more accurate, 'people'. I'm pretty sure that there have been years when I've only had to cut it once. Not such a big deal when you're bass guitar in that band in your local pub that's definitely gonna make it any day now. Really, I've never really cared about what hairstyle I'm styling. People who have known me a while will be able to readily vouch for this. Cut, grow shoulder length, cut, repeat. 

But this time, it - along with the beard - had got so long - not really all that long, in the world of long beards (can you imagine such a world?), but long enough that any hairdresser wouldn't neccessarily know what it was that I wanted, particularly as my conversational skills with hairdressers tend to not get any more detailed than 'Just a bit of a cut'. This is an opening line that's served me well since about the age of eight, although addmitedly not one that you want to be misheard if you're in Croydon and the other person has easy access to a razor.  

Because that wouldn't be quite enough this time around, I did something that I've never done before, which was to bring along a photograph of the sort of style I thought I wanted. Of course, it wasn't a photograph at all, but an image on my mobile phone. This didn't stop me feeling slightly foolish as I showed it to the hairdresser. I wanted to be very clear that I wasn't expecting or even hoping to look like the guy in the picture, who was all pretty-boy-pouty-lips and airbrushed cheekbones. I think most hairdressers know this already, but mild paranoia had set in: I half expected him to do a double take between me and my proffered mobile, and fight hard to contain his hysteria. That, and beckon a couple of his work colleagues over so that they could join in their derision. None of that happened, of course.  He just nodded, looked entirely unimpressed, and got to work. Six months of hair were clipped into a reasonably innoffensive (and a helluva lot lighter) style in under twenty minutes. OK, so I had previously been waiting there for about half a hour, but that's hardly the point. 

Maybe it's just the change in hair, the change in weather and the change in month (hello, summer), but I'm currently feeling infused (and enthused, I guess) with all manner of upcoming projects. There's a couple of performances coming up next month, plus a full length script to get done in roughly the same time. Plus, I worked out this week that some of the writing projects I've got going on will take me - and this is if I'm working non-stop, along with everything else I've got going on - til at least 2020. That's two leap years away. On the bright side, I will have probably had a haircut again by then. 

Friday 30th May 2014

I've got a To Do list that's, like, this long. A lot of it is script related, but I've also got to kick into gear with rehearsals for the next batch of Cast Iron, which will be performed in July. We've got six brand new plays by local writers that will be on stage at the DukeBox Theatre, and it's always interesting to see what the different directors and casts have done with their scripts. I haven't really had a chance to rehearse either of mine in any great detail yet, what with being in a play til the middle of May, but I'm hoping to get back on board with everything some time soon. 

In the middle of directing a production of Twelfth Night as well, which also seems to be very soon (in fact, it's literally as soon: it's on the same weekend), and that seems to be going well. It's an open air production, which is the first time I've directed such a thing, and I'm fully aware that there are about a dozen and twelve little logistical nightmares that I - well, that I'm not fully aware of yet. So it's good that I've got myself surrounded by a great team who are constantly watching my back. Not literally watching my back. That would be a bit weird. And quite niche. 

Anyway, where was I? The main thing I've been working on this morning (GOOD GOD DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IT'S LIKE TO HAVE MORNINGS) is redrafting the longform narrative improv course we've got coming up at the DukeBox Theatre in June. We had a great one last year, and we're now revamping and streamlining it for 2014. There's lots of good stuff in it, and it's as useful for actors as it is for improvisers. Genuinely looking forward to being able to deliver it to the new group. I am now of course contractually obliged to say that thing about there only being a few places left, and you're contractually obliged to that thing where you make a 'hhmmph' sneering sound as you decide to assume that actually there's tons of places left, and then I'm contractually obliged to respond, well it depends on what you mean by 'tons', I mean, there are six places left, if that's a ton, then, yes, I guess there's a ton - 

And so on. You get the idea. 

The other major thing I need to be working on is the next draft of this play that I'm writing at the moment. I hacked out a first draft (not even a first draft, let's called it Draft Zero) earlier this week, and now I need to rip through that draft and sort out what's wrong with it. Possibly what's right with it too, but let's be honest, what's wrong with it. What I'm reminded of is the fact that when I'm at this stage (and most of the stages between now and the final draft) is that I absolutely have to be working on paper. I need to be able scribbles notes on it, ask myself questions in the margin (which are normally things like WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? and WHY IS THIS CHARACTER DOING THIS SHE DOESN'T EVEN LIKE GHERKINS) and, on many more occasions than I care to admit, literally ripping the pages apart so that I can stick that scene in between  those scenes. Then I rewrite all those changes, ideas, half-baked scenes onto the computer ... and then print them all over again. To do exactly the same thing again. At least seven times. There is probably a more productive way to write a play - and certainly one that isn't felling forests at the rate of Orcs in Lord Of The Rings, but this seems to be the way to work for me. 

That, and delaying any writing by messing around on a blog first. Obviously.  

Thursday 29th May 2014

Have just got back from being a few days writing in a converted barn in the middle of the woods, which is either the most middle-class I'll ever get, or it's the prelude to a particularly nasty movie in which my dismembered remains are discovered nailed to a wall by country folk in a ill-advised attempt to make sure that the crops don't fail again this year. Either way, it's been gorgeous. 

I've spoken before about how tough it can be to get any writing done, how it can be a challenge to get stuff down on the page when you've already done a full day at work, and there's only fifty minutes before you've got to get out for a rehearsal / performance / workshop / whatever, and that's not even taking into any account any time you might want to set aside for eating and basic social interaction. And, yes, you might want to argue that the level of time poverty I put up with is somewhat self-inflicted, and I hear y', but, rest assured - it will be an argument. I mean, I get what you'd be saying - something has to give, right? I can't be rushing from here to there, constantly spinning plates. And, yes, that's true. But I rather suspect that if I put one thing aside - directing that play, or delivering those workshops, for instance - then I would simply be feeling quite twitchy at home, wondering if I wasn't wasting my time just a little. While watching Young Sherlock Holmes for, like, the twentieth time. What? Shut up. Young Sherlock Holmes is Harry Potter for the eighties generation. The arch enemy kid is even a posh boy with blonde hair. 

What I've really enjoyed about these last couple of days is the ability, the elbow room, to be able to spend as much time not writing as actually writing. Being able to circle the story before ripping it up and changing the order of the scenes. Being suddenly inspired by a completely irrelevant idea, that's enabled me to go back and fix a previously abandoned short story still sitting on my USB. At some point, spending slightly too much time on a app that allows me to create funky book covers for the kindle editions of my short stories - short stories that I haven't actually finished yet. Just having the time to stare into space - occasionally literally stare into space (we identified two planets), while thinking of the next plot point. 

And through it all, a minor note of disquiet. The usual minor note that I get, that's always laced in my feeling of yes-I-can-do-this when my writing is going well. That warning note that reminds me that my timetable won't always be like this - from next week, it will be back to normal - an average of - what? twelve hours a day given over to the day job and commuting to and from it. Look, I'm not complaining (note: obviously I'm complaining), but it's occurred to me a couple of times this week that I should definitely ensure that I'm managing a good block of writing EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. No matter what else is going on, no matter how tired / uninspired / comprehensively untalented I feel. But, yes, I already knew that. I've already told myself that. I've probably already told myself that on this blog. 

So, yes, I'm just telling myself that again. And reminding myself that there will still be days when I don't feel like writing, when I just don't want to do it. But it's worth reminding myself that if I only have half a hour to write then - well. Then I can do what the hell I want in that half hour. And that includes not writing, and not having to feel guilty about it. 

But the main thing is: I have an entire play to write this summer. And in the past three days, I managed to hack out a fairly decent first draft. For just this moment in time - I'm feeling pretty hopeful.  

Thursday 10 April 2014

Last week, we had the first performance of our short play night at the DukeBox Theatre, Hove. It went pretty damn well - we ended up having to turn away about twenty people who had turned up on the off chance that they could buy a ticket on the door. For those who got in, it was a great night - eight brand new, short plays by new and local writers. I'm already ploughing my way through submissions for the next night, which will be sometime in late June. Actually, not 'some time' - I know the date; it's just that there's a very good chance that we'll make it a two night run rather than just one. 

What's been most pleasing about this process - and I mean this sincerely - is that people are writing for the first time in ages, or, in a couple of cases, the first time, full stop. I think a lot of us have this hankering to write a little something, and many of us - most of us, in fact - never do. Obviously for 99% of people, it's for the reasons (excuses) that annoy all the writers who actually do manage to write - excuses like 'I haven't got the time', or 'I can't come up with good ideas.' I think one of the major reasons, however, why would-be writers don't, is very simple: Nobody Cares. I'll say that again so we're all on the same page. Nobody Cares. 

Seriously, all those half-finished stories and ideas for novels and fillms and radio sitcoms that litter your bottom drawer? Nobody knows about them beyond you wittering on about this great idea you've got, and thus nobody is waiting for them. More importantly, then, nobody needs them. (and by the way, if you've assumed that it's me that has a bottom drawer full of unfinished and unworked ideas, then, well, shush.) 

And if it's true that nobody cares about or wants your great story (and, sorry, it is true), then it follows that a thing like the short play night becomes really important: at it's most base, at it's simplest: it's an excuse to write. And finally, a showcase for your writing. I think, essentially, that's what I've considered most important about this. Not that anyone actually needs an excuse to write (but, actually: people need an excuse to write). 

Last year, I decided pretty early on that I wasn't going to direct anything this season. I've been directing every year for the last three, and it's always meant that I never really got a chance to see anything in the Brighton Fringe, which was something that I wanted to rectify, since I was missing out on a lot of pretty good stuff. So, firm decision: no directing this year. However, that plan didn't go to - uh, well, plan, since I have found myself in a production of The Crucible. 

It's a two week production, which will be the longest run I've been personally involved with (and after being at work all day too - PITY ME), and it's a pretty big part. I'm just about beginning to feel the weight of pressure on me: the production opens in about three and a half weeks, and in many ways I'm still finding my feet. One of the challenges is that I'm playing John Proctor, which, if I'm honest, is not neccesacrily a role I would have thought of myself first for. Historically, I've always thought of Proctor as being somewhat alpha male - all tall and broad shouldered, which, with the best will in the world, is not ever going to be even your third description of me. So, there has to be another way in to the character, which I'm still working my way through. In fact, I had intended to essay how I was approaching the character in this blog, but - as might be expected - time in rehearsals, and learning lines, has robbed that time from me. 

There are other, exciting things planned for later this year (and, somehow, even next year) ... But I'll chat more about that another time ..  

Thursday 13th February 2014

You know how it is. You're going through your day to day life, minding your own business, when you find, much to your surprise, that you appear to have set up a theatre company quite by accident, when you weren't really paying attention. I'm still not entirely sure quite how it happened. It's not as if I haven't already got quite enough to be getting on with, what with the improv classes happening every week, and the longform course starting next month (don't worry, the plugs will get less coy and subtle soon enough). But it seemed the right thing, and the right time for it all to happen in. 

When I say that I don't quite know how it happened (because, hell, after all, who sets up a theatre group by accident?) I'm not being faeustious. Well, not by much, anyway. I do know that I was involved, as an actor, in one of the Ten Minute Plays at the New Venture Theatre last year. I had submitted a play which didn't get accepted, and I honestly will never be able to tell you if I was piqued enough by that to start thinking about setting up an event where I - and others - would have other and more often a chance to submit work of our own. Well, regardless of what the catalyst was, and what my intentions were / are, that's exactly what happened next. It certainly seemed (to me, at least) that in Brighton, there appeared to be remarkably few events that promoted new writing in theatre. I'm sure there are a few, but it seems that they are sporadically littered throughout the year, and if that's not the case, then the attendant advertising and social networking ain't up to much. 

I'm very lucky in that I'm somewhat surrounded by a good number of passionate and talented people, a good few of whom were also in the NVT production of Ten Minute Plays. Some of them, I'd worked with in A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End (last years entirely improvised play that we produced for the Brighton Fringe), and it would appear that at least a couple of them are willing to work with me again, which is to their eternal credit. If all that sounds like a stumbling attempt at a humblebrag, well, then, I'm not going to disagree with you, but let the record also note that there are also a few people out there who have clearly decided that they'll never work with me again. 

So, somewhat on a whim, I voiced this vague concept of a probable idea that I almost had forming in my head. I'm used to that; I'm a would-be writer, I talk about the possibility of ideas annoyingly much more than the doing the hard work of actually getting those ideas on paper. What I'm less used to is the moment when a few (more than a few, in fact) like minded people voice their agreement on said idea and have questions like 'when do we start?', 'can I send in my play?' and 'cool, I'll bring the biscuits'. Actually, it may be that I'm being fanciful with the truth on that last one. What the hell. It might get me a couple of biscuits. 

So a couple of months ago, it was somewhat overwhelming to be surronded by a gang of creatives, all there for the same purpose. The concept is simple and clear. Ideally, a person will write a play, direct another, and appear in a third. Now, that won't always work, simply because sometimes a play won't get through to the acceptance stage, or someone's confidence doesn't lie in direction, or simple, base logistics (not every play will feature a cast of exactly one person, for instance). But that's the template we're working on, and so far it's working pretty well. Of course, the planning is a nightmare, since everyone has to arrange their rehearsals so they don't clash with each other - and since everyone is involved in everyone else's play, that's almost impossible - but I'm hearing good reports back. We intend that there will be batches of new writing four times a year (with perhaps an extra one thrown in as a Halloween special) and largely speaking, I'm more excited about the process than the final production. Not only is it a lovely atmosphere to meet up and work in, where the idea is that nobody's actually in compeition with each other - ideally, you'd turn up with your half-baked idea, show it around , people will either dislike it, or love it, or like the idea, but let you know that your dialogue / plotting is crappy - and it just means that if you're a nervous, new writer, you don't have to go it alone. The most gratifying part of this process so far have been the people who have taken the time to let me know how pleased they are to finally have an avenue for their writing, that they haven't before quite had the courage. If that's all I end up achieving with this accidental theatre company - well, that would seem to be a good trade. 

Methods Of Work Avoidance # 2365

In between writing re-drafts (no, really), I have also found the time to create a avatar of myself via the website BitStrips.I'm fully aware I may have created  a generously attractive   version of myself, but screw it, it's my cartoon,and so I'll do what the hell I like.  

Thursday 29th August 2013

At ‘that’ stage with a good few short stories. I’ve been a bit like a magpie with them over the last few months (and by ‘few’, I’ve just realised I mean ‘twelve’), in that as soon as one idea gets a bit too tough to carry on writing, then I’ve flitted to another work in progress, and tinkered with that one. As soon as the tinkering gets a bit too much like hard work, then I’ve gone back to the first WIP (or a completely different one), so that my attention  span doesn’t get too hammered over the head, and I give up on the writing altogether.

Now, depending on who you listen to, this is either a perfectly fine and noble way to stop ideas (stories) getting too saggy and baggy and boring, or it’s the worst idea ever, because you have to stay committed to your ideas, and see them through to the very end, otherwise you’re never actually going to finish the bloody things at all. And, of course, in some cases, both those statements have been made by the same person at different times. Like all pieces of advice, they can be embraced or ignored as you see fit (and as you see that the advice itself fits you).

Right now, however, I feel that I need to go the hard-work route, and commit to the stories, and finish them off. One by one. This will be somewhat tough, because, at the moment, a lot of them are crap. Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t self-loathing, deprecating analysis. Even at their current stage (and I think a good few of them are about three drafts away from the final version), some of them read better than a few of the short stories I’ve bought on the kindle. There’s a reasonable amount of short stories self-published by unknown authors, some of them good, some of them awful (not nearly as many as you might think, however), and the majority of them – uh, average. Now, I’m sticking my neck out here slightly, because of course, I intend to publish my own collection at some point (reasonably) soon. So it’s a bit of a risky job – if not actually arrogant – to compare my unfinished works to those that have actually been uploaded onto a website and people are paying for. But, what the hell. I will claim that in at least a couple of cases, the stories that I’ve got, in their second or third draft, are better than the stories that somebody has deemed fit for public domain, publication, and consumption. And, yes, I am talking about the drafts of my stories that are currently in the ‘crap’ stage.

It’s not as if the stories that I’m talking about are bad, not at all. And I’m aware that I’m certainly setting myself up for a fall when I do publish my own (hey, here’s an idea, maybe I don’t publish them, that’ll keep me safe from public criticism – even better, hell, I won’t actually finish any of the stories ..). The ideas behind the stories (the ones that people have published, not mine) are actually pretty good. But quite often, the story is told in such a brief, perfunctory fashion – in the matter of about three kindle pages – that I wonder, what’s the point? It feels less like a story well told, and more like the synopsis on the back of the DVD cover : ‘Once there was this guy who said that it would be cool if we were all nice to each other but he got nailed to a tree but it was OK because he came back to life the end’ … Now, come on. I’m sure you could’ve stretched that out a bit.

It’s occurred to me recently that short stories don’t always have to be short, and they don’t have to be stories, not in the normal sense of the word. Quite often, I see short stories (very short, around 1,000 words) struggle to keep to the format of a beginning, a middle and an end. I understand the desire to keep things coherent and within a recognisable framework, but I’m not sure it’s always vitally necessary. Some of the best short stories deal with a passing thought or emotion, a reaction to something else (I’ll be honest – some of the very worst short stories do that, too, because the writer is shrinking away from committing to an idea – but that’s a blog for another time).

Anyway, I managed a few thousand words each on two stories this morning. They’re both currently at the stage of ‘terrible’, but they still feel good to write, and I still (just about) remember what I liked about the ideas in the first place, which isn’t always the case. Plus, it’s helped that in the café where I’m writing at the moment, there’s a couple of other people, both working on Important Stuff. There is a distraction here, and it’s name is Free WiFi, but there seems to be a atmosphere in these kind of places; if you’re vaguely aware that the other people are actually furiously working, rather than piddling about on facebook, or tweeting the hilarious ‘other’ dream that Martin Luther King was going to talk about, it ‘shames’ you into doing some work yourself.

Or, as writing avoidances go, writing a blog isn’t exactly the most terrible .. 

Friday 23rd August 2013

Last night, went to an event called The Space in Brighton. This is a semi-regular event in which various industry types (usually two per evening) have an informal chat in what's usually quite intimate surroundings. It's always a good night, even if (sometimes, especially if) you haven't heard of one of the guests. I try to get along to it whenever I can (and fancy myself as a possible interviewer - not quite as overbearing as James Lipton of Inside The Actors Studio). At previous events, guests have included Mark Gatiss, Frank Skinner and Barry Norman, as well as many more. 

Last night, the first guest was Dennis Kelly, writer of Utopia, Pulling (along with Sharon Horgan) and the musical of Roald Dahl's Matilda (with Tim Minchin). Somehow, I've managed not to see any of his work, despite all things being on my to-see list for quite some time. Because I've never followed him as a writer, it was somewhat startling to see these apparently diverse things being created by the same person. I'm sure there are probably connecting themes if you look hard enough for them (good people can be dicks, for instance), but I imagine that there's not a stand-out text that you could point to and say that's a Dennis Kelly story. This was spoken about in a roundabout way as part of the interview when he spoke about not 'having a voice'. Many writers, at the start of their career, are advised to 'find their voice'. It makes some kind of sense. If nobody knows who you are, then if you want to get your next gig, then there's a certain logic in being easily identifiable to whoever it is that might give you your next pay cheque - 'oh, let's get the guy who does the Richard Curtis style rom coms .. who is that? Oh, it's Richard Curtis,' Kelly rails against that, and quite aggressively so. I can get on board with that idea. A 'voice', surely, runs the risk of being restrictive, of suggesting that you can 'only' write a certain type of story. Stephen King speaks of the warning that his agent delivered to him when he offered up Salems Lot for publication (the second book after Carrie) - the very real danger that with two bloody books in a row, he was going to be forever pigeon-holed as a horror writer. He decided that he was OK with that (and his success has meant that he's managed to smuggle a decent amount of very good books in under the radar that can truly be described as 'horror', even if they are still a bit bloody). I wondered if that's somewhat the case with Kelly. Although what he's written has been very successful (even if hardly anyone actually saw Pulling, it's highly regarded by those that did), his name isn't really on the public's radar yet, which means that he's allowed to follow the story, whatever story interests him, even if it bears no relation to what he's produced before. A certain amount of anonymity can be a blessing. I remember the creators of The Blair Witch Project being asked what their next film was going to be (this at the height of Blair Witch's success). They replied, in all seriousness, a romantic comedy. As far as I'm aware, that film never surfaced. 

The second guest of The Space was Phillip Hinchcliffe, who has had a wide and varied career, bringing many interesting and sometimes even risky projects to the screen ... but will always be remembered as a producer for Doctor Who. It helps that the era that he oversaw was just about the most successful in the show's history. Russell T Davies credits the Hinchcliffe era with igniting his passion for wanting to revive the show, even going so far as to say that the only reason he started writing for television in the first place was so that he could revive Doctor Who- and, in turn, the only reason he wanted to was because of his memory of the stories that were produced by Hinchcliffe. It's true that there's a very impressive wealth of stories under his tenure that are genuine classics that more than stand up today, and would be good gateway drugs for anyone who hasn't yet seen an episode of the original series, among them Genisis Of The Daleks, Terror Of The Zygons, Planet Of Evil, Pyramids Of Mars, Brain Of Morbius, Seeds Of Doom, and The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. 

Hinchcliffe comes across as a gracious and generous person, very often deflecting praise to others, (particularly Robert Holmes, who does indeed deserve much praise), but I get the impression that as a producer he didn't suffer fools gladly, and that he was straight-arrowed and focused. That certainly comes across in the stories of his era. While he didn't write or direct them, and is quick to bestow the praise for the 'Gothic' shades of those years back to Holmes, there's a focus there that is absent in the latter Pertwee years, and wobbles a great deal in the Tom Baker era after Hinchcliffe leaves. Indeed, most of the 'pantomime' criticism that is delivered at classic Doctor Who really begins as soon as he's left. We spoke about this, about the idea that a producer of a show can have 'authorship' on a programme, even more so than the director or even, ironically, the author. In many ways, it's directly opposite to the avoiding 'finding a voice' that Dennis Kelly was speaking about earlier in the evening. 

It's quite clear that, for better or worse, Doctor Who was essentially 'just another job' to Hinchcliffe. That's understandable: with genre TV or film, the story on screen is almost always going to be a helluva lot more important to the viewers than those who made it - they've already made the next three jobs, after all - but it always makes me curious and even uneasy at events like this. I imagine fan conventions are even worse. Exactly how many times can you answer the same question about bubblewrap monsters? Can you really relate to men in their forties who probably have an unhealthy fixation with Sophie Aldred, and are dismayed when you acknowledge that you don't actually know who Sophie Aldred is? Plus, you get people like me who are fans, but try to act casual about it, and absolutely refuse to ask questions about bubble wrap - which, I suspect, is equally annoying. 

Both men were inspiring, full of energy, intelligence and verve (and Kelly said 'fuck' an impressive amount). As a writer, though, it's always worth keeping in mind what other (successful) writers speak about when they are talking about what works, and what doesn't. It's always in slightly different words, it's sometimes eloquent, it's sometimes basic, but it's essentially the same message, a thousand times over. The only way to write is to get your arse on that chair - and write. 

Thursday 22nd August 2013

As a writer, you’re not really meant to go on too much about whatever it is that you’re working on at the moment. There are many reasons for this, the most compelling being that if you’re talking about the writing, then you’re not getting on with the actual business of doing the writing. It’s a form of procrastination: if you can talk about how fantastic the finished product is going to be, it (deceptively) lets you off the hook of actually putting in the work of putting one word after the other on a page. What you talk about will always be better than the dull, flabby story that you finally produce. There’s also the fact that you’re likely to dilute the story. Speak it out loud enough times – and all stories, at their source, come from the oral tradition (oh, stop sniggering at the back) – and the written version becomes a pale tracing.

There is, of course, yet another reason to shut up about your writing, and it’s probably the most simple. Unless you’re already published, unless people are prepared to fork out twenty quid at a book festival and ask some variation of ‘where do you get your ideas’, then, frankly, nobody gives a damn about that thing you’re probably never going to finish. Oh, sure, some of your loved ones will, and the couple of people who earnestly believe that you actually do have some talent – but even those people would rather you shut the hell up, and get on with the writing.

Back when I lived in Croydon, I remember attending a house party, although I don’t clearly remember anyone there, suggesting that the party was of a friend-of-a-friend. Therefore, I found myself wandering aimlessly through the various rooms. I do have one very clear memory of the party, however, and it’s of a writer talking – rather tediously – about this book he was working on. I remember thinking, even then, that this book would never be finished. The woman he was talking to also seemed to have reached this conclusion. He was speaking about how he got his ideas, making him reasonably unique in all of authors in that he actually had an answer to this question, even though it was likely that nobody had asked him it.

He’d written some kind of sci-fi book, which to my eavesdropping ears sounded somewhat like a EE Doc Smith kind of book. He was speaking about how he’d come up with the name for his hero. ‘You know the housing estate by the ABC cinema?’, he asked. It’s genuinely likely that you – yes, you, the one that’s reading this blog – do in fact know what housing estate he was talking about, since it’s the one that Jeremy and Mark live in, in the series Peep Show, and appears in some form in almost every episode. The name of the housing estate was (and may well still be) Zodiac Court. For as long as anyone could remember, however, the ‘O’ in court was missing. And therefore, our writer friend declared in revelatory tones that one normally reserves for penicillin being discovered growing on your lab table, wouldn't it be a great thing if those two words were reversed, and - ? Well, the rest is history. Uh, literally history, it seems, as a perfunctory Google search suggests that that character has not yet reached any kind of saturation point.

As I’ve indicated, though, I felt even then (and I wasn’t particularly doing any regular writing at that point) that his talking about his ideas in such a way seemed to pretty much guarantee  that he’d never finish the book. I’m not a big fan of Family Guy, but I’m fond of the repeated gag where the would-be intellectual Brian is constantly mocked: ‘you’ve been talking about that novel for three years now. How’s that going, anyway?’ Most of us probably know of a writer (read: not actually a writer) like this. I’m very aware of that trap.

However, that hasn't stopped me banging on about my writing on various networking sites. I know it can be tedious and boring to read/hear, and that it can be an excuse – as I’ve mentioned earlier – to not actually put the spadework in. I do it, however, for the same reason, I suspect, most writers do: partially for the affirmation, to get friends and other writers to show interest and support – to cheer me over the finish line – and also (the theory goes), if the declarations of a story are in such a public forum, then the idea is that I’ll be too embarrassed to do anything else but actually finish. However, I’m acutely aware that many other writers do this, and never finish (or even start) the stories that they’re wittering on about.  After all, writers have no excuse not to write, no matter how tired and emotionally drained at the end of a work day they are (which is normally, literally my excuse). The only thing to do is to sit down and write.

I feel a little more relaxed about banging on about what I’m writing (or so I tell myself) because the bulk of what I’m talking about is, for the most part, actually finished, done, completed. In the case of one play, it’s already had a full cast production. What I’m going on about now is the re-writes, the final draft. A few more of those well-wishers are now more vocal about wanting to actually read something I’ve written at some point. And, at some point, I’m going to have to take a deep breath, and let that happen. After all, why the hell else does anyone write?