Archive for the 'Ideas' Category
Thursday, July 29th, 2010
MMORPGs: What Would It Take To Tempt You?
I’ve never played World of Warcraft. If I’m honest, I didn’t even know what it was until long after everyone else was a level 55 arch mage. But I’m curious as to what it would take to convince YOU to upload yourself to a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG)
This is pure speculation, but I think the online gaming world would be a different shape had the sequels to The Matrix (somehow) lived up to all their hype and The Matrix Online would have been the perfect opportunity to bring new audiences into Neo’s medium. Regardless, The Matrix Online still went ahead, expanding the story-world for the die-hards and the sci-curious, But it could have been bigger.
But are potential audiences just waiting for their favourite franchise to expand into the internet? As the launch of the DC Universe Online draws close, I’m finding myself deeply considering coughing up and crossing the line into online gaming. What’s tempted me? Not just that you can create your own character to then be mentored by the DC Hero or Villain of your choice, but the stories have also been written by some of DC’s top writers and features voice talent from the DCU cartoons (Mark Hamill as the Joker included).
Sounds a lot like Batman: Arkham Asylum really. So if you played and enjoyed Arkham Asylum, why won’t you be signing up for DC Universe Online? Seriously.
‘cos as cool as that video looks (from my POV, anyway), these MMORPGs seem different, don’t they.
In learning about writing for games, I was taught that describing your game as a list of adjectives is a good way to describe the experience (ie - run, shoot, duck, fly, hide, find etc) Is what’s keeping you offline that they aren’t developing the MMORPG with the right adjectives to suit you? If so, what’s missing? Is it a genre thing? Is the fact that the main examples I’ve mentioned feature flying around and probably thumping people what kept you positively unintrigued? (but there are others)
MMORPGs seem to have it all - serial storytelling, stand-alone missions, social networking and an independent gaming experience. So why are they still a niche thing? What’s keeping you offline?
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
DETECTIVES: There’s no such thing as too quirky!
The copper who uses their special break-dancing prowess to catch criminals. The Private Eye who can piece clues together using hallucinations caused by auto-esphixiation. The detective who is also a duck. I love them all. But how quirky is too quirky?
In my own writing, whether it stars a procedural copper or an accidental investigator, mysteries have always been my ‘thing’. Trouble is, if your protagonist is just doing their job week after week, it can be hard to generate an emotional connection - no matter how many endearing tics they have.
This is easily remedied in a film/one-off. A case starts as professional but quickly becomes personal (Silence of the Lambs, Chinatown, Se7en). But if you’re creating an ongoing TV, web or comic series - surely everything can’t be ‘hey, this case resonates with that traumatic broccoli experience I had as a child!’ But you’ll probably need something if you don’t want your show to simply be a cerebral exercise.
I’ve heard the appeal of the Mystery described as ‘the audience’s desire to see Order triumph over the Chaos of the outside world‘ (like the drunken football fans who chucked our bins all over the street last night. Where were you, Batman?) But where Bob Peck in a one-off story like Edge of Darkness needed to know why his daughter died, the returning series detective needs a more abstract motivation for taking on the Chaos of the world that we can understand and emotionally connect with.
The reason we connect with any of the above more than, for example, Miss Marple is because of this vocational calling that made them a detective. Details aside, this can usually be summed up as one word. Redemption. Ambition. Validation. Even Retaliation. (they don’t all have to end in ‘-tion’ btw 
)
So it’s okay to pile on as many quirks as you like to make your detective unique. But before you do, make sure you can easily answer the core reason why this guy or gal is a detective in the first place.
Thursday, April 8th, 2010
What makes a good Calling Card script?
As the opening and closing dates for the BBC’s Writers Academy have now been announced (Deadline May 5th btw), I’ve fallen into a downward spiral of second-guessing as to what script I should submit as the best example of my work.
I took a bit of a blow when my intended project turned out to be very similar to an idea I read about by a former Writers Academy student (down to our titles almost being identical) as well as a recently released feature film touching on the same themes. Obviously all three scripts are entirely different but they are similar enough for me to worry that a reader will pigeon-hole it as ‘another bloody (something) script’. And no, I’m not telling what it was about 
So that leaves me questioning what makes a good Calling Card script? And for the Writers Academy in particular. Is a feature unsuitable for this scheme? Is a TV pilot too risky on if they like the series idea? I’m erring towards a single drama as the happy medium - but is the single drama too much of a rare format to be useful (and will it just give away I was too chicken to write a feature or a pilot?)
Gah.
The one thing I do know is to not just mimic Eastenders or Casualty. In past application years, an offbeat murder mystery has gotten me far further than my attempt last year to write (what I thought) was the kind of thing they’d be looking for - which promptly saw me knocked out in the first round. I’m sure I’m right in saying that the BBC want writers who can bring something fresh to Doctors or Holby – not just imitate it!
And yet I’m still a bit wary of sending them my oddball spy drama 
So what are your thoughts? Do you have a particular format you use to open doors first and then sell your other projects? Has a particular genre always proved successful for you when making first contact? I know we all write differently so might have different answers, but what sort of script has proved your strongest calling card?
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Creating TV Drama Series: Something Borrowed, Something NYPD Blue
Something different…but the same. Trying to shoehorn my way into TV writing, I’ve spent years trying to concoct never-been-done before ideas for drama series. And yet what are my favourite shows on TV at the moment? A show about Cops and a show about Doctors. (This doesn’t include Lost, obviously – but Lost is the exception to every rule including this one so it will get its own blog posts at numerous later dates )
For anyone who hasn’t seen either Bones or House then I’ll summarise: In Bones they solve a murder every week and in every episode of House they try and work out what’s wrong with sick people. Genius, innit.
Well, actually yes. Why do I actually watch and love either of these shows? Not because of the above, that’s for certain. But each provides a clear and renewable ‘story-engine’ to provide a launch-pad for the plot of many, many episodes. I was lucky enough to recently attend a really useful seminar in Manchester with BBC’s Controller of Drama Production John Yorke where he clearly described some of the must-haves for a returning series:
Naturally, I agree. For Bones, the big softy in me loves the family aspect of the show. The more the series progresses, the more we see how damaged each of the brilliant people in it are and you like them even more for being able to function whilst being that broken. In House, I’m watching to the see the chinks in House’s bastard façade that defines his morality. And, while I’m waiting, I can enjoy just House being a bastard. But a clever bastard. And that’s what the creators of these shows are too, dagnammit!
As the series have progressed, I’d also say that both the murder and medical mysteries have actually slipped down the importance scale in an average episode. But they’re always there as the spine in Bones and the foundation in House. Without them, there’s no need for the characters to even be together. It’s telling that the fourth season of each show featured Brennan and Booth and House and Cuddy facing murder or disease on a plane bound for Asia – deprived of their usual facilities and facing the ticking clock of landing. But both were very different – apart from the fact that they were both brilliant.
Even if both will-they/won’t-they pairings got married, there had better be dead/dying body in their Honeymoon suite! But it’s the fact that the writers have made me want there NOT to be a mystery to solve that makes these shows so successful.
It seems the series creators ensure we want to see their characters happy…then do everything they can to ensure that they’re not!
Monday, March 1st, 2010
Writing Roles for Gorgeous George…
Well, not *just* for George. This time every year – come Award Season – there are always a number of films where you could easily think ‘that film would be nothing without that central performance from (insert A-Lister)’. Maybe this is true. But how do you write the roles that big actors actually want to play?
When I went to see Up in the Air back in January, I realised halfway through that this wasn’t just a role written for George Clooney – it’s just that Clooney was the perfect actor for the part. And he is acting up there. Despite me thinking that Ryan Bingham is one of those characters that Clooney always plays, I’d never really seen him do it (maybe not since ER anyway). And while George was up for a Bafta the other week, it was for Best Adapted Screenplay that Up in the Air got its gong.
This might all sound bleedin’ obvious, but I’ve been reading an increasing amount of scripts that sacrifice character for concept - when really character should be the concept. Especially if you’re trying to get a first feature made. If you can’t prove you can write decent characters for lower-budget films, why will anyone trust you to write characters for expensive ones?
January also saw the release of Daybreakers and Britflick Exam – two films with some decent character actors but few decent characters. Both were dominated by cool high-concepts but, in my opinion, without decent character stories both ran out of steam as soon as the novelty of the big ‘what if?’ had worn off. It all seems so frickin’ obvious but, sitting there watching Up In The Air, it really hit home that high-concepts must still have the character at heart. As Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio put it:
High Concept = Character + Conflict + Hook (where Hook is often a cool catalyst or big event)
Maybe you do have the next breakthrough lower-budget, high-concept like Paranormal Activity or Cube did. But then the makers of these films have struggled to catch the same lightning in a bottle if they’ve even attempted a follow up. If all you’ve got is a gimmick then that will quickly be imitated and become stale. Whereas, the more banal films Denzel Washington does with Tony Scott, the more iconic his character in Training Day becomes to my eye.
Just looking at the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscar nominees of the last decade, roles including Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood, Ellen Page in Juno, Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married and (it wouldn’t be a blog post without him) Bill Murray for Lost in Translation really stand out (and that’s deliberately not including actors winning for real-life characters in Monster, Capote, The Hours or Milk). This is who they want to play. It can’t be coincidence that the screenplays of all of these films were also – at least – nominated for their Oscar categories.
Not that the awards themselves are the priority… but I’m just saying that, if you can write a screenplay that lures Daniel Day-Lewis from being a cobbler for a few months, chances are that finding funding might be a little easier! 
Sunday, December 27th, 2009
Are you Game?
Granted, I’m just trying to wrangle a new career path in order to justify getting an Xbox 360 for Christmas, but writing for computer games has greatly interested me for years now.
At the beginning of December, I managed to gain a place on a Writing for Games training scheme run by Screen Yorkshire and indie games company Team 17 (who created Worms and the just released Alien Breed Evolution pictured above). For the next few months, I’ll be learning how to plot, develop and actually script a narrative for game which, whatever I come up with, will be about running around and blasting aliens.
That’s the interesting part for me and what makes it so different from writing for other media. Whatever this game turns out to be, this game will always be a ‘run and gun’ - but it’s the writer’s role to provide the context: Why are you shooting the aliens? Where are they shooting the aliens? Who is shooting the aliens?
That sounds like a lot of fun to me, for now - the main focus of a game should always be the gameplay, shouldn’t it? But there seems to be a battle brewing between narrative and gameplay on its way. Upcoming games such as the impressive-looking Heavy Rain which are focussing on emotional impact in its audience could open up new levels of interactivity and emotional immersion in a story. If it sells (fingers crossed!)
Even though the cut scenes were clunky, the story for the original Resident Evil had enough to keep me going. Mind you, most of the backstory for that came in the little booklet that came with the game, rather than it. But did that matter?
I found this short and funny video lecture by Daniel Floyd at Screw Attack on Storytelling in Videogames. It succinctly puts across the potential problems as well as the positives of interactivity in big release games. But, to me, it also puts across why writing for games is an exciting new venture as the rules haven’t quite been laid down yet. I’m going to give it a go anyway. Just as soon as I’ve saved Gotham from the Joker in Arkham Asylum
Friday, November 20th, 2009
Introducing your Character
I’ve been doing a lot of scriptreading work lately and have spotted a recurring problem that sometimes we can all forget about.
A while ago, we talked about the concept of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Circumstances and how it’s maybe easier to get an audience on side with a ‘normal’ character only for them to get sucked down a magic wyrmhole etc. This is all very well, but what I’ve been noticing in a lot of what I’ve been reading is that that ordinary character is often quite dull until the fun happens at the inciting incident. Which is pretty bad! So I was trying to think of some better examples:
Yes, he’s using Ghostbusters as an example. Again. Thing is though, it’s ‘cos it’s good. Take Venkman: His inciting incident is when he’s kicked out of the University and starts up his own Paranormal Investigations & Eliminations service (”some call it fate, some call it luck, some call it karma...”) But before any of that happens, he’s already interesting. Not only is he using a telepathy test to pick up girls, someone has painted ‘Venkman, Burn in Hell‘ on his door. I’m intrigued by this guy - and that’s before we know the world’s in peril.
On the other end of the scale, ‘Se7en‘ opens with Morgan Freeman as Det. Somerset routinely picking lint off his jacket, placing his well-ordered badge, notebook, pen and flick knife into all the correct pockets - ready for work as the sounds and sirens of the city emanate from outside. When a fellow officer describes a murder scene as a simple crime of passion, Somerset’s response of ‘Just look at the passion all over this wall’ shows he sees things differently. But his methodical, well-ordered approach and his soothing metronome show he has set up his own barriers to protect himself from the horror of the city he seems to love and hate.
While the plot hasn’t got going yet, both these characters become fascinating and that’s partly because we get a good glimpse of their flaws (or their ‘character need’, if you like). Venkman needs to start taking what he does seriously if he’s ever going to save the world and Somerset has perhaps become too guarded and detached from the world to stop himself despairing.
Both are very different, one funny, the other foreboding. But both really make the characters captivating long before the high-concept turns up. Also, perhaps more importantly, we’re hooked long before page 10 which is when, as a reader, I can put the script down if the writer hasn’t grabbed me!
Any other good examples you can think of how the character hooks you before the plot? Genre and non-genre ones are all welcome. Happy writing!
Friday, September 25th, 2009
TV Protagonists: Ongoing Goal vs Weekly Motivation
Discussing ‘Ordinary People in Extraordinary Circumstances’ in this post led to an interesting discussion in the comments that highlighted it’s difficult for some TV formats to allow their characters to remain ‘ordinary’ as the series progresses. This made me think about ways to ensure your protagonists goal compliments rather than contradicting the story-of-the-week structure most series rely on.
I’ve used the above three examples as characters because a.) I’ve watched episodes of each series in the last few days and b.) because I already had the pics on my computer
What are their motivating goals? Mulder wants to find out what happened to his sister. Charlie Crews wants to uncover why he was falsely imprisoned for years and Frank Black wants to protect his family from advancing evil in the world. That all sounds good right?
But then we can really break it down into more universal abstract concepts such as Mulder is searching for the Truth, Crews is fighting for Justice and Frank wants the American Way…er, Protection of loved ones. (Same as his immediate goal, granted - but it’s a pretty universal theme in itself). While they refer to specific story elements, they also dictate every single story the protagonists take part in - eg. Mulder’s quest to explain the unexplainable is just as much what sends him chasing after werewolves just as much as the conspiracy that stole his sister.
As much as I did enjoy BBC’s new take on Survivors (especially as a good example of ordinary people in extraordinary situations), I wasn’t a huge fan of the central focus on the Mother in search of her Son. This isn’t just because I’m a childless, immature boy who preferred the escaped convict character with a secret - but I just didn’t think that the Mother’s character served an ongoing/weekly plot - as much as it made her an identifiable character amid all the sci-fi gubbins.
Simply put, every time she stopped to enjoy a story-of-the-week, the search for her son came to a complete standstill. I found a similar thing with The Mentalist. The Red John serial (killer) plot that was potentially interesting and was supposedly haunting our protagonist could go for weeks without even being alluded to.
I deliberately try to keep this blog discursive rather than offering definitive answers (largely ‘cos who the hell am I to tell you anything, but also I find anyone with THE answers to anything is trying to sell you something) but I think the balance of your protagonist’s specific goal must match the universal need and theme between the whole series, whatever the genre. Otherwise, your series runs the risk of appearing as an idea for a feature film that pauses to have episodes of something else shoved in.
So there
. . . . .
Also, we realised last night that I have now been living with the lovely Heather for four years as of today. Living with your partner is somewhat unremarkable I suppose but it means something to me as, for the previous three years, we were living at other ends of the country. So happy four year co-habiting anniversary, Heather! Here’s hoping the next years are as much of a happy blur
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
Ordinary People/Extraordinary Circumstances. Help?
When asked what commisioners are looking for in a TV series idea, a phrase I hear over and over is ‘Ordinary people in extra-ordinary circumstances’. Now I just need to crack exactly what that means
It sounds simple enough. Here’s the cast of NBC’s Heroes which went into its 4th season on Monday night (with much lower ratings than its previous years. Oh dear). This seems clear: Ordinary people receive extraordinary powers. That premise is appealing - but it also, by definition, can’t last too long. Once they’ve got the powers…they’re not ordinary for much longer.
I never thought the show was quite as good as everyone else seemed to (years of reading comics?) and so somehow now don’t think it’s as bad as everyone else seems to (years of reading comics?). But I can see the problem - where once the drama was ‘hiding who you really were from your boss or your family‘ (which can be easily metaphorical for other things), the drama quickly became ‘my nemesis may actually be my brother and my dad, who I thought was dead, is trying to blow up the world etc’. Whuh?
What’s that? There are shows other than ones with aliens, monsters and super-powers? (checks TV guide) egad, you’re right! I even like some of them too It did make me wonder if ‘extraordinary’ differed on either side of the Atlantic - but then I realised that my favourite British Drama series Cracker features a very un-ordinary protagonist in Fitz.
He’s brilliant. Brilliantly flawed maybe - but just try and define him as ordinary. The cast of Six Feet Under are an average family give or take and they face extraordinary death/mortality on a weekly basis - but keep going. Does that fit the brief? BBC’s excellent The Street features ordinary people and problems that are extraordinary (yet recognisable - no aliens!) but then these stories only sustain an hour of television. Not a series.
So I’m confused. By ‘ordinary people’, do they just mean ‘identifiable’? I’m far more ordinary than Greg House MD, but I still identify with his gripes. Does the novelty of an ordinary character wear off once they start actually doing stuff? Or is this just a buzz phrase that I should ignore and come up with what I want? Does this phrase actually describe what you want? Help?
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
Script Scaffolding (Or ‘what’s propping up your script… but also holding it down?’)
As I’ve mentioned in past posts, a feature film project of mine is currently being guniea-pigged by the Scriptfactory as they train their next generation of expert script developers.
Very exciting and useful for me but last Monday I was sitting in Notting Hill for what should have been a two hour meeting but stretched out to four and a half hours of my story treatment being… well, let’s just say there’s some work to be done
But my picture of a suicidal Norville Barnes above isn’t meant to represent me after the meeting but, for those who’ve seen The Hudsucker Proxy, the strange forces that unexpectedly effect what happens to Norville at the end of the film. For all the stuff I am now cutting (entire sub-plots, set-pieces, characters and a big re-think tonally) I think both me and my developer Brenda still have faith in the idea due to the core concept and central relationship between the two leads.
What I realised though was that the film still stands up as an idea without all of these things. When a film is in its early stages, it’s very easy to think up all sorts of cool ideas and bits and pieces and then try and lasso them all together with your premise and theme.
Which doesn’t work.
It might just be me but I don’t think so. Anyone trying to write has probably picked up several structural ‘rules’ from books or gurus giving us all the answers to writing. So, when I’m thinking of my idea, instantly the back of my brain is thinking ‘ooh and wouldn’t it be cool if this happened at the end/end of act two/mid-point moment of no return’ etc etc.
But, having done that, I now realise that I’m desperately trying to crowbar my central character arcs around these big moments which is the wrong way round. My characters need to drive the plot and create what happens to make sure it feels real. As much as I came away from the meeting petrified that I had no bloody clue what happens after Act One, I do have a much clearer idea of what the characters want to happen so just need to put obstacles in their path and see what happens.
We know that we’ll always end up having to cut our favourite line or scene, but I can’t stress enough how clearly I can now see the premise of my idea now that it is uncluttered by the ’script scaffolding’ I’ve wedged all around it. In terms of plot, I’m now back to square one and a blank page. But, without the scaffolding obscuring view, I hope that I’ll be able to see what actually belongs in the next draft that I will be handing in soon.
I may also have to do a post about how to take four and a half hours of criticism on the chin sometime…but I’m still trying to figure that one out myself
