SING DATE TONIGHT.

Obligatory post: I'm on it tonight. Check it out. Sky Living. 8pm.

A Talk with Brookside Writer Helen East

Ms East advised a collection of budding Oldham writers on Wednesday 24^th,

over at Oldham Lifelong Learning in the Cultural Quarter on Union St. She dished out a few nuggets of awesome advice.

A film script should be 90-100 pages in length.

Find info and examples of scripts over at BBC Writersroom. 

Find writing prompts over at CAKE.shortandsweet. 

A rough rule to work to: 1 page of script equals 1 minute of screen time.

A TV drama script needs a quicker set-up and structure than its film counterpart.

LA Productions and Red Production Company are two TV production companies accepting unsolicited screenplays.

Break rules. Reading books on screenwriting will teach you the rules. Know them, then break them.

Writers write. Don't put it off.

Send your work out as much as possible.

Look for stories. Be nosy. Listen to people. Eavesdrop. Be a voyeur. Read the news.

Once you have an idea, write a synopsis. Then research the subject to flesh it out. Your synopsis should indicate the tone of your proposed screenplay.

Start your script. In your first ten minutes (Act 1) we should know who the main character is and what world they inhabit. 10 pages in, something happens to them. At this point, Act 2 begins.

Know your characters inside out. Put them into different situations to see how they react and behave. Something has to be at stake for them. What do they want? Who has the most to lose? That's your main character. It's their story.

During the session we also analysed the opening scene of a courtroom drama. We looked at how the setting, costume design, casting and narrative all told the viewer what kind of story the programme was telling within the first few minutes. As mentioned in point 5, this has to happen quickly in TV.

I asked Ms East for some advice on screenwriting. I've got a synopsis and a feature script that I've been looking for feedback on. She suggested that the synopsis shouldn't go online, as it's hard to copyright an idea. Also, as the script goes through drafts, the synopsis will change. Feedback is much easier to get on the screenplay itself, so I should just go for it, tidy up the script and start dishing it out for critiques.

So. Very informative and engaging night down at the library. I may have another bash at screenwriting in a few months!

Three Strikes: Week 22

This week: watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on the big screen, thanks to Manchester Odeon Flashbacks. 

If you haven't seen this classic tale of a drug-addled journalist and his slightly unstable Samoan attorney going in search of the American Dream- do so right now. You need to. But don't Google “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas full movie”. Be fair on Universal Pictures, now!

This film introduced me the gonzo wisdom of Hunter S Thompson, back when I first watched it in about 2000, and is probably responsible for my obsession with documenting everything I do on this blog. Watching it on the big screen was a real treat.

I also went to a talk delivered by a screenwriter who worked on the now-discontinued soap opera Brookside. Very interesting discourse into the world of writing for television. Full post to come.

Other than that, I'm making progress with writing and NaPoWriMo. I've found a decent feedback site- a real rarity- and have written a handful of poems as well. Stay tuned for all of this.

I've been consistently smashing the gym. My only personal bests are STILL just the 10 minute run: up 4 speeds. It's getting incredibly difficult now. Which will come first- a shredded six-pack, or a cardiac arrest? Place your bets now!

Manchester's Shame

Let’s take a look at day 2 of NaPoWriMo. The prompt is a poem that tells a lie. Here’s a Mancunian tale of an “alternate” history.

Manchester, 1996.

A high-roofed, airy chamber:

The archaic, Gothic Town Hall

Suits and ties and darkened minds.

Overshadowed by colossi:

London, Birmingham, Liverpool-

The city stagnates.

This will not do, they agree. This must change.

Their sporting goal:

The Commonwealth Games. To host, to sell,

To rejuvenate.

To put a chain of events into motion:

To rebuild a city, to take on the UK’s Metropoli,

To make Manchester shine.

The meeting closes. A door opens.

The mayor enters with a man, Devant. They are alone.

They plot and scheme. They crusade.

A week later: a secret auction.

Worldwide moneyed tyrants argue.

The mayor oversees. Devant bangs a gabble,

Echoing, bomb-like.

The successor, the buyer: The IRA.

The merchandise: 9,000lb of C4,

Digital timers, blasting caps,

A battered old van.

A codeword.

Days later: The call is made.

Emergency services receive the codeword,

An IRA chant.

The town is cleared: ants,

From a dollop of cinnamon.

A van in ghost-town Manchester.

A distant camera, high angle,

Image greyed out and silent,

Zoomed far in and grainy.

A small white van, boxy and desolated.

Then, obliteration.

A ball of light. Zoom out:

A street engulfed in smoke

Up to the rooftops.

On the street: alarms ring.

The carcass of the van still burning.

Debris. Dents in lampposts.

An overhead walkway a gutted frame.

Smashed and battered shop fronts.

A dirty mushroom, filling the skyline.

Stragglers glassed, then hauled

Into standby ambulances.

Only the local post box, blood-red,

Remains untouched.

Days later, the clean-up begins,

Clearing a path for a glassy,

Metropolitan future.

Repaving. Reinstalling. Rejuvenating.

Day by week by month,

The city blooms, business booms,

Yet the IRA still looms,

In the minds of the people.

The locals’ prize for enduring this:

A large, modern sporting stadium-

And a grant from the Commonwealth.

In the stained-oak chambers

of the city’s boardrooms,

The mayor and Devant share

handshakes and visions of success,

as IRA money flows blood-like into the city.

Prohibition Cinquain

Day five of NaPoWriMo suggests a cinquain, a five-line poem with emphases on particular syllables.

Here’s one inspired by a recent night out in Prohibition Manchester. (I’ll be there again on Saturday, if the poem tempts you. Or I do.) Check out how to write cinquains, then let me know if you think I hit the stresses at the right points. It's a little bit literal, but it's a first attempt.

The bar

Has a DJ

The music binds us all.

With the dark-haired beauty in black,

I dance.

Strigiformes Assassination

Day 20 of NaPoWriMo suggested a poem using at least five of a collection of words.

Strigiformes Assassination

The Cyclops owl, Edgar

laden with heavy artillery

curls cheese into a bilious truffle.

He is a widow. A dairy farmer. A hitman.

His elusive nature,

svelte and accurate and deadly,

is renowned. But he is modest

and as vocal as a ghost.

He glides from willowy nest

to gutter, to sky, in a swoop, without a hoot.

Tonight's client: Elwin the cow-bird,

cattle hustler, moving in on Offa's land,

Edgar's superior.

Elwin sits atop the beast, horned and fat,

gorging on ticks in the black night.

Edgar flies high, his target upwind. He hears only

the breeze in his feathers.

And then he plummets.

He activates photon canons with

an acute feather rearrangement

Sending a coarse beam through the night,

a fluorescent javelin.

He kills twice: The bird: obliterated.

The cow: a cauterised arc in its back,

smoking, dead.

Edgar is the toast of Offa's steak-and-cheese party.

Have You Used Scribophile?

At the time of writing, we're past the half-way mark of NaPoWriMo 2013. In the midst of all this, I'm trying to get some feedback on some poems I wrote a while back. Hence, I've set up a profile on Scribophile, a creative writing critique site. Check out my page here. 

Have you used it? How did you find it? Comment below...