For a time it was scary. I thought that was it, that I’d given up writing completely. The dreadful day had come and my brain had totally disengaged and that was that. But it was also refreshing just to have a break and not think about when I was going to get my hour done and if I couldn’t, when I was going to make it up. It had become added pressure that I didn’t really need outside of my day job and had removed any fun from it. It had even gotten to a stage where sometimes I’d sit in front of my computer and just run out the hour without even typing anything. I’d turned writing into something I wasn’t looking forward to, a chore to get out of the way.

So now I’ve got a new routine – writing when I feel like it. I want to write most days but I won’t feel guilty if I’d rather watch a movie or play some games. It might take me longer to get stuff done but at least I’ll enjoy it again. And I am enjoying it. I’ve just gotten back from a much needed holiday away and I’ve already bashed out a synopsis for a new TV idea.

My main reason for the ‘Hour a Day’ was to treat it like more of a profession. I was a runner-up in the Red Planet prize and was ready for them to snap up one of my ideas and for me to get cracking, delivering drafts to deadlines like a proper writer. But that hasn’t happened and they’re now drawing the pitching to a close. I haven’t had a definite no on all my ideas but I’ve got a feeling my style wasn’t what they were looking for. So without a proper production company to send stuff to I feel like I’m back to square one, the hobbyist writer in his bedroom who keeps plugging away.

But the Red Planet experience has given me several ideas which I’m excited about, ideas that get my blood-pumping and make me want to write. I’ve learned writing isn’t supposed to be a prison sentence that you give yourself. You can’t force it into a quantity or a timetable, instead you’ve got find the ‘right’ time, the time when the juices are really flowing, and ride the wave – you just can’t plan when you might catch it again.

Luckily there are some parallels between what I do as a web developer and the craft of screenwriting. This was highlighted by an evening of talks I went to a couple of weeks ago run by Brighton web agency Clear Left on the subject of using the web to tell stories in various ways. Obviously the method in which a user interacts with a web site is different to how they watch a movie but a web designer’s job is to still engage with their audience and present a story in an engaging way.

First up was Phil Gyford who is the creator of The Diary of Samuel Pepys, an on-going blog which is updated daily with an entry from Pepys’ diary. Phil’s initial reason for doing this was to take what are several hefty volumes of text from the 17th century writer and break it down into a manageable format. Rather than sit down and read Pepys’ Diary as if it were a book, he wanted a way people could read it without being put off by the sheer size of it. The blog format seems perfect. A diary isn’t a story in the classic sense, it has no beginning, middle or end, or any exploding robots, so reading each entry as a separate entity makes sense. It also gives the reader a sense that Pepys is out there somewhere in history, writing his diary as the reader lives their own life in tandem. Phil has also put Pepys on Twitter and used some of his more mundane text as a daily insight into what Pepys got up to. Like everyone else on Twitter, he bad-mouths theatre performances, bitches about work and gets drunk.

There was also a talk by Gavin O’Malley about the creation of Spacelog, a collection of transcripts from NASA’s space exploration missions, including Apollo’s 11 and 13. The transcripts they started with were simply reams of paper containing radio messages between the NASA control room and the astronauts. The team digitised everything and presented it to the site’s user like a Twitter feed. So each message has a time stamp and a photo of who’s saying it. Still sounds pretty dull but it makes the text much more browsable and the mundane conversations are brought to life to a point where they become quite involving so that you find yourself scrolling through for hours. There’s even a nifty feature that graphs how many ‘tweets’ there were at particular moments so you can see where the action kicks in.

I might as well round-up what else I’ve been up too… there was April’s Moviebar which was a fun night, it seemed to be a bumper edition of great shorts.

I reviewed a couple of fantastic Hong Kong films recently released by Terracotta Distribution over at Electric Sheep; Sparrow and The Detective.

I also saw Source Code from director Duncan Jones. I preferred his debut Moon because it was a more in-depth and lovingly crafted retro sci-fi film. By comparison, Source Code is much more of a caper and it’s obviously more mainstream with an easier to sell high concept – Groundhog Day meets Quantum Leap meets Speed – with requisite love story and cheesy ending. But it was still very enjoyable, Jones has fun with the idea and there’s stuff about Quantum Physics and parallel universes there if you want it. I don’t think it’ll be this year’s Inception as it doesn’t feel quite as grand but it doesn’t take itself too seriously either so it makes for a fun ride.

First up last week was a showing of the shorts made at the Brighton Filmmakers Coalition’s 48-hour film challenge which involved creating trailers for made-up films.  I had the pleasure of working with a great team of people on a trailer for a sci-fi thriller called Blink.  Sadly, hardware let us down and we only ended up with the teasiest of teasers but director Sammi Hamer shot some amazing stuff and hopefully we’ll be able to pull that footage together soon…

The other trailers were very cool and stylish but the funniest were by director Anthony Carpendale, especially The Man Who Shouts at Seagulls…

Over the weekend I saw the fantastic duo Bitter Ruin perform at the Brunswick in Hove and they were followed by a trio of American musicians, including Dresden Dolls drummer Brian Viglione, called Gentlemen & Assassins.  Obviously they rocked, very bluesy and punky.  You can find out more on Chris’ Blog and follow that to a review by Scar who summed it up perfectly.

And then it was Moviebar on Monday, another great set of shorts which I wrote about on the Official Moviebar blog.  I even tried to take a few photos as evidence about how great these nights are but with the pub being dark and busy they didn’t turn out that great.  Although you can just about see Chris in his swish Moviebar hat…

So you probably suspect I’ve gone insane with jealousy and simply ripped-off Chris’s blog, passing off his packed social life as my own.  As I’ve no photographic proof of me at these events then I guess you’ll just have to trust me.

Next week I’ll be talking about my experiences writing Ten Dead Men…

I’ve followed game developers Quantic Dream since they released Nomad Soul back in 1999. They also released the crime thriller Fahrenheit and both games were great but still felt like games. Fahrenheit was a compelling story but felt ‘on-the-rails’. Failure to escape a particular situation meant you had to go back to the beginning of the same scene and try the button sequence again. By comparison, Heavy Rain is a huge leap forward. While playing, I never had to go back and re-do something. Obviously you could if you wanted to but the game constantly moved forward and I was more than happy to let it. So my decisions, my abilities, dictated the story I was watching and meant I was much closer to the characters than I would be in a movie. In a film, the director is in control and it’s their own personal vision I’m watching. In Heavy Rain, I’m the one making split-second decisions for the characters, meaning I’m the one responsible for what happens to them.

The story itself is nothing ground-breaking. In a Fincher-esque city a child murderer is on the loose – the Origami Killer – and you take control of four protagonists who have the potential to uncover his true identity; Ethan – the father of a boy who is missing, Madeline – an insomniac journalist, Scott – a PI on the trail of the killer and FBI agent Norman who’s working with the police. Each character has their own personal problems and are approaching the case from different angles. How you play the game determines which one is the real hero. For instance, Ethan is the most desperate and the Killer has given him a set of Saw-like challenges to prove how much he loves his son in order to prevent his death. But he also has blackouts and the police suspect Ethan himself is the killer so you’ve got to stay one step ahead of them as well. Failing to do so means being locked up and leaving Ethan completely helpless in saving his son.

The greatest success of the game is how much creator David Cage gets you to care about the characters in the first place. This is helped largely by the doom-laden score and fantastic motion-capture graphics but it’s really down to the realistic and emotional scenes Cage gets you to interact with. The game is a slow-burner, many early episodes are ponderous with nothing much happening except they get you as player to reflect on a character’s disposition. There’s a heart-breaking scene at the beginning where Ethan has to look after his uncommunicative son who just wants to watch TV while you cook him dinner and try and get him to do his homework. Ethan is still guilt-ridden over the death of his other son and this boy just wants love from his father, yet in the same room they are unable to express their feelings. In filmic terms it sets-up the themes of the overall story but as a game experience it’s incredible, as a player you can literally sit there and run out the clock or try and get Ethan to entertain and engage with his son.

As the story gets rolling there are bigger and bigger set-pieces. Quantic Dream aren’t afraid of crowd scenes which are put to great effect in this particular game. There’s the usual chase through the subway but made more exciting because you’ve got to chose your route through the busy platform and push past people. What’s terrifying is that putting one button wrong could mean the end of this particular plot. The game seems much more forgiving early on but as the stakes get higher just missing one move could end a character for good. There’s a tremendous weight of responsibility throughout, especially after I discovered just how easy it was to lose. Through my own stupidity I led one character into a horrible situation that I wasn’t able to save them from and they were suddenly brutally murdered before my eyes as I’m cursing my prematurely aged fingers, left with their dead eyes staring accusingly at me. And it’s not like a movie where their death might have been a noble sacrifice, in my Heavy Rain none of the other characters would know of this particular person’s tragic death.

I’ve heard that Heavy Rain has been optioned to be made into a film but I fail to see the point. As serial killer stories goes the game does come up with a compelling backstory as to why the killer became a killer and it has a gut-punching twist as to their real identity, but in a film it would be easy to fall into the typical serial killer format and completely miss the layers the game has to offer. At the end I had saved the day but only partly, it came at a huge cost. Despite the action scenes the game felt like Fincher’s Zodiac more than anything, a network of characters that either failed or succeeded (mainly failing thanks to me) and it felt like the story never quite resolved. This isn’t a criticism but a niggling feeling that keeps you thinking about the characters long after the game has finished. I would like to play it again, to see the different outcomes, but the first time round was so involving, draining almost, that it felt like that’s the only Heavy Rain story I’ll know. Seeing something happen differently would be like watching someone else’s edited version – as would be watching the adapted film.

Tony Jordan kicked things off with a passionate talk about keeping your writing pure and personal, and not becoming shallow and following the trends of the entertainment machine.  It was hugely motivational as Mr. Jordan (or can I call him Tony now?  Or Tone?  Or the T-Man?) is as you’d expect; energetic, funny, sweary and bursting with wisdom.  He doesn’t want to see another tired vampire script but find the next big thing.  He doesn’t want anyone starting a pitch with ‘OK, 6-parts, 9pm slot on Channel 4’ but hear the story that you’ve poured your blood, sweat, tears and spunk (his words) into.  If you had 3 months left to live, what would be the script you simply had to write?  That’s the one he wants to read.

He also distilled a few of the truths about the craft of screenwriting.  McKee, Field, Truby and everyone else trying to sell you the magic secret is just trying to fleece you.  The Tony Jordan approach is get a good character, determine where he/she needs to get to and then place obstacles in their way to achieving that goal. That’s it.  Your skill as a writer will be in how good those goals and obstacles are.  And if you want to work on building a great character one of his tips was to fill out job applications as that character, because the questions they ask will get you thinking about who they are and what their background is.  Tony was very proud of getting Gene Hunt an interview with Tesco.

There was also insight into the industry as it stands now and why it’s so damn hard to break into.  Nowadays there are only a handful of big-name writers who get to do the huge primetime shows, why?  Because if an Exec gets Tony Jordan to write something and the show goes tits-up, the Exec can blame the well-known writer who should’ve been a safe pair of hands.  But if the Exec hires a new writer and the show doesn’t deliver, then the Exec has to bite the bullet for taking the risk.  And don’t sit around waiting for the phone to ring.  Keep writing!

Then it was on to the dreaded networking, what every writer, especially me, fears.  But this wasn’t really ‘networking’, more of a mingling.  I haven’t been to any writing festivals but I imagine networking there is more fraught, with desperate writers trying to get their script into the hands of an elusive producer.  This was much more chilled-out affair, the bonus being that everyone had the perfect icebreaker – ‘So, what was the script you entered?’

Everyone had a brilliant, yet simple, pitch.  What was interesting was that there seemed to be a lot of very dark, bleak stories out there, sometimes with a horror bent, but not generic.  No zombies or vampires or anything but new, fresh ideas.  Hopefully, some of those ideas get to make it to our screens.

So it’s onwards and upwards from here.  I wish everyone the best of luck as the mentoring process continues and I hope we all get to meet-up again in the future.

What’s interesting about the RPP is that it got me thinking about TV in the first place.  Ever since I was a kid I always wanted, someway, somehow, to be involved in films.  All my other scripts have been shorts or features and I’ve always thought if I ever became a professional writer it would be as one who wrote movies – preferably ones with lots of things exploding, in space.  But the harsh reality is that making a film in the UK seems to be a very hard business.  Even if I got a script optioned it could be years before it ever became an actual film.

On the other hand, TV at least seems realistic and there are loads of success stories surrounding UK writers and shows like Misfits, Peep Show, Dr Who, Being Human etc.  So the RPP was the perfect excuse to actually sit down and write a pilot for a series, although last year was the first year I finally got round to entering.  The pilot I entered was a sci-fi drama centred on a group of teenagers addicted to online videogames, and how the lines between gaming and reality start to blur.  It was actually an idea I wanted to enter into the 2008 RPP but I never got past the development phase (the development phase being me creating a file called ideas.doc and writing ‘teenagers, gaming, explosions, space,  school’).

So after I failed to enter the RPP I sat down and decided to write the pilot anyway, for the next competition at least.  It was sketchy and very loose – only about 40 pages while the RPP is after 60 – but I sent it round to my small circle of fellow writers for some feedback.  From there I worked on tone and tried to make sense of the various themes I had flying round.  I’ve always been a fan of sci-fi but writing it can sometimes lead you into a complete muddle of half-baked concepts and what you think are cool ideas that quickly become difficult to realise on the page.  The great thing about doing a pilot is that you don’t have to pack absolutely everything into it – it’s designed to tantalize the viewer without giving them any answers.  My rewriting quickly became about doing a simple, focused story but one that introduced elements that would be played out later in the series.

When RPP 2010 came round I already had something to work with and could focus on writing an amazing 10 pages – which is what you submit first and then those chosen for the second round send their completed scripts.  Again, feedback from other writers was invaluable in stripping the first 10 pages into a tasty hook for the rest of the episode.  Then, after I got over the shock of making it to the second round, I frantically polished the 60 pages and had a mild heart attack.

Then I got the news that I was a runner-up and was very, very happy.  I’ve entered a fair few competitions (that you usually have to pay for) and never gotten anywhere so it’s great to get some recognition.  It might just be that my concept’s got ‘something’ but that’s enough for me to keep plugging away and develop other ideas.  I’ve just reread the pilot for the first time in a few months and it does still excite me.  It’s also come a long way since my original idea, yet I can see where the work needs to be done.  As always, it’s up to me to keep rewriting away but me actually getting something on the telly does seem (albeit minutely) possible.  Me writing Blade Runner 2 is still a wild, crazed fantasy.

In the past I’ve aimed to try and do an hour every weekday but I’ve only ever managed this in short bursts, maybe a month or so each time.  At the end of 2010 I began writing a new feature script and set myself the task of doing an hour every single day.  This worked marvellously and in a little over 2 months I had the first draft of a script, which is the fastest I’ve ever written anything without the pressure of a deadline.

So my aim for 2011 is to do an hour every single day, including weekends and holidays – 365 hours.  Obviously it’s not feasible to actually write every single day so if an hour is missed my time goes into debit and I make up the hour elsewhere.  I’ve just done my hour for today and I’m only an hour down so far this month, meaning in January I’ve already done 21 hours of writing.

I find it quite neat that each week I get 7 hours of writing done, or roughly 1 working day of actually being a writer.  Having to set the hour aside each day and actually doing it proves to be very rewarding, leaving me satisfied that I’ve accomplished something that day and less guilty using the rest of my spare time to my own debauched ends.  And an hour definitely focuses the mind, pushing it to get things down on paper before the time has vanished.

In the past I’ve kidded myself that not doing anything during the week is fine and I can make up for it during those endless weekends that are always just round the corner but disappear in a flash.  A haphazard approach also meant there was never any consistency, with time wasted catching up with what I’d done last time and trying to get back in the groove.  A proper schedule means the script is fresh in the mind and you can easily plan what to do with the hour the next day and the day after that.

The hour itself I class as mainly writing actual drafts but I also include writing scene outlines, character bios, treatments etc  in that time, anything that contributes directly to the screenplay.  So reading about the craft of screenwriting or doing this blog do not count!  I have included general research for a script in the hour but have found that meandering around Wikipedia in the name of work usually leads me drifting off to other, less work related, things – curse you internet!  So anything that involves being online may have to be done at other times.

Finally, I am slowly redesigning the site.  I know it looks a bit boring, would you believe my day job is as a web designer?!  But hey, my screenwriting hour has to take priority over all other distractions to justify this blog in the first place!

So rather than a portfolio of my writing assignments I hope the site will be a more casual blog discussing screenwriting from (yet another) wannabe writer.

CUT TO: Next entry, April 25th, went to Cornwall, it was nice.

Anyway, for nostalgia reasons my old reviews and interviews can be found at http://reviews.reelcitizen.co.uk