Beta play blog 3: writing TV is tiramisu & tea.

So, I have minutely sad news. The beta play isn’t exactly dead. It is in Purgatory. Its soul is on the shelf, due to the arrival of a much shinier cousin. Unfortunately, or fortunately I’ve discovered that I really, really, really enjoy writing TV – like, eating Tiramisu while drinking orange-coloured tea levels of ‘enjoy.’

And naturally, I’ve started a pilot script. I say started, this is the year of the ‘Fire Horse’ and maybe some very extra alignment of the stars is to blame…but I’ve had three writing sittings and I’m already 15 pages in. Which for me is a lot, a lot, a lot.

When I sit down to write this TV drama, I seem to have zero f***s, about anything in fact – judgement, structure, subject, other people, ‘work work.’ I’m just having one big champagne- ball on my laptop, making it up as I go along, with the visual grammar and cultural references gathered through a lifetime of consuming TV drama in unhealthy amounts. There is also the BA in Film studies and sometime Masters degree in scriptwriting… Let’s not put too much store on education – it’s often the education around the course content that shapes us, don’t you think.

Ironic then, that I’ve been writing on and off for 13 years, yet, I’ve only pushed out some plays and a radio script. Why? Well, if you’re interested, it’s obvious to me. I always thought of screen writing as a pie in the sky route to seeing my work produced. And having become more and more of a pragmatist, this medium has, until a few weeks ago, been left out to pasture on a shelf (next to the beta play script) labelled ‘Fat chance, but have a go when you’re ready.’

This wasn’t a totally uninformed assumption or mental block. In 2008, just before the big old ‘crash’, when more than half of an office disappeared by 11:00 AM, I briefly worked as a Film script development assistant in a big rights and production company in Marble Arch. It’s what partially inspired me to study on the UEA MA…that, and wangling free tickets for The National Theatre by volunteering.

As you may imagine, being in the nitty gritty of receiving submissions…so many submissions, some of which were good, all of which had been through an agent/filtering process, the impression I formed was of a paper mountain locked in one of the cabinets I had moved from storage to the side of my desk. At the top of that paper mountain was a green light. Also, within my experience at that time was witnessing a big production, which had wrapped filming, being dropped from distribution.

…I couldn’t conceive of the level of heartache involved in reaching that green light at the top of the paper mountain and making the thing, only to find that no one would ever see it. Ever. I should say that I’m speaking of feature films here and not television, which is perhaps why I’m giving myself a hall-pass to shoot my shot at TV writing.

Because I haven’t toiled at TV writing over the past 13 years, in a way, there is less to lose – less expectation – less sense of failure, less high stakes. And here is a lovely anecdote…You know those times when you’re doing something completely unrelated, like walking home for instance, and you start looking forward to a TV show or series that you’re following? You think about the characters and what they’re going to do? And you look forward to having a good roll around in that particular storyworld later, perhaps with Tiramisu and tea. Well, I unconsciously started thinking about the world of my TV script in the same way… As if it were a show I was looking forward to watching. Then I remembered – that isn’t an existing thing, it’s what I’m writing…not viewing. Which is testament to how much I’m enjoying this thing…

What of the play in its beta stages? I’m not abandoning it, orphaning it, forgetting about it. The subject matter’s too special. Unlike its shinier cousin that gets impromptu writing sessions, the play needs a schedule. Yet it’s hard to make a date with yourself to do something you’re not in the mood for. Further proof, that I’m relating to the beta play and the (now very alpha) screenplay in very different ways.

I guess we’ll just have to see what happens next.