Writersroom

For what it's worth Paul, I think this is an extremely useful and practical series of posts.

You certainly got some flak with the last instalment (!) but the way I see it, rules are absolutely there to be broken - but you can't break them without knowing what you're doing first.

As an aspiring script writer I'm not arrogant enough to presume I already know it all and the truth is, a script is worth nothing until it's shot. These guidelines help people to get there and it's enormously helpful.

Thanks

(c:

I'd like to echo the comments of the previous post. It's not long ago that script writing with the BBC was a closed off world for any new writers, so to ignore this kind of information is foolish. I wonder how many talented writers with good ideas have failed due to break through due to their inability to accept advice such as this. Many thanks Paul, it's a check list that can only help to improve the scripts of open minded writers.

These are fairly fundamental and should be known to most aspiring writers already, but it is good to be reminded of them from time to time. This kind of thing is particularly useful when you want to take stock of where you are with a project and are trying to identify what works and what needs more attention.

Quite timely this second installment, because I think the opening episode of Survivors doesn't stand up too well against it. I personally found it quite watchable but at the same time kept thinking it fell a long way short of what one might have expected about a drama about the end of humanity. It was oddly undramatic. Mystery Man's excellent blog talks about a crisis in screenwriting because the art of suspense appears to have been lost, and that seems a reasonable assessment of Survivors.

I don't think people would be fretting about the age and race mix of the cast if it was a ripping good story. The fact that they are suggests that it is failing to really engage the audience, and I'd say the fault begins with the first thing in your list - knowing when to begin the story.

In Battlestar Galactica humankind (ok, a fictional, different humankind) was virtually wiped out, and it was thrilling. In Survivors we got a fairly cursory run-through of the stages of the disaster, but it seemed to be purely a mechanism to introduce character (half of whom were going to die anyway, of none of which we'd spent long enough to care one way or the other). Such a half-hearted treatment might as well have been done away with, and it would have been dramatically more compelling and intriguing to have started with the inciting incident to have already taken place before the start of episode one. Start with Abby Grant waking up recovered, wondering what the heck has gone on, finding her dead husband who'd been keeping a vigil etc.

As you say, "Don't wait."

terraling
those are excellent points, i wondered what was wrong with it as I was getting quite bored

Good, sound advice. Thanks.