Writing the first draft of the pilot was a lot immediately easier than I expected. Having spent significantly longer on planning than I have before - usually starting stories with a scene and growing from there - I found a lot of the immediate premise flowed with relative ease. I wrote the opening scene a week before putting it down to focus on the pitch, as it was a scene that I'd been thinking of for a long time and I was eager to get into the rhythm of writing. Writing for the first time in a long while was very exciting and ignited a passion to keep the project advancing and got me highly anticipating the writing process. After sitting on this opening scene without adding to it, I sent a copy to my tutor upon his prompting and quickly got to work with the rest of it. Again, this moved quite quickly and the rough bulk of the pilot was written over that week.
After quickly glancing at my tutor's notes for the opening scene I quickly tried to cast them aside until i'd finished the first rough draft. This is because I wanted it to be mostly unfiltered, as it came from my brain to the page so I could then edit it and tidy it up afterwards before sending it to my tutor.
Over the course over this first writing process I realised a couple of important things. Not much changed as far as the story is concerned during the first draft. Upon review I did realise that the lack of variety in settings and the dialogue-heavy approach could be a problem as far as pace and energy levels go, which led me to include a scene in Sarah's bedroom. Initially I wanted to hold off on showing this until the second episode, however I think this has also benefitted in allowing audiences a more immediate sense of who she is and providing a much more intimate setting to see her in.
I decided to add the scene of Jack and Beth is Jack's room due to the ensemble approach of the show and the understanding that not every character would be explored as others in each episode. I felt that Jack and Beth's relationship was not being represented as clearly - or as much - as Natalie and Ryan's and wanted to take some of the heat off of Ryan, who I felt was receiving a lot of abuse from his housemates for the first episode. Jack's messiness reflects her artistic mind and contrasts Beth's academic, organised character - which will become a tension later in the season.
One of the most reassuring aspects of writing was the ease with which I was able to write. Whilst I do not feel as though my work is the perfect example of what I can produce - obviously this comes with the editing, re-writing and learning process. However I felt like my understanding of the character's and where I needed to be setting up certain character/story points. This also motivated me towards the editing process - nervous but eager to receive feedback and start applying it.
The scene where Sarah rings home was important for two primary reasons: It sets up the strained relationship she has with her mum and the tension between her and Paul, it also sets up what I hope to be a recurring element of the show. In order to highlight the influence of parent expectations and the importance of the idea of family in the show I plan to recur video calls to parents / family members - slightly differently to reflect the family dynamic of each housemate. This scene was also inspired by a scene from the original college script this story is based on, one of the few features that I think still has some sembelence of similarity.
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| Rough Dialogue, written during a train journey |
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| Story plans |
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| Scene Ideas |
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| 6/12 dialogue ideas |
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