Idea & Technique
MENTAL HEALTH
One of my early ideas was to show housemates struggling with various forms of mental illness - it's commonplace among students but not always properly discussed or given the awareness it deserves. (1) However, one of my early issues with this idea was my tonal aversion to the typically very dramatic way youth drama approaches issues and something I wanted to try and explore in more subtle or developed ways. I didn't necessarily want to show somebody dealing with issues of self-harming, instead later deciding to explore life AFTER overcoming those urges and feeling. To reflect the reality and some of the dangers - of the lack of communication and discussion around mental health, I wanted to try and show two sides: Sarah, who bottles up her feelings leading to an eventual explosion and Jack, who hides them at first but quickly opens up to Nat and Beth. As a moral consequence, Jack's issues are easily actioned and they're supported by their friends, whereas Sarah clearly makes herself worse, working herself up into panics at the smallest thing. While my usual writing style is very dialogue heavy, I wanted to avoid having characters just talk about their mental health - something that a lot of people struggle to do - and ended up leaving only a featherlight trace in my initial pilot script: Sarah had a panic attack upon failing uni and the news that her mother is having another child - but even then I felt that the scene was the roughest skim on the surface of what I wanted to achieve.
When exploring the series as a whole, I was able to re-address this idea and try to figure out whether and/or how it would fit into my story. This wasn't an idea I wanted to give-up on, affecting me personally, close friends as well as countless other people - not just student. In The Hollywood Reporter's Full Writer's Roundtable, Emily V Gordon speaks about how she sees writing as a continuation of her previous career as a therapist, speaking the power for an audience member to empathise and connect with characters. I think this is true for both the audience and the writer, writing about something you're dealing with can act a way to process ideas and also offers you the chance to have to consider other viewpoints to issues, and empathise with characters with conflicting opinions and ideals. Peele goes so far as to say that the "power of story is that it is one of the few ways we can really feel empathy and encourage it" (2).
It was during this time that I decided to explore the aftermath of self-harm, once again going back to my original plan for the series of trying to explore what happens 'in-between the scenes' of other shows, here looking at what happens after a typical storyline perhaps have finished. advice from BBC writers room suggests bringing all major character points into present in some way so wanted to try and show a more (literally) matured version of self-harm story, instead exploring with Sarah's struggles to keep clean after quitting, dealing with intrusive thoughts, irritating scar-tissue growth and her personal failure sending her back to that headspace. I decided to show Sarah as somebody that had dealt with self-harm before uni and now considers themselves past it and then contrasting that with Jack who deals with body dysphoria in ever increasing ways, some old and knows how to deal with but some brand new, brought on by relationship.
As a way of maintaining this idea throughout the season without Sarah talking about it, I decided to turn it into an action motif that could recur, growing understanding and meaning the more you saw and recognised it. To do this, I took the action of Sarah rubbing her irritating scars and pinging a hairband against her wrist - a commonly suggesting coping mechanism (3) , include it when she's stressed/upset etc and grew it throughout each episode, starting with rubbing, then scratching, growing and growing with her mental state. This was partially inspired by an old acting exercise where you'd assign an action to your character and grow it from 1-10, making it more exaggerated as the number grew. I think here, by looking at my problem as what would benefit both the character and actor provided a unique insight and allowed me to try something quite interesting and different. By combining the wrist and the hairband, two actions they may seem innocuous to somebody that wasn't aware of what they were looking for, these may appear as small quirks of the character until you finally learn what they mean and change your understanding if re-watching - however, to somebody that may understand and relate to those small, almost invisible action - they will (hopefully) immediately understand and relate to that character a bit more.
ENDINGS:
Learned from college script that without known ending, your story will lack direction and without direction your story will burn out. Started with story specifically with a through story that would always be leading me toward an ending. I decided to follow a personal story about failure, a theme I think is rarely explored in the media - many screenwriters insist that research is key and "its the next best thing to having experienced something yourself." (Field S. 2003) This story of failure also led me down a road that I saw to have two potential endings: Sarah would either pass or fail. The best part of this being my main, 'face' story is that either ending worked as long as her personal, emotional journey of overcoming the elements that lead to the failure was appropriately and satisfyingly concluded. I started writing knowing where the story was leading, but also allowed myself and the story to reach a conclusion that came organically.
I started, knowing that Sarah would inevitably have to confront her father - who she feels she was taken from as a child and desperately tries to emulate, with limited knowledge, in order to feel close to him - finally coming to realise living in his shadow had left her jeopardising her relations and herself: without personal drive or belief in any sense of self. How this happened changed frequently - from full fights, to her playing in his band without him, publicly humiliating him etc. My final idea was informed by a variety of sources, only one of which was intentional. I started reading guitarist of the Sex Pistols, Steve Jones' autobiography, hoping for some insight into Rotten Johnny's world, building my contextual and historical knowledge of punk. Whilst I also watched some other small documentaries and read sections of other books, I also did not want to inform it to a complete of pure facts and direct quotes, hoping small inaccuracies gives the impression that Johnny partially uses punk to just excuse his selfish behaviour but also to show his general ignorance and shallowness. One of the recurring parts of Jones' story is the frequency to which he stole: clothes, guitars, equipment, cars anything. (Jones, S. 2016) He speaks about how this meant he never bought his own guitar - having always nicked them - and the importance he ended up placing on the first guitar he finally bought for himself post-rehab. I liked this idea and inverted it slightly for Johnny's story - he'd amassed many guitars during his fame days, slowly losing all but one to debts, decisions, (maybe Steve Jones) until he eventually only had one guitar left - his first guitar he'd had all his life, (this idea was also inspired by Billie Joe Armstrong's guitar 'Blue').
While not intended at the time as direct research, another answer came from Vice's Guide to Film (2018). In an episode about Quentin Tarantino, Juliet Lewis reflects on his story's usual obsession with revenge in some form (4). It was something I'd been aware of in the back of my mind before, a big fan of Tarantino, but hearing it said immediately provided another answer to the question of the ending. It occurred to me that for Sarah's character and its arc to be satisfied, Sarah would need revenge on her father in some way or another - for his actions but also personally for her idolization of him. With the talks of Tarantino, I was overwhelmed with ideas of revenge that didn't align with the tone of the show, Sarah and her father fighting or her bludgeoning him with his guitar to a 60s/70s score. I kept considering the notion of revenge and how Sarah could achieve a victory over her father.
The final piece of the puzzle was also inspired by 'Boy' (2010, T. Waititi). I found a couple of similarities between this story and my own - a child whose father is not about and because of this is idolized as the child fills up holes in their head. When his father returns, Boy slowly realizes that his father's carefree attitude and promises of joining him on his travels are all lies. There is a moment where Boy is holding his father's guitar and his father shouts at him for it, clearly treasuring the guitar over the boy as he threatens him. I saw the deep connection here between Boy and Sarah and had an immediate image of Sarah stealing her father's final guitar - stealing his very identity but also perhaps cutting off one of his devices to enable his behaviour. This kind of deeply personal revenge felt much more satisfying that Sarah and her Father having a full fight and helped me avoid the high-intensity drama I was trying to steer clear of. Sarah still punched him because one, I wanted to show that without him she's stronger in all aspects but mainly because I felt it was right for her character. She wouldn't be satisfied having just taken his guitar and would have regretted it the whole train journey. Felt right for Sarah to take, showing she's done with him but wants to keep what she feels are good inherited qualities, continuing music but hopefully with more positive future.
ACTION / 'MONEY SCENES':
During my unintentional break when Covid-19 lockdown was enforced, I was not completely out-of-touch with my project. While I felt unable to continue working on my script, I was able to use this time to research a way to include more action into my admittedly very dialogue-heavy scripts. Action is an important part of television writing. Being a visual medium, television "relies on the juxtaposition of images to convey a mental state" (Yorke, J. 2013) - being the most evident difference between television and its partial roots of radio drama. Physical action makes sense for an art form that you WATCH, as well as being useful for characterisation and proving interesting television-ing: Scenes of action, directly related to character's wants and needs, best when acting contradictory to speech to reveal character's true desires and intentions. Action is also beneficial in simply breaking up large quantities of dialogue, but more important for me is the part it plays in characterisation. "Action is character; what a person does s who he is, not necessarily what he says". (Field, S. 2003) Words are specific and chosen by an individual in order to represent their ideal public persona, a reflection of their face-value wants; Action can betray a character's deeper psychological needs. I think part of my initial aversion toward action came from the original intended tone of the show, wanting to combine the characters or stories of typical youth drama, but view them through the domestic filter of family sitcoms, similar to Grandma's House - which was initially told by BBC producers to include more story (action) (5) - a suggestion writers Swimer and Amstell say they did not follow.
Fearing lack of emotion and missing out on original intentions of show, wanted to include "money scenes", an idea presented by Showrunner and Executive Producer Glen Mazzara. money scenes are also known as Character scenes, which he describes as "cool people, doing cool stuff", physical action related to your character's wants and needs, being active characters.(6) My show is very dialogue-driven so I especially wanted to make these scenes run without any/much dialogue - helping to focus entirely on the action and set these moment apart as being important. In order to make these scenes, I looked the wants and needs of my characters, both face-level and deeper - this helped me create actions that could help reflect character and betray their mask, "an outer manifestation of an inner conflict" (Yorke, J. 2013) to reveal their true character. One of my immediate ideas for money scenes was my previously mentioned growing motif of Sarah pinging a hair band against her wrist, reflecting the growing fragility of her emotional state. However, expanding out to my supporting characters, this exercise was also very useful in helping me add to Jack's story, having been aware it was lacking something but until then unable to put my finger on it. Like Sarah, Jack lost a parent early in their life - however Jack lost their mother to illness and their father turned to alcohol to cope with the grief, essentially losing two parents. Watching their father's love and grief for their wife destroy not only him but losing almost every foundation Jack's life has affected them and their relationship with Beth. As the end of university draws nearer, this all streamlines into a contradicting approach to commitment, teasing and testing their relationship with Beth while considering and planning for a life with her, moving in together immediately after uni - also to avoid having to move home, back to their father. Thinking about money scenes, especially before the party episode, helped me fill a blank gap in my story for Jack, where these two contradictions collide and they realise their true intention. Removing Beth and Natalie from the episode left me with my three compulsive characters, away from the positive influences their partners provide and provided a party episode - where I could separate characters, allowing them to counter-productively but also create the illusion of potential bad actions. I used the party to introduce extra characters, friends from uni and times in halls - both to add depth to their three years at uni, acknowledging the story before we're introduced, but also to introduce a character that Jack has previously had a relationship of some kind with - acting as a temptation for them to follow their base want (abandoning commitment) instead of pursuing their true need (taking relationship(s) seriously). However, this triangle approach is a very common and visible trope of most modern TV (7) and not something I wanted to approach in the classic way. " Look for common tropes and clichés of your genre, what's special about your show? How can you use your speciality for originality within genre etc? Hard to find new, not so hard to find FRESH!" (6) To subvert it, I watched the story through Sarah's eyes - using the house party element to keep distance between her and Jack increasing tension and suspense as neither her nor the audience know whether Jack is jeopardising their relationship - seeing them flirting and getting closer and closer through momentary meetings. By the time Sarah is able to finally locate Jack, they're drunkenly crying down the phone to Beth - something I'm sure many students (and not just students) can relate to having seen or experienced for themselves.
As well as helping me add action to my story, helping its pacing, structure and characterisation - this exercise was also incredibly beneficial for helping me re-focus on my story after Covid-19 upheaval. I'd been struggling to get back to writing and get back into the university headspace after moving home. By breaking down my ideas, character by character and focusing on how their actions could directly relate to them and their story I was able to re-introduce myself to the story, the world, the characters and motivate me to get back into writing, feeling less removed from the project. Found this very helpful, getting back to story and personally most vital part, character, with most lacking part, action; fired up creative muscles and helped get me back into writing. After exercise, writing progressed very well - action key in my mind, able to include spontaneous scene of SARAH in kitchen - continuing idea of her feeling separated from group while creating and enforcing own separation, growing mental health concerns and relatable uni cleaning. Writing felt easier after this and has definitely helped me include more action, understand need for action and most importantly realize characterised action isn't as hard as I first thought - hopefully in time growing to be subtler and more considered.
TECHNIQUE
The biggest challenge during this project, ironically, came relatively toward the end with the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown. Beforehand I'd been able to put myself in a position where my days were spent, predominately isolated anyway in a private halls room which helped force me to sit down and write. I have previously struggled with motivation and the actual 'doing' of something, similar to Sarah from my story, and this way of working proved very beneficial to me. However, when lock-down was announced, mid-way through writing the series, it affected not just myself, obviously, but everybody dramatically. I moved home, and had to try to maintain my motivation, competing with people with different schedules, losing time to unpacking, re-organising and trying to creative a space where I could be productive and creative as well as dealing with increased anxieties of lockdown-era. As writer, find place very important for feel and initially struggled to get into uni headset, so far away from university.
Immediately I knew I needed routine, including exercise to offset lockdown lethargy - which also proved surprisingly helpful in helping boost my self-esteem and motivation. (8). New work routine takes more sectioned approach to work, inspired by Taika Waititi - increased anxiety from Lockdown affected attention span and ability to settle, mix scripts with blog-work and other creative pursuits, art and piano - hoping to strengthen and "explore creativity, inspire and console self" (Perry, G 2020). Grayson's art club helped keep me inspired and think about creativity, art and push me from my comfort zone. Portraits especially helpful when thinking about characterisation. Feel more confident as artist, faced crisis and found way to use art as means of productivity and escape, helped not feel too overwhelmed.
Also found artistic interest in lockdown itself, watching how TV adapted, first with ads, eventually creating lockdown-produced TV etc.
Got back into piano to stretch and strengthen creativity and found myself writing simple but surprisingly therapeutic songs. Became way to relax but remain creative in-between writing, allowing break while subconscious tends to ideas, a notion given to me by my tutor.
MUSIC
MUSIC has always been an important (if not vital) part of my process and an important part of life. Within film, inspired by Tarantino and love wright's editing - first thing i was taught in editing is to try hit the beat and this stuck to me, seeing wright was like seeing my editing dreams explode, outstandingly enjoyable and artistically sound. As a writer I find music useful for tone, characterisation and getting into the general headspace of the project. Made individual playlists for each of my characters, considering what music they would have started listening to, inspired by parents and friends, what they would have found by themselves and how each had a different relationship to music - not just Sarah. Considered putting songs into script but realised doesn't happen. Waititi: "How informed are your scripts by visual background - all films have playlists and tends to write songs into script - even if can't afford them - visually, images and photos are very inspiring and tends to collect in large folders, no matter how weird " Even though made minimal face-value footprint on script, helped build and grow understanding of characters, considering what could be considered minutia details but personally important for process. Hate saying I have process but realizing i'm developing one.
Overall, my way of writing has definitely grown. When I started, I tended to avoid planning - writing on a whim, trying to capture scenes and feelings, then continuing on them without any forethought. Taking the time to be able to plan and research a full story before writing it has proven to me, not only that I can do it, but how much more enjoyable the planning is that I anticipated. I now not only appreciate the need for research to help explore and inform your ideas, watching how my story has taken on its own life and evolved has been the most fulfilling part.
REFERENCES:
1) Guardian, (2020) Why students are turning to mental health apps. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/feb/27/too-few-counsellors-on-campus-why-students-are-turning-to-mental-health-apps [accessed 18/5/2020)
2) The HollyWood Reporter, Youtube, (2018) 'Full Writers Roundtable: Jordan Peele, Darren Aronofsky, Emily V. Gordon | Close Up With THR' {online] Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB3nfc1tQ0E [accessed 18/5/2020)
3) MIND (2020) Self Harm [online] Available at: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/self-harm/helping-yourself-now/#collapse1149c [accessed 18/5/2020]
4) 4, (2018) VICEs Guide To Film [online] Available at: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/vice-guide-to-film [accessed 18/5/2020]
5) SIMON AMSTELL, Youtube (2012) Making of Grandma's House [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_zEp_UznsM Accessed 18/5/2020
6) Sundance Collab, (2019) Episodic Writing with Glen Mazzara (The Walking Dead). Available at: https://collab.sundance.org/catalog/Episodic-Writing-Master-Class/Episodic-Writing-Master-Class-February-2019. Accessed: 18/5/2020)
7) TV TROPES. Love Triangles. Available at: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoveTriangle. Accessed: 18/5/2020)
8) PSYCHOLOGY TODAY. (2018) The power of routines in your mental health. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-gen-y-psy/201810/the-power-routines-in-your-mental-health. Accessed: 18/5/2020)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FIeld, S (2003) Definitive Guide to Screenwriting. London, Ebury Press.
Jones, S. (2016) Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol. William Heinemann.
Yorke, J (2014) Into The woods. Lonon, Penguin Publishing.
Grayson Perry's Art Club (2020) Channel 4, 27/4/2020
Idea & Technique
MENTAL HEALTH
One of my early ideas was to show housemates struggling with various forms of mental illness - it's commonplace among students but not always properly discussed or given the awareness it deserves. (1) However, one of my early issues with this idea was my tonal aversion to the typically very dramatic way youth drama approaches issues and something I wanted to try and explore in more subtle or developed ways. I didn't necessarily want to show somebody dealing with issues of self-harming, instead later deciding to explore life AFTER overcoming those urges and feeling. To reflect the reality and some of the dangers - of the lack of communication and discussion around mental health, I wanted to try and show two sides: Sarah, who bottles up her feelings leading to an eventual explosion and Jack, who hides them at first but quickly opens up to Nat and Beth. As a moral consequence, Jack's issues are easily actioned and they're supported by their friends, whereas Sarah clearly makes herself worse, working herself up into panics at the smallest thing. While my usual writing style is very dialogue heavy, I wanted to avoid having characters just talk about their mental health - something that a lot of people struggle to do - and ended up leaving only a featherlight trace in my initial pilot script: Sarah had a panic attack upon failing uni and the news that her mother is having another child - but even then I felt that the scene was the roughest skim on the surface of what I wanted to achieve.
When exploring the series as a whole, I was able to re-address this idea and try to figure out whether and/or how it would fit into my story. This wasn't an idea I wanted to give-up on, affecting me personally, close friends as well as countless other people - not just student. In The Hollywood Reporter's Full Writer's Roundtable, Emily V Gordon speaks about how she sees writing as a continuation of her previous career as a therapist, speaking the power for an audience member to empathise and connect with characters. I think this is true for both the audience and the writer, writing about something you're dealing with can act a way to process ideas and also offers you the chance to have to consider other viewpoints to issues, and empathise with characters with conflicting opinions and ideals. Peele goes so far as to say that the "power of story is that it is one of the few ways we can really feel empathy and encourage it" (2).
It was during this time that I decided to explore the aftermath of self-harm, once again going back to my original plan for the series of trying to explore what happens 'in-between the scenes' of other shows, here looking at what happens after a typical storyline perhaps have finished. advice from BBC writers room suggests bringing all major character points into present in some way so wanted to try and show a more (literally) matured version of self-harm story, instead exploring with Sarah's struggles to keep clean after quitting, dealing with intrusive thoughts, irritating scar-tissue growth and her personal failure sending her back to that headspace. I decided to show Sarah as somebody that had dealt with self-harm before uni and now considers themselves past it and then contrasting that with Jack who deals with body dysphoria in ever increasing ways, some old and knows how to deal with but some brand new, brought on by relationship.
As a way of maintaining this idea throughout the season without Sarah talking about it, I decided to turn it into an action motif that could recur, growing understanding and meaning the more you saw and recognised it. To do this, I took the action of Sarah rubbing her irritating scars and pinging a hairband against her wrist - a commonly suggesting coping mechanism (3) , include it when she's stressed/upset etc and grew it throughout each episode, starting with rubbing, then scratching, growing and growing with her mental state. This was partially inspired by an old acting exercise where you'd assign an action to your character and grow it from 1-10, making it more exaggerated as the number grew. I think here, by looking at my problem as what would benefit both the character and actor provided a unique insight and allowed me to try something quite interesting and different. By combining the wrist and the hairband, two actions they may seem innocuous to somebody that wasn't aware of what they were looking for, these may appear as small quirks of the character until you finally learn what they mean and change your understanding if re-watching - however, to somebody that may understand and relate to those small, almost invisible action - they will (hopefully) immediately understand and relate to that character a bit more.
ENDINGS:
Learned from college script that without known ending, your story will lack direction and without direction your story will burn out. Started with story specifically with a through story that would always be leading me toward an ending. I decided to follow a personal story about failure, a theme I think is rarely explored in the media - many screenwriters insist that research is key and "its the next best thing to having experienced something yourself." (Field S. 2003) This story of failure also led me down a road that I saw to have two potential endings: Sarah would either pass or fail. The best part of this being my main, 'face' story is that either ending worked as long as her personal, emotional journey of overcoming the elements that lead to the failure was appropriately and satisfyingly concluded. I started writing knowing where the story was leading, but also allowed myself and the story to reach a conclusion that came organically.
I started, knowing that Sarah would inevitably have to confront her father - who she feels she was taken from as a child and desperately tries to emulate, with limited knowledge, in order to feel close to him - finally coming to realise living in his shadow had left her jeopardising her relations and herself: without personal drive or belief in any sense of self. How this happened changed frequently - from full fights, to her playing in his band without him, publicly humiliating him etc. My final idea was informed by a variety of sources, only one of which was intentional. I started reading guitarist of the Sex Pistols, Steve Jones' autobiography, hoping for some insight into Rotten Johnny's world, building my contextual and historical knowledge of punk. Whilst I also watched some other small documentaries and read sections of other books, I also did not want to inform it to a complete of pure facts and direct quotes, hoping small inaccuracies gives the impression that Johnny partially uses punk to just excuse his selfish behaviour but also to show his general ignorance and shallowness. One of the recurring parts of Jones' story is the frequency to which he stole: clothes, guitars, equipment, cars anything. (Jones, S. 2016) He speaks about how this meant he never bought his own guitar - having always nicked them - and the importance he ended up placing on the first guitar he finally bought for himself post-rehab. I liked this idea and inverted it slightly for Johnny's story - he'd amassed many guitars during his fame days, slowly losing all but one to debts, decisions, (maybe Steve Jones) until he eventually only had one guitar left - his first guitar he'd had all his life, (this idea was also inspired by Billie Joe Armstrong's guitar 'Blue').
While not intended at the time as direct research, another answer came from Vice's Guide to Film (2018). In an episode about Quentin Tarantino, Juliet Lewis reflects on his story's usual obsession with revenge in some form (4). It was something I'd been aware of in the back of my mind before, a big fan of Tarantino, but hearing it said immediately provided another answer to the question of the ending. It occurred to me that for Sarah's character and its arc to be satisfied, Sarah would need revenge on her father in some way or another - for his actions but also personally for her idolization of him. With the talks of Tarantino, I was overwhelmed with ideas of revenge that didn't align with the tone of the show, Sarah and her father fighting or her bludgeoning him with his guitar to a 60s/70s score. I kept considering the notion of revenge and how Sarah could achieve a victory over her father.
The final piece of the puzzle was also inspired by 'Boy' (2010, T. Waititi). I found a couple of similarities between this story and my own - a child whose father is not about and because of this is idolized as the child fills up holes in their head. When his father returns, Boy slowly realizes that his father's carefree attitude and promises of joining him on his travels are all lies. There is a moment where Boy is holding his father's guitar and his father shouts at him for it, clearly treasuring the guitar over the boy as he threatens him. I saw the deep connection here between Boy and Sarah and had an immediate image of Sarah stealing her father's final guitar - stealing his very identity but also perhaps cutting off one of his devices to enable his behaviour. This kind of deeply personal revenge felt much more satisfying that Sarah and her Father having a full fight and helped me avoid the high-intensity drama I was trying to steer clear of. Sarah still punched him because one, I wanted to show that without him she's stronger in all aspects but mainly because I felt it was right for her character. She wouldn't be satisfied having just taken his guitar and would have regretted it the whole train journey. Felt right for Sarah to take, showing she's done with him but wants to keep what she feels are good inherited qualities, continuing music but hopefully with more positive future.
ACTION / 'MONEY SCENES':
During my unintentional break when Covid-19 lockdown was enforced, I was not completely out-of-touch with my project. While I felt unable to continue working on my script, I was able to use this time to research a way to include more action into my admittedly very dialogue-heavy scripts. Action is an important part of television writing. Being a visual medium, television "relies on the juxtaposition of images to convey a mental state" (Yorke, J. 2013) - being the most evident difference between television and its partial roots of radio drama. Physical action makes sense for an art form that you WATCH, as well as being useful for characterisation and proving interesting television-ing: Scenes of action, directly related to character's wants and needs, best when acting contradictory to speech to reveal character's true desires and intentions. Action is also beneficial in simply breaking up large quantities of dialogue, but more important for me is the part it plays in characterisation. "Action is character; what a person does s who he is, not necessarily what he says". (Field, S. 2003) Words are specific and chosen by an individual in order to represent their ideal public persona, a reflection of their face-value wants; Action can betray a character's deeper psychological needs. I think part of my initial aversion toward action came from the original intended tone of the show, wanting to combine the characters or stories of typical youth drama, but view them through the domestic filter of family sitcoms, similar to Grandma's House - which was initially told by BBC producers to include more story (action) (5) - a suggestion writers Swimer and Amstell say they did not follow.
Fearing lack of emotion and missing out on original intentions of show, wanted to include "money scenes", an idea presented by Showrunner and Executive Producer Glen Mazzara. money scenes are also known as Character scenes, which he describes as "cool people, doing cool stuff", physical action related to your character's wants and needs, being active characters.(6) My show is very dialogue-driven so I especially wanted to make these scenes run without any/much dialogue - helping to focus entirely on the action and set these moment apart as being important. In order to make these scenes, I looked the wants and needs of my characters, both face-level and deeper - this helped me create actions that could help reflect character and betray their mask, "an outer manifestation of an inner conflict" (Yorke, J. 2013) to reveal their true character. One of my immediate ideas for money scenes was my previously mentioned growing motif of Sarah pinging a hair band against her wrist, reflecting the growing fragility of her emotional state. However, expanding out to my supporting characters, this exercise was also very useful in helping me add to Jack's story, having been aware it was lacking something but until then unable to put my finger on it. Like Sarah, Jack lost a parent early in their life - however Jack lost their mother to illness and their father turned to alcohol to cope with the grief, essentially losing two parents. Watching their father's love and grief for their wife destroy not only him but losing almost every foundation Jack's life has affected them and their relationship with Beth. As the end of university draws nearer, this all streamlines into a contradicting approach to commitment, teasing and testing their relationship with Beth while considering and planning for a life with her, moving in together immediately after uni - also to avoid having to move home, back to their father. Thinking about money scenes, especially before the party episode, helped me fill a blank gap in my story for Jack, where these two contradictions collide and they realise their true intention. Removing Beth and Natalie from the episode left me with my three compulsive characters, away from the positive influences their partners provide and provided a party episode - where I could separate characters, allowing them to counter-productively but also create the illusion of potential bad actions. I used the party to introduce extra characters, friends from uni and times in halls - both to add depth to their three years at uni, acknowledging the story before we're introduced, but also to introduce a character that Jack has previously had a relationship of some kind with - acting as a temptation for them to follow their base want (abandoning commitment) instead of pursuing their true need (taking relationship(s) seriously). However, this triangle approach is a very common and visible trope of most modern TV (7) and not something I wanted to approach in the classic way. " Look for common tropes and clichés of your genre, what's special about your show? How can you use your speciality for originality within genre etc? Hard to find new, not so hard to find FRESH!" (6) To subvert it, I watched the story through Sarah's eyes - using the house party element to keep distance between her and Jack increasing tension and suspense as neither her nor the audience know whether Jack is jeopardising their relationship - seeing them flirting and getting closer and closer through momentary meetings. By the time Sarah is able to finally locate Jack, they're drunkenly crying down the phone to Beth - something I'm sure many students (and not just students) can relate to having seen or experienced for themselves.
As well as helping me add action to my story, helping its pacing, structure and characterisation - this exercise was also incredibly beneficial for helping me re-focus on my story after Covid-19 upheaval. I'd been struggling to get back to writing and get back into the university headspace after moving home. By breaking down my ideas, character by character and focusing on how their actions could directly relate to them and their story I was able to re-introduce myself to the story, the world, the characters and motivate me to get back into writing, feeling less removed from the project. Found this very helpful, getting back to story and personally most vital part, character, with most lacking part, action; fired up creative muscles and helped get me back into writing. After exercise, writing progressed very well - action key in my mind, able to include spontaneous scene of SARAH in kitchen - continuing idea of her feeling separated from group while creating and enforcing own separation, growing mental health concerns and relatable uni cleaning. Writing felt easier after this and has definitely helped me include more action, understand need for action and most importantly realize characterised action isn't as hard as I first thought - hopefully in time growing to be subtler and more considered.
TECHNIQUE
The biggest challenge during this project, ironically, came relatively toward the end with the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown. Beforehand I'd been able to put myself in a position where my days were spent, predominately isolated anyway in a private halls room which helped force me to sit down and write. I have previously struggled with motivation and the actual 'doing' of something, similar to Sarah from my story, and this way of working proved very beneficial to me. However, when lock-down was announced, mid-way through writing the series, it affected not just myself, obviously, but everybody dramatically. I moved home, and had to try to maintain my motivation, competing with people with different schedules, losing time to unpacking, re-organising and trying to creative a space where I could be productive and creative as well as dealing with increased anxieties of lockdown-era. As writer, find place very important for feel and initially struggled to get into uni headset, so far away from university.
Immediately I knew I needed routine, including exercise to offset lockdown lethargy - which also proved surprisingly helpful in helping boost my self-esteem and motivation. (8). New work routine takes more sectioned approach to work, inspired by Taika Waititi - increased anxiety from Lockdown affected attention span and ability to settle, mix scripts with blog-work and other creative pursuits, art and piano - hoping to strengthen and "explore creativity, inspire and console self" (Perry, G 2020). Grayson's art club helped keep me inspired and think about creativity, art and push me from my comfort zone. Portraits especially helpful when thinking about characterisation. Feel more confident as artist, faced crisis and found way to use art as means of productivity and escape, helped not feel too overwhelmed.
Also found artistic interest in lockdown itself, watching how TV adapted, first with ads, eventually creating lockdown-produced TV etc.
Got back into piano to stretch and strengthen creativity and found myself writing simple but surprisingly therapeutic songs. Became way to relax but remain creative in-between writing, allowing break while subconscious tends to ideas, a notion given to me by my tutor.
MUSIC
MUSIC has always been an important (if not vital) part of my process and an important part of life. Within film, inspired by Tarantino and love wright's editing - first thing i was taught in editing is to try hit the beat and this stuck to me, seeing wright was like seeing my editing dreams explode, outstandingly enjoyable and artistically sound. As a writer I find music useful for tone, characterisation and getting into the general headspace of the project. Made individual playlists for each of my characters, considering what music they would have started listening to, inspired by parents and friends, what they would have found by themselves and how each had a different relationship to music - not just Sarah. Considered putting songs into script but realised doesn't happen. Waititi: "How informed are your scripts by visual background - all films have playlists and tends to write songs into script - even if can't afford them - visually, images and photos are very inspiring and tends to collect in large folders, no matter how weird " Even though made minimal face-value footprint on script, helped build and grow understanding of characters, considering what could be considered minutia details but personally important for process. Hate saying I have process but realizing i'm developing one.
Overall, my way of writing has definitely grown. When I started, I tended to avoid planning - writing on a whim, trying to capture scenes and feelings, then continuing on them without any forethought. Taking the time to be able to plan and research a full story before writing it has proven to me, not only that I can do it, but how much more enjoyable the planning is that I anticipated. I now not only appreciate the need for research to help explore and inform your ideas, watching how my story has taken on its own life and evolved has been the most fulfilling part.
REFERENCES:
1) Guardian, (2020) Why students are turning to mental health apps. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/feb/27/too-few-counsellors-on-campus-why-students-are-turning-to-mental-health-apps [accessed 18/5/2020)
2) The HollyWood Reporter, Youtube, (2018) 'Full Writers Roundtable: Jordan Peele, Darren Aronofsky, Emily V. Gordon | Close Up With THR' {online] Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB3nfc1tQ0E [accessed 18/5/2020)
3) MIND (2020) Self Harm [online] Available at: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/self-harm/helping-yourself-now/#collapse1149c [accessed 18/5/2020]
4) 4, (2018) VICEs Guide To Film [online] Available at: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/vice-guide-to-film [accessed 18/5/2020]
5) SIMON AMSTELL, Youtube (2012) Making of Grandma's House [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_zEp_UznsM Accessed 18/5/2020
6) Sundance Collab, (2019) Episodic Writing with Glen Mazzara (The Walking Dead). Available at: https://collab.sundance.org/catalog/Episodic-Writing-Master-Class/Episodic-Writing-Master-Class-February-2019. Accessed: 18/5/2020)
7) TV TROPES. Love Triangles. Available at: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LoveTriangle. Accessed: 18/5/2020)
8) PSYCHOLOGY TODAY. (2018) The power of routines in your mental health. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-gen-y-psy/201810/the-power-routines-in-your-mental-health. Accessed: 18/5/2020)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FIeld, S (2003) Definitive Guide to Screenwriting. London, Ebury Press.
Jones, S. (2016) Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol. William Heinemann.
Yorke, J (2014) Into The woods. Lonon, Penguin Publishing.
Grayson Perry's Art Club (2020) Channel 4, 27/4/2020
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