The Writer Type

writing for austerity

2011-11-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

Writers are in a good position to ride out a global economic downturn because we rarely get paid anyway. But we have to survive somehow, and most of us have some kind of independent income. My income is so fiercely independent that I never see it. I wish it well, wherever it is.

But while our choices as writers may be limited to not getting paid now or not getting paid later, and we can't make a living that way, we still need to ask ourselves some searching questions about writing in relation to the global economy:

What is the writer's role in an economic crisis?
Aren't we all, in a way, responsible?
Or is that some kind of guilt trip?
Yes, why do I always blame myself?
Is it because of that thing with my mother?
What makes you think that's any of your business?
How about leaving my mother out of this?

Okay, calm down. Let's put a positive spin on this. Maybe our writing could benefit from a spirit of austerity. Let's face it, we've been profligate, like everyone else. We've recklessly depleted precious resources such as irony and metaphor. An insatiable demand for similes has driven writers to delve ever deeper for fresh comparisons, like desperate literary miners in a race to the center of the earth to claim the last remaining nugget of precious creative fuel. There is also a global punctuation crisis, with fierce battles for control of the Latin American exclamation trade, fueled by the wasteful habit of using exclamation marks at both ends of a sentence and the vast quantities of energy squandered by turning them upside down.

Yes, we are all guilty. Each of us must take responsibility, and write less. If we must write, we should practice severe austerity. We all know that economy is a supreme creative discipline. Ask Hemingway (in six words or less). Meanwhile, here are three simple tips to help you:

Never use two words when one word will suffice to express what you were originally going to use two words for.
Know what to leave out. For example, when sending work to an agent or producer, don't include a photograph of your genitals.
This tip has been cut in the interests of economy.

But we've been wasteful in other ways, too. I've already written about the internet being stuffed with writers writing advice to other writers about how they should write (click HERE for article). But the internet offers limitless opportunities for everyone to vent their opinions. In fact, it encourages people to have opinions they don't need, and didn't even know they held until someone else's opinion provoked them to come up with one. The internet itself is creating opinions, many of which are about itself, in a sterile frenzy of degenerate McLuhanesque masturbation. (Damn, this is good coffee. I'm on fire here.)

What usually happens is that you see something on the internet that pisses you off. You mould your inchoate feelings of resentment into a point of view, using as a template some other opinion you've absorbed, probably also from the internet. You plunder your own pain, rage and self-loathing to personalize it, then post it as a comment or response, making sure you express it with enough uncouth derision to goad whoever offered the first opinion into responding indignantly, which naturally outrages you and makes you reply even more aggressively. And so on, until you find yourself in a vicious personal argument with someone you've never met, over something you didn't even know you gave a fuck about until a nagging sense of entitlement, amplified by the ubiquity of every other asshole's opinion, and facilitated by a technology that provides both anonymity and a fatal opportunity to be offensive before you've thought about it, encouraged you to say something you'll regret for ever.

And there's no better example of this futile and degrading waste of words than a BLOG. But I've come up with a proposal that will help. Why should people have one blog all to themselves? In these troubled times we need to think ecologically. Here's what Im--

Yes, that's enough. We agreed I'd come in after the first paragraph. Sorry, allow me to introduce myself. I'm George, a political blogger, and what Paul was taking far too long to say is that we've entered into a blog-sharing agreement. However, Paul's vague commitment to "think ecologically" requires political contextualization in a notional space and--

GUYS! WHAT KIND OF REACTIONARY PATRIARCHAL HIERARCHY IS THIS? I'M THIRD IN LINE? AND LOOK AT THE WAY YOU'VE TURNED WHAT COULD BE A SYNERGETIC COLLABORATION INTO A DICK SWINGING CONTEST.

What the hell? Who is this?

Sorry, I was going to tell you. That's Jasmine, another blogger. She's coming in on the blog sharing deal, too.

YOU HAVEN'T TOLD HIM YET? TYPICAL.

I was just getting to it.

Wow. She seems a bit... no, never mind. That's fine.

WHAT IS THIS PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE BULLSHIT? COME ON, SAY WHAT YOU WERE THINKING ABOUT ME.

I was just taken by surprise, that's all. There's no ned to be so sensitive.

DON'T PATRONIZE ME!

I wasn't. Honestly, I just...

You're lucky I didn't tell her what you said about women earlier.

What? I didn't say--

FUCK! I KNEW IT. OK, WHAT DID THIS PATHETIC DICKHEAD SAY ABOUT ME BEFORE I SHOWED UP?

I didn't say anything. But by being abusive you're only reinforcing an unfortunate stereotype of shrill, strident feminism that, in fact--

THAT'S IT! COME OUTSIDE. RIGHT NOW!

Calm down. I'm quite happy to discuss this rationally if you--

SHUT THE FUCK UP. OUT HERE, NOW!

Dude, you are in big trouble. She's a karate black belt.

You piece of shit, you set me up.

DO I HAVE TO DRAG YOU OUT?

Oh, God. OK, I'm coming. Please don't hurt me.

Goodbye, George.

Fuck you.

YES, FUCK YOU.

* * * * *

Okay, that didn't work too well. As soon as George used the word contextualization I knew he'd have to go. Sorry. I hope they both find other homes. I still think the principle is good, I just need to find people to share this blog with who are more congenial to me. People who think more like me. I'll keep looking. Meanwhile I believe there are other areas that could benefit from the constructive sharing of resources. With this in mind I'm proposing a campaign I'm calling Creative Austerity, a series of ambitious public projects to encourage innovative economy. For example...

How about the 2012 London Olympic Games? The whole spectacle has become nothing but a gigantic multinational corporate branding opportunity which arouses justifiable hostility in many concerned, intelligent people. Okay, me and my friends. But even if you disagree with us, you can surely see that the games could be made to reflect the austerity that's affecting all of us, regardless of your political views and how ridiculous they may be. So, I propose saving valuable space, time and money by combining different sporting events. For example, why have separate arenas for cycling and water sports? Why not create new, combined events like Water Cycle Polo? The players could be mounted on specially adapted paddle boats, or pedalos. What a magnificent sight it would be, and what a noble contest. Here are some other combinations that would not only economize but also create exciting new events:

Equestrian Pole Vault

Synchronized Boxing.

Weightlifting Triple Jump

Javelin Hockey

Beach Volley Shot Put

Please feel free to join in by suggesting other combinations. Just leave a comment.

why I am a genius

2011-06-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

As we all know, genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. And 1% willingness to disregard rules, especially rules about percentages.

plus 1% persistence.

plus 1% even more persistence.

plus a further 1% of not knowing when to stop.

plus 1% just persisting now to annoy people.

But it's worth thinking about what the word genius means because most people misuse it. By most people, of course, I mean you. Have you referred to someone as a genius recently? Maybe someone you saw on YouTube doing something, like, totally awesome. Or maybe one of these people:

Einstein
Lady Gaga
The guy who invented that thing
Stephen Hawking
Mark Zuckerberg
That comedian, you know: total comedy genius
Tiger Woods
The guy who invented that other thing
Mozart. Or that hot chick who plays classical violin.

The word genius has become meaningless. I've been to the Genius Bar in an Apple store and I'm pretty sure those people aren't actual geniuses, they just know a lot more about computers than me. But so do most people, and it's no excuse to neglect your personal hygiene. Maybe we should go back to the earlier meaning of the word and talk about someone having a genius for doing something, rather than being a genius. For example, if I told you Mike Tyson was a genius you might disagree with me. Unless I'd brought him along and he was standing right next to me staring at your ear. But if I said that Mike Tyson has a genius for brutally battering his opponents to a bloody pulp you'd probably agree with me even if he wasn't there.

Or you might say to me, "Hey, Aaron Sorkin's a terrific screenwriter, isn't he? Great dialogue, what a genius." In which case I'd have to point out two errors you're making there. Firstly, what you really mean is that Aaron Sorkin has a genius for writing dialogue. And secondly, he doesn't. Aaron Sorkin's dialogue always sounds like what it is: dialogue rather than real speech. It's glib. That's just my opinion, of course. Which is one of the problems of applying the concept of genius to artistic or cultural activity rather than scientific discovery or technological innovation. Who knows who's any good? Some people don't even think Shakespeare was a genius. And some people acknowledge his genius but don't really like all his work, and find themselves sitting through a mediocre production of one of the so-called comedies simply to get into the pants of the person they're on a date with and then finding out, after it worked, that she didn't particularly like Shakespeare's comedies either but didn't want to say so.

Recently Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article in The New Yorker about creativity (click here for summary). It was mostly about new technology, and one of Gladwell's points was that for every breakthrough idea there are dozens that don't make it, for a variety of reasons, and the most successful inventors and innovators are the most prolific ones who keep coming up with ideas until one of them works. To test this theory here's a list of inventions I came up with in the last 24 hours:

Unsweetened sugar
Oven hat
Humane mousepad
Sofa-bath (for very small flats)
Solar powered night vision goggles
Edible bicycle
Scrotum varnish
Musical cat litter
Scented emails
Raisin tidy.

I feel at least one of these has a future, maybe the sofa-bath. I'm not sure what a raisin tidy is; it was on the list by my bedside in the morning after a dream in which giant raisins rolled around my kitchen floor while I had an erotic encounter with a policewoman.

Genius brain

So, the argument is pretty solid for science and technology, but Gladwell's article then goes on to use the example of Mick Jagger writing lyrics quickly and prolifically, and quotes Keith Richards who declares, in his autobiography, "Sometimes you'd wonder how to turn the fucking tap off." But is Mick Jagger a rock lyric writer of genius? In fact is anyone a genius when it comes to writing rock lyrics? Maybe you don't want a genius to write great rock lyrics. Maybe you need Ozzy Osbourne. It's all about the form.

Your brain

Which brings us back to Aaron Sorkin. There is a place for an extensive discussion about literature in general, but not here. I have to go out later and I'm not about to leave you here by yourself. I have a lot of food in the fridge. So let's focus on the specific craft of screenwriting. Can a screenwriter be a genius? The idea sounds like an oxymoron: if they're so smart why did they embark on a career of voluntary penury, humiliation and frustration in the first place? And screenwriting is meant to be collaborative: everyone gets a chance to fuck your script up. But if you're a genius you work alone and obsessively for years on something nobody else believes in. Then, when it finally gets ruined or ripped off by other people you have the satisfaction of knowing it's all your own work.

But let's not forget the extraordinary case of Joe Eszterhas. In the 1980s Eszterhas wrote films like Flashdance and Jagged Edge. Then, in 1992, he was paid three million dollars, up front, to write Basic Instinct. It was hailed as the dawn of a glorious new era in which writers would finally get the money, respect and power they deserve. But it was all an illusion, largely fueled, like so much in Hollywood at that time, by gigantic egos and mountains of cocaine, which are often closely interconnected. But I still think Joe Eszterhas was a genius, just not as a writer: his next film was Showgirls. No, he was a genius inventor. He came up with an idea that nobody had thought of before: the highly paid, powerful screenwriter. It didn't last long but it was his best creative work by far.

So, do you want to be a genius? I propose a distinction that will let you know if you qualify. Just answer the following question:

Do you invent things or do you make stuff up?

If you say you invent things I want to see the lab coat. At the very least I expect you to be a geeky type, borderline sociopathic, working in a garage or your parents' basement, trying to figure out a completely new way to make or do something. If you're that type, there's a chance you could be a genius. You might come up with a revolutionary idea that has a tangible result in the real world. If, on the other hand, you sit at home and make stuff up, you're a writer. Everything you do takes place in the imagination: yours and that of your audience. And you can't be a genius.

Wait, what gives me the right to make this kind of ridiculous pronouncement? And surely it's a reactionary statement, now that the artificial distinctions between science and the humanities, that didn't really exist before the 17th century, are being eroded by new developments like string theory that require a certain metaphysical sensibility to be wholly understood? Yeah, but bollocks to that. I just don't think the word genius should be bandied about by people who don't know what they're talking about, which is most people. I can't prove that, but I don't care. However, if you want to disprove it, go ahead, genius.

the writer's voice and how to shut it up

2011-05-02T06:20:00.000-07:00

As a writer I am passionate about the following subjects:

Food hygiene.

Mid range family cars.

Duodenal ulcer medication.

Well, I've written training, promotional or information films about those subjects, and I did the best work I could on them, and we all know that writers have to be passionate to do their best work, so I must have been passionate. I was definitely passionate about getting paid for them. At other times in my career I have also been passionate about many other subjects, including:

Airline customer relations.

Surgical gowns.

Conflict resolution for nightclub staff.

The history of the London Science Museum.

Some of those scripts were pretty good. The food hygiene film became part of a national training process. But is it enough to be passionate about how bacteria get into the food chain when someone doesn't wash their hands between taking a dump and making your sandwich? As a writer you must also WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW and only do so when you have FOUND YOUR VOICE.

I assume we've all got over the Write What You Know thing. Countless people have pointed out that many great writers have no first hand knowledge of what they write about. And in the digital age everybody knows everything anyway. Research is no big deal.

Research = Google.

In-depth research = Lunch with someone who knows their stuff.

High Grade Classified Inside Intelligence = Paying for the lunch.

The author, in an early attempt to discover the subtle cadences of his own quietly distinctive voice.

Of course, knowledge isn't the same as wisdom. Any time you suspect we're all going to hell in a handcart you'll probably find a knowledgeable fuckwit directing the traffic. However, the cart is always pulled by an ignorant nincompoop, and a bit of information might at least help them see what a rotten job it is. But for writers, once we've acquired all the information we need to write about a transexual neurosurgeon who uses quantum mechanics to travel back in time and foil a plot to destabilize the 17th century Flemish potato market, the next step is to FIND YOUR VOICE.

The writer's voice I like best is the one I can't hear. By that I mean the one I can't hear drawing attention to itself. I'm not suggesting that writers shouldn't have a... what's the word? Style! That's it. In fact, let's stop talking about writers having a voice, and think about style. Ah, that's better. Now we can talk about good style and bad style, and the difference between style and content, instead of wondering if the writer has a distinctive voice, and whether it's an authentic voice or one he picked up in a creative writing class, which is where this stuff about voices came from in the first place. Yep, style is what we called it back in the good old days. Back when all this was open prairie, pardner, and a writer could ride tall with his trusty Remington typewriter on his saddle and spy nary a soul all day. A voice? Hell, in them days voices was fer highfalutin greenhorns and dancin' teachers and sitch like, and a real writer wouldn't say a single damn word out loud from one year to the next, 'ceptin mebbe to cuss a little under his breath at some inconvenience like his leg droppin off or his wife gettin ett by a bear. Yes, siree. Ptooeee. Oops, missed the dang spittoon agin. Hope them fancy suede shoes can be cleaned, my friend.

A REAL WRITER

Sorry about that, I'll turn the TV off. I was watching the news while I was writing and then there was an old episode of Bonanza. Let's get back to style.

What's your writing style? Are you trying to develop one? Really? Why? I mean it. Why do you want a style? Is it a way of making your writing distinctive or is it a way of telling your story? I believe that good style is about doing the job and bad style is about itself. The best writers use style to do something more than let you know what great stylists they are. They let you figure out what great stylists they are by working so hard to make what they write seem natural that you don't think of them having a style. You just hear their voice. Which is, finally, what you end up with after you've written and written and written some more and then, when you want to say something, you sit down to work yet again and there is simply no other way to write.

Some people claim that a writing style can be identified scientifically like a unique literary fingerprint. These people are often trying to prove that Shakespeare was written by someone else. Maybe the fact that none of them can agree on who, exactly, means that the methodology is truly scientific. In science if everyone agrees with each other they must all be wrong, but if everyone disagrees then at least one person must be right.

Meanwhile the rest of us can dream that we'll eventually write something so good that one day intelligent people will spend time trying to prove that someone else wrote it. All we can do is keep writing, and make sure we do our best work on everything we write, whether it's a food hygiene training video, a novel, a feature film, or a blog. That's as much as I know about how to develop a distinctive writing style. But I'm pretty sure that if it ever stops being hard work, that's when you've lost your voice.

So when you've found your voice, shut up about it.

how to have someone else's idea

2011-04-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

If you tell a Hollywood film producer you've got an original idea they usually ask what it's based on. If you say you made it up, because making things up is what writers do, they laugh, narrow their eyes, and surreptitiously text their assistant, asking them to find out what writers really do. If you persist in pitching your original idea they press the button under the desk that tips you into the tank of starving piranhas, and snigger as they stroke a fluffy white cat with a diamond collar.

But wait. We're being unfair. Put yourself in the producer's shoes for a moment. Nice, aren't they? Italian. Hand made. And as a producer facing a writer across your desk, here's what you're thinking:

1. If your original idea is so great how come nobody thought of it before?

2. I bet someone has thought of it before. There are no original ideas.

3. I wish this idiot would shut up. Is that stupid little beard meant to look cool? What an idiot. Why hasn't my secretary buzzed me to pretend I have an important call, like I asked her to, so I can get rid of this idiot. What's he talking about now? Jesus, character arcs. I should never take meetings with writers. Writers. I forget, what exactly do they do again?

It doesn't matter if you don't agree that there are no original ideas. Someone paying for your script is also paying you to agree with them. You can make a film the way you want with your own money, and then you can argue with the producer by shouting at the mirror. But you'll only scare mainstream money away by claiming to be original. The real trick is to say that you're going to do something that's like something that's been done before and then do something different. You just need to reassure them by using ingredients that look familiar. Choose one from each of the following categories.

PROTAGONIST
Boy wizard, Teenage vampire, Brooding superhero, Robot, Toy, Cop with a drink problem, Crusading journalist with a broken marriage, Eccentric family with a cute kid, Sassy newcomer with an attitude, Feisty woman on a life-affirming journey of self-discovery, Wronged warrior on a rampage of slaughter.

ANTAGONIST
Bad wizard, Bad vampire, Bad superhero, Bad robot, Bad toy, Serial killer, Evil tycoon, Corrupt politician, Fashion magazine editor, Master criminal played by respected British actor with an unexpectedly large tax bill to pay.

THE GOAL
Save the world, Make the kid happy, Kill the villain, Serve justice, Serve dinner, Expose evil, Get married, Get published, Get rich, Get home, Get laid... mmm... cigarette?

THE OBSTACLE
Greed, Power, Corruption, Protagonist's inner flaw, Kryptonite, Lack of time, Lack of money, Lack of Julia Roberts, Irascible police lieutenant, Devious best friend, Bad breath, heart-rending moral dilemma, Bubonic plague, Death.

Don't forget to choose a genre. To help you, here's a guide:

SCI-FI: In a distant galaxy, far away, everything explodes.

ACTION: Your mission, should you accept it, is to explode.

KIDS: Everything explodes but no one gets killed.

ROMANCE: Two people, an explosion of love.

COMEDY: Whatever you do, don't touch th-- (BOOM!)

Okay, now just write the script you wanted to write in the first place. They'll never suspect it's original. There's only one danger. The idea you've come up with to make your original idea look familiar may actually be more fun than the original idea. The story with the vampire cop and the beautiful librarian who becomes an assassin to pay for her blind daughter's hospital bills could be pretty entertaining. Maybe you should actually get into that as a genre potboiler and make money so that you can take some time to write that original idea about the dying geography teacher who dreams of chess games. Hmm. That idea seems kind of boring now, though. Maybe it could use a little action. What if the chess pieces were these, like, really cool helicopter gunships, flown by wrongly convicted special forces dudes on death row as part of some kind of gladiator fight-to-the-death type deal? And one of them is this beautiful but deadly female special forces chick and she has a blind daughter? That could work. And it's original, in a way. If there is such a thing as an original idea. Which there isn't.

funny and not so funny (update)

2011-03-13T09:21:00.000-07:00

It's funny if a well dressed, dignified man slips on a banana skin. It's not so funny if a tramp does it. But what if the rich guy fractures his skull, gets brain damage and becomes a vegetable? Is that funny? Depends on the vegetable. A cucumber is funnier than a potato but a potato is funnier than a mushroom. Comedy is in the detail. It's funny if your kid has an imaginary friend, but not so funny if your heart surgeon has one. In the following examples one is funny and one is not so funny. Use your skill and judgment to tell which is which.

CLOWNS

1. A clown in a circus.

2. A clown outside your bedroom window at 4AM.

FINANCE
1. Bungling, inept bank robbers getting themselves caught.
2. Bungling, inept bankers getting themselves huge bonuses.

CARS
1. No sooner do you wash your car than a bird defecates on it.
2. No sooner do you wash your car than a neighbour defecates on it.

TECHNOLOGY

1. The novelty ring tone on your phone.

2. The novelty ring tone on anyone else's phone.

YOUR MOTHER

1. You discover that your mother once wrote fan letters to Michael Jackson.

2. You discover that your mother still writes fan letters to Michael Jackson.

VOICES

1. The goofy voices a guy in your office does.

2. The goofy voices a guy in your head does.

CLUMSY IDIOTS

1. A clumsy magician.

2. A clumsy gynecologist.

CRAZY DAMES

1. Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy.

2. Sarah Palin in the White House.

POULTRY
1. A headless chicken runs around a farmyard.
2. A headless chicken runs around your kitchen.

SCIENCE

1. An absent-minded professor gets his experiments mixed up.

2. An absent-minded pharmacist gets your prescription mixed up.

DOGS

1. A dog chases its tail.

2. A dog chases its tail, catches it and eats it.

TV (1)
1. Out-takes and bloopers from TV shows.
2. Out-takes and bloopers from TV shows repeated endlessly on TV shows about out-takes and bloopers from TV shows, on TV, all the time.

AT THE ZOO
1. A monkey in the zoo masturbating.
2. A monk in the zoo masturbating.

TV (2)
1. You start laughing at a character in a TV show.
2. A character in a TV show starts laughing at you.

FLATULENCE

1. At a funeral the priest farts.

2. At a funeral the corpse farts.

BABIES

1. A tiny baby sneezes and looks surprised.

2. A tiny baby sneezes, looks surprised and curses, invoking Satan.

OBESITY

1. A very fat man gets stuck in the doorway of a fancy restaurant.

2. A very fat man gets stuck in the doorway of a burning restaurant.

AIRCRAFT

1. The person next to you on a plane laughs while reading a book.

2. The person next to you on a plane laughs while reading the safety instructions.

HANGOVERS

1. You wake up and can't remember where you left your car.

2. You wake up and can't remember where you left your kids.

TRAINS

1. A priest runs for a train, his suitcase flies open and female underwear falls out.

2. A priest runs for a train, his suitcase flies open and female body parts fall out.

HEALTH

1. A doctor tells a patient, "I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that you have a week to live. The good news is that I finally screwed the receptionist last night!"

2. The patient is you.

I'll update these periodically. Come up with your own examples. Comments welcome.

failure is the new success

2011-01-25T07:43:00.000-08:00

The world is suffocating in an avalanche of self-help books that promise to reveal the secrets of success, and every day more of them appear. Clearly, none of them work. If any of them did, there would be no need for all the others. There would be one book, and we'd all be happy. And so would millions of trees.

The internet is also choked with recipes for success, and writers get more offers of help than any other group except people who might be interested in enlarging their penis. But while gurus who promise literary enhancement offer only advice on how to do it yourself, at least the charlatans of genital transformation have the decency to send you tangible products like pills, creams and contraptions, even if they're ineffective and dangerous, rather than simply give you advice on how to pull your own plonker. Either way, none of it works. But why should it? Writers have no business with success. Face it: our trade is failure.

Writing is a lonely, obsessive craft, unless you're doing it wrong. But writers are especially vulnerable to the mirages of self-help, mainly because we have time on our hands, and finding ways to waste it is an essential part of being a writer. These days you hear a lot about the work/life balance, whatever that is. I suspect it's another formula that encourages people, especially writers, to become less interesting. With this in mind, here is an illustration of my own current work/life balance:

And now that writers are all in the business of giving each other advice, here's mine:

NEVER GIVE UP YOUR BAD HABITS.
YOU'LL BE JUST THE SAME BUT YOU'LL HAVE NOTHING TO BLAME IT ON.

Writers are meant to fuck up and suffer so the rest of us don't have to. Even if a writer has achieved success, happiness and wisdom they should keep quiet about it. What we want from writers isn't wisdom, we want art that shines an unexpected light on life and illuminates the road to our own wisdom. Give us lurid descriptions of the journey, not serene dispatches from the destination. Send us the news from hell, not the view from paradise.

I'm not talking about the "courage to fail" which is just bullshit about success disguised as heroic martyrdom. I'm talking about the courage to be a really bad writer. The sheer stupidity and ignorance required to write something truly awful. So that you can experience abject failure and humiliation, which just might make you a better writer. But don't count on it. However, failure doesn't happen often enough, and that's partly because of all the tips, steps and secrets about writing that we keep giving each other, and which, if applied diligently, can drag most of us from the swamp of inanity up to the foothills of mediocrity and dump us there, blinking in the feeble light of mere competence.

The problem is that we're being enabled to bypass the salutary experience of failure. There's a lot to learn from having your manuscript, book, script or film roundly rejected by readers, publishers, producers, critics and public, or have your play laughed off the stage. At the very least it might teach some would-be writers to give up. I know I'm not meant to say that kind of thing in this age of self-belief, and following your dream, and growth and actualization. But let's face it, some people are just not very good at writing. So, let's thin out the field, especially as it's now so overcrowded not just with writers writing whatever they're trying to write but also writers writing about how other writers should write whatever they're trying to write. So stop it.

Please, stop helping each other. Enough with the tips, and secrets and steps. And especially the lists of Rules for Writers. There is only one rule on that list:

STOP WRITING LISTS OF WRITING RULES AND GET BACK TO WORK.

And now I'll have to face the unwelcome prospect of taking my own advice.

political comedy: year of the ostrich?

2011-01-07T07:09:00.000-08:00

With the UK facing a year in which education, jobs and the health service are all under attack while the government encourages greedy tax-evaders to laugh as they piss all over the rest of us, plus the prospect of a royal wedding (Jesus, I've got millions of parasites living in my large intestine but I don't throw a national celebration just because two of them might reproduce) here's a little quiz about political comedy.

The best answers to the following questions will win a prize which will be either a mention in my next blog, or a guided tour of Britain's historic Royal Mint affording a rare glimpse behind the scenes and a chance to take home a souvenir ingot of solid gold worth at least a thousand pounds. Ok, here they are:

1. Can you name three comedians under 40 who are currently using comedy to challenge perceptions with the intention of promoting an agenda of comprehensive social and political change?

2. Do you really believe that bit about a gold ingot?

3. What if that last question was a trick, and if you say "no" you lose the chance to win the ingot? And what if this is also a trick question?

4. Can we stop the Jesuitical metaphysics and get on with the quiz, please?

5. Okay. Can you name three comedians over 40 who are still doing political comedy with the same commitment they displayed when they first began performing?

6. What do you like most about neoliberal economic policies being imposed on third world countries, and, purely coincidentally, what makes you most uncomfortable about oppression, torture, famine and dictatorship?

8. How do you rate Nick Clegg's integrity on a scale of one to motherfucker?

9. What is too good for the bankers whose selfishness and incompetence caused the financial crisis that totally screwed the world yet who still imagine they deserve to be obscenely rich?
a) decent human society
b) hanging
c) underwear.

10. Will you forgive Ben Elton the cultural atrocities he's committed in the form of the musicals We Will Rock You and Love Never Dies, and the books which make you want to tear out your own tongue in shame because it formed words in the same language that he desecrates so horribly, for the simple reason that once, long ago, he stood up and did unashamedly political comedy, even though it wasn't very funny?

All right, that's enough. At a time when inequality and injustice are increasing, reactionaries of every type are on the rise and the planet faces environmental disaster caused by greed, here's the only question I really want to ask: is political comedy dead? Or has it just been very busy for a while, doing a series of corporate gigs to make some money now that it's got a family and a mortgage?

Maybe political comedy never makes a difference. Did "Alternative Comedy" bring down Thatcher? Not from where most people are sitting. Maybe art and entertainment can never cause political change. But in a recent interview (The Guardian, Saturday 1st January) here's the musician Billy Bragg describing how and why he became involved in Rock Against Racism: "But it wasn't the Clash that changed my world. It was the audience. In the office I was working in at the time, there was a lot of casual racism. I didn't like it, but I wasn't big enough to say anything. But then I went along to Victoria Park in Hackney one afternoon, and there were 100,000 kids there who felt exactly like me. So I went back to work on Monday morning, and I knew I wasn't alone. My world hadn't changed, but my perception of it had. And that's the role of a musician."

Even if the only thing that political comedy can achieve is to challenge perceptions, and provide a comic expression of opposition to the political status quo, that's better than burying your head in the sand. (Actually, whoever first proposed burying your head in the sand as a strategy for ignoring something unpleasant obviously never tried it. They probably just saw an ostrich doing it and didn't think it through. Or maybe they saw the ostrich doing it and wrote it down just before being killed by whatever the ostrich was ignoring, leaving behind a mangled corpse and a misleading tip in a battered notebook.)

Anyhow, soon there will be another series of demonstrations by students, all over Britain, against education funding cuts. And when those students get home after the next big demo, and they switch on the TV, or go out for some entertainment, will they find the voices that echo their own, that tell them they're not alone, that help to channel their anger at injustice into political expressions and movements? Not unless there are some comedians out there who aren't embarrassed to have political beliefs and to use comedy to express them. Have we given up on the idea that comedy has a place in the front line of the battles that are currently being fought to determine what kind of world we're going to live in? It would be a pity if a whole generation grows up without realizing that the revolution can be funny.

NOTE: About those prizes. If you feel like leaving a comment, and it makes a point (I'm not asking you to agree with anything) then I'll draw attention to it. As it happens I have some names in mind for the answers to questions 1 and 5, and I'd be interested to see if anyone comes up with any, and if they're the same. But I was lying about the Royal Mint. However, if you do ever happen to find yourself inside that venerable institution, please burn the fucking place down.

tales from the fridge - season's eatings

2010-12-23T09:52:00.001-08:00

A Happy Christmas to all our readers.

Christmas comes but once a year too often

2010-12-18T06:52:00.000-08:00

Imagine a scientist telling you about an experiment he's planning. He will select a group of people who have nothing in common except being related by blood or marriage, place them in a confined space, feed them massive amounts of sugar, protein and alcohol, expose them to a nonstop barrage of degraded, overfamiliar entertainment, turn the heating up, and see who cracks first. You'd call that cruel and inhuman. And yet that what's many of us volunteer for, every year.

Why do we do it? Why do we succumb to the seasonal plague of sadomasochistic insanity that we call Christmas? Simple. It's because we get sentimental.

Sentimentality is a form of emotional totalitarianism. The greatest tyrants are invariably sentimental. Hitler, drooling over his unpleasant dog and slapping his lederhosen to the martial rhythm of sanctimonious Teutonic folk songs; Mao Zedong, spellbound by the shrill pieties of the Chinese Opera, many of whose plots feature children who love their parents so much that it nearly breaks their stout little hearts to denounce them to the secret police; Stalin, wiping away an avuncular tear as he pats the heads of Young Pioneers, many of whose murders he will authorize a few years later without a blink. And what could be more sentimental than the crazed bucolic vision that inspired Pol Pot and his regime to commit genocide?

I blame Charles Dickens. At least, in part. Which is a pity because I love Dickens and nearly all his work. I even love some of his writing about Christmas. For many years I would read The Pickwick Papers every December, contriving to arrive on Christmas day at the sublime passages depicting Christmas at Mr Wardle's farm. But Dickens ruined it all with A Christmas Carol. I may be unusual in that I interpret the story as a tragedy. The hero, Scrooge, an admirably clear-sighted realist, undergoes a ghastly conversion and is reduced to driveling imbecility simply because he's informed, by a trio of unconvincing holograms, of something that a noble pragmatist like him would surely understand better than most people. Namely, that he will meet the fate that awaits us all. He will die and no one will care very much.

This Christmas the media will begin supplying us with a ceaseless and indiscriminate supply of Dickens, that will continue well beyond the point of overdose on Dickens's 200th birthday, February 7th, because a bunch of people in the media have decided that this anniversary is an excuse to declare 2012 the 'Year of Dickens,' and to do even less original thinking than usual, for at least twelve months. And amid all this, we're going to be seeing far too much of A Christmas Carol. We'll also read, hear and see a lot of crap about Dickens, mostly from people who don't really care about his writing, but have a lot to say about what his writing means. People will say all kinds of stupid stuff. Things like, "Of course, if Dickens were alive today, he'd probably be writing television drama or even soaps." I don't think so. If Dickens were alive today he'd probably be selling small, very expensive bottles of whatever it is that's kept him alive for two hundred years. But who am I to complain? All I can do is advise you to read Bleak House, if you only read one book by Dickens, but to read everything he ever wrote if you have a chance. Yes, even A Christmas Carol, because a second rate book by Dickens is better than a first rate one by nearly any other writer. "God bless us, one and all!" in the words of Tiny Tim, the rotten little creep.

Meanwhile, I'm with Scrooge, before he became a pussy, and I leave you with the thought that Christmas comes but every fucking year.

christmas shoplifting tips

2010-12-12T06:17:00.000-08:00

DISCLAIMER. Shoplifting is a crime. Of course, some people think that turning our streets into homogeneous cultural wastelands and driving small, independent stores out of business is a crime, and that shoplifting from big corporate retailers is a natural response to their greed, vandalism, and the rank sludge of stultifying mediocrity they dump all over our lives. But I wouldn't know about that.

So, in a spirit of happy festive innocence, here are some Christmas shoplifting tips:

When using the "pregnancy" technique to conceal a frozen turkey, think: underwear.

Train a gang of impoverished, slum-dwelling urchins to steal name-brand clothing. That's how most of it is manufactured, after all.

In a trendy modern art gallery, tell the owner you're performing an ironic, conceptual piece called "Taking a Picture."

Wear a bear costume to steal from bookstores. Bears can't read, so no one will suspect you.

In a store with a lot of security cameras? Steal a couple. they make fun, original gifts.

Train a small dog to leap up and swallow the Rolex watch you've asked to inspect, and run off. Then ask whose dog it was. (Then go home, let the dog in, and wait for time to pass.)

Carry an old suitcase. It's an ideal place to hide a slightly smaller, new suitcase.

Don't try to conceal a Christmas tree about your person. Ask to "see it in the light" then run away with it.

Take clothes into a changing cubicle. Remove the monkey hidden in your backpack, put the clothes in the backpack, give it to the monkey - and he runs out. (Remember to give the monkey his cut.)

Men. In a jewelry store ask a female assistant to model a gold ring for you. Then propose to her and ask her to pay for it.

In a bookstore pose as a top author. Pretend to find typos in a copy of "your" book. Demand all copies and say you're taking them "to be pulped." (This works best if you pretend to be Jonathan Franzen.)

OR: periodically visit a series of bookstores. Steal a book one page at a time.

Wear a Carmen Miranda style hat decorated with fake fruit to a fruit shop. Surreptitiously replace the fake fruit with real fruit. (NB: only works if you can find very cheap fake fruit.)

Cushions make a thoughtful gift. In a furniture store, casually sit on a chair with a display cushion. Little do they know: you are wearing the classic "false-bottomed bottom" which can also accommodate towels and small ornaments.

The women who serve at make-up and perfume counters are, in fact, thickly-painted ceramic shells with tiny, blind old women inside. Help yourself.

Finally, one very important general tip:

To remain inconspicuous as Christmas approaches, ensure you are increasingly drunk while shoplifting.

deadline fever - read this by yesterday

2010-11-19T06:06:00.000-08:00

Ask the average writer how they feel about deadlines. Remember not to use the phrase "average writer" to their face, by the way. But suggest that they jot down some thoughts on the subject. Maybe a thousand words. By tomorrow.

WRITER: "Tomorrow is tricky. It's my mother's funeral, I'm moving house, and my divorce is being finalized.

YOU: "I'll pay you."

WRITER: "What time tomorrow?"

However, not all writers are motivated by money. Of those who aren't, some are even allowed out into the community, under supervision. But the amazing truth is that nearly all writers can be motivated by a deadline even if there's very little money involved. Or even no money at all. This is one of the secrets imparted in an occult midnight ceremony to producers and commissioning editors, after which they cease to cast a shadow. Because while money talks, a deadline yells. A deadline is the most powerful incentive you can use to get a writer off the internet and down to work.

Scientists have confirmed this phenomenon by replicating a writer's normal environment in sterile laboratory conditions (for reasons of hygiene). A deadline is applied. The effects are dramatic and often defy the laws of physics. A recumbent or even comatose writer is galvanized into a frenzy of manic activity, the envy of hardened speed freaks, like the Tasmanian Devil in the cartoons you see regularly if you watch a lot of daytime television. So I'm told.

But how can a simple deadline create such amazing results? The classic deadline is composed of two main ingredients: Stress and Time. Stress is a volatile substance. Correctly applied it can stimulate energy, enhance performance and provide extra pep, zest, zing, zip, vigor, vim and other names for potent household detergents. But too much of it can create the opposite effect, paralyzing the writer in the headlights of the oncoming deadline: literary roadkill waiting to happen. To experience complete absence of stress means you're dead; to experience too much just makes you wish you were.

In scientific terms stress is the product of two or more opposing forces. For writers these forces may be, on the one hand, the need to think about getting up and doing some work, and, on the other, the desire to stay in bed and think about who to leave out of the list of people you're going to thank in your acceptance speech for the award for the script you haven't written yet.

Which brings us to the second ingredient: Time. We all understand now that time is flexible. In fact, we don't understand it but we've got that Stephen Hawking book somewhere, so that'll do. And for writers time slows down when you're waiting to hear from people who might commission your work, and speeds up once you find out when they want the first draft.

But what if nobody has been intelligent enough to commission you to write something, and you don't have a deadline? Easy. You're a writer: make it up. It's not so hard if you remind yourself of one simple truth:

WE ARE ALL ON A DEADLINE FROM GOD. Yes, our mortal span is limited. The script of our life must be delivered to the Great Executive one day - maybe soon. For some, the deadline looms close, while others believe they still have plenty of time, the deluded fools. Shit, this depressing. Why did I start on this elaborate metaphor in the first place? Or is it an analogy? Let's have a drink.

That's better. Okay, let's forget about the clock of life ticking away and focus on what you can do today. Your big advantage as a writer is that you're an imaginative type. So, go ahead, imagine a deadline.

Let's say you're writing a screenplay. First, imagine a producer. The producer you visualize should be a cross between Harvey Weinstein and Jabba the Hutt. Wait, it's quite possible that Harvey Weinstein is Jabba the Hutt. But you get the picture. Next, imagine a meeting where you pitch your idea successfully. Imagine a contract, and sign it. Imagine getting your first draft commencement fee, and go out and spend it. Now imagine you finish the first draft in three weeks. Well done. Imagine getting paid your fee for first draft delivery, and spend it while waiting for the producer's notes before you collect your next fee, for first draft revisions. You may as well spend that as well, while you're waiting. Imagine a call from the producer. They're firing you and hiring another imaginary writer. What? But you've already spent all that money! They can't do that, can they? Of course they can. You should have looked more closely at that imaginary contract you signed.

Having established that writers will work tirelessly to meet deadlines for little or no money, the big question remains: why? The answer is simple. It makes us feel needed. We feel special: someone wants us, urgently, for our unique gifts. They must love us. It's pathetic, really. But it works. I myself am writing these very words against a tight deadline, and not only am I not getting paid, I invented the deadline myself. I convinced myself that you've been waiting desperately to read this. Oh, God, is that the time? I'm two minute away from the deadline I set myself. I need to come up with a good ending for this. I know. It was all a dream. No, wait. As you read these words you realize that you've been dead all this time! And that bit at the beginning, about a funeral - that was actually YOUR funeral. Hahaha. And now nobody can see you and you discover you're really Bruce Willis. All right, it's a bit lame, but I'm on a deadline here. Give me a break. Or give me more time. Yes, that's it. I'll finish it tomorrow. I promise.

Some of the above first appeared on www.twelvepoint.com (formerly Scriptwriter magazine)

"Chilling" - Tales from the Fridge: 9 & 10

2010-10-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

We've all been there. The morning after a party you wake up in unfamiliar surroundings and strange company. But at least you can leave, once you've collected your clothes and a few functional brain cells. How much worse to wake up in a fridge! Come to think of it, I seem to remember I did once wake up in a fridge. Someone had told me that ice was a good cure for the nosebleed I was having so I'd put my head in the freezer compartment and then fallen asleep. Happy days.

"Chilling" - Tales from the Fridge: 3 & 4

2010-09-23T14:06:00.000-07:00

In these two episodes, after love's young dream has been cruelly shattered, our hero begins to contemplate those profound question that we all ask: How did we get here? How do we get back? Are we getting paid for this? Perhaps he must also consider the bigger, universal enigmas: What is eternity and how long does it last? If the Night has a Thousand Eyes, how many noses does it have? Don't worry, these philosophical conundrums will be followed by some stunning dramatic sequences and kinky vegetable-on-vegetable action in the next episode. Possibly.

"Chilling" - Tales from the Fridge. Part 2

2010-09-17T11:19:00.001-07:00

This episode is a real tear-jerker, or what audiences in 1940s Britain used to call a "weepie," which is a reference to the weeping sores that afflicted most Britons at the time, along with rickets, scurvy, and optional teeth. In the above sequence love blossoms and is then cruelly thwarted. However, as I've noted elsewhere, "It is better to have loved and lost than to risk yet another restraining order." In the next episode our plucky little hero, the innocent red chilli pepper, turns to the consolations of philosophy. Coming soon.

'Chilling' - Tales from the Fridge: episode 1

2010-09-13T04:14:00.000-07:00

I'm developing this comic strip, set in a fridge, with my friend Dan Pearce. Screenwriters will recognize the start of a classic 'hero's journey' in which the protagonist is an innocent young chilli pepper and the mentor is a wise old chunk of Parmesan. Of course, thinking in these terms about everything you write will eventually turn your brain to loose porridge which would slop over the edges of your skull if, in an amusing reversal of convention, a monkey should slice off the top and try to scoop out the contents. My immature attitude to the disciplines of screenwriting is outlined in the mercifully unpublished thesis "The writer's journey, and how to get home after you've been thrown off the bus for fooling around."

More episodes of Tales from the Fridge will appear here very soon.

140 characters instead of an author

2010-08-26T11:27:00.001-07:00

(New Proverbs at the end of this post)

These days I spend roughly half my life coming up with reasons why I spend the other half of it on Twitter. One of my best excuses is when I say to someone: "Actually, for a writer, it's a very good discipline because the restrictions of the form require you to strive for the economy that is essential to good writing, and..." which is usually when their eyes glaze over, especially if they're a stranger I've accosted on a bus.

Hippocrates said "Art is long, life is short," and while he may have thought that was a good thing, he never sat through a James Cameron film. Given that everything I read, watch, hear and say is usually too long, anything that trains us to do a bit of editing is fine with me. Twitter is the Hemingway of social media, and it's doing a fine job of teaching us to keep it short and sweet, even if it simultaneously encourages us to do it all day.

The trouble is that it works too well. Economy is something I'd like to be in control of when I write, like punctuation or profanity. But I'm finding it increasingly difficult to write anything that' s longer than 140 characters. More worryingly, nothing I think is longer than that, either. My mind is becoming a bio-tweetback loop. Okay, we all know that our brains are being rewired by the way we use digital media. For more information about this, click on this link: http://www.google.co.uk/ That's right, it's just a link to Google. What am I, your mother? Just type in "neuroscience" and "social media" and you'll find lots of fascinating stuff. Jesus, no one wants to do any work for themselves any more.

And that's the problem: your mind is turning into a vast network of short, discrete bites of information, connected by random impulses driven by the last thing you saw or heard, like a pack of feral children playing with transistor radios in a junkyard. We are rapidly losing the capacity for sustained, meaningful ratiocination. Whoa, dude. What does that even mean? "Sustained, meaningful ratiocination?" It sounds totally boring, it's not funny, and it has nothing to do with Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga so who gives a shit?

That's the sad truth my friends, but don't worry. Every cloud has a silver lining. Aha, see what that was? That was a proverb. A proverb is like an olden-days soundbite. It's a short, pithy saying that appears to have some substance and to deliver useful information but most of the time it's just a clever way of reminding us of something we already know by using a resonant image, analogy or metaphor. Which makes it THE IDEAL TWEET.

Don't fight it. We're all going to neurological hell in a digital handcart anyway, so just sit back and enjoy the ride with a few well-chosen words that can easily be assimilated by your woefully amputated attention span.

But most proverbs are old-fashioned. "A stitch in time saves nine" isn't bad, but who does any sewing any more? Except a bunch of third world kids in sweatshops, and if they miss a stitch they probably get electrocuted, although Nike wouldn't know anything about that, of course. So, what we need are some new proverbs. "A stitch in time saves a post-natal perineal fissure when you start having sex again." Doesn't that make more sense?

And now I've succeeded in getting to this point by pretending to sustain a coherent argument I can drop the act and do what I really wanted all along, which is lay some of my new proverbs on you. Your reward for reading this far is that there are no more paragraphs to read, no more lines of thought to follow. From now on it's basically one-liners.

Most of the NEW PROVERBS I'm coming up with fall into four categories:

1. Fish

2. Fools

3. Writers.

4. Fish, fools and writers.

I've always liked the saying: "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, but teach him how to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life." I just like the idea of people giving fish to each other. But I wanted to update the political relevance and I was still thinking about those kids making T-shirts:

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, but teach him to work in a sweatshop and he can pay you for the fish.

The political angle led naturally to gender politics:

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. But give the fish a bicycle and you'll make a feminist happy.

But pretty soon I began to expand my horizons:

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, but give a monkey a firework and you create the precious gift of comedy.

After a while I began to see things from the point of view of the fish:

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. But are you prepared to go and break the news to Mrs Fish and the family?

And if you think about anything long enough it starts to get weird. So, finally, here's the surrealist version:

Give a man a fish - but don't tell him why.

A lot of proverbs are warnings against foolishness. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." Here's my new version, and some others about fools:

Fools rush in where a big sign says "Fools, rush this way!"

A fool and his money are soon offered a mortgage they can't afford.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame I didn't have a gun with me the first time.

A lot of my tweets about writers aren't strictly speaking proverbs, but they serve the same function: they're all warnings.

Writing is a lonely, anguished craft - unless you're doing it wrong.

The writer's creed: "There are no strangers, only friends you haven't alienated yet."

Dead men tell no tales. But you can still make money on the royalties.

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. But give a writer a fish and he'll want your fish as well.

Finally, a few random new proverbs:

Better the devil you know than a proctologist with a hangover you've only just met.

Laughter is the best medicine, except after abdominal surgery.

If a job's worth doing it's worth paying someone who knows what they're doing to do it.

There is no honor among thieves, and no change among bus drivers.

When you're screwed, everything looks like a screwdriver.

It is a great undertaking to truly know another person. It's easier to steal their identity.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you if they gave a shit.

Better to have loved and lost than to risk yet another restraining order.

There's a fine line between a fan and a stalker, according to the TV presenter tied up in my basement.

Never put off until tomorrow what you already put off yesterday. Today put off something new.

An iPad for an iPad, a Bluetooth for a Bluetooth.

Christmas comes but every fucking year.

I'll be adding to these periodically. All contributions welcome.

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE with scenes of explicit socks

2010-08-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

This film was made on a budget of slightly less than nothing at bolexbrothers studio in Bristol. The second time you watch it, keep your eye on what's happening in the room at the back, behind the window.

Here's another short film, on the theme of Artificial Intelligence. It uses a mixture of different animation and live action techniques. It was made for a bit more money in 2001 for Channel 4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHFIDkEEPUs&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Based on an Original Sin

2010-07-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And He saw that it was good. Good, but not great. The project was high-concept but the story was a mess; basically, God needed a writer. That's where I came in. First, God created me, then He created a window so we could have a meeting. He had His people contact my people to schedule it. Of course, I didn't have any people, just some little shapes made out of mud and twigs. That's all God had, too, but He could do that thing where He just breathed on them and suddenly a full size, naked accountant is in your face.

Anyway, we set up the meeting, but God cancelled at the last moment - something about needing a break after working six straight days - and then, when He finally found another window, I arrived at the meeting to discover that He'd created a lawyer. The lawyer made me sign a contract which gave God all the rights to my work, in return for an "additional material" credit, plus an eternal soul, which the lawyer assured me was very valuable, although I've never really figured out how to use it, and it came without any instructions. In the meeting, the lawyer showed no respect for me personally or for the writer's craft. But God was pretty pleased, and after the meeting He asked me how I'd like to develop the lawyer character. Which is how I came up with the idea for Satan.

I didn't get credit for the idea of Satan even though I created a lot of the stuff that made the role so distinctive, like the whole 'Lucifer' concept of the good guy who gets brought down by a fatal flaw in his character, which introduces the whole dynamic of an internal conflict and gives the antagonist some real depth. At first God didn't like that, because He thought maybe people would find the villain more interesting than Him, but pretty soon He came up with plenty of ways to make His own character more complex and conflicted. So much so that everyone's been trying to make sense of it ever since. And then, of course, He claimed it was all His idea in the first place. But that was always happening. Basically, He was a jealous God...

It was the same with all the work I did on the Garden of Eden scenes. For example, the serpent was my idea. In God's original outline it was a parrot. But once God got His head around the idea of a talking snake, there was no stopping Him; He couldn't get enough of the whole surrealist, metaphysical thing - burning bushes, plagues of frogs, you name it.

And another thing: it was me who came up with the whole concept of Time. I'm a big fan of Time because, let's face it, without Time everything would happen at once. Which is what it did in God's original story, which went like this: Creation; Adam meets Eve; the human race sins big time; boom, apocalypse. Running time: the blink of an eye. I recommended that the running time should be at least several billion years, or people would ask for their money back.

Speaking of money, the whole project began to spiral out of control, and what finally sent us way over budget was the idea of giving the protagonists Free Will. We're not just talking about a little improvisation to open up the dialogue, this was basically telling the actors to make everything up as they went along. Like Mike Leigh gone crazy. Only funnier, obviously. It wasn't my idea; one of the other writers came up with it. Did I mention that by now there was a whole team of us? God had created more writers, using a sludge-like substance that was left over after he'd finished creating yeast infections. And He figured out how to keep the writers totally under his thumb: the trick was to create insecure neurotics with very low self-esteem.

Anyway, all the new writers specialised in one particular thing. There was one guy who worked exclusively on begetting. So-and-so begat whatsisname, and whatsisname begat so-and-so, all that stuff. I think he now works in the adult entertainment industry. And one writer just worked on taboos. He was a weirdo. "Thou shalt not eat of a kid that has been steeped in its mother's milk." I mean, you'd have to be twisted to even think of doing that in the first place. There was also this radical, firebrand type who tried to unionise us. But negotiations with God broke down when the writer proposed shorter hours and a fairer pay structure, and God proposed condemning the writer to burn in a lake of fire for all eternity. The writer still held out, until God threatened him with six months working on My Family then he caved in.

Things always got a little tense in the writer's room when it was time to get the producer's notes. The standard reassurance, "nothing's written in stone," didn't apply, because God's notes were, in fact, written in stone. And it was murder trying to get some laughs into the script. God was great with the big set pieces, and the special effects were stunning. But no sense of humour. For example, I came up with a gag for the end of the big flood sequence, where the dove comes back with an olive branch and Noah freaks out because he'd actually sent out for a plumber. But that didn't make it into the final draft.

But I can't really complain, because I haven't stopped working. It turns out that the project is a huge, rolling franchise, with the next sequel always in development. And there are some really spectacular productions on the way. I can't reveal any details, but let's just say there's one genre that never goes out of style: disaster movies.

Oh, yes; you remember that "eternal soul" thing I never figured out? The lawyer has offered to buy it back, and for a fair price, too, so maybe he's not so bad after all.

Parts of this article first appeared in Scriptwriter Magazine (now twelvepoint.com)

funny and not so funny

2010-07-04T09:49:00.000-07:00

It's said that comedy depends on context. If a well dressed, dignified man slips on a banana skin it's funny, but it's not so funny if a tramp does it. But what if the rich guy fractures his skull, gets brain damage and becomes a vegetable? Is that funny? It depends on the vegetable. Some vegetables are funnier than others. A cucumber is funnier than a potato but a potato is funnier than a mushroom. But what if the tramp fractures his skull, receives compensation from the shop that sold the banana, buys some fine clothes, gets drunk on champagne, slips on another banana skin, fractures his skull again, loses his short term memory and wakes up wondering where all the fine clothes came from? That could be pretty funny, if it was in a film and the tramp was played by almost anyone except Adam Sandler. But when did you last see a banana skin lying in the street, unless you put it there because you're a comedy writer who's run out of ideas?

So, something can be funny in one context and not in another. It's charming if your kid has an imaginary friend, but not so great if your heart surgeon has one. Try this test. In the following list of examples one is funny and one is not so funny. See if you can tell which is which, and then come up with some of your own.

CLOWNS

1. A clown in a circus.

2. A clown outside your bedroom window at 4AM.

YOUR MOTHER

1. You discover that your mother once wrote fan letters to Michael Jackson.

2. You discover that your mother still writes fan letters to Michael Jackson.

POULTRY

1. A headless chicken runs around a farmyard.

2. A headless chicken runs around your kitchen.

YOUR CAR

1. No sooner do you wash your car than a bird defecates on it.

2. No sooner do you wash your car than your neighbour defecates on it.

DOGS

1. A dog chases its tail.

2. A dog chases its tail, catches it and eats it.

FLATULENCE

1. At a funeral the priest farts.

2. At a funeral the corpse farts.

BABIES

1. A tiny baby sneezes and looks surprised.

2. A tiny baby sneezes, looks surprised and curses, invoking Satan.

OBESITY

1. A very fat man gets stuck in the doorway of a fancy restaurant.

2. A very fat man gets stuck in the doorway of a burning restaurant.

AIRCRAFT

1. The person next to you on a plane laughs while reading a book.

2. The person next to you on a plane laughs while reading the safety instructions.

HANGOVERS

1. You wake up and can't remember where you left your car.

2. You wake up and can't remember where you left your kids.

TRAINS

1. A priest runs for a train, his suitcase flies open and female underwear falls out.

2. A priest runs for a train, his suitcase flies open and female body parts fall out.

1. You start laughing at a character in a TV show.

2. A character in a TV show starts laughing at you.

HEALTH

1. A doctor tells a patient, "I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that you have a week to live. The good news is that I finally screwed the receptionist last night!"

2. The patient is you.

I'll be adding to these periodically. Come up with your own examples. And please post them here.

workshopaholics anonymous

2010-06-24T11:47:00.000-07:00

"WHY NOT BE A WRITER?" demands a long-running advertisment designed to make writers feel guilty if they happen to catch sight of it with a hangover. Well, I can think of three good reasons:

1. There's no money in it.

2. It's a miserable existence and you never meet anyone.

3. Except other writers, who tend to be embittered misfits.

But if you still insist on this interesting career choice, you may feel you need some kind of training for the job. That makes sense. Any profession requires certain skills. You wouldn't think of becoming a doctor without a thorough knowledge of golf, or a lawyer without the basic computational skills to count large sums of money.

Writers also needs skills. For example writers must learn how to develop ideas, characters, plots, and a taste for very cheap food. They must also learn how to present and pitch their work, how to conduct themselves in meetings and how to look pleased when another writer you know achieves success, and pretends he's inviting you to his launch party because you're a friend and maybe he can introduce you to some people but really he just wants you there so he can gloat, the bastard.

So, how can a writer acquire these vital competencies? The answer for many people is a workshop. No matter how many books about writing you read, the really invaluable lessons about the craft are only brought to life in an individual learning experience with a genuine failed writer.

The following is an overview of some of the types of workshop on offer. But I must declare an interest: I run writing workshops myself. Of course, I'm a highly successful professional, while most workshops are run by people who've never written anything more important than a biography for the online dating agency profile which they hoped would attract the human beings they're too dysfunctional to encounter in their non-existent social life, and who'd then give them a reason to go out once in a while instead of sitting at home every evening, obsessively analysing the story structure of the Star Wars series. But, hey, don't go running away with the idea that I'm brilliant and everyone else is total pants. That's my idea, so you can just run straight back here with it. However, my assessment of other people's workshops is completely fair and objective. And if you believe that, you possess an imagination so powerful and vivid that you don't need anyone's workshops. Otherwise, here are some of the typical courses on offer:

The Myth of the Wounded Anti-Writer's Journey.

This course uncovers the Mythic Resonance of the Hero's Journey that forms the Deep Structure of all successful films except Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Learn the Thirteen Principles of Dynamic Storytelling. Then discover the Nine Master Principles behind them. Then unearth the Six Secret Archetypes concealed underneath the Master Principles. Then discover the Wounded Heart of the Sneaky Antihero hiding in a motel owned by the Secret Archetypes. Finally, confront the most potent myth of all - that any of this stuff is a good reason not to finish the screenplay you've been writing since 1989.

The Thirty-eight Steps.

This workshop is run by a top screenwriter, or possibly a top screenwriting consultant. Basically, you spend two days sitting on a hard red plastic chair, listening to someone you've never heard of tell you how fabulous they are. Hollywood legend Bud Schlitz explains that outdated, formulaic approaches like three-act structure, or the twenty-two step analysis, are no longer valid tools to get your screenplay green-lit. The only thing that works is his unique thirty-eight block dynamic breakdown. This is illustrated by elaborate diagrams with arrows connecting overlapping circles labelled: 'Sub-genre Paradigm', 'Societal uber-context', 'Mentor Figure's Influence Sphere', and 'Free wi-fi coverage in the greater Los Angeles region.'

Dash it All.

This highly specialized workshop is subtitled: "Unleash the Hidden Power of Punctuation to Create a Sure-Fire Blockbuster." In Module One, the tutor examines the creative use of the semicolon in the screenplay for 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'. Modules 16 to 28 analyse the significance of dots, finally resolving the bitter dispute that's torn the industry apart: Hesitation - Three Dots or Four?

By Module 40 you begin defacing your course study notes, as follows:

MODULE 40: BRACKETS.

1. When to use brackets. (Never.)

2. When to use square brackets. [Forget it, you sad little man.]

3. What about those funny curly ones? {No. Just get a life, okay?}

The Untold Hidden Secrets of Writing, Pitching and Retiring on Your Screenplay that are Completely Secret and Hidden from Everyone Except Me.

This workshop reveals the Hollywood insider secrets that are absolutely guaranteed to sell your script. The tutor is a true maverick who promises to rip aside the veil of hypocrisy surrounding the film industry, slit open its soft, quivering underbelly, and slap its hot, throbbing intestines. He teaches that success depends on actualizing your potentiality and validating your self-worth by being rude to people. Assertiveness is everything. Movie executives go for winners, he claims, so, in meetings, you must establish dominance over producers and development lackeys by insisting that the writer is a free, unfettered spirit while they are miserable salary-whores who've prostituted any integrity they may have possessed. Gradually, you realise that the tutor, who is clearly self-medicating, is an unsuccessful writer who's been driven insane by envy, and developed a cunning strategy to ensure that every other writer in the world screws up their career even more than he did so that he might finally have a chance. He is giving you the worst advice he can think of.

How to Get Ahead in the Workshop Business.

This course reveals the insider secrets to success in developing the most vital skills you will need as a professional writer: promoting and selling your workshop.

Parts of this article first appeared in Scriptwriter Maagazine (now twelvepoint.com)

are you a digitalmediaholic?

2010-06-14T07:29:00.000-07:00

TRY THIS SIMPLE TEST.

1. During sex, how do you communicate your desires to your partner?

a) by subtly guiding them with your body.

b) by whispering to them.

c) by text.

2. Do you dream in:

a) 140 characters.

b) Dream? Is there an iPhone app for that?

3. While reading this are you also:

a) updating your own blog.

b) joining a new social networking site.

c) conducting a vicious argument with someone you've never met.

d) all of the above.

4. Who do you entrust with your most intimate secrets?

a) your spouse or partner.

b) your therapist.

c) facebook.

ANSWERS.

There are no answers. You've got a problem. How much time do you spend noodling around online doing this kind of thing? Haven't you got better things to do than answer questions like this one? And more importantly, haven't I got better things to do than ask them? Because rather than encourage your self-indulgent digital narcissism by asking you more questions about yourself, let's talk about me. I'm a writer. And like all writers I keep hearing the same thing:

"Writers can't just sit at home all day and write. Writers have to market themselves."

I OBJECT.

For one thing, I never sit at home all day and write. I mostly sit at home all day and don't write. And sometimes I go out and don't write. And even when I do write, I don't do it all day. Anyone who claims to write all day is a liar or a speedfreak, or someone scribbling scary occult gibberish on the walls of their apartment for the cops to find while they're out committing the latest in a series of elaborate slayings based on the seven deadly sins, or the book of revelations, or some other text traditionally popular in the homicidal psychopath community. But normal writers only spend part of each day writing, and I don't want to be told that I have to spend the rest of it marketing myself, rather than wasting it in the ways that made writing such an attractive proposition in the first place. But then it all changed. I wrote a novel.

SUDDENLY, NOTHING HAPPENED...

My agent sent my novel to some publishers. And then nothing happened. Well, some publishers liked it but didn't want to take a chance on it. Maybe it was because I'd carefully chosen the worst time in UK publishing history for a first book in a genre that's an endangered species: the English Comic Novel. Or maybe my book is no good. By the way, if you meet me at a party please don't offer the second explanation, especially if I've had a drink.

So, maybe we'll publish the novel online. Meanwhile I'm writing another novel. High concept. Niche market. Easier sell. Short sentences. Terse. Punchy. Okay, I'll stop that now. But while I'm writing the second novel I'm supposed to establish an online profile so that we can sell the first novel, and promote the second novel. So that's what I'm doing. These words I'm writing are part of the process. But something is happening. My brain is changing. I'm becoming a different person.

HI, PLEASED TO MEET YOU. I'M A STINKING WHORE...

Stupid people used to say "A woman should be a wife in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom." You might as well add that she should be a plumber in the bathroom, a tree surgeon in the garden, and a trained nurse in the event of an emergency. However, a writer should definitely be a genius in the workplace and a whore in the marketplace. And it's fine that we have to be whores. You knew what you were getting into when you first bought that expensive pen, the fancy notebooks, and the screenwriting software. No one is forcing you. You don't have to sell people what you write. But if you want them to buy it you have to sell it. And if you want to sell it you have to promote it. And if you want to promote it you have to promote yourself, too. Writers can't just sit at home and write, remember. And what's so terrible about being a whore anyway? They're just more honest about selling themselves than the rest of us. But for writers is there a danger that you might end up spending more time and energy promoting what you do than actually doing it? Yes. There is. It's called the Internet.

MY NAME IS PAUL AND I'M A DIGITALMEDIAHOLIC

For a long time I didn't think I had a problem. I justified all the time I spent on Twitter by saying that it was really just a way of driving online traffic to my blog. And the reason I was writing a blog was really to drive traffic to my other work. Except I'm not doing any other work. I'm not sure when the balance tipped but it was probably around the time I began using phrases like "driving online traffic" without making ironic quote marks in the air with my fingers. All the online stuff was meant to be a means to and end, and now the means have become the end.

Addiction is defined as a recurring compulsion to engage in an activity despite harmful consequences and an inability to stop that activity without adverse effects. That's me. I'm doing all this stuff that isn't good for me and I can't stop. And every time I do it, I want to do more of it. And now I know why, thanks to research from some scientists in California. Scientists always live in California. The only scientists that don't live in California live in Russia. Or possibly China. But you never hear about important research from scientists in Wales, or scientists in Idaho. Anyway, this research shows that my compulsion to do less and less real work and spend more and more time on all the digital media and social networking that's meant to be promoting the work I'm no longer doing is an addiction just like any other. And in the same way that any addictive behaviour reinforces itself, my brain chemistry is changing as the neural pathways involved in this behaviour become stronger, encouraging me to use them more, and so on. The way I perceive and process information has changed. My brain is becoming increasingly hungry for the quick, diverse shots of gratification it gets from a multiplicity of online stimuli, and increasingly less inclined to help me write a book or a script, because it's bored with that shit. It wants the adrenal buzz it gets from the internet. And as other people have observed, of all the behaviour that can turn you into an online addict, Twitter is internet crack. I've used Twitter five times while writing this. If you've read this whole post, and you've got this far without doing anything else at the same time, you're either very interested, very disciplined, someone in my immediate family, or someone who's reading it while I'm watching you. And now I'm going to stop. I need to do some more online research. You'll notice I haven't included any links to the scientific stuff I've mentioned. That's not because I made it up, it's because I thought it might increase the chances of you reading this all the way through without distracting yourself. If you have, thank you. Now you can go and google a bunch of stuff about internet addiction. There's plenty of it out there - all on the internet, naturally. Have fun. I need to check my emails. I'll get back to you.

how to be a writer - part 3

2010-05-26T14:45:00.000-07:00

THE WAY OF THE LONER

Writing is an anguished, solitary trade. Unless you do it with other people, which can be even worse. There is no lonelier place than the writers' room of a top sitcom when you're about to be fired. You'll know it's going to happen because all the other writers start laughing at your jokes. These are the dark times for the writer. This is the place of pain. These are the mean streets down which you must lurch, nursing the black eye you got at the last place you were thrown out of. But do you despair? Yes! Plunge to the depths of misery, and make that dark, demonic pit the crucible in which to forge a new soul! (I'm on a roll here. That was good coffee.) Arise from the ashes of your agony, reborn, renewed, revitalised, and follow the path of wisdom and self-knowledge that was forged by the Masters of old: fierce, bearded types, many of them professional hermits who rejected all human society save for weekly meetings of the local Hermits' Club. But know that the path is steep. The road is hard. The buses are infrequent. For this is.... THE WAY OF THE LONER.

You are not lonely

Just because you spend all your time alone, that doesn’t make you lonely. It makes you a loner. Big difference. You are the Cat who Walks by Itself. And walking by yourself, incidentally, is a simple, inexpensive way to stay healthy. You’ll find yourself thanking the bailiff who re-possessed your car. Not to his face, but silently, to yourself. This is the Way of the Loner.

You are your own best friend

When you first set out on the Path of Dynamic Solitude, the idea of having a pet to keep you company may seem attractive. But scientists now speculate that dogs, cats and other pets may have the same needs, delusions and neuroses as the person you’ve just finished a relationship with. Why not grow a moustache for company? Women, don't be left out. Facial hair is cheap to maintain, and easier to get rid of than a pet. Society looks more favourably on someone who shaves off their beard than someone who leaves their cat in a cinema many miles from its home.

You travel light

Do you really need your so-called friends, who say they want to help you take your mind off your problems, and buy you drinks all night just so they can feel superior when you end up crying in front of them? No. Get drunk alone, at home. But a word of caution. You may be the kind of drunk who goes through a gregarious stage. For some, the window is narrow, lasting only a few carefree moments between the stages of Infantile Hilarity and Unpredictable Aggression. But for others, it lasts until the people you're trying to be gregarious with club together to pay for a taxi, forcibly put you in it, and instruct the driver to take you to another town. When you're getting drunk at home alone you may experience a sudden urge to rush out to a bar, club, launderette or anywhere else you can find fellow human beings to tell them how much you like them. As a sensible precaution, before you start to drink, lock yourself in and hide your keys somewhere you won't think of looking later, when you're drunk. Don't worry, you'll probably remember where they are the next morning, or some time that day. And if it takes a couple of days to find them, so what? You didn't have any plans to go out, anyway.

It's your party.

If you really need a social life, your imagination is the best party you’ll ever go to. And, for once, you’re on the guest list for the VIP lounge. In fact, you control the guest list! Invite who you want; linger over the choice of who to turn away. The Adept in the Tao of Singleness has one priceless asset: time. So, let your fantasies run wild. Here’s a good one. You die stoically of a rare but painless disease contracted during your work among the poor, that you tried to keep secret but is now legendary. Imagine the look on your pompous brother-in-law’s face when what you really think of him comes out in the reading of your inspirational will, which is televised world-wide, and causes the parties in all global conflicts to resolve their differences! Also, you can finally give your real opinion of the screenplay that your friend sold through sheer luck to those German producers who were all a bunch of amateurs anyway, so God knows how the film ended up being so successful. And express your feelings about people who say they'll pass on your own script to their new best friends, the German film producers, but almost certainly didn't, even though you let them sleep on your floor for three months when they first came to London, for a very reasonable rent.

You are not alone.

Actually, you are alone, in the sense that you spend all your time by yourself. But you’re not alone in the sense that there are thousands, maybe millions of people like you. It’s just that you don’t want to meet them. They’re real losers, mostly. But you are a Loner.

Sniff the Corpse of Bernard Manning pt3

2010-05-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

Anyone here been raped and do standup?

I once heard a comedienne say in an interview that you can only make jokes about rape if you're a woman who's been raped. I gamely tried to think of a few gags on the subject but I couldn't come up with any. However, if a woman who's been raped has found a way to make the experience funny I find that admirable and I don't think anyone should try to stop her. But I don't think they should try to stop me, either. As it happens I don't want to make jokes about women and rape but I don't want to be told I can't, either. I can understand why some people might be offended if I did, and I'd be wary of doing the routine at hen parties, but I don't think anything should be taboo for a writer or performer just because they haven't experienced it. Shakespeare wrote about rape, torture, and people accidentally eating their own children, which he presumably hadn't experienced. Those topics tended to crop up in his tragedies, admittedly, but murder and mayhem have never been off-limits in comedy. So why can't I tell jokes about women being raped?

There doesn't seem to be a problem with jokes about men who've been raped. It's taken for granted that a comedy which even mentions men in prison will include jokes about proctology and not bending over in the shower. But a man who's raped is no less damaged by it than a woman. Why is one experience a legitimate subject for comic treatment while the other isn't? This is part of an argument about 'offensive' comedy which, in turn, is part of a much larger battle about free speech, censorship, and human rights. Offensive comedy is beginning to look like the front line in a cultural civil war.

Everyone's angry and we hear about it all the time. The media tells us about the angry people, and the rest of us get angry about how angry they are. And in a world of instant electronic response where debate is replaced by assertion, I'm always right, and you're wrong, end of story. People get angry about a joke on the radio, or a play about a sensitive subject, or a TV programme that offends someone's beliefs. Some people don't get offended themselves but they get angry on behalf of other people who they think might be offended. Some of us believe we've got a right not to be offended, because that's what respect means. Some of us think we've got a right to be offensive because that's what free speech is all about, and we get angry if people try to stop us.

Of all the anger that's aroused, nothing makes people angrier than religion. Since the established Christian church lost much of its authority in Britain we've got accustomed to people telling jokes about religion in public. There's sometimes been some debate about whether people other than Jews should tell 'Jewish' jokes, and most people agree that they shouldn't, but only because they're funnier when Jews tell them. And when we talk about Jewish jokes we include jokes about both Jews and Judaism - the doctrine and the faithful. Similarly, everyone tells jokes about both Christians and Christianity, and Jesus and God both show up as a characters in gags, TV shows and films pretty regularly these days. And Muslims tell jokes about Muslims. Some very funny Muslim comediennes have emerged recently. And now non-Muslims are telling jokes about Muslims, too, like Chris Morris with his film Four Lions. But the difference is that while jokes about Muslims may be acceptable, no one makes jokes about Islam.

Of course, you'll find jokes about Islam on the internet, because you'll find anything on the internet. I'm talking about what's in full public view. And in this context the actual doctrine of Islam is considered taboo, unlike nearly every other major belief system. In this it's exceptional because, broadly speaking, it's the smaller religions or sects that are the most sensitive. Most Hindus can make and take jokes about their religious beliefs, but Sikhs, like Scientologists, tend to take up arms or attorneys if they think their religious faith or doctrine is being mocked or criticized.

However, if we really believe in free speech, shouldn't we be able to say what we want about people's religious beliefs? The western liberal view in this respect derives from the sentiment attributed to Voltaire, "I may disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." This seems a pretty straightforward proposition. But Voltaire said nothing about respect, and in the last few years a lot of people haven't been able to shut up about it. The problem is that respect means different things to different people: one thing to a rabbi, another to a rapper. Arguments over respect, like feuds over honour, seem to generate exceptional levels of aggression, and the biggest casualty in the confusion over the meaning of respect has been free speech.

Many people believe that in a society which embraces different faiths and cultures, we have a duty to respect the religious beliefs of others. No thanks. Why should I respect your beliefs if I think they're misguided, repressive, misogynistic, destructive or just plain silly? However, I respect your right to believe whatever you want, provided it doesn't harm me. That's a different idea, and in a society that truly supports free speech, it should be enough. It might permit unpleasant and malicious insults to be expressed by one person about the beliefs of another person, but so what? What's so terrible about being offended anyway? Where does it hurt? Isn't your precious belief sufficient to sustain you?

If only it was that simple. And it might be if we lived in a world where no one felt vulnerable or oppressed or powerless. Because we can't consider any of this without considering the issue of power. Which brings us back to the question: Why can't I make jokes about women being raped? My answer is, I can, but at a price, and I won't even know what the price is unless I understand why this whole conversation is about power.

Comedy often comments on, reflects, subverts or reinforces power relationships. In many cases comedy derives its whole impact from a power dynamic. A lot of comedy is about status and its reversals, and this tradition stretches back to the earliest stage dramas, with the figure of the wily servant who outwits the master, and beyond, back to the inclusion of subversive comic elements in ancient rituals and ceremonies. And power is inseparable from violence. We're always reminded of this by the language that comedians use about their craft. The stage comic talks about slaying the audience. The weapons are the killer joke, the side-splitting gag, the punch line. And every comedian knows that you have to dominate the audience because if the power dynamic changes and the audience gets the upper hand, the comedian begins to seem desperate and runs the risk of 'dying' onstage.

Power plays another part in the dynamics of comedy, and is reflected in the different attitudes to jokes about male and female rape, along with the different meanings that both 'offence' and 'respect' have for different people. If you don't hold strong religious beliefs, or any at all, it's sometimes hard to comprehend the anger of those who feel their beliefs have been offended. If you identify yourself as a modern European liberal humanist you may be inclined to condemn such anger as a symptom of intolerance or as the ignorant rage of primitive bigots who don't have the breadth of mind to understand the gifts and responsibilities of freedom and plurality. But you're just as likely to encounter ignorance, intolerance and bigotry in people who profess no faith as you are in religious believers.

You might object that you're not an angry atheist or an enraged believer; you're simply a decent, broad-minded person who believes in tolerance and understanding. Well, that's a belief right there. And have you ever written a letter of complaint? Have you ever lost your temper with the person on the line from the call centre? Have you ever felt that you've been treated with contempt by an official, or a system, or a driver or a pedestrian or a cyclist? Have you been angered by the behaviour of a stranger or a friend, a spouse, or a member of your family or of the human race in general? Have you ever felt hurt, angry, vulnerable - have you ever felt powerless? Of course you have. You had a belief and it was offended. You believed that you were entitled to something - consideration, respect, compassion, understanding - and you didn't get it. And it hurts. It doesn't matter whether you can argue that you're justified in feeling the way you do because you've got a good reason, whereas another person isn't justified because they haven't got a good reason. You believe they haven't and they believe they have. All indignation is righteous indignation. It's not about what's rational or justified. It's about how you feel. And it's acceptable to express that feeling, and to complain if you feel offended. The problems begin when someone tries to rationalize what they feel and make it into a doctrine or an ideology, and then use that ideology to enforce their view. We have to accept that two individuals may think and feel differently about the same subject. But we have to resist any attempt by one of those individuals to insist that the other one thinks and feels the same way as they do about it.

More about this soon.

Sniff the Corpse of Bernard Manning part 2

2010-04-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST I'M OFFENDED?

When it comes to comedy some people claim that nothing can offend them. But the truth is that everyone can be offended - if you try hard enough.

In the same way that everyone has a price, everyone has something they're sensitive about - because everyone has beliefs. Rationalists believe it's stupid to hold irrational beliefs, and you can make them quite angry simply by professing faith in something, especially if you invent it yourself and make it as weird as possible. But it's sometimes hard to offend people who are so certain of their religious beliefs that they radiate that creepy, contemptuous serenity. With them you might have to get personal. Stuff about their mother often does the trick. But how do you offend a comedian who tells offensive jokes? I'll tell you later.

On May 19th I'm chairing an event at London's Southbank Centre. It's called "No Offence But..." and the panel includes Richard Herring, Brendon Burns, Francesca Martinez and Oona King, Channel 4's Head of Diversity (see link at the end of this post). We're going to challenge some basic assumptions about comedy.

Why does comedy have to be offensive at all? Why can't we just make nice, silly jokes that make everyone happy? Why do we need comedy that might offend some people? The answer could be in the word 'some'. If everyone in the world found something offensive it wouldn't be funny. But there are some very sick people out there, who find even the most vile, repulsive jokes amusing, if you tell them properly. Thank God for diversity. What one person finds funny, another person finds distasteful. But there can be lots of different reasons why someone takes offence. It could be because of beliefs they hold, or it could be because of something that's happened to them. And even then, two people can react differently to the same experience. Here's an example. It's not strictly speaking comedy, in the sense that it's about someone dying of cancer. But lighten up...

On 10th April 2010, The Guardian Weekend Magazine published a piece by Briony Campbell about the death of her father; it was called "Saying Goodbye with my Camera" and was illustrated by photographs of him in his final days. The pictures were muted and restrained, and mostly featured details, like close-ups of his thin, delicate hands. The next weekend (17th April) the magazine published responses by two readers. Here are extracts:

1. "Saying Goodbye With My Camera was objectionable, tasteless and plumbed the lowest depths of sensationalism. Having in recent years watched both my parents die of cancer, I found the whole thing distressing and disgusting."

2. "Briony Campbell's photographs are in front of me now, splattered with my tears. They are so beautiful. They reminded me of forgotten details connected with the deaths of my lovely, gentle mum and dad. Thank you."

So, one person found this material offensive and another found it moving. Does that mean one person is sensitive and the other isn't? It doesn't sound like it. Was the subject matter disgusting or perverse? The pictures showed nothing loathsome. Did it deal with some kind of bizarre minority interest? No, death seems to be pretty widespread. So, what's going on here?

The obvious conclusion is that it's not about the material itself. It's not even about principle, or morality, or taste. It's about an individual's experience, from which that individual derives a principle or moral value - based entirely on how they feel.

Okay, back to comedy. It's got to be obvious that you simply can't avoid offending some people, some of the time with some comedy material. It may be because of beliefs they hold, or because of the way they've reacted to an experience, or just because they're one of those people who seems to go around expecting to be offended, with a big invisible but irresistible sign on their back saying, "Go on, offend me, I know you're going to anyway, you bastard."

But if we examine the comedy material itself, trying to find out what's acceptable and what's not, the chances are we're looking in the wrong direction. It's not about the material, it's about the people. And that includes us - the people telling the jokes. If the only criteria we can find for judging what's going to offend someone, and why, is the way they feel, then the only chance we've got of understanding the process is by looking at the way we feel ourselves. If you aren't interested in understanding it, that's fine, just don't complain that the people who say you've offended them are narrow-minded. They may be, but so are you. It's one thing to say that you're using your right to free speech to make a joke that attacks hypocrisy or oppression, but if you just want to make people laugh and you're going to hurt someone in the process, then it's best to have some idea of how they feel. The you can go ahead and make an informed decision. Personally I want to be able to make comedy out of anything I please, but I think that 'challenging' comedy should challenge me along with everyone else. That's just a belief I have.

This will be investigated further in the next post, along with ideas about free speech, human rights, censorship, and some really great jokes about child abuse.

Oh, and that thing about offending a comedian who tells offensive jokes? It's easy to offend any comedian, whatever kind of material they use. Don't laugh.

http://www.underbelly.co.uk/webpages/southbank/southbank-show.php?id=61:81

my brain scan is a bestseller

2010-04-15T05:19:00.000-07:00

"Literary critics scan the brain to find out why we love to read"

The Observer 11th April 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/apr/11/brain-scans-probe-books-imagination

People have been striving to analyze literature ever since the first campfire story was deconstructed by the first critic, who hit the storyteller with a club, and was then eaten by the storyteller and his friends, setting the tone for literary debate through the ages.

Literary criticism is a wide battleground. At one extreme is the idea that the author is an omnipotent deity, controlling his story, his characters, his readers and pretty much everything else except his bank balance, which seems to remain beyond an author's control whichever theory you use. At the other extreme is the idea that the author is a kind of talented idiot who has no idea what he's doing and whose work can't possibly be interpreted out of context, which can only be supplied by highly-paid university professors. The ground in between is occupied by marauding squadrons of Marxists, social historians, feminists, deconstructionists and supercilious French semioticians who are almost certainly just having a laugh.

Now experts claim that the biology and chemistry of the brain, and lighting up the right neurones, could be just as important as any interpretation derived from gender studies, social context, or painstaking examination of the author's underwear. Some scientists believe that even our genes could affect our response to literature. But how can we understand all this in simple terms? We can't. It isn't simple. And this is where I come in, the author. I will now attempt to explain it, using that reliable literary device, the analogy.

Imagine the reader's brain as a house. The top floor is occupied by abstract thoughts which drift through a series of spacious interconnecting chambers. On the next floor down logical ideas patrol the endless corridors, forming a conga dance of narrative coherence. Below that - wait. This is a very impressive house. It's the kind of place I'd like to live in. Much better than my own brain, which is more like a garden shed full of repugnant trolls with bad hangovers. And this is the point. Isn't that exactly what every writer is trying to do? We're like housebreakers. Or, more accurately, squatters. We want move in to the reader's brain, ask our friends over, and make it our own. The more effectively we take over the place, the harder it will be for the reader to forget us after we've gone, especially if we leave the literary equivalent of burns on the carpet and red wine stains on the duvets. Or maybe if we were another kind of writer - someone like Anita Brookner or Paulo Coelho - we'd be more like those weird burglars you hear about who break in, clean the place, redecorate, put some flowers on the table and leave a note congratulating you on your taste in curtains.

All this may be one way to think about the latest research in a field that some people are calling 'Neuro-lit-crit' which suggest that different kinds of literature stimulate different neural pathways. Scientists have already discovered that the responses of someone reading Keats will differ from their response to a book by Dan Brown. For one thing, most people who read Keats would probably try to burn the Dan Brown book, which could cause problems in a lab full of expensive MRI equipment. However, the scientists suggest that the next step is that authors will be able to decide what kind of reader they want to appeal to, and will be able to check on how they're doing by running the work-in-progress past readers undergoing brain scans. Which begins to sound more like marketing than either science or literary criticism.

And when it comes to marketing, Hollywood, as usual, has got there first. Researchers there have deduced, again using brain scans, that the most 'appealing' type of film is the action movie, because it's most effective at lighting up the neural pathways associated with pleasure and gratification. But are pleasure and gratification all you want from a film? That depends. Are you a male, between the age of 15 and 26, which happens to be Hollywood's most coveted demographic? If you are, tear yourself away from that computer game/chat room/internet porn, pay attention, and tidy your room. But if you're not, you might enjoy many different types of film, depending on your mood, the quality of the film, and many other factors that grown-ups respond to. And, much as marketing engineers would like to use the latest scientific technology to map, classify and predict our tastes, they're up against the eternal problem that people are different and tastes are subjective.

I have a personal interst in all this. Several years ago I submitted a scheme called 'The Neuronarrative Project' to The Wellcome Trust 'SciArt' bursary, which was designed to encourage collaboration between artists and scientists. My proposal was based on the idea that a writer is striving to communicate his or her own experience as accurately as possible to a reader. The more successful the attempt, the greater the resonance created in the reader's mind. I suggested that this resonance could be mapped using brain scanning techniques, and an eminent neuroscientist, Dr Emil Toescu, of Birmingham university, agreed to join the project. The idea was to simultaneously scan the brains of someone reading 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' aloud, and the brain of someone listening. The greater the similarity between the scans, the more effective the artistic communication. The Wellcome Trust turned down the proposal for 'SciArt' funding because it had too much science and not enough art. This surprised me as I'd devised the whole thing as an exercise in speculative fiction in the first place. Now it seems I was simply being prescient. Clever me. If you want to know what made me that way, just come and scan my brain.

how to be a writer - part 2

2010-04-02T04:25:00.000-07:00

Does writing make you sick?
(Do not answer this question if you suffer from high blood pressure, low self-esteem, or moderate existential dread)

Some people say that writers are notorious hypochondriacs. But writers have always been genuinely prone to poor health. Think of Proust, Keats, or Emily Dickinson. And I'm not feeling too well myself. If you don't believe me, come and listen to my cough, look at my rash, feel my glands, check out my tongue and tell me what you make of this weird lump behind my knee. It's also a myth that writers tend to destroy their health by drinking too much and taking drugs. Most of us can't afford it. Have you seen the price of absinthe?

But it's true that writers need to take care of themselves. In many ways, a writer is like an athlete. Except that a writer sits around all day and doesn't get much exercise. Also, athletes tend to be better looking. But writing is essentially a sedentary occupation, unless you do it standing up. Which is how Anthony Trollope produced around seventy novels, putting in a couple of hours every morning at a lectern before going off to work in his job at the Post Office. Maybe that's what my postman is doing - writing a novel. He's certainly got something better to do in the morning than deliver my mail, which arrives around lunchtime. But if you're a writer who spends a lot of time sitting down, how can you stay fit? Try the following simple tips.

A writer can turn routine domestic activities into useful physical exercise. For example, when you're watching daytime TV (for research purposes) get up and walk to the TV to change channels instead of using the remote. And even when you're having a cup of coffee at your desk, you can exercise your muscles by lifting the full mug up and down with one hand while typing with the other. But be careful not to spill coffee on your keyboagx5>jkq%nnggg.

Okay, maybe forget about the coffee mug. Ideally, what we're looking for is a way to keep fit by harnessing and transforming creative mental energy. Unfortunately there isn't one. mental activity trains the brain, not the body. So, while your brain develops a six-pack, you're still sitting there in those sweatpants you bought from a mail-order ad in a magazine you saw in the doctor's waiting room, modeled by creepily spry elderly types who look like they'd sprint out of the house, put you in an armlock, and make a citizen's arrest just because you threw an empty wine bottle into their front garden.

Another option is to actually do your writing while going for a walk. The problem with this, I've found, is that you tend to spill your drink and bump into people. In the old days a major author could solve the problem by having an amanuensis. But for the modern writer the idea of an amanuensis raises questions like "What is it?" "Can I plug it into the USB port of my laptop?" and "Is it tax-deductible?" However, once you find out what one is, you'll see how unlikely it is that you'll ever get a good one. Boswell may have clambered around the Hebrides behind Dr Johnson, diligently noting down his every thought, but nowadays if you find that there's someone who is prepared to follow you around day and night, recording every word you say, then it's probable that the secret service has identified you as a dangerous subversive, especially if you're foreign, black, Muslim, interested in civil rights, or have at any time expressed mild reservations about the ethics of US foreign policy.

A different approach is to take pills. The chances are that you already take at least one supplement to replenish the vitamins, minerals, and things with funny names that get depleted by your active, stressful lifestyle. Maybe you take lots of different supplements. You obviously need them because you never quite feel one hundred percent these days, do you? There's always something wrong. Feels like a magnesium deficiency. Or calcium. Or something to do with ginko. But now, a report from the Association of Costly Health Product Retailers suggests that whatever you’re taking for it, it’s not nearly enough. The shock findings show that you’re almost certainly deficient in things you never even knew you were meant to have in the first place. And the report reveals that even when you are aware of a deficiency, the supplements you take to make up for it inevitably deplete other vital resources that can only be replenished by taking further supplements. But if it makes you feel better, go ahead. Just be careful with the more exotic complementary remedies. I had a problem with 'healing crystals' once. I probably just ate too many of them. However, I know people who are completely committed to using crystals, particularly crystal meth.

Not only is it difficult for a writer to stay physically fit, there's also the issue of mental health. Writers are crazy. This is partly because writing is a lonely craft full of anguish and frustration. Unless you do it with someone else, which is even worse. If you write with a partner you run the risk of them suddenly becoming independently successful with another project they're working on, in which case you may go insane and try to kill them. But let's face it, you have to be unbalanced to want to be a writer in the first place. All the best ones have something wrong with them. At the very least they're obsessive. Look at Hemingway: he was obsessed with boxing, bullfighting and shooting things. When he couldn't think of anything else to shoot, he shot himself. But obsession is part of the job description, and we may as well accept that we're nuts, forget about ever getting fit, stop beating ourselves up, make another cup of coffee and this time have some of that cheesecake you've sworn not to eat in the daytime with it. Or have a drink, or tune up with pharmaceuticals, or do whatever it takes to get the job done the way you want to do it. Stop worrying about your health. The truth is that writing itself is a sickness, and none of us really want to be cured.

Some of this article first appeared in Scriptwriter magazine, now www.twelvepoint.com

Sniff the Corpse of Bernard Manning, part 1

2010-03-26T04:30:00.000-07:00

WARNING:
Don't read this if you're easily offended.

Still here? Of course you are. Have you ever met anyone who admits to being easily offended? "I'm rather narrow-minded, actually, and I haven't got much of a sense of humor - you know the type, an uptight bigot." It's a ridiculous warning, even though you often see it. Next time you do, laugh knowingly and congratulate yourself on your liberal values and tolerance. You can't be offended, can you?

Free speech. Are you getting enough, or is there a bit too much of it around? It's a big, hot topic that generates a lot of anger, fear and confusion. In fact, it's so big that it helps to narrow the focus a bit in order to have a fruitful discussion. So let's talk about comedy.

Should comedy worry about offending people? In the words of my friend Francesca Martinez, "What's so terrible about being offended anyway?" And she should know, because she's one of Britain's funniest disabled comedians. Although that isn't really saying much, is it? It's a bit like saying "One of Britain's finest tap-dancing astronauts." See what we're doing here? We're being a teeny bit 'offensive', just for fun. That's the spirit. Anyway, Francesca will be joining me at an event I'm hosting on May 19th called "No offence, but..." at London's South Bank Centre as part of the Udderbelly comedy festival. We'll be joined by Richard Herring, Brendon Burns and some others, to have a challenging discussion. In the next few weeks I'll be posting a series of articles on this site about 'offensive comedy'. So watch this space. Okay, you can stop watching now; it's a figure of speech, and nothing is going to happen this instant. Or... is it? Better keep watching. Meanwhile, here's a thought. Everyone talks about 'respect' but what does it really mean? And can you teach respect through fear?

how to be a writer

2010-02-26T14:38:00.000-08:00

Part 1

GETTING STARTED: what you will need.

SOMEWHERE TO WRITE.

Somewhere quiet, comfortable and clean. So, obviously not your place. If you have a friend with a nice house who is away, preferably in prison for something terrible, that's ideal. Break into their home and make it your own. They'll understand, they're a criminal. Actually, having friends is a sign that you may not be a serious writer. Don't worry, you'll soon lose them. Remember the writer's creed: "There are no strangers, only friends you haven't alienated yet."

Many writers like to work at a desk near a window. But don't look out of the window in the morning, or you'll have nothing to do in the afternoon.

SOMETHING TO WRITE WITH.

E.g., pencil, paper, computer, £400 Mont Blanc fountain pen you bought with a tax rebate as an 'investment' that would 'make you a better writer'.

SOMETHING TO WRITE.

See: 'How to Have an Idea'. Also, 'How to Have the Same Idea Again and Make it Look Like Another Idea', and 'How to Have Someone Else's Idea.'

SOMEONE TO HELP.

One famous writer had a butler whose job was to leave the house before the writer woke up, taking all his trousers with him. The writer couldn't then avoid work by "just going out to buy some milk" for several hours. If you can't afford a butler, throw your trousers out of the window*. If you can't afford a window, hide your trousers and get drunk, so that in the morning you can't remember where they are. If you can't afford trousers, you're already a truly committed writer.

TIME.

Writing is a full time job, even when you're not actually writing. Much of your most valuable work is done when it looks as if you're just having a bath, going for a walk, or taking a nap. Insensitive people don't understand this, and expect you to perform household chores, look after the children, seek paid employment, etc. (See: 'The Importance of Creative Sleep'.)

MONEY.

All writers deserve to have an independent income. Many writers have incomes that are so independent that they never see them.

COFFEE.

Lots and lots of coffee.

*NB: If you haven't got the willpower to throw your own trousers out of the window, most writers find that it takes very little to provoke their spouse or partner to throw all their clothes out of the house. Remarks like, "Actually, it's been proved that creative thinking is far more exhausting work than your full time teaching job, even when I do it lying here on the couch," usually do the trick.

CROC - Recycle the Oscars!

2010-02-07T08:38:00.000-08:00

Join CROC, the Challenge to Recycle the Oscar Campaign. The plan is to limit the number of Oscars in circulation. If a previous award-winner makes a really atrocious film, they have to give their Oscar back. They do it with Michelin stars, so why not with Hollywood stars? This scheme not only endorses eco-friendly practice, it will also discourage stars, directors and writers from making terrible movies. And it's a good way to start arguments and insult people while pretending to discuss culture. Suggestions? All categories included; who should give their award back, and why?

2010-01-26T04:51:00.000-08:00

this happens
TIME TRAVEL NEWS:
The recent blasphemy Law passed in Ireland is an interesting attempt to turn the clock back to the merry days of yore, redolent with the heady aroma of heretics roasting on an open fire. The law claims to be about protecting religious beliefs but it's really about trying to shut people up. Fight back and defend free speech; you don't have to be an atheist to appreciate the following link. The quotes are anti-religious but that's the point. As one of the comments following the quotes says, if your religion is offended by freedom of speech then problem isn't with freedom of speech. And some of it is very funny:

http://blasphemy.ie/2010/01/01/atheist-ireland-publishes-25-blasphemous-quotes/

You can sign a petition, too. Pass it on:

http://www.petitiononline.com/blmy2009/petition.html

this happens - news

2010-01-16T17:50:00.000-08:00

ON THE OFFENSIVE: Writers and the duty to offend.

Last October I chaired a panel at the Screenwriters' Festival in Cheltenham. It was Called 'On the Offensive' and it was about whether comedy should be constrained by considerations of taste, decency and potential offence to other people's beliefs. On the panel with me were comedienne Francesca Martinez, Jane Berthoud (head of comedy at BBC Radio) and Secunder Kermani, a writer who's filmed some very challenging but very funny (I think) sketches and public provocations about religion. The event was very lively and really got people talking and thinking. This is a hot topic and getting hotter.

Here is part of a manifesto that I drew up before the event to spell out my own position and to kick the discussion off:

Wake up! We are sleepwalking into prison - a prison that we are building oursleves. As we give up our rights and liberties in exchange for the delusion of security, and the state fights a war on terror by terrorizing us, so we are betraying our cultural freedoms. Through our dumb fear of causing offence, our misguided attempts to honour other people's beliefs, and our grovelling willingness to police ourselves, we are locking ourselves up and handing the key to the very people from whose rage we cower; those who believe they have a right to tell us what we can and can't say and think.

The whole subject of free speech and censorship is more important today that it's been for years, as we can all see with each new instance of someone claiming to be outraged over what we as writers are producing. And it's not just writers; freedom of expression is something that affects everyone. The hot buttons of race, gender and religion have never been hotter, and religion is the big, red, boiling one. It's time for us to say what we think and where we stand.

Francesca Martinez and I did an interview on this subject: here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ngZ6YJah0&feature=player_embedded#

There will be more links, thoughts and comments about all this soon. Watch this space. (Okay, you can stop watching now; nothing's going to happen if you just sit there watching this space. I mean come back and check it out later.) Meanwhile, here are some questions to consider:

Which of the following is most morally reprehensible?

1. Someone swearing on TV before 9pm.
2. Two overexcited narcissists leaving a puerile voicemail message for an elderly actor, outraging thousands of people who never heard it.
3. Broadcasting a comedy that might offend someone's religious beliefs.
4. Agreeing not to broadcast it under pressure from people who claim they might be offended if the broadcast went ahead.
5. The salaries of certain broadcasters.

Me.

2010-01-13T16:32:00.000-08:00

"Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk." (Tom Waits).

When I was young I was talented but very innocent. One day I met the devil in a laundromat and he offered me a deal. I'd never heard about Faust and I didn't really understand how it was meant to work. Instead of selling my soul to the devil in return for supernatural gifts the devil sold me his soul and he took all my talent. As part of the deal, every time I write something he gives me a little bit back.

Here's a different version:
The day after I got thrown out of theatre school in Bristol I founded a multimedia performance company called Crystal Theatre (of the Saint). I wanted to act and the only way I could get on stage was to write something myself. We did interesting work for ten years and then some of us turned into a punk band called Shoes For Industry. We made an album called Talk Like a Whelk and John Peel used to like us, especially our songs Sheepdog Trial Inna Babylon and Invasion of the French Boyfriends.

Then I created a series of one-man shows, two of which were Perrier Award finalists at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I also created pieces that mixed live action with video, like my show Slave Clowns of the Third Reich.

I started doing less performing and more writing. On Radio and TV my credits include: Spitting Image; Smith and Jones; Rory Bremner; Jasper Carrot, and many more, including own radio sitcom with Jeremy Hardy. I also did a lot of corporate work, writing and directing nearly a hundred short films for business and industry, which taught me a lot about writing.

I wrote the screenplay for the feature animation film The Magic Roundabout and also the screenplay for a feature film based on legendary underground comic book heroes The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (working closely with Gilbert Shelton) which is in pre-production, and has been for the last four years.

Here are a couple of short films I wrote and directed. How Do You Feel, an award winning short film for Channel 4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHFIDkEEPUs&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

And a gonzo science film (with scenes of explicit socks) called What Happens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gNJMT9mmT0&feature=BF&list=ULFUvxHh8MJZM&index=2

I wrote and produced BBC Radio 4 series ‘Do Go On’ with Griff Rhys Jones and Graeme Garden (Sony Radio Silver Award for Best Comedy) and also several plays for BBC Radio 4 featuring, among others, Bill Nighy, Linda Smith, Martin Clunes, David Hemmings, and Alison Steadman.

I write articles for online magazine www.twelvepoint.com and I also do a bit of teaching as I have a prejudice against starvation. I run some writing workshops with Euroscript, which is a company dedicated to helping writers develop. Check out:
http://www.euroscript.co.uk/