Plot Plant
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Just before I left to attack the Alpine ice with my ribcage I suggested that on my return there would be a few things I wanted to talk about concerning the future of this blog. I will get to that in the next few days, I promise.
In the meantime, and as a precusrsor to what is to come, I want to continue where I left off - in October! - regarding my brief and disastrous spell writing for "The Bill".
My prospective script editor asked me to send her a story I had written. At the time this posed a problem. My drawers were full of story beginnings and some endings. Unfortunately, the endings were for stories other than those that had beginnings. There were even novel beginnings and a couple of pages of screenplay. Basically, in keeping with my Belbin-assigned personality description (from team-building exercises in Reuters) I was very much a 'Plant' and not much of a 'Completer Finisher'. (NB. My wife has similar but less pleasant terms to describe me, by the way.)
What to do? Well, I grabbed the story with the most pages - which, by my reckoning, meant it was closest to the end - and read it. Then I finished it. Quickly. For the first time in my life I had an external reason to complete something. I didn't need to fanny about looking for drive and internal motivation: someone OUT THERE wanted me to send them something. So I did.
The point of the story, as far as Rachel (my script editor) was concerned, was simply to have something finished to show to anyone foolish enough to ask for proof of my credentials. As far as I know, nobody at Thames Television read the story. I'm not sure Rachel even read it. Suffice to say, I was in and when I arrived back in the UK from Singapore in 1996 I was invited to the studios to discuss writing for 'The Bill'.
In the spirit of keeping posts short, I shall stop there. The next part will follow soon, though.
In the meantime, and as a precusrsor to what is to come, I want to continue where I left off - in October! - regarding my brief and disastrous spell writing for "The Bill".
My prospective script editor asked me to send her a story I had written. At the time this posed a problem. My drawers were full of story beginnings and some endings. Unfortunately, the endings were for stories other than those that had beginnings. There were even novel beginnings and a couple of pages of screenplay. Basically, in keeping with my Belbin-assigned personality description (from team-building exercises in Reuters) I was very much a 'Plant' and not much of a 'Completer Finisher'. (NB. My wife has similar but less pleasant terms to describe me, by the way.)
What to do? Well, I grabbed the story with the most pages - which, by my reckoning, meant it was closest to the end - and read it. Then I finished it. Quickly. For the first time in my life I had an external reason to complete something. I didn't need to fanny about looking for drive and internal motivation: someone OUT THERE wanted me to send them something. So I did.
The point of the story, as far as Rachel (my script editor) was concerned, was simply to have something finished to show to anyone foolish enough to ask for proof of my credentials. As far as I know, nobody at Thames Television read the story. I'm not sure Rachel even read it. Suffice to say, I was in and when I arrived back in the UK from Singapore in 1996 I was invited to the studios to discuss writing for 'The Bill'.
In the spirit of keeping posts short, I shall stop there. The next part will follow soon, though.
