I don’t normally write fan-fiction, as I kind of think, what’s the point in spending so much time and effort creating something if it doesn’t really belong to you, and you can’t sell it or publish it or take real ownership of any of the characters?  Of course, that’s a somewhat reductive view of creativity, as art should be for its own sake at the end of the day.  And spurred by something I read online, I was tempted to have a crack at writing an in-universe story.

The following is a very short tale set at a specific point within the timeline of the original Marvel Transformers comic.  If you’re not quite heavily “into” Transformers, it probably won’t make a lick of sense.  But I’d written it, it was kicking about, I thought, hey, why not stick up on t’Tumblr?

Enjoy. 

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Time is running out for Share a Story 2013!

The competition, which is all kinds of fantastic, closes this week.  You need to get your entries in to us (well, technically to the lovely guys n gals at First Light) by 5pm on Friday. 

I want more entries than last year so if there’s a child in your life aged 5-12, give them a polite kick up the backside and get them to send their entry off pronto.

Remember, if they win, CITV will turn their story into an animation!  They’ll be a legend in their own lunchtime.  There’s no reason not to do it.

Top Ten Non-Baby Things I’m Looking Forward to in 2013

Inspired by my previous post looking backwards, here’s where I look to the horizon…  Again, leaving Emilia out of this otherwise she’d just dominate everything (crawling!  Walking!  Playing on the Xbox!).

1. My top-secret writing project…
2. The conclusion to Grant Morrison’s Batman epic
3. My two planned CITV projects
4. The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary shenanigans
5. Share a Story 2013
6. Multiversity by Grant Morrison
7. Lincoln
8. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
9. Season three of Game of Thrones
10. The new Xbox console

A few words on beginnings.

I’ve recently started writing a new script (in collaboration, too, which is a whole other “new”), and as such I’ve been thinking about starting.

I have to plan things out before I start writing; I can’t just blank-page it, otherwise I waffle for ages and ages and just go round in circles.  But even with a scene breakdown and full synopsis, and character bios and histories, and ideas for sequels and all sorts going round my head, and an entire fictional universe for this New Story, writing the first scene is always arduous.

Firstly, there’s the characters; they haven’t lived yet, I haven’t played about with them, so I don’t know what they sound like.  Even if I think I know all there is to know about them, it usually turns out that they all speak in a certain way, and it takes a while to find out how.  Then there’s the rhythm of the scene, the flow: how this opening plays into the rest of the story.  Is it too fast, too slow?  Does it go anywhere?  Does it set up things that don’t pay off, or should it highlight future plot points?  And does it end up feeling just wrong, against the tone and pace of the rest of the script; once it’s all finished and the regular rhythm is established, does the top just not quite fit?

Generally speaking, I always hate my first scenes.  It’s always the thing I re-write the most.  When I go back after having finished, it always makes me cringe to read the beginning again.  And openings are so important: you have to grab people instantly; you have to set up the world and the people that inhabit it, you have to make everyone and everything interesting and make the audience want to stick around for the rest of the running time.

I think the main reason, though, why I don’t like first scenes, is that it’s a stark reminder that there’s a thing here that I wrote, and I’m expecting people to like it.  Out of nothing, there’s all of a sudden the start of a story.  Once I get into it, I tend to like what I’ve written (otherwise, what would be the point?), but that cold opening?  Those words that I imagine ring heavy with a variety of truths, my attempts at humour and empathy and three-dimensional characterisation?  I just think everyone will see through it and realise it’s clunky and rubbish and derivative and not funny at all.

Endings, on the other hand?  Endings I love to write.

I’ll be stepping out from behind the keyboard next week, and slipping behind the camera once more, as I get ready to shoot the launch promos for the Share a Story premiere (I don’t think that’s a trade secret, but if you’re from CBBC, maybe stop reading a sentence ago).

I love directing, I love working with the crew, and I love working with actors.  I especially love working with kids, as it’s doubly great when you see a child absolutely nail a performance or a line - you think, yes, this kid’s got it, this kid could go far.  There’s a sort of parental pride involved in coaching a great performance from a child actor, at least from my point of view, and it just cheers you up for the rest of the week.

They say “never work with kids or animals” - I’ve done both, several times - but to be honest the worst thing about kids is the restrictive hours they’re allowed to work!  They tend to be incredibly enthusiastic, really excited to be there, and eager to learn.  It’s a lark for them, one they’re enjoying, and it’s sort of contagious.  You don’t get bored and don’t get tired.  Or maybe I’ve just been lucky with the kids we’ve used in the past.

So, it’s gonna be a real thrill to put on the old director’s hat on Wednesday and boss people around like I’m a Yorkshire James Cameron.  Really looking forward to it.

Top Ten Endings, as Represented by a Line of Dialogue

1. “Just like that, he’s gone” (The Usual Suspects, 1995)
2. “Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.’  I agree with the second part” (Seven, 1995)
3. “No atonement for God, or novelists” (Atonement, Ian McEwan, 2001)
4. “I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich” (When Harry Met Sally, 1989)
5. “Your mother and I were very concerned” (Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, 1991)
6. “Got a taste for the theatrical, like you” (Batman Begins, 2005)
7. “Shut up and deal” (The Apartment, 1960)
8. “This is how he sees, all the time, every day” (All-Star Superman, Grant Morrison, 2008)
9. “Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father” (The Empire Strikes Back, 1980)
10. “This was a triumph” (Portal, 2007)

A couple of points… the ending of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is just bubbling under.  I tried very hard to get it in, but it’s only just number eleven.

Also, the ending of The Dark Knight Rises almost made it, too, but the bit I really like is the very, very end, and that’s not got any dialogue associated with it.

And I know the ending of Batman Begins is basically the ending of Batman: Year One, but the dialogue in Begins is better.

Unused concept art for an upcoming CITV interstitial I’m working on.  I doubt it’ll see the light of day in this exact form, but I’m still being cagey about what I want to show at this moment!

If this comes off as I want it to, it’ll be amazing, and the best thing I’ve ever done for CITV (with the possible exception of Share a Story, natch).

Today, I have been adapting.  Adapting isn’t something I do a lot, although to be fair I’d say my biggest “success” as a writer has come from adapting King Lear, so what do I know?  Anyway, today I’ve been adapting the eight winning Share a Story entries into scripts for animation.

This can only ever be the first step in a process which will involve the winning kids as much as possible.  The stories are presented as a six-panel storyboard plus one written page of text, and as such require some fine-tuning to get them from page to screen.  I imagined, before I started work, that I’d be adding dialogue and changing sentence structure left right and centre, if only to stretch the kids’ work to fill sixty seconds of air-time; in fact, my biggest problem was fitting everything in!  Man, these kids can write.

I wanted to keep the voice of the authors as much as humanly possible, and this meant maintaining their original text as voiceover, in classic SAS tradition.  Also, as this is animation, I’ve tried to leave a lot of room for our animators to inject humour and action in between the lines.  And, of course, I’ve left room for the children themselves to have input: they’ll be coming into the CITV office very soon, and recording the voiceovers themselves, so we’ll get them to tweak the script and change it around until their happy with it.  All I’m doing is helping them realise their own stories as working pieces of television; I’m not the writer this time, just the guide.

Anyway, it’s all just one more little step on the road to some terrific Share a Story films!

So, Share a Story 2012 is finished, and the winners have been selected.  It’s been quite the adventure.

We received over 5,000 entries, which is five times more than last year, and therefore I judge the promotional campaign something of a success.  Certainly one of the biggest things we did was the assembly at Brookburn school in Chorlton, as that yielded many entries and even produced one winner.  I’d like to do more of that sort of thing in the future (let’s plan the 2013 Share a Story Roadshow!).

I was lucky enough to be involved in one of the early shortlisting panels, where we whittled down one of the age groups to a shortlist of twenty (from over a thousand!).  But the final, difficult decisions belonged to others, and I know from peeking over their shoulders with a Z1, that these decisions were, indeed, difficult.

So, what’s next?  Well, before too long the winners will be gracing CITV with their collective presence, and once again I’ll be documenting the whole shebang.  It’s been a terrific Share a Story year so far, and long may it continue.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to travel to Bristol and attend the final night of Dragons at the Bierkeller Theatre.  It was a rather strange experience, to go for a night out at the theatre to watch a play I’d written myself.  I handed in my final draft of Dragons around Christmastime, and I’ve been very busy since then, what with Share a Story and the upcoming baby, so I haven’t thought much about the text itself.  Therefore, although I obviously knew how it was going to end, I almost felt like a regular punter, enjoying it for the first time.

And enjoy it I did. Kirsty Hemming, director and old college buddy, did a fine job of keeping me in the loop, but still so much – from the casting to the staging to the costumes – came as a surprise.  I was delighted.  The cast were excellent, and wrung some genuinely large emotions from my humble words.  It really did feel powerful.  I don’t really have much experience with watching my own work (other than 30-second promos for Horrid Henry), so to see some genuine drama emerge from my own writing was a great thrill.

However, naturally, I nit-picked.  The first act goes on a bit, and there are a couple of scenes that just drag – chief among them being Vigilante being brought before Dragon for the first time.  And there’s too much waffly exposition at the beginning, too.  And maybe the second of Mr Wrath’s long speeches could have been cut, or turned into dialogue instead of a rant.

I discovered that actually watching a performance of your script is really the best way to see what works and what doesn’t.  I guess this is the benefit of film; you write the long, rambling, over-the-top version, and use the edit to cut it down to size.  Of course, I’d actually like to write another version, with more scenes and a whole “Knight-in-disguise-becomes-a-vigilante” subplot, but that’s a performance for another day.

So, here’s to Stratford, assuming the baby gives me the day off!