Some of my closest friends are Scriptwriters...

...I just don't want them living next door to me, the old saying goes. It is one of those sickly truisms that they say 'writers write more about the process of writing than actually writing', and ever since George Orwell's 'Why I Write' we've all had a tipple of it, haven't we?

Well I have been reluctant, much as I am reluctant to most things, but it has been a growing trend amongst acquaintances to blog about their craft. They read up on their Little Miss Moffat and St. Tony of Jordan, and the occasional Matryr La Plante, and the others, too too many to mention, and they just gobble it up, delicious sustenance, all in the quest to get better at the type type, space, space, delete, delete.

I don't want to run that odious risk of sounding like some Sunday Tabloid Columnist that have regular opinion pieces, and when they are asked to write on subjects they don't care about, they trot of witticisms and cynical twat-tropes galore.... and I shan't, it just feels like it from where I am sitting, but hopefully I can mould this clay, some other way... and the cut of my jib Isssss..... well its rather simple....

To me, there seem to be two schools of thought, both valid, 1. The technical script-writer; this breed hones scripts based on a formula of what works and invest in stories that enthrall and capture the imagination on a limitless scope, providing it is commercial, viable and appeals to a mainstream audience; they can write sports-management epics even though there background is computer engineering in New Delhi. 2. The vocational scriptwriter - feels they have a self-righteous scribe, this mode is highly laughed at by the former school for fact that writers whose backgrounds are computer engineering in New Delhi will more likely focus their narratives on computers, engineering and um... New Delhi... their work builds into an oeuvre, in an almost literary fervor, with motifs, preoccupations about class or personal narratives, autobiography, they don't conform to the mainstream, they break conventions, they behave erratically...  and so it goes on...

The two schools of thought can overlap, but where was I going with this? I was pointing something out, yes, ironically for scriptwriters they cease to function as happy consumers of others work, they become critics of it, analyzers and they'll pontificate on a particular scripts merits and pit-falls, without a hint of irony, that even though they may be aware of the studio systems ability to piss all over work, directors realize scripts badly or are hacked up in the editing room or countless focus rooms and test screenings, they'll go head-first into a locked-horned battle of scripty supremacy....

For my own sake I did a Scriptwriting course on a whim, I do have writing coursing through my veins, but I learnt from the master in this field that words belong to everybody, we don't get to decide where they have been, we just try to steer them into some sort of cohesive direction.... and it's rather difficult because words never behave the way you want them to, they are the bastard ADHD children of our thought....

The problem (and delight) is that writers think they are special, and they are, they all are, when it goes wrong is that one writer may go 'well I am better than this writer' which isn't playing the game, as is my mantra anything creative isn't bad even at its worse its better than destruction and the detracting of things. The cynicism and cruelty of writers is silly but sometimes fair, the Wildean idea of criticism 'I see for others to see' can be justified if you've been in the bizz 20, 30 , 40 years... but you can tell when it is borne out of jealousy that so and so got the BBC1 Primetime series and you didn't.

Lastly, no matter what happens, there will be the inexorable passing of time, and when we are in our thirties, fourties, fifties, sixties, you will look back at your younger self, full of self-righteousness, and go pink in the cheeks and your throat will go croaky and you will see the utter contemptible O.T.T., sometimes unpleasant shit you used to come out with, 'the lording it over' tosh and you'll think, what an insufferable oaf I once was....

...Oh shit! Hello Simon in thirty years time, at least your still fit ;) x

POSTSCRIPT: (the irony) Just to say, I don't know if I agree with half the stuff I have written, so if you don't we're in the same boat, secondly I know I am not really helping in that spirit of script blogging, where scripters blog about the construction of scripts, which is really rather top-notch, and yes, oh these industry vultures that jump on internet opinioning... ugh, I shall have no part of it, here is hoping this blog entry is consigned to oblivion like the rest :D