It's all sorted now. New ISP, fully connected with a new Mac to boot.
My Xmas Casualty came and went - the Narcolepsy storyline plus the incident with the golf club and the missing teeth. For the first time ever, I wasn't at home watching when the episode was broadcast, I'd got a prior engagement - it being the Christmas season. I left my family dutifully poised in front of the TV to watch the drama unfold, whilst I went out dancing. It was a bittersweet experience, not unlike standing up a good friend.
At 8.05pm I felt incredibly twitchy and narked at all the people I was with - why weren't they at home watching my Casualty? I got a raft of texts from family and friends 50 minutes later, 'Well done' etc. The episode had been watched, been and gone - I could finally relax.

I have just submitted some Guest Pitches for my next Holby. These story ideas will have to 'signed off' in the next couple of days by the Series Producer, assuming they are original enough to be rubber stamped. The stories/characters I'm pitching may be too similar to other recent storylines, not 'medical enough' or simply not right for the show. This is a frustrating time because although my head says "wait" the writer in me has already moved these characters in, lock stock and barrel. I tried to avoid thinking about 'lad with Narcolepsy' before the story pitch was signed off for Casualty, but dammit I already knew his name and what he'd eat for breakfast most days - I was fleshing him out.
Narcolepsy boy was allowed to live, but the petty thief with one leg I'd dreamt up for one Holby episode had to put into the deep freeze - maybe I'll be able thaw him out for some other story.

As a writer on Continuing Drama, the ability to get the regular characters' voices right is often touted as the Holy Grail. Your own characters will naturally live and breathe your words, but the knack of knowing Elliot, Connie or Donna and understanding how each would react in any given situation is fundamental. This of course has to do with familiarity and knowing the shows. Fortunately I am a sponge. I am a 'good listener'. I am the quiet observer.
Thinking about how best to encourage this familiarity fell into place when I read about 'Thin Slicing' in Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink" a year or so ago (you'll have to read it, far too much to go into for this little blog).
As an Academy graduate I was awed by the amount of backstory I imagined I would have to get under my belt in order to write for these shows. But as Gladwell expounds - a little bit of knowledge goes a long way. As does observation and trusting your instincts.

So I am instinctively writing the treatment for my next Holby episode. I have my 'mood board' of images for the story on the wall - it is broadcast in August, a nice summer story. I have my writing music of choice for this ep on the turntable - "Meet you at the Moon" by Imelda May. And I have my character cards lined up on the windowsill behind of my laptop.
Onward...

A couple of weeks ago in Holby, Daisha gave birth in a lift with Joseph assisting. There was going to be a third person in that lift adding to the mix, a guest character with his own story, but he was axed by draft 2. Joseph and Daisha were to fly solo so that their intimacy could be better explored and the 'confessional' better exploited. It was I believe, the second 'birth in a lift' that Holby City Hospital has had (Casualty, unknown birth mother, Adam hyperventilating and Alice assisting). You'd think they'd place emergency birthing packs in there, or at least change the maintenance contractors by now.

The most natural thing when writing these birth scenes was to dip into my own birthing experiences - I've had two, both very different. (I'm sure it's harder for male writers, but then I've never had/performed open heart surgery but have written about it with confidence). The births of both my daughters were very straight forward in bog standard hospitals, but the timing of the various stages, the weird sensations, loss of control - I pulled on all that to add authority Daisha's experience in the lift. Mind you, I do not recall yowling in slow motion at the final push underscored by music, although I did have Bob Marley playing throughout both my births.

My Casualty birth mother was Maggie's daughter Joanne, caught short in a pub with a pissed Toby assisting. Again the baby hovered on the brink of life until Dixie gently rubbed some life into its tiny bones. Casualty is less underscored with musical interludes, but I did have a guest character put on the jukebox 'Sugar Baby Love' by the Rubettes as Joanne struggled with her labour. I can't remember whether this actually played in the episode, but it was in the script. I do have a tendency toward bathos in my music suggestions, which for some reason is often overlooked by directors - especially when it comes to the old Holby Montage.

Whilst Daisha was going through the rigors of birth with an OCD sufferer to hand, Michael Spence was dealing with dear old Gloria Rowlands who had mistaken him for her long dead GI husband. This episode was broadcast on 11th of Nov - Armistice Day and this was my nod to the hundred of stories that will have been remembered that week.
My final montage for this episode was in fact trimmed down (see previous post). I had wanted a final image of Gloria catching a glimpse of herself reflected in a window - the handsome 40's beauty she once was. Or, my editor was warming to my theme - "She could see Michael in his WW2 uniform in a brief trick of the light moment, just as she leaves the hospital.." Lovely! I added a small soft shoe shuffle for Michael in the stage directions as my montage music of choice was 'Come Dance With Me' by Sinatra - the lyrics reflecting the struggles of all the other stories of the day.
Wasn't to be.

I'm holding out for a Frank Ifield track on this current Holby I'm writing.

The script is coming along apace - I'm at executive draft stage and am (as ever) awaiting notes. This has been a very challenging episode scheduling - wise, with requests to bend the space-time continuum in various forms, not least going to 'night' earlier in the script than planned because although the episode airs in the spring, it's shot in January and light for filming will be different, or absent. I haven't fully understood this - my editor has had to explain it all several times and ... I'm still not sure I have grasped the concept.

So back to my innovative Holby episode that fell onto the doormat in DVD form recently. It has a title at last. I've posted before about how difficult it can be to watch my own episodes, it does get easier the more TV hours you clock up. I managed to get through this first viewing of 'We Said Some Things' without squirming too much or without having the script on my knee thumbing through the dialogue to see what they'd cut.

Holby City can be montage Heaven or montage Hell depending on whether you happen to love or loathe the device. Personally I prefer to montage at the beginning middle or end of an episode rather than montage twice or indeed in all three - there you can be heading for montage overkill.
Montages do have to be written, I don't just write 'Montage with music' after the scene heading and hope for the best. It is a compressed chunk of storytelling and needs to be planned and structured like the rest of the script. I always hope to marry certain lyrics with particular on-screen action, choice of music is very important. I did manage to get a Monkees track into my montage for one episode.
I'd really enjoyed constructing the final montage for this last Holby - it encapsulated my themes, it had some dancing, wonderful music, a period costume change.. (I kid you not).

My montage was cut.

True - my producer had phoned and warned me that once they'd come to filming they didn't think they could do my montage justice - given the budget and scheduling constraints. I had to make do with a trimmed down version and different music was used given that my overarching montage theme had been excised.
I was disappointed I have to admit, but the rest of the episode was really quite good - Hey ho, maybe it was just as well the ep wasn't upstaged by all singing all dancing montage madness.

Another problem with montages is that they eat up scenes. I'm writing a Holby at the moment that is quite pacy - lots of scene cuts, 4 story strands, lots going on - a nice meaty episode. I'd notched up quite a few scenes already by the time I'd finished. Then I found a wonderful place in the storytelling where I knew the only way to get the most out of the story was to tell it in pictures with music - I penned a montage sequence that promptly added another 6 or 7 scenes to my already bursting scene count. Granted each scene is probably only a sentence or two long .. but it may take some negotiating with scheduling.

Best montage? The end of Donnie Darko to 'Mad World'. Has to be.

I had to reach for a helpline of the highest authority after watching the Casualty series openers a couple of weeks ago with my 10 year old. We sat down for an adrenalin filled Saturday evening ep penned by Mark Catley - I'm a huge fan of Mark's writing, it's clever, quirky and never fails to move me. They appeared to have thrown the entire Casualty budget at these first two episodes - heavy location and tons of gore. Tons of it.
Gore we can cope with, people impaled on spikes? No problem.
What affected my little one most was Zoe's patient - the tiny tot with cancer who died at the end of the ep, and Dixie behind the wheel sending the nasty girl into orbit.. a real shocker that.

My youngest believes all these things will happen to her at some time, possibly within the next few days. Infantile hypochondria? Or possibly simply getting to grips with the real world where bad things happen. Even before the end of the episode her big sister was commenting dryly 'Don't worry it won't happen to you..'
I was in Elstree the next week for a commissioning meeting and was able to collar John Yorke in the lift. I mentioned how fab Cashzz is at the moment and my daughter's subsequent sense of impending doom. 'You can tell her from me she's not going to get impaled on a spike or ploughed into by an ambulance..'
I relayed the reassuring words from the "Controller of BBC Drama Production" to my daughter over tea that night. She looked relieved.

My own Casualty episode (produced on a shoestring as it's not a series opener) is in the can! Not without its own drama - I was penning amendments to scenes that were to be shot the next day. There's a writer living on the edge for you. One storyline needed constant tweaking, once tweaked everyone was happy.

My episode was being filmed with a Baffle and this caused a few problems here and there. 'What is a Baffle?' I asked my editor, baffled.
A Baffle is a huge soundproofed wall that splits the Casualty set in half. One team films in one half whist another team can simultaneously film in the other half. The Baffle cuts the ED 'Staff Room' in half. I had quite a few scenes in the staff room. Damn.
They had to be played elsewhere. Also having been asked to write 70% of the episode on location outside of the ED for scheduling purposes - half way through, this decision was reversed and I had to rewrite some scenes back into the ED.
With a Baffle. And half a Staff Room.

So you see - the journey of a Continuing Drama episode can be less about the nuances of the story road travelled, and more about who's where and the studying of architectural ground plans.
The walls of my writing space are now more or less covered in ground plans for the hospital sets of Casualty and Holby - you'd think I was orchestrating some sort of NHS bank raid..

Presently awaiting notes - the Treatment for my next Holby ep is currently under scrutiny over in Elstree. So should be enough time to finish the raspberry knitted circular bolero, especially with this cold weather setting in..

You wait and wait by the phone, putting off going out, putting off mixing a bucket of wallpaper paste just in case. And nothing happens. Just when I thought the coast was clear I get to wipe 10 minutes off my overlong script. Couldn't the BBC simply schedule a one off 60 minute casualty episode instead?

We did it though, my editor had some suggestions for cuts which helped. Nothing too painful, excess dialogue and scenes that although worked well, could feasibly go and not hinder the telling of the tale. I noted all this down then dashed for the Caribbean lunch and jazz with my patient friend.
Cycled to school to pick up my daughter at 3pm, threw her in front of the telly with a snack, threw the (previously prepared that morning) Jamie Oliver number into the oven, fired up the Mac and got to work. Cut, snip and trim and by 4.30pm I was hitting the send button. Done.

I sauntered back indoors to dish up dinner when the phone rang .. my editor hadn't received my script, could I re-send it? There then followed 90 minutes of my nipping out to my writing space to resend the darn thing to various different email address around the BBC building - and still my script refused to land in anyone's in tray.
I fed the family, supervised homework, put on some glad rags and was ready to go out for 'Academy Drinks' when I sent the script one last time for luck.
By 6pm the BBC email system had finished its strop and my poor editor had my episode on his screen.

I was talking with other Academy Writers last night at our yearly get together, we were pondering on the ability to Multi-task - is it predominantly a female skill? Discuss.

It was great to meet up with old faces - not all 3 years worth of Academy Writers could make it to the get together of course, there have been babies, weddings, successful TV pitches, continuation of Continuing Drama commissions, heartbreak, knock backs, new horizons.
I think the new Academy lot start next week - it'll be a fantastic time for them.
I couldn't have coped with the intense 3 month 'classroom work' at Elstree without the support of my man back at the homestead whose Multi-tasking skills are equal to mine.
'Another Goodfellas day,' he'd tell me wearily as I'd come home from Elstree.

Ah, what fond memories we have of those scenes with Ray Liotta a nervous wreck co-ordinating his complicated Mafia career, dope sellers, sleazy customers, useless babysitters all whilst cooking a meal for his family..

I was determined not to have to take my iBook away with me, I wanted a clear window of holiday time so I started the negotiations a few months back. Once the commissioning process for Casualty was underway I had to email and memo in triplicate that there would be one week at the end of August when I would be away, non contactable, unavailable for script amends.
After most note sessions and phone calls, I'd remind the team about the week I would be away. I almost adopted ... Remember end of August - holiday time! as my email signature.
They don't mind writers going away, having time off unshackled from the garret, but they do like to know in advance. It's understandable - all those deadlines, all that scheduling beautifully engineered to a nanosecond, god forbid I cock it up by disappearing just as my production draft needs amending.
Which is exactly the time I did disappear.

Spontaneously going away is rare and I find I cannot commit to anything. It drives friends to distraction. I appear to come over all wishy washy - 'I may be free next week, there's a possibility I may have some time at the weekend, all depends how things are going..'
At the Academy we were reminded to hit our script deadlines on time, a missed deadline can throw a huge spanner in the works and producers don't like writers who cannot get stuff in on time. Fair point.
But deadlines move like shifting sands - editors go away on holidays, substitute editors are drafted in, draft 4's languish on someone's desk for a week or there were too many notes to compile and the promised phone meeting moves from Tuesday morning to Tuesday afternoon, to Weds morning with an email promising contact by Thursday teatime honest.
These days I have stopped sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring, I do tend to go out now, do stuff and pick up calls later. It takes a long time to erase the feeling that you are somehow skiving.

My editor and I did manage to synchronise everything so that I could fly out to Ireland and not have to think about the script. It was brilliant.
My only dip into the sea of Continuing Drama was to watch two episodes of Fair City - RTE's answer to Eastenders (not to be confused with River City, which is a Scottish soap I believe, or indeed Holby City .. )

Now I am home and facing my production draft notes - quite a chunk of them too. Hopefully by production draft you'd want to be tweaking as opposed to re-writing, but this episode is proving tricky. 'Shifting serial' this time as opposed to shifting deadlines. And my guest stories are proving a little complex - overwritten. I have a sign on the wall that says 'Keep It Simple' (one sign of many, my writing space resembling some sort of Writer's 12 Step haven).

So with juggling and dovetailing all happening this week - I am commissioning for Holby on Thursday - my iBook is once more plugged in and purring sweetly and I am ensconced, looking out at the rain.

No word on the title yet (see previous post).

Of course some friends and family have asked glibly, 'Why don't they get the makers of the trailers to produce the episodes? We'd watch it then...'
When I tell people I write for continuing drama, I can usually predict how the rest of the conversation will go. Devotees of the programmes are delighted and usually know more about the shows than I do. Cynics inevitably throw up ER, Greys, often The Sopranos but always The Wire. Everybody it seems, loves the Wire. I wind up these conversations asserting that yes, I too enjoy American dramas, but we have to work to with what we've got - an 8pm watershed, and a British way of doing things. Vive la difference.

Sure we'd all like to write like David Simon, but as a writer friend pointed out the other week, our scripts are nit combed for expletives and dark humour and god forbid we take our central characters/heroes to such dark places that we risk losing audience empathy... And yet don't we all love the psychotic Tony Soprano, serial killing Dexter, House? Maybe we should give Charlie a crack habit and have him wreak revenge on NHS timewasters in an overt yet beautifully filmed bloodfest ... and we would love him more.

Personally I'm counting the days til the next instalment of Mad Men. It's a question of taste after all - and whilst I was happily transported to the streets of Baltimore with the homeys exploring urban life and the sociological battle that ensued vis a vis the effect of institutions on the individual - you can't beat the sheer joy that is the frocks on Mad Men.
Maybe it's a girl thang. During the Writers Academy training days we watched and deconstructed a fair number of TV shows. Academy Boss asked for my opinion on Life On Mars at one point and I think my reply was, 'It's a bit blokey.'
Well in my defence, it is - nowt wrong in that.

One thing I did love about the Wire, was watching the show and waiting for the 'title' of that particular episode to be spoken by one of the characters. It was always a very satisfying moment.
I've hit a real blind spot, it's not writers block as such, I'm not battling with huge story problems or re-drafts, but I am in creative pain. I can't find a title for my latest Holby City.
The episode is in the can, filmed over the past few weeks and soon they'll be wanting a title. I've posted before on this blog how episode titles usually make themselves known to me by the time I've written the treatment.
I've offered a few - but my editor has come back with, 'Might have to dig a bit deeper on the title,' and 'I've run it past the Producer and we might need another push on the title..'

I guess the problem is - finding a suitable title that encompasses all the themes in the episode ie: all 3 storylines. In my frustration I even took my daughter's advice and found a 'title generating' website - her mates use them for band names. It came up with suggestions like "Atomic Elliot and The Explicit Tree" and "Purely Holby and the Junk" (honest).
So now I am going to take a leaf out of The Wire, read through my Holby script and find the essential spoken line that sums up the episode ... and use that.

I was at the Casualty Story conference this week - and if viewing statistics are anything to go by, Joe and Joanne public are still watching, still very much in love with Charlie, Maggie et al.
Story Conferences are held several times a year in order to help the story department plan out the lives of the regular characters over the season. I could go along and pitch an idea about Big Mac marrying Tess say, suggest a few untimely deaths - that sort of thing, it's all bandied about and discussed in small focus groups over a couple of days.
A true imaginative melt down you may think - all those creatives in one room over two days. Actually I find it exhausting, but I could put that down to too much coffee (on tap) and no air (corporate board room in a hotel like a multi-storey car park).
I wonder if the Conference makers have put much thought into what environment best facilitates creativity? Does it matter? I think it probably does.

I once attended a Science and the Arts Conference at the state of the art Science Learning Centre - pretty apt and pretty fabulous, lots of toys to play with - multi media stuff etc. And there was an emphasis on exploration and play (see 'Let's Pretend', previous post).
Maybe medical drama Story Conferences should be held in hospitals? In deserted hospitals? But then we'd all be writing like Stephen King and us pampered writers would be up in arms at the lack of Spa facilities and corporate nibbles every half hour.

In 2000 I was lucky enough to be invited onto a Performing Arts Lab residency for 10 Days 'Writing for the Younger Audience'. It was held on a relatively isolated Organic Farm in Kent. We had a chef who served up the most fantastic organic food, but we still had to set the tables and fill the dishwasher ourselves...
When we weren't writing we could wander over the fields and mud to bring back things for the nature table, lounge about on sagging antique sofas that had seen better days, play a tune on the aging grand piano ... make our own coffee.
We had at our disposal a drama studio, a handful of actors and directors, IT technicians and a writing mentor. Again, we were invited to play. It felt, dare I say, very organic. I got a lot of ideas very fast.

Part of me also knows I can write anywhere and I'm not at all precious about writing (have kids and try and be precious about writing times and venues). I always have a pen and paper to hand to jot down ideas and can just about edit scripts with Tracy Beaker playing full pelt in the background - and funnily enough I've just written a food fight into this episode of Casualty.

Working on Continuing Drama shows - the one luxury we don't have is time. Time first to attune, time then to play about - with ideas. The one drawback (or not, depending on how you feel about it) about my Organic Farm experience, was only being able to get a mobile phone signal in the top field whilst standing on one leg with your phone held in the air.
The field would simply be awash with Blackberrys wouldn't it...

My Holby episode is filming over the next month. Transmitted in September, I gave it a bleak autumnal feel at the end - characters battling home against the wind and rain etc. Only we couldn't have rain (too expensive) and as I write this, the sun is cracking the flags and bringing my petunias into second bloom. Who'd be a scheduler/director eh? Having to contend with small things like continuity and the British climate. I hope they're all having a good time - I hope my script isn't causing them too much angst or pain. I may go down and watch some filming next week - it's an interesting episode, I'm intrigued as to how some bits are going to be filmed!

Did you ever play Let's Pretend as a kid? My guess is, if you're reading this blog then you probably did. If you're a writer, actor, director then Let's Pretend was probably in the genes. My kids played Let's Pretend ad nauseum when they were younger (not so much now alas, unless it's a form of Let's Pretend they'd rather I didn't know about..).
We would have to pretend a situation - trapped fairies in a witches castle, roles would be assigned arduously (non-negotiable), costumes imagined or actually accrued, and a loose plot line pencilled in so that we knew where we were going.
Let's Pretend could last all day - I would invariably, as the witch/queen/mother of poor orphans, have to prepare tea/run baths in character. It was exhausting.
Not unlike writing.
I do not sit and write in costume mind you.
Switching off is incredibly hard. I have stood at the school gates in odd socks with a glazed look over my face recently, trying desperately to get a Casualty story to come together in my head. I have spent whole evenings supposedly with my family when in my head I have secretly been with Charlie and Toby in the ED.
I used to tuck my kids in bed all tuckered out still in their fairy costumes with blissful smiles, I take myself to bed now, worrying over Dixie and Jeff..

It's the start of the 6 week school summer holiday. I have to juggle writing with child care, it's the most creative I get all year. Thankfully my local council runs free summer courses all through the holidays - my two girls have opted for 'drama' and 'fashion and photography' so I won't have employ a nanny. This is one of the joys of being a writer who writes from home - flexibility. My day can start as early as the crack of dawn or finish at the crack of dawn - whatever works.

I have a wonderful bolt of fabric on the washing line and a new 50's inspired dress pattern - yes I'm waiting for notes again - and will probably have the dress cut out by the time my editor phones me from Bristol.
I could spend the time watching more Holby DVDs as these are now coming thick and fast through the letter box each week. It's a way for regular writers to keep up with the show - a glut of Holby eps back to back can really help move a script on - I get to see the characters walking and talking, can hear the cadence in their voices. It's important.
However it is also important to make a new summer dress whilst the sun is actually shining. I have found an ally in the Casualty story department who knows a thing or two about interesting fabrics and the cut of a good frock - something I hope to discuss with her at the next Casualty story conference on Monday. Along with ideas for the show of course.

I'm waiting on 2nd draft notes for my Casualty episode. Sometimes the leap from draft 1 to draft 2 can be one of the biggest. We completely excised one character from my last Holby script by draft 2. In draft 1 he was thoroughly involved, had a lovely story arc - by draft 2 he was gone. He was holding the action up.
Ruthless eh.

I have to get defensive around this issue, it's delicate - I would love to say I have three or four pieces of work in development, that I'm nurturing several ideas of my own. But time does not always allow for this. I do have a melting pot of ideas on the proverbial back burner and I'm currently very excited at the prospect of developing a theatre piece with the company who produced Peter & The Wolf last year. But sometimes I don't feel like letting people off the hook that easily when they're pressing that 'Continuing Drama is too prescriptive ergo not writing of value and integrity' button.
If anything, it's the production values and scheduling that cause these shows I write for to sometimes feel repetitive and implausible - too many stories and too many episodes. You can't tell me that fewer shows a year wouldn't boost quality and engender a 'desire' in the writers and the watching audience as opposed to an 'immunity' to story. Series breaks work that way. How can you know the joy of being sated if you're never allowed to feel hungry?

I really enjoyed writing my last Holby, which is in the process of being signed off. My editor was very thorough from the word go. I had several stabs at my story pitches and tweaked, trimmed and refined the Treatment until I felt this guy, my editor, was verging slightly on the obsessive. Same with my drafts, "We're getting there.." would be his opening gambit, until draft 4 he finally said something like, "I think this is on the verge of almost being there.."
It was like teetering on a huge precipice throughout, when would I 'be there?' when would it be safe to relax? Where was it I was going anyway? What my editor was aiming for was a smooth ride and we got it, relatively speaking - that's not to say the workload wasn't tough, but with all our preparation work behind us, by the time the exec producer got his hands on the script, it was quite tight. And barring a huge casting/scheduling cock up it shouldn't have needed too much tinkering with.

The exec notes were entirely manageable. I relaxed a little. The Director now had his mitts on the script - again his notes were manageable. Now I had to think of a title - I suggested a couple. "I'll run them past the producer" my editor mused. Not that catchy then?

I spent yesterday in Bristol discussing the first draft of my current Casualty. I can get quite nostalgic about Casualty - especially climbing the stairs to the offices in the portacabin hell that is the Bristol Casualty Warehouse. They have old Radio Times covers on display on the walls there. Mostly Charlie posing with some nurse or other - usually Duffy, under the title 'Charlie's Angels' and the like.
Casualty was a Saturday night staple in our house when I was younger. One particular Christmas episode moved my angsty teenage heart and has stayed with me.. (if you are the writer of the following retro Casualty episode, thank you and please do get in touch!)...

It was Christmas on the ward and all was very busy - during the episode an anonymous medic appeared (white coated in those days I believe) and moved from bay to bay surreptitiously 'curing' people in a very unassuming way. The medic left the ED at the end of the episode as enigmatically as he had entered, nobody knew who he was. Oh the true spirit of Christmas and all that... give me a bit of the old magical realism any time.

My current Casualty, although not the Christmas episode, is a Christmassy episode and I've officially been given the go ahead to go tinsel mad if I so desire.
And I do desire it.
Also, someone will have to appear in a hand knitted Christmas jumper at some point, I need to get more crafting into my episodes.

And that lingering déjà vu I had? This time last year Dawn was sitting eagerly opposite Rob, hoping for an engagement ring - Marriage was in the air. There was a creepy guy on the square who got off with Carly and attacked her.
Mind you if I go back 12 months over my own life, nothing much has changed - I'm still knitting the same bolero, writing the same shows.

Casualty finally got back to me. There had been some almighty delay because my producer and editor were concerned about the serial stories I had. The episode I'm writing is what's known as a 'standalone'. I'd always assumed that meant an episode could 'stand alone' in the scheduling and not be tied to serial either side of it, watched as a one off almost. But it appears it has more to do with what they can film where.
A majority of my story must be played outside the Emergency Department, and thus filmed on location. I am assuming the Hospital sets are being used for another shoot.

All very technical. Really I just need to concentrate on where I can take my guest stories and how best to have all these medics interact when they're not at work. Hmm.
So with this in mind I had a meeting over the phone about my guest pitches and serial threads. We thrashed a few things about, my editor and I, then I finally got sent to Treatment stage.

When you're writing an episode of Casualty you get assigned a real live medic. Someone whose job it is to save lives in the real world. The idea being, you phone the medic up and enquire about the medical plausibility and logistics of the terrible accidents and consequences that are going to befall your hapless characters.
Phoning these guys is an incredibly hard thing to do. My hand hovers over the dial. What if they're busy? What if they've just been called into resus, lost the battle to save a child's life - and here I am calling about a made up individual who may or may not befall some comedy blood spurting scenario.
'Hi there - just wondering, just how high would that blood spurt and could Dixie ram her fist into the wound to stop it?'
What if my medic has done 48hr shift and has just managed to fall asleep in the on call room?
I'll send an email.

It doesn't work quite the same for Holby episodes. Holby gives me an assigned researcher whose job it is to phone said tired and harassed medics. The researchers are incredibly good at this in my experience, they're diplomatic, full of dogged perseverance and courage. I'm confident these researchers would drag the cardiothoracic surgeon from the operating table in order for me to get my drafts in on time.

What joy then when my Casualty medic called me back pronto - eager to discuss my stories. We happily discussed how ill to make my A story patient, how I could increase the severity of his injuries and have my Paramedics do lovely stuff at the scene.
It's all in a days work for real Medical people, they aren't in the least bit squeamish .. and they've seen most things.
Casualty give new writers a compilation DVD of their regular Medical Experts discussing on camera their best day/worst day etc. Believe me - you need a strong stomach to listen to these tales. That DVD should be rated 18 and put on a high shelf.

I sent off my Casualty Treatment just as my Holby draft 3 notes came in. Phew.
Now - onto draft 4.

It was four months ago that I sat in a room with the other writers of this fortnight's episodes and a clutch of editors and researchers. We had digested our story documents and were there to 'pitch' how we envisioned our particular Eastenders episode to be, iron out any serial problems and ask any burning questions we had.
As I was 'week one Friday' I wasn't first to speak and so scanned my notes over and over to calm my nerves. Suddenly it was me. Some writers, being such pros and stalwarts had raced through their questions at breakneck speed and had assured everyone they had it all in hand.
Now it was Friday's turn.

My first EE episode had been a joy - this time last year Daren and Libby were in the throes of condom heaven/hell, Dot was giving up smoking, Dawn was in love, Carly was in danger.
I had a weird sense of deja vu. 12 months down the line and the episodes seemed to be following strangely familiar paths. I won't elucidate - I'll let this week's stories play out then maybe come back to you on that.
Needless to say, fundamentally not a lot can change in the life of a soap character - or if they do change, they have to forget the lessons they've learned and get themselves back to square one in order to make the same mistakes all over again. And god forbid anyone learn from anyone else's mistakes.
I had some reservations about my second trip into Albert Square - could I do this? Would I have chosen this to happen? Was it fair? How would I write it? But I am in the hands of the storyliners, and EE is a tight ship with some 200 or so episodes to produce, not much space for manoeuvring.

Like any artiste worth their salt, I rose to the challenge. The biggest challenge making R 'n' R look like a swinging hep joint and not like your front room with a couple of neighbours dropping in for Karaoke under a 100w light bulb...
See what you think this Friday. I am credited (again) as Abi Brown in the Radio Times, I am seriously thinking of adding that 'r' to my surname and have done with it...
And please pay attention to the last line of the ep, I sweated over it.

Holby draft 3 is coming on apace. Those of you familiar with this blog will know I tend to overwrite and then have to spend hours chopping bits out. Draft 2 notes came back with a plea for another 10 pages. Wow!
I have written another 20 so far ... guess what I'm doing tomorrow before my deadline on Wednesday.

Casualty have been very quiet. Very quiet. They've had my guest stories for ages... and I've been reluctant to call in case I'm suddenly inundated with notes having to produce 3 more guests and gory accidents out of a hat.

An old familiar face is turning up on Casualty in a few months - a character with a lot of Holby airtime. As a result, I've been inundated with DVDs from Bristol so I can get a feel for the guy - you know, see him in previous episodes. Hear the 'voice'.
Last week was half term, whilst my lot were out doing museums and Pizza Hut, I was hunkering down in my Shipping Container watching old episodes of Holby and Casualty. Hours of them.
Needless to say, I ate a lot of popcorn and got a lot of knitting done.

I've been doing a fair bit of writing in the garden, the weather having been nice recently. My workspace (worthy of a colour supplement spread as I've said) is in the garden and I can look out over the lawn to my blooming peony next to the plastic pink flamingos. I've taken to lying on the grass with my laptop, I have to weary of bugs mind you. This has made the whole writing process very pleasant. But then I often find writing the 1st draft good fun, ignorant of just how many pages of notes it is going to generate - it all still feels fresh and exciting.
Ask me how I feel at the end of draft 7 - when the prospect of rewriting the same scene for the 7th time makes you want to gaffer tape the laptop shut and go shopping for the day.

I went to hear John Yorke give a talk about 'Life After Continuing Drama' at the Writers Guild a few weeks ago. It was illuminating, especially the notion that there is no conspiracy amongst the BBC to ignore good writers. Good writers are in demand. This must be so - look how many episodes of each CD show are broadcast each year, hundreds of them. Not to mention the Spooks and Waking The Deads of this world.

I reckon it's useful to have a good agent, an agent with their ear to the ground - I'm out of the loop when it comes to who's commissioning what for whom, I'm too busy writing. My agent lets me know when he's putting my name 'out there', phones me to ask if I'm still happy doing what I'm what I'm doing, we chat about the previous nights' Eastenders. We rarely meet up to face to face, it's not unlike Charlie's Angels, his is the disembodied voice on the end of the phone, lining up my next mission.
I know he likes the way I write, he 'gets it' and that's really important. Of course some writers are happy without an agent, they get jobs word of mouth and are rarely out of work. Whatever works I say.

I have a good support system, if I'm flagging I'll email other writers for support. If I'm stuck for ideas there are a few 'ol buddy books I tend to dip into, this usually kick starts my writing again.
If you're writing for Holby and Casualty then there are two texts that are a must :
"Blood Sweat And Tea" (Real life adventures in an inner city ambulance) by Tom Reynolds and "In Stitches" (The highs and lows of life as an A & E doctor) by Dr Nick Edwards. Both books are laugh out loud funny, both may make you think twice about visiting an A & E department - for various reasons.
For CD writing generally, you can't get much better than Ed McBain who penned the 87th Precinct cop series. He is the master of the hook and the cliff along with subversion of expectation - great fun to read. "Non Fiction" by Chuck Palahniuk is another book that has me crying on tube journeys (funny, as opposed to tragic) and always gets me writing again.

I am in the daunting position of writing two shows almost at the same time.
I didn't plan it this way - scheduling is the monster that skulks in the in - box, then hits you with an email throwing you into hysteria. My next Casualty episode was intended to dove tail neatly into the final stages of this current Holby, but date changes have made this less likely. The hardest bit is not the amount of writing ahead, but making sure I don't have Connie walking into the ED putting arms in slings or Kelsey on Darwin tackling coronary embolisms.

Casualty are musing over my Guest Story pitches as I write - I wait with bated breath. A lot of work goes into producing these Guest Story documents. It's not merely a case of standing before the exec producer saying "Imagine Titanic meets Only Fools and Horses - there's this guy..." I would feel gutted if I had to shelve characters I'd nurtured into a medical crisis.

Tuesday 27th May at 8pm I have a Holby on BBC1. Great casting I might add, my 'A' story yoof has done me proud. It's nice when a plan comes together.

My new editor is very thorough, I've been tweaking my guest story pitch for a few days now - this is the document pre-treatment where the editorial team make sure all the storylining and serial beats are being worked to their fullest. Hopefully any loop holes are stitched up and everybody understands what is needed from this particular ep. In a biblical sense this is how a script is created - one document begets another document, which begets another etc. Think microcosms and macrocosms, think fractals. If you are averse to 5 part structure or merely the idea of structure per se, then look away now...

My pitch is an outline for my episode loosely broken down into a 5 act structure, possibly 2 pages long.
My treatment is the pitch expanded, each Act broken down into outlines for individual scenes, 15 or so pages.
The script is the treatment expanded with each scene broken down into individual chunks of dialogue, 120 pages.
Each scene ideally has its own internal structure that mirrors the story as a 'whole'. IE: something happens, people react to it, crisis, climax, resolution. Beautiful isn't it?
Unnatural you say? A stifling imposed format that strangles all creativity/spontaneity? Structure may sound like that when it's deconstructed - but you'll find fractals in nature, nature loves order.

So, with my shirt ironed (what do you wear to a BBC party?) I emailed off my Treatment. I foolishly checked my emails before I left the house - my editor was wondering if it was worth me tweaking the Treatment slightly before he distributed it? Clutching my 'laminate see through fancy party invitation' - er no, I didn't think so.

It's been a bit of a social whirl lately. Last week I went to the Holby storylining conference for two days in a nice hotel in Watford (!). It's hard for us shy retiring writers to come blinking into the light and be expected to talk to people, let alone come up with story ideas in a large group format. Things eventually warm up though and story ideas, opinions, gripes, insults and fawning compliments soon flow, along with the coffee and Danishes. Not quite a bear pit, I've not actually witnessed any furniture being thrown or writers storming out but it must happen.

I'm going to the Casualty storylining equivalent next week and had to email them my lunch choice. A fellow writer and I agreed at the party last night that I'd made a bad choice. I'd opted for the veg pasta with pesto - she conjured up a vision of an over baked ramekin welded with pasta and cheese. She may well be right. I'll report back.

To add to the already jam packed social window in my writing life, I attended the opening of 'Peter and the Wolf' at Hackney Empire. This is a gorgeous family dance/music piece narrated by Brian Blessed.
I have written the new First Act for the piece - the original story is only about 25 mins long (yes we all remember sitting crossed legged in school listening to the duck getting swallowed and feeling sad). The company have expanded the piece into a full length show courtesy of a wonderful new score by Philip Feeney and my words. So you see - I'm also interested in writing other things, a question that is constantly asked of me.

I was at a party last night, did I tell you? It was great to hear what fellow Academy writers are getting up to now - plenty are still writing 'their own stuff' some for telly, some for theatre and radio. Some writers have moved onto other shows, some are contracted to Continuing Drama series still. Last years crop of Academy writers are currently writing on shows - I met two at the Holby conference.

One of the nicest things about getting out about recently is meeting other writers, putting faces to long established names I've seen on script credits. Academy writers are in the mix and sometimes coy of the 'Academy' label - it can be awkward being at the forefront of a new initiative. But Writers Academy won't be seen as so novel soon - it'll be just another 'way in' for people who want to write, like pitching stuff to Writersroom, like sending anything in on spec. And guess what - Academy '08 is looking for writers now.
Go for it.

It is my rest day and a new batch of raspberry pink knitting yarn has just arrived in the post - if you'll excuse me.

It has been exhausting. My first commission after graduating from the Academy all those months ago was an Eastenders, I have rather fond memories of the process. Rose tinted memories? I went back and looked over all my old notes, totted up the number of drafts it took me - the work load is probably equal to what I’ve just done. The time to do it in must have been condensed surely? Annoyingly I have been getting notes back Friday afternoons and the temptation to work weekends with the notes still fresh, is too huge. As a freelance worker almost all my working life, the weekend as a two day break, is a concept that must be fitted in wherever possible - often mid week.

At this point in blogging - the phone rang. It was my editor. “Hiiiii …” with that sing song hate to do this to you, type of greeting… “About Scene 20a.”

Scene 20a has been following me around for a day or so now. It first pitched up just before I was about to take my niece to Victoria Coach Station after a chocolate filled Easter visit. As she packed her bag I wrote Scene 20a - a little bridging scene that my editor and I agreed was needed to keep my narrative balls up in the air. If you drop a narrative ball, the story stops dead and is forgotten about.

At the coach station, with noisy tannoy for company I was on my mobile discussing the scene I’d sent an hour earlier, waving my niece off I agreed to a few amendments. After chucking some oven chips on to cook back at the ranch, I amended the scene - sent it off again.

“We’re almost there...” my editor told me just now - one more push on Scene 20a. I’ll leave the birthing analogies for you to imagine.
I have just sat in bed, Barbara Cartland like, laptop on my knee re-writing little Scene 20a. It is only a page long and that is a difficult task, especially as I tend to overwrite everything. But with Scene 20a now fully fledged and nestling nicely between Scene 20 and 21, perhaps I can get this script signed off.

I have a Holby Commissioning meeting next week and need to move my head out of Albert Square. I’ll also be working with a new (new to me) script editor, and look forward to forging a new working relationship.
We’ll be shy with other to begin with - how do we sign off our emails? ‘Best wishes’? ‘Look forward to hearing from you’? ‘Dahhrling, mmwwahh xx’?
I wonder what his pink fuzzy/blue prickly ratio is? My last Holby editor was very supportive and had that canny skill of making me feel I was only the writer he was concerned about at any given time.

I’ve been flying solo writing Continuing Drama shows for a year now - having flown the Academy nest. Each script has been a completely different experience and I’m still enjoying the process. The workload has been about right - with space to breathe (I got a repro 1940’s swing dress pattern for Easter.. if I don’t craft I die) and I’ve enough guaranteed work to know I won’t starve next Christmas.

Life is good.