In particular, for those keen to write for the show, it might be most useful to imagine what you'd have done if all you had to go on were the central revelation between the two main characters. Sorry if that sounds vague, but after watching the ep it should hopefully be clear which revelation/characters I mean. So if that's the only bit of story info you knew you had to impart, how might you go about building an episode around it?

I've written a few half-hour Doctors now and find that with practice something rather cool happens where the ideas that you have for the show seem to want to fit that slot snugly. Characters' goals are achievable in that time with roughly the right amount of aggro to keep them interesting. But this idea was different, which is why I pitched it as a two-parter. The pitch seemed to go down well. I was excited about writing it. And then I got to the end of my scene-by-scene and...

... well, it wasn't the end. Length-wise, it was only about two-thirds of the way through episode two. Sure, I could keep it going to the required 30 scenes, but the actual story, the stuff of drama, was only around 23 scenes long. My wily producer and script editor were not distracted by my smokescreen scenes: "Do it again, please. With more story!"

Fair cop. Looking back at my first draft, it was clear that despite my best efforts, there was too much writing and not enough story. A scene-by-scene is all about events management. You have to have sufficient story beats for a packed episode, and the right ones in the right places, or else it's all just words on a page and no one needs to read more of them.

Luckily, the script editor gave me some pointers that sent me back to the story with a pickaxe to mine it for more of the good stuff. In no particular order, here's some of what I found...

Supporting characters - in the first draft, these fellas were there to serve the protagonist. Why not? It is his story. But looking again that bit closer and giving them much more of a life of their own conversely turned out to enrich the protagonist's story more. By deepening their motivation, they started to cause more problems for him, forcing him to work harder - and longer - to reach his goal.

Lies - I always foolishly forget this and it's one of the best, and the truest, things a character can do in terms of causing complications that push the story forward. In my first draft, information just came too easy. No wonder it was all resolved so swiftly if, when push came to shove, everyone told the truth. In fact, why was there a problem in the first place, if they were all so nice and honest? As soon as I got real and they got lying, the story came alive again.

Conflict not consensus - following on from the above, it's perhaps another obvious one, but can often get forgotten when you're caught up in the moment. It's so tempting to start tying things up, having people agree, especially people we like, like our doctors. But really any consensus should immediately tell us that things are about to get even worse than we dreaded.

Small change - if we're having people lie, cause problems for each other, and struggle to find consensus, then, when the conclusion finally arrives, it needn't be massive. My first draft wrapped everything up so we could switch off and not worry, all was well. But who buys that really? Lots of life-changing things do happen in the day or two that make up a Doctors story, but to me it's always stronger when there's a sense those changes will go on for the rest of the character's life, only just beginning today. Better, I reckon, to put less emphasis on the destination and more on the journey.

Speaking of change, the other thing that helped was changing locations, situations, or the mix of characters in any scene that seemed to be nodding off. If things got too cosy and friendly, I switched them up, kept them on the move, made someone do something. I might sit on my bum all day writing, but most people do stuff, all the time. It causes all manner of problems and is much more exciting story-wise.

Is all this blindingly obvious? I hope so. That means you're writing blindingly good scripts packed with well-managed events and you're happily not getting asked to redraft. But if not, and if you have any further insights into how to do it again, but better, do let me know. My second scene-by-scene has now thankfully passed muster, but who knows how the first draft scripts will go down?

I was reminded of that recently when I had to write my first serial-only episode of Doctors. Normal episodes have two elements: serial and story of the day (SOTD). The SOTD is your own idea, previously submitted and signed off. It tells the tale of a patient or other guest character and their involvement with one of the regular characters. It takes up the majority of the episode.

The rest of the episode is taken up by the serial element, given to you by the storyliner. This usually has two strands of a paragraph each, covering a handful of beats that will continue the ongoing story of our regulars' lives from the previous ep to your cliffhanger. When planning your ep, you weave the serial and the SOTD together so they complement and contrast with each other. Just when you reach a high point in your SOTD, it is a godsend to be able to cut away to the serial, and vice versa.

But with a serial-only episode, there's nowhere else to go. A vast empty flatplan with no ads at all. And I didn't even have two strands of serial, only one - a few lines in which a long-running story came to a head. It was wonderful stuff. Two great characters coming face-to-face with something deeply hidden. But how they faced it, and what to do for the other 25 or so minutes when they weren't facing it. That was my problem. Not to mention that many of the most memorable episodes of Doctors have been serial-only - Vivien telling Jimmi about her rape, George confessing to Ronnie about Nick - the bar was set alarmingly high.

To begin with, I tried to plan the ep as usual, coming up with a series of story beats that could feasibly culminate in the required confrontation, but even with a textbook structure and all the technical narrative boxes seemingly ticked, it just wasn't taking flight. I needed a different way in, so I looked back at the serial. What did I have, apart from one big moment? Oh yeah. Duh. Two great characters.

I put down my pen and spent some time just hanging out with them, wandering the streets imagining their lives in more depth than you ever get chance to when there's a patient to deal with. What were they really like? What were their fantasies, their fears, their trivial thoughts when they went to the fridge? It was quite blissful actually, indulging in some pretend friends for a couple of days. By the end, I really felt I knew them better and knew what I wanted to do with them. I took up my pen and this time things happened.

As it evolved, the story took in another couple from the Mill, another story, but not to cut away to - to pile the pressure on my main couple, making it impossible for them to run away from each other, and as hard as possible for them to confront the truth. Everything became about them, like on a birthday or wedding day when for once it's all about you and the guests are there to support you. Or cause you major headaches. When I finished, I had what was essentially a four-hander, and a good deal of cutting to do to fit it all into half-an-hour.

When it finally came together, I remembered how it was on the paper when press day rolled around. Even in the quietest news weeks, stories always emerged. People called in, wrote letters, things kicked off. At the last minute, we were never scratching around. Wherever there are people, there is news. Wherever there are characters, there is drama. You just have to take the time and listen to them.

So to fill you in briefly on my writing background - I wrote plays as a kid, but had this odd preoccupation with having to get a job, so I became a journalist. I wrote fiction on the side and got on a short course at the Old Vic Theatre that made me realise that most of my fiction was actually drama. Happily relieved of writing pages of description, I wrote a play instead and shoved it through the letterbox of Soho Theatre on the deadline of the Verity Bargate Award competition. It ended up sharing the prize with two other plays and my life changed overnight.

It didn't really. My play did win, but nothing much changed. It still took me three years to get my first full production. In the meantime I wrote like mad, mostly for free, and took every opportunity going - readings, short play festivals, competitions, bombarding the Writersroom, lit. departments, and the rest. Gradually I found people who 'got' me - an agent, directors, other writers in the same boat - and eventually I got my production. And then everything changed.

Did it heck. It was great experience, but it was still back to the blank page, writing the next thing, knocking on doors again. Around this time, the first BBC Writers' Academy was announced. I wasn't going to go for it, after my rejection from Doctors, but I think it was something as fickle as hearing that another writer I knew had applied that set me thinking. I changed my mind, and I somehow managed to get in. That did change things a bit (so if you haven't applied already, do give it a go!).

Crucially, it gave me another chance on Doctors. Over the course of the Academy, I wrote two 'dummy' episodes to get into the swing of things and then a third that got made: my first broadcast episode - starring Ray Quinn! Everything changed... for Ray. X-Factor. Grease in the West End. Dancing on Ice. All thanks to my launchpad episode*. Meanwhile, I went back to my blank page, kept writing, knocking on doors.

Since finishing the Academy, I've written 16 more episodes of Doctors, as well as writing plays for theatre and radio and various other stuff still in the pipeline/drawer. At the moment, I'm working on a serial-only episode of Doctors, but when that's done I'll be back to putting stuff out there and waiting for the phone to ring. Everything and nothing changes. Like Mr Stack says, there are no guarantees, which is how it should be really. It's how life is, and story. From that opening scene when we meet our protagonist, the other question we all want to know the answer to is: "what happens next?"

PS: Is anyone else reading David Mamet's new book 'Theatre'? Very inspiring, I reckon, in the sense of being shaken till your bones rattle whilst someone yells at you to 'TELL THE TRUTH!'.

* This may not be 100% true.

So how did that episode [edit: this one for those who missed it] come about? Warning: this is long! Get yourself a cuppa

The idea - JW_Doctors_CATCHING.pdf
I often choose Michelle as my regular, because I find her fun to write and it can be easier to get her involved in people's predicaments as she's unafraid to stick her nose in. I can recommend starting with your regular and thinking about what story you want to write for them. They are the ones we watch the show for.

I read somewhere that one of the best places to find ideas was to think about things that scare you. After I had my son, I was forever having terrors about him being alone in the house, helpless, so this was one of the sources of the idea.

The medical aspect came from my son having conjunctivitis (very handy, these kids!). I put the two elements together and started working something up. It often helps to put more than one idea together. Sometimes an idea you're struggling with turns out to just be one moment in a bigger story, so don't be afraid to cross-fertilise.

Initially, going straight for the obvious, it was about a mum, but that felt clichéd - do we really need to guilt-trip working mums again? So I switched to a dad. It instantly felt fresher. Changing a character to someone more unexpected can transform your idea, a tip I nicked from 'Alien', in which Ripley was originally a boring bloke.

The ep was also going to be darker, with the dad having lied about his dead wife and suffering a full-on breakdown when he faces up to the fact that she left him. As it developed, that felt like a leap too far, and it also got a bit lighter because of...

The serial - Doctors_serial_ep1.pdf
I was excited to bag this episode because it had two good hooks that worked together well, and resonated nicely with my guest story. Sometimes you have to work harder to get the different elements to meld and to build a cliffhanger, but this episode already wanted to be written.

The serial dictated some changes though. It was very much about couples, love stories. This made me focus more on Luke/Saskia as the heart of the guest story, rather than the parent/child aspect that had inspired it.

It might seem like a lot of the work is done for you in the serial document, but there's also a good deal of room to take the beats and make them your own. For instance, I had to show Ruth's edginess, but how, if she couldn't tell anyone? I took the Easter egg hunt element and ran with it, filling her pockets with chicks and eggs.

Likewise, the planetarium was a given, but what occurred was largely down to me. It went through a few incarnations and we ended up chucking out the 'tender confessions' because it felt better unsaid. This was just one of the changes that came in whilst I was...

Writing the episode
The episode went through a scene-by-scene treatment (around 6pp long) and four drafts before getting locked off for production. The big changes happened early.

The main note I had to grapple with was getting the Luke/Saskia relationship right. In the original idea, it was quite vague about how close they were, but my producer quite rightly made me pin down what had happened in the past so that we knew what was at stake. It's a big thing on Doctors to know why the change has to happen to your character TODAY. The job interview and Aggie's conjunctivitis were driving the change TODAY, but if where Luke had to end up was in a relationship with Saskia, that had to be set up more clearly as a goal, even if Luke was blind to it to begin with.

Other changes were more practical. The treatment included Saskia's house and Luke's interview, but my location count was getting out of control so I had to cut it down. That's okay. Working within boundaries can help you to be more creative.

Another reason for the changes to the Simon/Will conversations was because Will's character was still evolving. It's tricky to nail the voice of a new character. Smithy was easier because he'd been in the show before. However we did change the hook, as it seemed OTT to have him looming like that. In fact, it felt more menacing for him to be gentle. That's one of changes I was pleased with in....

The final product
Remember, we're only interested in the storytelling now - if I criticise something, it's my work I'm slagging, no one else's execution of it (for the record, I think they did me proud). So, what do we reckon?

My first impression is that generally the serial worked better than the guest story. There was so much to set up in those first scenes - the interview, financial straits, frisson with Saskia - and I could probably have done a better job. Perhaps there was a more elegant way to relate it or perhaps there should just have been less to relate.

I think the guest story caught light after that. The big moments seemed to work - Luke leaving Aggie alone, Michelle realising that, Luke cracking up. I also like that Michelle didn't help Luke initially. That felt like a nice change.

I think I slightly laboured Saskia lying for Luke, and then rushed the resolution. The relationship angle got a bit lost. I wonder if deep down the parent/child story was still too central for the relationship side to really flower in the time and space we had. I haven't checked yet, but I think some of the story was cut and it does strike me now that the guest element may have been a touch too big for an episode with such strong serial.

I felt the serial turned out well, the planetarium scenes especially. I'm really glad we left the actors to tell the story with their looks and the handholding. I also liked Smithy and Ruth, the switch from romance to it all falling apart, and the ominous burnt cake in the oven. I don't know if I was 100% successful in conveying Ruth's growing unease during the day. There may have been more cuts, but I might just have been too subtle. How might you have conveyed I?

Perhaps perversely, I really loved the Zara and Charlie moments, which only had a secondary function, to support the stories and provide a little light relief. But then I do think it's easier for me to relax and enjoy the bits where there's less storytelling at stake. And more mucky jokes.

Over to you
Having banged on at inordinate length, I just want to add one final thing - this is a 'How It Was', not a 'How To' guide. In no way am I putting this up as a model episode to emulate. You have to do your own thing, it's the only way to get your voice heard. That's why it'll be interesting to hear how you'd have done it differently.

Given this serial, what other ways would you have found to play it out? If this was your guest story, what changes might you bring to make it your own? You don't have to answer right now, or ever really. Just go scoff chocolate eggs and have a think about it, maybe have a scribble. And have a very happy Easter!

[edit: in response to the request, here is the script CATCHING_script.pdf]

If this blog is meant to be about writing for Doctors and hopefully helping us all to get better at it, then how about we watch the episode and have a gas about it afterwards? I could do another post after the broadcast (within 24 hours), saying how it came about, what I intended and what changed, and then we can talk about whether it worked or not, what you might have done differently and so forth. Does that sound useful?

Sounds a bit scary to me, but, on the other hand, it will be nice to get feedback from someone other than my mum.

The episode is called 'Catching' and it's on this Thursday in the usual Doctors slot. Catch up with you afterwards...

My trial was way back in the days when Mac ruled over the Riverside and Best Practices. The main doctor in my episode was to be Jude Carlyle. All I can recall of Jude is that she was Scottish and possibly rode a motorbike. There's one clue as to why my script didn't get made right there - I didn't know my lead character.

In my defence, I hadn't much time to prepare. Like most aspiring writers, I had a day job and spent the rest of my waking hours scribbling. If I'd stopped to watch all the TV shows I might like to write for, I would never have got anything written. And this was in the pre-series-link era, where daytime shows would have needed taping specially. Every day. Suffice it to say, I had not watched much Doctors.

But then a script for a TV pilot that I had sent to the BBC Writersroom put me in the running for Doctors. They sent me a pack with maps of the surgeries, character biogs and guidelines for how not to mess up my episode. I pored over them all avidly, watched a few episodes, and set to work on what I thought was a dynamite idea about a medical condition that surely hadn't been done on the show before.

There's another big clue as to why it didn't get made. I started in the wrong place, with the medical condition. Obviously Doctors is about people with medical conditions. It is well-researched and you can learn a lot about various unpleasant lurgies that afflict its patients, but those patients have to be people, not petrie dishes. If they start life as a vessel for an illness rather than a story, it will show.

But I didn't know that. So I wrote what I thought was a pretty good script about an old woman with an obscure eye condition that meant she could see things that weren't there. This was cunningly interwoven with a serial strand about Jude going on a blind date. Spot the resonance? If I'd wanted to be subtler, I could perhaps have had Jude wearing a big hat with 'RESONANT' written all over it.

One of the things this old woman hallucinated was a cat. Now, if the script was amazing in all other ways, the producers just might have made their lives hell by adding a performing cat into the mix of hectic shooting schedules and strict budgets. But as my script was already fundamentally flawed, the presence of a cat in the cast list probably did not help its chances.

I got a gutting letter. Thanks, but no thanks. Characters too thin. All the best. Bye bye now.

Back to the day job. No need to tape Doctors any more. Purposely avoid it in fact. The fools!

Except, when my sulk wore off, I started to watch it. Properly. Perversely spurred on by my rejection, I had finally taken the plunge of working part-time, and, with the pressure to watch Doctors gone, I actually began to enjoy following the stories and getting to know the characters. So when the first BBC Writers' Academy was announced, even though those skeletal characters still haunted me, I felt that now I was ready to have another crack.

Years later, Mac and Jude are gone, and here I am, working on a new episode and blogging about writing for Doctors as if I know what the dickens I'm talking about. I don't really, I'm still learning - the current script is my first serial-only episode, more of which in a future post. But for now, that's enough. That's one good thing about first times, they tend to be over quickly.