Script Reading

Hello budding writers,

I'm offering feedback on scripts for you! Just you! Only you! (Please tell all your friends.)

Here is a little bit about me:

I'm a scriptwriting student, I've just finished my second year, having received a First Class Honours for the year. I'll be spending the summer working with Lucy V Hay at Bang2Write (http://www.bang2write.com/), after having proven myself on the GAUNTLET OF DEATH (... sending her some of my work). I came in the last 25 of nearly 2000 writers for this year's Red Planet Prize, and I placed first in a writing competition with the Bournemouth Uni Writers' Soc. in 2010. Oh, and there are endorsements at the bottom!

Here are my rates:

Television (30 - 60 pages) £30
Feature (90 Pages) - £50

You can pay me by BACS, CHAPS, or cheque, but I'd suggest BACS because it's the cheapest and fastest for everyone involved. I don't do Paypal because Paypal will take some of my money which I need to feed my children/kittens/baby pandas (delete as appropriate to produce the most sympathetic image).

For these prices, I will provide at least 4 pages (of A4!) of detailed, honest and insightful feedback.

So yes, if you'd like something reading, or have any further questions, please send me an email: samuel.g.caine@gmail.com, and I'll get back to you ASAP.

Oh, and I can also send you examples of previous reports (which I have done!) and examples of scripts (which I have also done!) if you feel the need to measure my skill first.

Thanks,

Sam

Endorsements

Mark Leigh, Writer - 'As a published author (45 books) I have recently turned my ambitions towards screenplays and submitted Kakia Vice, a cop comedy to Sam for a critique.  His report was extremely constructive in pointing out what worked and what could be improved upon in the areas of plot structure, character development, dialogue, comedy and tone. The notes I received were clear and concise, and contained practical suggestions and I will be taking them on board for my next rewrite.' http://www.mark-leigh.com 

@markleigh99 on Twitter

Elliot Moore, Writer/Director - ' Sam’s feedback is attentive and constructive, and it is clear to see that he 

takes a great deal of time to ingest the finer details of your work in order to give more fulfilling feedback. The breakdown of his critiquing was very informative as well, going into great detail on pacing, characterisation and tone, which was extremely beneficial. As a director myself, it was also nice to see that Sam put as much thought into the criticism of the visual side of the script, as he did with the narrative structure, helping to ensure that the script didn’t just end up as a fine script, but a fine film as well.' 

@elliotseymour on Twitter

BU Station, Episode VI: Return of the Freedom

Ahoy.

So, by this post, my sixth (and thankfully!) final post, you're almost certainly sick to death of me. Apologies.

My plan for this blog post is to talk about another script I've edited, and then do a brief reflection on BU Station as a whole.

The script that I had to edit was about a male student, Eric, trying to hide his spontaneous erections from a girl whenever she's present. (Her name is Tina.)

Obviously the writer was taking the brief very seriously. In fairness, a lot of the scripts for hidden have involved some sexual perversion - ranging from fruit fetishists to scat lovers - so erections seem quite mild in comparison. From the brief, however, it needs to be made clear that although BU station was allowed to feature nudity, it wasn't allowed to feature sexual content. Whereas the scat script and the fruit fetishist were both written with a degree of subtlety, I'd argue this particular script - dubbed 'Elephant in the Room' - was not.

Oh, the great irony, when we can get away with broadcasting shows about people who are sexually aroused by faecal matter through a series of elaborate 'chocolate log' metaphors, but the bulging of an erection through someone's trousers, followed by the aggressive sexual nature with which the script ends (heavily implied sex with contraception, etc.) might be 'too much'.

For the sake of dodging the bullet of censorship, I advised the writer to tone down the explicitness of the sex scenes, just because, y'know, it would suck to write a script and then have to chuck it in the bin because it didn't adhere to Bu Stations censorship rules.

My other major criticism of the script was the way it was formatted. I know great screen writers can get away with it (ala Charlie Kaufman), but it's actually incredibly hard to read overlapping dialogue, and I would advise any scriptwriter who wasn't already successful to steer clear of it.

Here is an excerpt as an example:
(I'm struggling to sort out blogspot's formatting, so you'll have to click it, unfortunately. Sorry for the inconvenience.)

Although overlapping dialogue can work quite well on the screen to create a sense of 'realism' (as it does happen in real life ALL THE TIME) I'd argue that it was more of a directorial decision than that of the writer. Especially because, from a reader's perspective, it is impossible to get it to actually 'work' on the page. Whilst when we watch a film, we can hear two people speaking at the same time, it is impossible to read two lines of dialogue at the same time, and thus difficult to get a sense of what is going on. Like it or not, a reader will have to read those lines individually, and therefore apply a sense of chronology to the dialogue that wasn't dictated by the writer, which is why, in my opinion, it's a bit rubbish.

'Awkward' dialogue scenes are probably best shown by lots of interrupted sentences - so I would advise that approach instead.

Carrying on with the theme of formatting, the script suffered from a case of the old 'chunky scene directions'. I feel slightly hypocritical complaining to other writers about this, because I do it all the time. I fall victim to my own wonderful prose, and just can't stop myself.

In the editorial stage, however, sorting this out is important. I would say that three lines of scene description bunched together is about the max you can go for. Any more and your scene directions start to resemble a mini-essay, and deter the reader from... well, reading.

Breaking things up.

Gives pace.

To your work.

Even if it is.

A little bit pretentious.

Essentially, they were my 'key points' of feedback, so I'll now move on to talking about BU Station as a whole.

If you thought the post up until this point was uncharacteristically non-sweary, that's because I was saving myself for this segment. You bloody bastards, you.

Overall, from what I've seen of BU Station so far, (and that's obviously without having done the intensive week), I can see why we would be asked to do it. However, as the objective of this unit is to study 'professionalism', I don't really thing it meets the mark. Perhaps this is because I have actively sought to avoid doing work I don't really know anything about, and therefore have avoided the 'days' on bustation altogether, but the three courses feel very fragmented to me, at least.

If a study in professionalism is really about going off, doing our own thing (alone if we chose to), then I think we should be judged on the quality of our work, rather than the quality of our blogs. I think it's deeply unfair that we're being graded on blogs, which pander to the more literary members of the courses, which may not necessarily be synonymous with 'the best'. If I'm getting a script of mine directed, then I want the best director, not the best blogger, and so I don't really see how it ties in to professionalism.

Although there were quite a lot of gripes with the collab project last year, I feel like BuStation would be much more effective if it was run in a similar way. Being put into groups with people that we don't like, or don't pull their weight, isn't really (in my opinion) a valid complaint. There are lots of shit people in most career paths, and we'll probably all have to deal with people we don't like at some point. If we want to study professionalism, then I think there should be more cross-course collaboration. Not just for an intensive week.

BU Station, Episode V: The Tedium Strikes Back

'Lo,

I intend to keep this more brief than my usual entries. The reason they have been so wordy in the past is because I thought words = better marks in the peer assessment, especially if those words were interesting. Sadly, after the last blog entry, I felt that interesting is no longer really on the agenda. So, let me present you with some cold hard facts about script editing.

FACT: There is no such thing as a fact in script editing. Only opinions. And opinions are like arseholes. Everyone has hundreds.

So I was asked to edit and feedback on a fellow writers script. That I did. That I did. Overall, it was a pretty decent effort, so let me quickly bemoan one of the woes of script editor: a good script.

Sometimes, when you're editing work, it's a lot more satisfying if it was completely crap in the first place. Obviously I enjoy reading great scripts a lot more than I enjoy reading crap ones, but from an editor's perspective, a terrible script makes me feel like I'm worthwhile.

AND NO I DO NOT HAVE LOW SELF ESTEEM HOW DARE YOU.

But yeah, in summary, this script was about a girl whose dad died over the summer holidays, and she's been trying to hide it from her fellow students. As a non-believer in ghosts, I decoded (Hall) that the message in the script was that the emotional burden on poor old Marissa was too great to cope with, so she was being haunted by memories of her father. However, for the sake of argument, I will refer to him as a ghost.

By the end of the script, Marissa reveals her secret to a fellow student, and George fades away. Yaddayaddaya, we all know the cliché. Don't moan about it. It's BU Station, not HBO.

I'll talk about only real grievance with the script first, but as I said, it was a pretty decent script, so there weren't many more.

The first time we really see Marissa interact with George (her father's ghost) is when she loses her temper at him in the middle of a lecture, leading everyone to think [probably correctly] that she's completely crazy. My problem was that, although it's clear that we're meant to find George to be a sympathetic character, I didn't really understand why the writer chose to have him sit at the back of the lecture theatre, and throw balls of paper at his grieving daughter's head. Because when I read the script the first time I couldn't help but think 'Jesus George, you're a massive prick' and when I read it back, knowing that George was a ghost I thought 'Jesus George, you didn't need to be such a prick about it.'

As someone who was supposed to be keeping an eye on his daughter, perhaps even being her 'guardian angel', I couldn't help but feel that the whole paper throwing episode was purely a plot devise for Marissa to lose her temper, and one that didn't really stack up.

My alternative suggestion (and suggestions are crucial to good feedback, it's easy to say 'that's shit', but without offering guidance, what's the point?) was that George would be trying to help Marissa, but actually hindering her, rather than being generally annoying. The example I provided was he could be correcting her spelling/grammar/doing something typically irritating, and causing her to mess up even more, and then lose her temper. Hey presto! You get the same results, with much less straining of the narrative/character.

My only other real point was this: sort our you grammar. There is nothing that will put a script reader off faster than suspecting their writer is illiterate. Know the differences between your/you're and they're/their/there. Know how to use apostrophes. For example, don't say 'see's', because it makes me feel sick. WHAT WAS THE POINT OF LITERACY HOUR?!

The rules are relatively simple to learn, and much like riding a bike, impossible to forget. Hoping to have a non-solicited script with terrible grammar bought it as likely as a terrible cyclist winning the Tour de France: quite unlikely.

AND WITH THAT, I bid you adieu.

One more blog entry to do. It'll also be on script editing, because I've not had enough interesting writer meetings to justify talking about them, so I have opted to edit more scripts. Exciting stuff.

BU Station, Episode IV: An Absence of Hope

Hello there, readers.

I will warn you now, herein lies another BU Station blog post.

I am forced to write it on pain of academic failure, and, in the near future, some of my cross-course colleagues will be forced to read it under the same circumstances. Some of you naive folk may be considering choosing to read this. I would advise against this. If you will allow me to extend a metaphor and draw on some commonly distributed cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1973), choosing to read this blog post is akin to taking a seat next to Alex, the protagonist of The Clockwork Orange, in the cinema where he is physically forced to view a mentally disturbing montage. What I'm trying to address here, is that some people will be forced to read this, and if you are not, evacuating at this point may be wise.

I've set aside today to blog the notes from my three days on BU Station, simply because I'm running out of time to do it. Previously I've tried to make my blog posts at least remotely interesting, but today I'm struggling to express anything beyond disdain over the necessity of this project, which feels unremittingly tedious.

I will save my exact feelings on BU Station until the concluding blog post, but if you feel like this might be going in a positive direction: you're an idiot. A wonderful, optimistic idiot. I envy you.

This post is about a script I wrote for 'Hidden', the university soap opera I've talked about before. This was my second script featuring the same character, and focussed around issues of 'hiding' social anxiety disorder from the world. I am under no illusions about this script being my Magnum Opus, or anything close, but it fit the brief, and was achievable.

I titled it 'Necessary Evil', which I could pretend was some deep subtextual metaphor commenting on why the protagonist feels it necessary to hide his dependence on anti-anxiety medication from the world, but really I was just making a snide comment about the nature of BU Station.

Thematically, I tried to keep my script in line with its predecessor. This time, my protagonist, Alex, was talking to his counsellor about 'feeling better', and recovering from his social anxiety disorder. As I revealed that Alex suffered from this at the end of the previous 'episode', I didn't really think there was much point in even attempting to conceal it for a second time.

Anyway, this time, the 'reveal' had to obvious be something different, or at least pushing in a different direction.

I started the script with a seemingly open and honest discussion, albeit with a different person, under a different content. 

At the risk of sounding excruciatingly pretentious, I'm a really big fan of loading scripts full of subtext. I think dialogue is perhaps the most badly used tool in a lot of the scripts I read. It's often flat, boring and extremely literal (or 'on the nose'). Real life would be infinitely less complex is every single person said EXACTLY what they felt, or thought at any given time. Sometimes it's difficult for us to even know what we feel or think about things. We're all conflicted in some way or another about something, and most people lie, or tell half-truths, for varying motives, on a daily basis. I try to include that kind of thought process into all of my work, and, as meaningless as I found it, this included 'Hidden'.

In order to do this, I tried to make Alex seem as uncomfortable as possible, whilst putting on the pretence of being comfortable. Talking with the counsellor about 'feeling better', he finds it difficult to make eye contact, and searches desperately around the room for visual consolation in inanimate objects. Basically, he's lying. He's lying to get out of the situation. Not because it's the best thing in order to cure his anxiety, but because the cure makes him feel more anxious, and he wants to escape it.

In keeping with this, he allows the counsellor to lead the conversation, but provides concise, brief and 'correct' answers, in order to allow him to escape. Saying he wants to escape would stop him from being able to, so he needs to say all the 'right things', in order to lead the counsellor to the conclusion he is healthy enough to go free.

His brevity, his lack of eye contact, and his nervous mannerisms, all suggest that what is being said is a long way from the truth, and this is revealed to be the case when, upon leaving, he immediately needs to take the anti-anxiety medication he claimed was no longer needed.

As the elevator doors slide open, and he walks into the light, it is clear that he has acquired his freedom, but at what cost?

I think the script was successful in what it set out to do. I would have liked to have made the dialogue more interesting, but that would have been at the expense of realism, and the effectiveness of the piece.

Smashed

Context: I finally finished developing my television series yesterday, and I don't really want to talk about it on here FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS. Needless to say I think it was pretty damn good, so here's my favourite monologue from the series bible, as a treat for you, my readers.

Smashed - Joyce's Monologue

It was quite a nice day, I’d say. I mean, it wasn’t gorgeous, but I wasn’t about to start complaining. I can remember that because I was sat on a chair on the front lawn, appreciating an Embassy Number 1 in the sun. There was a bit of a chill in the wind, but when the rays came out proper, I felt like stretching out in the warmth and falling asleep in them, like me Nan’s cat used to before it got hit by that car. After that it was never right.

Stan said it looked nice, so ‘e came out too and sat next to me. ‘E was readin’ a book or something and I reckon he’d come out just to wind me up. I’ve never known someone to make so much noise readin’ a book. Every time ‘e turned the page he made so much rustling it sounded like he was wallpapering the front room, and he kept clearing his throat, every two seconds or so. I don’t know what it was about Stan, but every noise ‘e made seemed to louder and more annoying than it needed to be. Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more annoying it became. I eventually screamed at him to shut up. I don’t know why. I’m usually quite easy going.

Anyway, we ‘ad a bit of a tiff. Nothing major. Stan wasn’t much of a talker. I know ‘e loved me, but he seemed to go about it all wrong. Moving here, ‘e said it’d bring us closer together, but all it did was bring him closer to work, and that just seemed to get in the way.

I could never get my head around Stan, not really. It felt like ‘e was cheating, but I knew that he couldn’t be. It never felt like it felt at the start, where I was exciting and ‘ad things to say, things that he wanted to hear. He’d just talk about the weather, and rescues, and what we were having for dinner. The other men, they told me I was sexy or gorgeous or made an effort to pretend they were listening, at least for a while.

When ‘e got called out for the rescue, ‘e told me he’d be a while, but asked for me to make bangers and mash for when ‘e got back. The last thing ‘e said to me was ‘use real potatoes’. I’ve thought about that lot and in a way I’m grateful ‘e didn’t make it back for tea that night, because he’d’ve ‘ad a right barny when I gave him faggots and Smash. I ate the sausages for supper the night before, and mashing potatoes gives me tennis elbow. Funny that. I’ve never even played tennis.

The bell rang around six, I wondered who it’d be. No one used to come ‘round when Stan was out. When I opened the door, Pat was stood there. The sun was setting pink just behind him, and it took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust.  The world seemed softer after a couple of sherries, and it would ‘ave been a lovely moment if I’d taken my pinny off in the kitchen, because it was absolutely covered in Bisto. I wish Pat’d taken a little longer to get his words out, given me a few moments to enjoy it, but he just came right out and said ‘Stan’s dead. I’m really sorry’ and started crying.

I felt something sink in my stomach, but I didn’t cry. I felt different, but I couldn’t have said in what way. I said ‘Oh. Thanks for coming around’. There was so much I wanted to say, but they were words without sentences, feelings without thoughts.  I just closed the door and got another sherry. I ate his faggots, but couldn’t manage anything else.  I started crying when I scraped ‘is Smash into the bin. It seemed like such a waste. 

BUStation Post 3 - Editing a Goddamn Script

Well howdy, partner. 


Today I'm going to be discussing what it is like to 'edit' a script, and how I have done this for an episode of 'Hidden'. 


I was going to go into painstaking detail about editing a script about a misunderstanding. The script focuses around a young girl, who is obsessed with fitness. The people at the university begin to suspect her of having an eating disorder, after witnessing her being sick after a hard jogging session, only for it to be revealed that she was, in actual fact, accidentally made ill by running on a full stomach of porridge, to which she has a minor addiction. 


On reflection, much like the heavily featured porridge, this script sounds a little tasteless. I can assure you, my beloved readers, that representations of mental illness/diversity/equality are things I feel quite strongly about, so if it wasn't tastefully done, it wouldn't be done at all.


Unfortunately, the person responsible for this script (NAMING NO NAMES) sent it me in a read-only format, which obviously hampered my editorial skills quite significantly. So instead, I will talk about someone else's work.


The email in which the script I have edited contained the following text:

"This is the first draft. It's pretty shit."

Whilst low expectations often lead to people having higher opinions of the final piece of work, on the whole, I wouldn't recommend taking this approach to your own work in the industry. I'm sure some people find self-deprecation to be very endearing, but ultimately, you're trying to sell something. So saying:

"This is the first draft. It's pretty shit."

is akin to an estate agent saying

"This is a shit house.'

or a car salesman saying

"This is a shit car."

or a zoo keeper saying 

"This is a shit zoo."

or a chef saying

"This is a shit meal."

 or a pilot saying

"This is a shit airline."

or baker saying 

"This is a shit loaf of bread."

or a board of tourism saying

"This is a shit country." 

 or a scat lover saying

 "This is some shit sex." 

As you can see, I didn't see the need for the use of particularly elaborate metaphors. The rule, for all writers, is not to say you're shit, even if you are. Usually people who are totally shit have no self-awareness, so wouldn't say that. This means that if you say your work is shit, you're placing it below theirs. DON'T DO IT. 


The script itself actually wasn't shit, so that just goes to prove my point, but there was one major problem with it, and that was that it didn't really adhere to the brief we had laid down. That is to say, firstly, the script was 4 pages, which is obviously longer than 3 minutes of screen time, and secondly, the script didn't have any aspect of something being 'hidden', aside from a potential gambling problem (which if anything is glorified, rather than criticised).


In terms of production, too, I could foresee the script being very difficult to bring to fruition. It included a pretty elaborate fantasy scene, the use of a 'Sports Channel' in driving the narrative (which TV production students would presumably have to create purely for the sake of exposition) and a crazy amount of locations and extras.

The plan for this blog was initially to go through the script on a point-by-point basis, as I did with the script, although with the realisation that it does not adhere to the brief, and therefore is not cohesive with the rest of Hidden, I will be sending it back to the author to bear these points in mind, and hopefully get a 'tidied up' second draft.

Once again, I hope this hasn't been too tedious. I said 'shit' 14 times, excluding that example, so it should make for colourful reading, at the very least. 

BANAL AND PREDICTABLE 'BYE FOR NOW ENDING'.

BUStation Post 2 - Writing a Goddamn Script

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your patience,
I come to bury this project, not to praise it.

It is not for love, but for necessity that I have come to discuss BUstation again, but now that I am here, I may as well make an effort.

This week, I wrote my script for 'Hidden', as mentioned in my previous post, it deals with issues of Social Anxiety Disorder. I decided to go forward with this idea for a couple of reasons: primarily because I feel mental illness is misunderstood and misrepresented, but also because, in terms of creation, it is actually quite difficult to 'show' an anxiety attack of film. I love a challenge. 

As an internalised experience, I have gone to every effort in the script push the cinematography and sound in a direction which will lead the audience to sympathise with my protagonist, whom I have dubbed 'Alex'. I have totally avoided the obvious (and easy) choice of doing a voice over. In general, I think it's a pretty lazy technique. Film is a visual medium, and I am a vocal advocate of exploiting these aspects of it, rather than falling back on easy exposition. 

So, how did I show Alex descending into an anxiety attack? Well, I won't post the script here, because it needs to be approved/edited, blah blah, first, but hopefully my approach to anxiety won't be removed. 

Firstly, I needed to create a sense of claustrophobia, and judgement. It's pretty easy to do this, visually. It really is as simple as getting your character to walk down a corridor and have people looking at him: or the sense that they are. Laughter, too, is another factor which can easily be utilised. People with social anxiety, when not 'in on a joke', often feel like they might be the joke. More often than not, this obviously isn't the case, but the combination of laughter/staring, especially when shown from the character's perspective, can easily lead an audience member to feel a suffocating sense of being laughed at. 

In terms of a story, for the episode, I don't follow an especially conventional narrative, as, using the soap format, I intend to re-use Alex and his anxiety. The purpose of this episode is purely to outline how debilitating social anxiety can actually be. So, I start the episode with him meeting Amy, who is amicable, even loveable, from the offset. It's clear they're vague acquaintances, and she wants to get to know him better. However, during their somewhat one-sided conversation, she scratches her nose, and he misinterprets this as being a 'hint'. Convinced that he has something in his nose, Alex walks across the university to the nearest toilet, feeling judged along the way, using methods which include (but extend beyond) what I previously discussed. 

The episode ends with Alex in a toilet cubicle, with the anxiety reaching a new height. He feels unable to open the lock, as there are people (who sound judgemental) on the other side of the door. His heart beats over the digetic sound, and perspiration forms on his brow. This is where it is revealed that Alex is on some form of medication, (beta-blockers), and that something is 'hidden' in his life.

As mentioned earlier, I intend to explore his character much further next term, but for the purposes of this script, I tried my best to have a reveal, a narrative, a point, and some form of cinematic titillation beyond dialogue. Hopefully I achieved that, to a degree at least.

Soon, perhaps tomorrow, I will discuss the editing process on some of the scripts I have been given to look through. 

I hope this wasn't too tedious or self indulgent. On reflection, it certainly feels like that.

BUStation Post 1 - Creating a Goddamn Series

Hello,

I apologise to my regular readers, if they exist, because this post is 'work' related. I was told to create a blog to reflect upon my experiences on BUStation, which is a uni project in which we have to create something for our television station. I will try my best to keep it from becoming bland, and perhaps throw in an exciting chase scene to slap you awake from an unrelenting torrent of exposition..

I am yet to be convinced on the merits of doing this, and how effectively it will be marked, but hey-ho.

This post is being done from memory, and notes that I made at a couple of meetings, regarding a scriptwriter driven online soap, which is called 'Hidden'. We were told to do them on the day, as our memories often fail us, but I completely forgot, so that doesn't bode well.

Meeting 1 - THE CONCEPTION

First of all, credit to Sam Honnoraty, who arranged this project for the scriptwriters. Quite a lot of us felt like we were pretty much redundant when it came to BUStation, where we were expected to perform practical roles (which TV Production students are clearly more suited for!). That sounded somewhat elitist, so I should clarify: I'm crap with anything practical. When I produced anything at school that required an element of dexterity, or finesse, my teachers would look at me with that 'there, there' patronising look, as if was incontinent and just did a 'whoopsie'.

ANYWAY, Sam learned the specifications from Trevor Hearing: the series should be called 'Hidden'; it should be made of several 3 minute episodes, which link in some way; it should NOT contain any sex, violence or bad language, but could contain nudity, if we wanted to include it.

With these specifications in mind, Sam and I decided on the best way to move forward with creating the series. Obviously the theme of the series needed to be linked to the name 'Hidden', and short of making a collection of three minute montages of naked people, where the title 'Hidden' was used purely for the sake of irony, we both felt there was only one way to go with it.

AND THAT WAS THIS WAY.

We drew up a plan. Each episode would focus on a different character, although the characters would be reused in other character's episodes. These characters would ALL be hiding something. Every member of the team would devise a character, plot an episode, and pitch it to the group. When the episodes were complete, they would send them to Laura Grima and I to edit/delete.

I nominated myself for a script editing role, on the basis that I thoroughly enjoy it, and am not afraid to break a few hearts. A lot of people on the course are quite nice, on the basis that they will do the best job they can at editing a 'bad' script, without ever saying it's bad. I believe a lot in positive reinforcement, and constructive criticism, but sometimes, gentle criticism isn't enough. It's like trying to knock down the Berlin wall with a dental hammer. Because scriptwriting is often quite a personal affair, it's hard not to be upset when someone doesn't like your work, but often, a relentlessly honest critic could improve a piece of work immeasurably. I've appreciate relentlessly honest criticism through gritted teeth more than once, and, as far as I'm concerned, if I'm making people grit their teeth, I'm doing my job properly.

Meeting 2 - THE DEVELOPMENT

At this meeting, we all talked about characters the group had come up with, and my-oh-my. Some people on the course have active imaginations. Although admittedly, I may have played a hand in the creation of a character with a porridge fetish, so I should probably remain silent on this issue.

My character, however, was one with a slightly more 'serious' tone. Although I intended the script to have snappy dialogue, the issue itself was a serious one. My character, who has been prospectively named 'Alex', has severe social anxiety disorder, and tries to hide this from other students, whilst struggling against it. I chose it because awareness is quite low, and mental illness is something which is grossly misunderstood, even by the most progressive of people.

I will discuss the production of the script shortly.

Sam

P.S. I feel like the tone of this blog entry changed dramatically in the last two paragraphs, and as a writer, I should probably try and fix this issue, because it's the tonal equivalent of the last episode of Tweenies ending in a graphic rape scene. I'm not going to fix it, because you are an active media consumer, and can decode (Hall, 2002) my meanings however you see fit.

The Grand Puppeteer.

I have small, frail hands. My tissue-paper skin shows each vein and artery, and when I move my fingers I see the ligaments dance like the inner-workings of a piano. My hands were crafted not for great acts of love, or violence, or revolution, but for spreadsheet management, and typing emails. They look greyer than ever.

The aquamarine blood vessels seem phosphorescent against their pallid backdrop. Glow-in-the-dark, like the stars and moons I had on my ceiling as a boy. You could leave me in the sun all day, and my mortality would glow blue-green at night. My network would be revealed to you. You'd see how I lived, with blood in my veins. It scares me to think I bleed, but to look in the mirror now, I can't run from this fact. I am emaciated and pale. Skeletal. My skin is so transparent that I can account for every pint of blood in my body.

I have livid purple bruises blooming on my arms, from too many intravenous drips.

Some people who co-habit with Cancer can pretend they're not dying, make the most of what they have left. I can't. I look in the mirror and see my death, slowly but surely.

I had a bad cough, but it was winter, and everyone else did. Air-conditioning spreads the germs around the office, and I rode the lift with 30 different sniffles everyday, watching the moisture fill the air as it evaporated from our damp clothes.

In March I still had it, I called the doctors at my wife's insistence. It was keeping her awake at night. By early May I found I was dying. I'm still dying now, mind, just not quite dead.

Small cell lung cancer at 39. Never touched a cigarette in my life. I smoked a cigar at a wedding once. The smoke burnt my lungs, and tickled my throat, and I couldn't keep it down. It made me sick, or at least contributed to my being sick. I'd had a lot to eat and a lot to drink. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, anyway.

My facial hair only grows in patches now. Little islands of rough, amidst smooth and delicate seas. The hair on my head's mostly okay. Every cloud has a silver lining; every coffin has a velvet one. At least these days, anyway. Coffins are expensive.

My wife's eyes were glassy when I told her. We're pretty close. We used to have sex regularly, and our domestic chores were pretty evenly balanced. Now she does everything herself, on both fronts. I haven't had an erection in a month.

At first she was in quite a lot of shock, you know, like I'd already died. I wish people would save that kind of sadness until I was actually dead. I'm not dead, not yet. I'm still here. We're all dying, just some faster than others. I'm not dead. After a couple of weeks I could tell she'd overcome that type of shock. I could see worry in her eyes: Who will be with me when he's dead? Who will want me now? Why didn't we ever have children? How will I afford the funeral? The mortgage? How long is he going to last? These questions mostly remain unanswered.

I've exceeded my expectations. I've gone twelve rounds with Cancer. Like a child taking a beating from a heavy weight boxer. Cancer's a better fighter. Cancer's a dirty fighter. Cancer's bribed the referee.

The problem with Cancer is that he used to be on my side. Cancer isn't a disease, contrary to whatever charities will tell you. There isn't a cure for Cancer. Cancer is you. Cancer is me. One day, my body was repairing and replacing old cells, and decided 'I'll go the extra mile.' Cancer is a revolutionary. He used to be on my team, but now he's not playing by the rules. Cancer wants it all.

I invited Chemo into the ring to help out for a while, but the problem with Chemo, is he insists on fighting blindfolded. Not being able to distinguish between me and Cancer, he spent the first eight rounds punching me in the face, until I asked him to leave. This upset my wife, but really, I'm dead either way.

So here we are, Cancer and I. Mostly Cancer, mind, but I can still see little fragments of myself. I wish we could have come to a more amicable agreement. Doesn't he realise he's killing us both? He could've had the lungs, or a lung, anyway. That'd be fine, but he wants it all so much that we'll both lose everything. Bloody Cancer.

This is the first time I've left my ward for a week. I'm in some grotesque and tiled shower room in the hospital, the hospital where I'll live for the last few days, and we're talking in days now. The room is lit by a fluorescent strip, the native of schools and hospitals, which buzzes incessantly. I am sat on the toilet with the seat down, looking at myself in the adjacent full-length mirror for probably the last time in my life.

I've thought a lot about God lately, and whether he'll intervene.

My wife's religious in her own little way. She went to Girl's Brigade, and church when she was little. She's not strictly Christian, she likes gay people and Muslims, but she lives by Christian values. Thou shalt not kill, etcetera, etcetera. That's served our relationship quite well, up until I asked her to kill me last week. Not in a hatchet-wielding psychotic manner, but with a pillow, or something. She told me no, and that I was being selfish. That's true, I was. She told me that God has a plan. I'm very much of the opinion that God doesn't exist, but if he does have a plan, I wish its resolution wasn't quite so dire in this case.

I used to be quite vocal about my feelings on death: I'll not know when I'm dead, that it'll all be over. It'll be a deep sleep. It'll be like before I was born. It'll be like those times that I was alive, but I have forgotten, but I've been pretending to think otherwise lately, it makes her feel better. That I'll be with her in Heaven, or the next life, or wherever.

I'm just an organism, not different from the prokaryotes, just more complex. My emotions are electrical and chemical stimulations, just like my pain. We can foresee our own demises, because foresight is humanity's evolutionary advantage. We follow rules: Humanity has never encountered someone who hasn't died, therefore, we all die.

...In this life anyway. I believe that Death is something we all understand to be hurtling towards us, but we don't want to, and can't accept. Therefore, there is God. God: Explanation for the unexplainable. The magic and mysticism to fill in the cataclysmic gaps that lie within Science.

Oh, Holy Science! Save me from this pain! Oh, bringeth to me a life eternal and joyous!

But Science can't. Science knows its limitations. Science holds it hands up and says, 'Gee whizz, I'm sorry, but I can't do anything else.'

So then we bring in God. No church will ever tell you of God's limitations, or entertain the idea that He might just be a little bit fictional, so maybe He, with His magic which surely surpasses even The Great Paul Daniels, can save me. But He hasn't, not today. God's left it to Science. Science was right all along.

This is because, or so my wife and her new Vicar keep telling me, He has a plan. A plan which involves me dying in agony on plastic coated sheets, which can be wiped down when my soul/bowels is/are evacuated.

Oh, Holy Lord! I'm not sure I'm down with this plan.

I get to wondering, in these darkening hours, where I am less myself, more Cancer, why we ever even invented God in the first place. As a species, with our knowledge of Death, do we find it that deplorable to admit that there's such a thing as luck/chance/coincidence, and that all of these things may not work in our favour?

I do now, in these darkening hours.

I long to believe in this Grand Puppeteer. The controller of the universe. Man's benefactor. The lovey-dovey, all singing, all dancing magician, who shoots playing cards from His sleeves, burns heretics, and forgives all.

I want to believe in His plan.

I want to see the pearly gates open, and be taken in His warm embrace. I want to dance amongst the clouds with Elvis. I want a Hollywood ending, where it all works out okay in the end. I don't want to die.

The fluorescent tube above me buzzes, and cuts out. It lights brightly, with a final paparazzi flash and pops. I see myself in the mirror for a brief moment, and now all about me is darkness.

Always carry a selection of mints.

For those of you who thought that I had prematurely aborted Salt in the Wounds, think again. I beseech you to stay a while, sit down, grab a cup of tea and I'll begin.

For the last couple of weeks I've spent my days shackled by lethargy. I struggle to wake in the mornings, and spend the afternoons resisting the urge to nap. As a result of this, Salt in the Wounds and its growing readership have suffered, but they shall suffer no more! I have broken my bonds, and return to blogging once more.

So, I've got a bit to discuss, I guess. FIRST AND FOREMOST:

The Extended Project

For those of you who don't know what this is, I'll explain. The Extended Project is essentially a group based activity I am participating in through college. As a group we are producing a short film, and, due to my aspirations in script writing, I obviously wrote the script.

The script is a contemporary piece about mental illness and the end of a relationship. It's quite monologue heavy; perhaps uncomfortably so. It required 2 twenty something actors: A young professional and his girlfriend, both relatively strong actors.

The role of the producer is to find suitable actors, location, props etcetera, etcetera. So, we sent off the producer to find actors, locations, props....

Three months pass. The producer returns. She has a location, a few props but no actors. Darnit. 'Well, at least she got a location', I thought, 'so it's not like she's done nothing for three months.' It quickly transpired out the location she 'hunted out' is her own house, and she just asked her parents to go out. 'Oh,' I thought, 'so she's done nothing for three months.'

Our editor happened to have a relative who was into amateur dramatics. So, we interviewed him for the role and gave it to him on the basis that we had no other applicants. He asked his girlfriend to play the role of his girlfriend. She said yes. Hurrah! We have actors.

So, one thing I omitted previously, is that the actor hails from Finland, and is slightly older than the character should be. Never mind, we can turn a blind eye to that. Oh, and his 'girlfriend' is fifteen years his senior, not sure we can turn a blind eye to that, but we really don't have anyone else....oh dear.

So, they turn up on the first night of filming, to produce some monologue-heavy high-drama. Neither have even looked at the script. Great...

The filming is consequently done as he covertly reads the script....in a Finnish accent....as a contemporary British film....about how his girlfriend....who is evidently much older than him and is Nottin'um frew an' frew...has left him.

Overall, I'm pretty sure it's going to be an absolute mess. The director has to be reminded to say 'action' and 'cut'. The continuity is an absolute travesty ('Was there a wine bottle on that table?' 'Was that table even there?...). The speech is barely understandable.

Fuck The Extended Project.

(I have arm ache from playing too much Bejewelled: Blitz. I am rubbish at it.)

SECONDLY:

Sex Offender

For some time now, there has been a suspicious individual in my English Language class. As the heading may reveal, I highly suspect that he is, in all seriousness, a sex offender in the making.

I was for a while, in two minds as to whether he faked his astounding levels of weirdness for fun, but if it is a façade, it's worryingly consistent. Another thing that makes me doubt this theory is that he doesn't appear to be having any fun, and there is no one to share the joke with.

Anyway, the reasons why I think he is a sex offender in the making (or perhaps, if things progress at the rate they seem to doing, the next Peter Sutcliffe) are as follows:

A) He has tried to seduce a girl in our class for the last few months. As she is a Muslim, he asked her to marry him so they could have sex. She declined. At this point I still thought it was a joke...He then asked, that if she didn't believe in sex before marriage, if he could finger her.....yeah.

B) I have never met someone with such an unhealthy interest in Michael Jackson, or argue so avidly that not only was his relationship with children healthy, but that we should all aspire to be more like him, and 'share the love' with children. There is nothing, I repeat nothing more sinister than watching him emulate Jackson's 'moves'; grabbing he crotch, and saying 'Ow! I'm bad'. There is something frightening about the understated slowness of it all. He whispers 'I'm bad' with his hand on his crotch in a way that screams 'RUN!'.

C) (And this is the prize winner) He visited an erotic massage parlour. I thought, as you probably do, 'Yeah, right', until he went into frightening detail about the whole encounter, and how the 'masseuse' refused to hug him in the bath.... He confessed that this encounter cost him £85, and I'm pretty sure that if it was at all possible to kerb crawl on foot/bike/public transport he would be frequenting the ladies of Forest Road. He has already confessed he's saving up for his next 'massage'.

I will update more frequently in future, and I'm sure I have missed out something of vital importance. I apologise for the hiatus.

XXXIII