Looking back, looking forward

First off - a happy and peaceful Christmas (or whatever you choose to celebrate) to all of you.

2008 has been a funny old year. I finished my MA with some decent work (hooray), but then got stuck organising the degree show pretty much on my own (boo), which has cost me a lot of momentum with my own writing (double boo).

I also lost my job (boo-ish; I took voluntary redundancy instead of moving to lifestyle-crippling seven-day shift patterns), but made a fairly successful - but time-consuming - transition into freelance writing and editing (hooray).

I also turned 40, which was a definite 'hooray' when we were in New York celebrating it, but then became a 'boo' when I started to slump back into my usual self-loathing meditations on how much time I've wasted down the years, how my brain isn't quite the firework display it used to be and how little time we've actually got to achieve anything here on earth.

Anyway, with the usual good intentions that come at this time of year, I'm planning to get stuck in from January 20 onwards, once the degree show is out of my life once and for all. The phrase 'write my tits off' keeps leaping unbidden into my aching little noodle, so I guess that'll do for a resolution.

Happy 2009 one and all!
Tom

I don't have high hopes...

...for the remake of The Sweeney

More high-concept/genre drama from the BBC

Ron Livingston to star in Defying Gravity for BBC Two

Ron Livingston (The Time Traveler's Wife, Sex And The City, Band Of Brothers) stars in Defying Gravity, a new adventure drama series from creator and Executive Producer James Parriott (Grey's Anatomy) and Executive Producer Michael Edelstein (Desperate Housewives).

The 13-part thriller begins filming in Canada in January 2009, and will broadcast on BBC Two later next year.

Set in the near future, Defying Gravity revolves around the exploits of eight astronauts from five countries (four men and four women) who undertake a mysterious six-year international space mission through the solar system.

With the eyes of the world upon them – everything they do is monitored and every emotion they feel scrutinised – they soon discover that their real assignment is not at all what they thought...

For your consideration

As usual, the good folks at Simply Scripts have collated the various award-contending screenplays that the studios have put online as part of their PR push (with links to previous years' nominees and winners).

While we're at it, the Golden Globe nominations have just been announced:

Best screenplay - motion picture:

Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire)
David Hare (The Reader)
Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon)
Eric Roth Button (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
John Patrick Shanley (Doubt)

One for the completists

In lieu of anything more relevant, here are a couple of things I've written recently for Orange: a vitriolic look at Best Friend Rehab on Fiver and a fairly bland review of the final Spooks.

Oliver Postgate RIP

Another bit of joy has disappeared from the world. Oliver Postgate, the co-creator of some of the most charming and enduring children's programmes in TV history, has died at the age of 83.

BBC Obituary

Oliver Postgate's work was both whimsical and matter-of-fact, magical and mundane.

It was popular with generations of children who loved both its strangeness and the reassuring warmth of Postgate's voice-overs.

With his story-telling skills, his love of found objects and mechanical improvisation, his funny voices and air of eccentricity, the man himself gave a good imitation of everyone's favourite uncle.

And his creations live on, at once surreal and comforting.

Charisma

Amid a week of hassly diversions, I finally managed to put a bit of heat under Foot Soldiers on Tuesday, and came up with about eight pages.

However, I've already hit a bit of a stumbling block. After an ambiguous and hopefully intriguing flash-forward opening, we go back to meet the protagonist (Adam, at the moment) in his original state: he is frustrated by the rudeness and aggression of modern urban life, but feels too alienated to step in and do anything about it. Basically, he needs to get his balls and backbone back.

So, everything changes when he sulks off down the pub and meets a mysterious stranger (Lloyd) who is, in effect, his alter ego - assertive, dynamic and not prepared to take a step backwards in his confrontation with the world.

The way the story develops means that Lloyd must have something of the cult leader about him - he is sufficiently charismatic to lure Adam over to his way of thinking and then manipulate him even further. And here's my problem - it's easy enough to stick that in my outline, but how do you then convert that into actions and dialogue.

I know that moving beyond our own outlook and experience is what we do as writers, and getting inside the head of people who are nothing like us is one of the biggest rushes we get.

But how do you go about writing characters who are more clever or persuasive than you are? If I could draw on those qualities at will, I'd be doing it a lot more in real life. I'd probably be lording it up over some Jonestown-style settlement hidden away in a corner of Crystal Palace Park.

At the moment I feel like an actor who's been told that he'll have to run 100m in less than 10 seconds because he's playing Asafa Powell.

In other news... Jason Arnopp's gulp at the brevity of life might give you the jolt you need to stop wasting time and just get on with 'it'.