Twittering Heck - Third Day

I work during the day apart from Mondays, and I've all next week off, on annual leave...YEAH! So...I've come straight home from work & donned the flighty Francine's (fragharpy's) skin for yet another evening's Twitterooo. Surprising how easy it is to get straight into character, especially as all the other characters are interacting & helping shape one another. I like when they ask the RIGHT kind of questions!

Tweeting - Twitter Play Second Day

I think things are shaping up...characters are coming to life in Real Time. It's strange, it's weird, but it's quite exhilarating. You can see that people are thinking on their feet, they're having to.

Mini sub-plots are forming, Spidery tangents are webbing together in intricate formation. There's also a lot of random stuff, and that's the way Twitter works.

So far, I'm loving it...

Twitter News - I Play Character B!

After two weeks of nonsensical Tweeting on Twitter, I'm pleased & proud to say that I'm one of the chosen writers to write the part of Francine Harpur, a London based fragrance designer & freelance 'nose'. Lasting for two weeks, it all kicked off today, & so far it's going really well. I find myself 'being' this character & have imagined Lisa Goddard's character (remember the lovely Lisa?) in ITV's 'Yes Honestly' to be quite similar to Francine.

Follow my updates if you like: see the 'Follow Me' link under fragharpy on this Blog sidebar. I'm also on Twitter as my 'real' ID, Antoniablue, but have suspended the 'Follow' tag on this name for now.

It's going to be fun, a blast, a real experience.

Will update about its progress by the day.

I Was Able to Change the 'About Me' Section!

...From "Hoping to become a full time MA Creative Writing student with Lancaster University..." TO...Well, see for yourself!

Yes! Lancaster University Here I Come!

Had word today that I've been offered a place on the MA in Creative Writing at Lancaster. I am so, so, pleased. I start in October 2009, and will Blog about the whole experience.

How's that song go? This could be the start of something good!!!

Happy Easter!

Hope you all have a great time this Easter, whether you're DOING stuff, or just lounging the holiday away.

Some Easter facts and non-facts:



A child born on Good Friday and baptised on Easter Sunday has the gift of healing.

Many fishermen will not set out for catch on Good Friday.

Bread or cakes baked on this day will not go mouldy.

Eggs laid on Good Friday will never go bad.

The planting of crops is not advised on this day, as an old belief says that no iron should enter the ground (i.e. spade, fork etc.).

Hot cross buns baked on Good Friday were supposed to have magical powers. It is said that you could keep a hot cross bun which had been made on Good Friday for at least a year and it wouldn't go mouldy.

Hardened old hot cross buns are supposed to protect the house from fire

Sailors took hot cross buns to sea with them to prevent shipwreck.

A bun baked on Good Friday and left to get hard could be grated up and put in some warm milk to stop an upset tummy.

Having a hair cut on Good Friday will prevent toothaches the rest of the year.


Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Wouldn't you know it, all the hairdressers are on holiday! Ouch! That rotten molar!

Trailer For Duncan Jones's MOON Film

Must Watch: Phenomenal Trailer for Duncan Jones's Moon! It looks really good.

LINK TO MOON FILM

Reasons to be Tweeting...one...two...three...

RESONANCE FM link @ BBC WRITERSROOM.

Hurry, Hurry, Hurry!

Twitteroooooooooo

Yes, I'm finally Tweeting on Twitter. You can follow me by clicking the Follow Me link on the right hand side of this Blog.

It's an experience...unusual...exhilarating...informative...crazily ubelieveably mad as a hatter...Alice in Wonderland...and I feel like I'm through the looking glass...

Eastenders - The Danielle Episode!

EASTENDERS - SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE TAPED THE SHOW OR SUMMAT!



I've loved the whole Danielle/Ronnie storyline, but to be frank, I was getting a little bit tired of the will she tell, won't she tell dragging-it-out scenario. Yes, it was great each time she almost told Ronnie: "You're. My. Mother!" Archie lied his socks off saying he'd told Ronnie, then he hadn't, then he had. So frightened was he that Ronnie would find out that he lied about Danielle having died years ago, that he was prepared to KILL Danielle. I thought that showed the measure of our Archie, really, really well.

So, I was pleased when the biggie finally happened. I thought the dramatic writing was excellent, the acting superb, the directing wonderful. That wedding reception in a transformed Vic, was so realistic, from the background soothing music, to Billy and his attempt at a best-man speech.

I almost sobbed when Ronnie chased after Danielle, and said: "Baby." Wow. The car accident was realistic, and I found myself screeching at the screen: "NO! NO! NO!" God, I wanted that girl to live.

Or did I?

What would the aftermath have been like if she'd lived? Okay, she could have been in a coma for a while. We could have watched as Ronnie tootled along to the orspital with flowers and tears. Would that have been dragging it out again? Yes, I think so. What then? Wake from the coma? Saunter into the sunset hand in hand?

But what about the dramatic conflict?

What about Ronnie's character? She's cold, vulnerable underneath it all, damaged goods, and that's what I LIKE about her.

If she'd lived and Ronnie and Danielle had attempted some kind of relationship, it would have had to have gone wrong, or not live up to expectations, or SOMETHING, because where's the drama in that? Where's our wounded Ronnie?

Happy endings? Yes, sometimes, and there are plenty on tv, some in Eastenders too, though they tend not to remain happy for long - or they aren't without their conflicts. But that's Eastenders, and if you look at most of the other British soaps, they're exactly the same.

Take Coronation Street: We have alcoholic Peter Barlow, Steve and Becky's wedding gone wrong, dastardly David Platt who once tried to murder his mother, and much, much more. But Coronation Street is a gentler soap, for all that conflict. It just is. And there's more comedy in the Street. In Eastenders there's more dramatic tension, but there's irony there, black humour. I love it.

More on this later.

A Bit of Good News

I'm happy to say that I've just sold a story to My Weekly magazine.

I've previously had a bit of story-selling success with The Weekly News, but this is the first magazine I've sold a story to. As soon as I got the e mail yesterday, I wrote another! Needs tweaking and all that, but I'll be sending that one soon, and hoping for a second hit. It all counts and it really fires me up, having some small success. Makes me want to keep on writing those stories. Short stories are brilliant for making you tighten up your story, with beginning, middle and end. Good practise for me now that my sights are set on radio or tv drama, or maybe even theatre.

Change Of Plan

I've done this before, changed my mind about what I'm going to work on. In the post below, I said I was going to work on a spec tv series, but I just wrote a short story, and it's given me an idea for either a radio play, or perhaps five fifteen minute related stories that might be suitable for radio.

Sigh...I just have to go with what feels more important, and the radio thing does for some reason.

Next Project: TV Spec Series

I have the idea, and have already written a brief first episode outline. I heard somewhere on the blogoshpere that it's best to write what you're passionate about, what fires you. I've always done that, really, though knowing why something fires you like it does, is another mystery. People say write what you know, which I think is correct, but it doesn't have to be know as in, you write about an alcoholic, so you should have had an experience of, or with an alcoholic. Not necessarily, say I.

We've (probably) all seen an alcoholic, so we know how they behave, even if we've only seen one on film. We know emotion like love and hate and greed and lust etc, so we put what we know of those experiences (and others) into everything we write, and that, to me, is writing what you know.

Anyway, I'm quite excited about this series idea. I'm going to get it all down, do some character studies, then write the first spec episode. If there's a comp out there, I'll send it in. if not, I'll send it to BBC Writersroom.

Age Matters?

Does it heck!

There are a few conversations happening at the moment on various Blogs, about this very subject. An editor has apparently said that she wouldn't take on a new writer over the age of thirty-five!!! What? Is she living in cloud cuckoo land my dears? There are more older people than there are young - and that's rising my friends.

Writing transcends age. I bet a good writer could write a piece and nobody would be able to tell if that person is twenty five or sixty five. Now I could begin to say that mature people have more life experience, more mulled maturity, therefore are richer writers, but I won't, because to me it don't matter a fig. And a great big SADDO to those to whom it does matter.

Ha Ha ha ha Ha ha ha!!!!!!...

...That's what I hope they'll do when they read the three sketches I've just e mailed to 7 on 7, the BBC sketch competition. Somehow, I doubt it. It's not that I haven't any confidence in my ability to write a sketch, just that comedy is so subjective isn't it?

I watched a video of a short sketch, on a Blog the other day, supposed to be funny, but I couldn't see anything funny about it at all. To me, it was completely and utterly puerile.

There are some good sketches on tv (to my mind) that I can laugh at, but some leave me cold. I wonder how mine will leave the readers...stone cold, luke warm, or red hot??

We'll see.

Ill tell you what made me laugh out loud all the way through: Jerry Springer The Opera. I didn't see it live, just on tv, but it was the funniest thing...

So...You Can Write Can You?

This post is prompted by a conversation over at Helen's Blog.

Now, it's true that many people, when confronted with the fact you're a writer, will say THEY too CAN write, or SHOULD write, or WOULD write...but...and the conversation over at Helen's Blog is going to be really funny and witty.

But what I find, is that people always want you to spell out (metaphorically speaking) what you've written. I don't know about you, but I hate doing that! I can never explain it properly in words, to non-writers, or even writers if I'm honest. Gawd, I'll have to improve if I'm ever going to pitch at some stage. It always ends up sounding so lame (to my ears) and I forget what the heck I've written and why.

Then you get the IDEAS person, who can't wait for you to finish your ramblings so they can tell you their much BETTER idea.

No wonder I tend not to tell people I write, because they keep asking you how you're doing..nothing published yet?...or...how long have you been writing?...when you tell them a number of years, they gasp and can't understand how you haven't MADE it yet...Grrr.

The worst experience for me was with the woman who runs the local Post Office. I handed over a M.S to be posted and she looked at the address, asked me what I'd written, then what else I'd written and told me I'd probably end up as successful as J.K. I mean, this from a woman who hasn't read any of my stuff...unless she sneaked a look-see. But how can I live up to her expectations???

Theatre Play Or Radio Play?

I finished the second radio play for the Alfred Bradley Award, and thought I would try writing a theatre play for The Fringe Marriott comp. Anyway, as I started writing, I realised my new scribblings had to be written in radio play format.

So I've written ANOTHER radio play, though I might adapt it for theatre, so I have both formats.

Where to send the new radio play? It's shorter than the previous two, running at about thirty minutes. I can either expand it and send it into Writersroom (though I have one aleady in the hands of Writersroom, so will wait to see what happens with that) or send it to a different comp, though can't find any other radio comps at the moment.

I think I'll adapt for theatre and get it off to the Fringe Marriott, then I can always send it as a radio play, somewhere, at some point.

I really enjoyed writing this latest play, and it's very different to the last two. I'm enjoying experimenting with structure and language.

With my previous plays, I've tended to go the traditional route, straightforward story-telling, A to B kind of thing, But this latest play is a bit different, in that there's a flashback scene and quite a bit of inner thought from characters.

It's only by trying new things out that you find YOUR way, or the right way for a particular play, I suppose.

If anyone knows of a radio play competition besides the Alfred Bradley, or 7 ON 7comedy sketch comp, let me know.

Playwriting Competition - The Windsor Fringe Marriott Award

Cancel what I said about starting a spec script for tv. I'm going to try and write a theatre play for this competition:

The Windsor Fringe Marriott Award LINK TO BBC WRITERSROOM.

Deadline: 5th March 2009.

I have the idea...

Second Entry To Alfred Bradley Now Finished!

Great! I've finally finished the second entry, and it's sitting in a brown envelope waiting to be posted. I'll send it tomorrow.

I've enjoyed writing this one very much, and prefer it to my first entry. I must admit, editing, and then checking for errors, and checking again, did my little nut in, though I'm glad I was so thorough because I found one or two glaring holes.

Good luck to anyone who's entered, and let's hope one of us at least, will be cracking open the champagne, come May. I'll crack open a bottle in April, if I'm shortlisted.

Being Human - BBC 3 TV

Anyone watched this yet? I missed the first couple of episodes, but caught it tonight after hearing good things about it.

I'm so glad I watched it. It's a kind of modern-day vampire/werewolf/ghost story, with lots of human elements for the not so human cast. I think that's why it works. A comedy/drama that follows the lives of a werewolf, a vampire, and a ghost, all living in a house together. What a great idea.

There are, or have been lots of other-wordly type tv shows. When people say don't try to copy or write something that's gone beore, they don't necessarily mean don't write ABOUT those types of things, rather, just give your story and characters a new and unique slant. This is other-wordly, set in OUR world, so we have the ordinaryness of everyday life, with an extraordinary side to it.

Gripping tv.

If you want to watch catch-up episodes courtesey of the BBC, click on the LINK below:

BBC iPLAYER LINK.

EPISODE 1 SCRIPT, courtesy of the BBC LINK BELOW:

EPISODE ONE LINK.