Here are ten links we've seen that are worth sharing.

 

Writer Julian Dutton has a script for his 2012 TV show Pompidou on his website to download. It's interesting to look at as it's a script with no dialogue. 'When people asked me ‘how do you write a script without dialogue?’ I was always a bit surprised. I would reply – well, you just write all the action you want to see on-screen, down to the minutest movement of a hand, the precise timing of a cut to an object etc. You have the idea of the joke or the routine, you visualise it, then set about describing it in the best way possible. Most action screenplays – for example Speed, or Gravity – undoubtedly consist of page after page after page of stage description. Well, a visual comedy is exactly the same, except with jokes.'

This is a post from last year but still holds up, from Dave Cohen on the British Comedy Guide site - Sitcom Scripts: 5 mistakes we all make. 2. You forget what makes comedy different from drama. Staying with Aristotle, every one of those stories is about a person or people on a journey. In drama our hero or heroine comes out the other end, they've learned their lesson. Catharsis, as Aristotle calls it. Comedy characters never learn. They make the same mistake every week. Or like Basil Fawlty, they lie and lie and lie until their lies are found out. But instead of saying "next week I won't lie", he says "next week I'll lie better so I don't get found out."

This is an article in The New Yorker from Michael Frayn On The State of Britain and the Future of Theatre. 'Comedy has got to be about something serious. A lot of people, even if they’re involved in performing comedy, think that you’re just doing funny things. But it’s people basically trying to behave seriously in a serious situation, where something real is at issue, and not being quite able to do it.' 

There's advice on how to pitch a comic from writer Lonnie Nadler's newsletter. 'This little guide, if we can call it that, is written assuming you already have a story for your book. This is for when you know the creative part, and are now looking to package your work to get in front of publishers.'

This is a great idea for a podcast. Script Apart talks to writers about the first draft of their scripts, and the journey it made to the big screen. The episodes include Armando Iannucci on In The Loop, Liz Hannah on The Post and Watchmen with David Hayter.

A list of Tools for Writers from The Write Life.

How to Write a Novel with Dual Timelines from Ella Berman on Curtis Brown Creative. Make both timelines as riveting as each other. This might seem obvious, but it’s so important for the past timeline to be just as compelling as the present timeline. The present timeline will often be inherently interesting in that the outcome isn’t determined yet, so we need the past to add something significant to the story. Each reveal should contain a gem that adds to the interpretation of events in the present, ideally in the exact right place. Don’t be repetitive.

Canadian author David Bergen told the CBC website the six lessons he's learned in 25 years of writing.

Roddy Doyle talks to the New Yorker about his short story set as the pandemic breaks out, and his new novel. 'I was in Edinburgh, in Scotland, when the lockdown was announced in Ireland. I suddenly felt very far from home. I’d been doing a week of events in different British cities. After the Edinburgh event, I watched the BBC News as Britain’s chief scientific adviser explained the concept of “herd immunity,” and the practicalities—how the elderly and vulnerable would be cocooned. Yet the following morning the streets were full of elderly people. There was no social distancing—as was happening in Ireland—and none of the hand sanitizers or signs about hand washing that, according to my family, had already become normal in Dublin.'

The latest hit movie on Netflix is about a struggling playwright. The writer-director-star of The Forty-Year Old Version Radha Blank talks to the New York Times. The film, Blank’s first, isn’t pure autobiography. She has yet to choke a producer. But the apartment in the movie is her apartment. Her actual brother plays her brother. The pain of continuing to believe in yourself as an artist when the art world thinks otherwise and candles on the birthday cakes won’t stop coming? That’s all her.

The best writing and theatre chat we saw on Twitter since the last newsletter.

Andrew Ellard on why some movies are not what you think they are.

An amusing thread on author's forgetting or mislaying their references.