Casualties

Here’s my fortnightly head spurt on the Writers Academy –  half-thoughts, nerve endings, impressions….

Two more weeks have passed – we’ve just finished week 8 – we have 5 more weeks to go…

What is absolutely clear to me now is that this course is a kind of boot camp for writing on series drama – (And a part of me, my instinct for hysterical melodrama part, wants to say that our office in Elstree is also the Guantanamo Bay of bbc writing – but I won’t go quite that far…)

Homework has been mounting. Demands are growing. The pressure is rising. We’re in the middle of it now.

The week  before last was the midpoint of the course – the point of no return – the moment in a story of biggest change…

We had a week at home – writing a full episode of bbc daytime drama – Doctors.

Unlike traditional ‘soaps’ -most eps of Doctors have a strong and unique guest storyline.  This is to say, that it is kind of a daytime – ‘Play for today’ with new guest characters offering something new everyday. (The balance in an average episode is 60% guest story – and 40% series story – the soapy bit.  Although some eps can be 100% guest story, and there is flexibility…)

Suddenly on our own – having spent weeks deconstructing how we tell stories – we were entering a strange world. I’ve worked as a full-time pro writer of drama for twelve years – but it felt like I was starting again… A forbidding and odd experience…

When the group gathered again on Monday – no one was happy. No one felt they’d done good. In isolation we’d all had the same experience.  We shared a sense of despair  that we hadn’t been able to put all the new techniques, structures and tricks we’d been discovering to good  use.  In essence – we all felt a bit crap.

Doctors’ is technically demanding and has clear stylistic boundaries – but it offers opportunities to write on subject  matter that wouldn’t make it onto prime time.  Like Radio 4’s Afternoon Play – you can get away with a lot in the afternoon on BBC1 – incest, murder, dead babies, raped pensioners, drug taking, men dressed as babies for sexual kicks -… all of these  have featured on Doctors in the past six months alone…

Doctors has a gamey strong flavour – and there’s scope.  But it’s tough in terms of budget.. and it’s easy to lose sight of the real joy of the story telling when blinded by the technicalities of the form…

(We haven’t got feedback from our scripts just yet – so our sense of failure is self-diagnosed at the moment. – but we’ve been told that it’s normal to feel shit at this point in the course…. – Which is a bit like saying that after a bus has hit you, it’s quite normal for your skull to feel a bit broken. All very well – but you’re still left with a headache…)

After the mid point – everything changes…

We’ve all done a bit of screaming… had dark days… banged our heads against the walls…The mid point is snapping point…

In films the mid point is often set in a forest or a dark cave…

(Some one said that Star Wars’ mid point is in a forest.  And in Passage to India it’s the Marabar caves… – but all this is a tendency rather than a rule.)

…We are all beginnng to emerge from this darkness now…

This following quote is from the Mid-point of Macbeth. (Exactly half way through the play.)

I am in blood

stepped in so far, that should I wade no more

Returning were as tedious as go’er

Strange things  I have in head that will to hand…

This is kind of how I feel about the Writers Academy at the moment…  (Only there’s a lot more blood – and Macbeth was never up against an indecipherable Holby City storyline document.)

But, anyway… just as we reached the difficult despairing moment of the course – things got more difficult…

We were onto the complicated stuff…

Multi protagonism.

A single protagonist drama is fairly straight forward.  A person goes through a journey of some sort. An incident  sets them on their way.  Things go right for them, wrong for them, there’s a mid point where everything changes, there is a crisis point,  there’s a final battle – and there’s resolution…  (all this loosely speaking – some dramas manage to dispense with these things and are still amazing – not many spring to mind though…)

Rocky is a good example of single protagonism drama – there are other major characters in the story – but there’s no doubt that the journey is his.

In Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid – both characters form one protagonist – and they share the major story beats.

But – In Multi-protagonism drama there are lots of main characters going through this journey paradigm – individually. While the characters in these dramas  may have journeys that touch each other – physically, thematically, or via shape-shifting characters – they are essentially in different stories…

Crash, Short Cuts, Amores Perros, Pulp Fiction, The Hours, Nashville, and American Graffiti are  among films that do this.

Multi-protagonism is more commonly seen on TV. And most notably on the shows that we’re about to be working on – Casualty, Holby City, and Eastenders.

It’s deceptively complex – feels natural and simple.

And It’s a bugger to get your head around.

I could try to explain it here in detail – but that would be the equivalent of passing around the poisoned Kool-Aid.

We spent three very full long days on it this week – and it’s only just beginning to sink in…

So –  just watch the 90 minute pilot episode of ER.

In that – Michael Crichton does it effortlessly and superbly – you love all the characters – they make you laugh – they have mystery – they make you curious – they make you cry – they move and uplift – they shock and surprise. It is hybrid multi-protagonism at its best.  Fill your boots.

(Having just written the phrase ‘hybrid multi-protagonism’ – I realise i’ve dodged the fact there are several different types of multi-protagonism…  Forget the kool-aid – load revolvers now and point them at your temples…)

(and hmmmm… having just re-read – i see that I use the phrase ‘shape shifting characters’ earlier too – without a shred of explanation…  It’s not meant in a sci-fi way – A shape shifting character is someone who appears in different stories in different roles…

For instance – Charlie the nurse in Casualty often has his own story of the week (his son has done something and he has to deal with it.. say .)

But Charlie might also appear, in the same ep, in a junior doctor’s story – acting as a mentor.

And he may also appear, in the same ep, in a guest patient’s story – acting as an antagonist.

And he might also appear, in the same ep, in the hospital porter Big Mac’s story of the week – acting as an ally…

In this sense – Charlie the nurse is a shape shifting character – and he links stories together…

but if that didn’t make any sense I wouldn’t be at all surprised…)

It strikes me now – that i’m using this blog as a kind of therapy. And as a way to try to understand what’s happenedin the last weeks – and what it all means. Which is to say…. I’m as lost as you are…

On thursday it was school trip day. All the acadamites travelled down to the set of Casualty in Bristol.

Lots of the actors were around.

Dr Nick Jordan (Michael French) was looking tall in a big black coat.

Dr Zoe and Dr Ruth-  were smiling, and short, and lovely, and hugging people.

Kirstie, Lennie, and Jay were wearing their working green uniforms and were very friendly.

Dr Adam Trueman passed me going into the toilets as I was coming out. (He seemed as friendly as anyone could while heading into the bogs.)

Everyone seemed happy, and nice, and friendly. (does it feel like i’m setting this up for a nasty pay-off?- ….i’m not.)

Moments/days like this – remind you of how much you love those characters – they’re instantly familiar – and somehow over the weeks and months and years of watching the show – i’ve grown to care about them.

Part of me didn’tt want to meet them. If you discover that they’re arseholes – it’s hard to not change your view of their character…

But that didn’t happen in this case.

Besides, I didn’t see the actors – I only saw the characters – Poor damaged Ruth. Volatile Lenny. Vulnerable Zoe. Ambitious Nick…

The sets too – incredibly familiar.

The highest praise you can give any medical drama is that you’d want to be treated by the characters in their place of work.

This is definitely true of Casualty.

We met the medical advisors on the show – Clive the paramedic expert, Ian a real live Emergency Department Doctor who works out of the Southampton hospital – and Pete Salt – a former nurse – who is the person who the character of Charlie is based on.

They talked about how important to them that the medical stuff in the show is accurate – it’s how the National Health Service is perceived… Dr Ian said that his patient’s often refer to the show during diagnosis… The show thrives best when it is being authentic…

Casualty started in 1986. It’s the longest running medical drama in the world – and nowadays its audience averages 6 million per episode.

When it was first pitched as a new bbc hospital drama back in the 80s – this was the one line pitch:

“In 1945 a dream was born in the National Health Service. In 1985 that dream is in tatters.”

Isn’t that the most perfect and awesome pitch for a show?

(The show was created by a script editor- Jeremy Brock, and a theatre director – Paul Unwin.)

–

We met the script editors, producers, researchers, and writer/showrunner Mark Cately…

Mark is the heart of the show at the moment. He told us not to worry about it all too much. It’s only telly. But he’s clearly dedicated to his work and the show.  He gave us advice. Told us how he started as a theatre writer. He talked about his vision for the show. How he was surprised by how much it mattered to him once he started on it. And how he fought to change it when he thought it was stale a few years ago.

We loved Mark. (He was a human being.)

Mark  graduated from the Writers Academy three years ago.

He is one of us.

He knows.

When we returned from Bristol – it being a friday – booze day – we hit the pub – and drank like fish for an hour or so – but were too exhausted to go on for too long….

It’s been hard work – and rough on the mind.

It must be if it’s affecting our drinking…

This ends the most difficult stage of the course.  Things can only get better from here on in.

Unless, of course, they get worse.