Tag: Script

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Back In the Room

A number of factors came together yesterweek, including scheduling problems and technical problems, which meant I couldn’t bring you a full entry. In the short explanatory note, I mentioned there were three possible topics I could cover. During the intervening period, however, I’ve added another one to this list, and it’s that I’m covering today.

The horror film Backrooms was released into cinemas at the tail end of May, and I had a chance to see it on Wednesday of last week. The director Kane Parsons didn’t come up with the central idea, but used the existing concept from popular culture. He’s previously expanded upon it with a series of short films available on YouTube.

In short, the eponymous backrooms are an endless maze of empty rooms and partitions that resemble an office or storage space, often illuminated by harsh lighting and decorated in shades of yellow. The architecture is largely stable, so any character who goes through an entrance can typically return to the previous room, and objects can be carried in and out.

The limitability of the place also frequently reminds people of a real-life place they’ve been before. In my case, my dad used to have a hair salon in the basement of a bank, which was accessed by a long staircase. Fluorescent lighting was a necessity, since there wasn’t so much as a window at street level. I also remember an unfinished section that looked onto bare rock; I called it the dungeon.

But I’m going off the point somewhat, as this blog is about writing, not art. In the film, the setting is front and centre of the whole narrative, so I was interested to see how it was described in the script. I expected there would be a leaked copy of the screenplay going about. Instead, I can only find a minimalist rendering that strips out everything but the dialogue, making it no help at all.

Nonetheless, I liked that the sets are varied, but there are no contrived traps for the characters. They’re often free to leave at any time, provided they know which corner to turn and if they can outrun anything that’s chasing them. It also steers clear of parodying films with similar characteristics, such as The Shining, The Blair Witch Project or Being John Malkovich.

Considering the practical sets built for the occasion, it’s remarkable this was delivered with a budget of $10 million, which is low-budget in Hollywood terms. Yet there is one other film around at the moment with even tighter purse-strings.

If $10 million is low-budget, then the $750,000 to shoot Obsession is practically pocket change. There are some parallels: this is also a horror, and its writer-and-director Curry Barker also started on YouTube. From here, however, it travels in its own direction, following a more conventional path with storytelling and gore at its centre.

It may be a coincidence that these two directors have come from a similar background to release low-budget horror films in the same month.

Equally, it might also be the beginnings of a trend where we see ideas transfer more readily from the computer screen to the cinema screen. If so, we must also brace ourselves for a hundred photocopies of Backrooms, or narratives just different enough not to tread on the toes of Obsession.

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The Radio Show Reviews That Never Happened

At the beginning of the year, I briefly considered devoting the last entry of each month to a review of a different programme from BBC Sounds. I listen to a lot of their audio comedy and drama, so it seemed like a workable idea at the time.

I abandoned the plan soon after, however, and there are a few reasons behind that decision. The saved draft from 19 January 2026 included a list of the shows I thought I might cover. Here they are in the order they were written down:

The list also illustrates the first problem with the idea: whatever I reviewed would need to be available at the time. Like most streaming platforms, BBC Sounds removes programmes after a set period.

The entries with links were still active at the time of writing this entry, so if I’d decided in January that the topic for May would be Clare in the Community, readers wouldn’t be able to listen for themselves.

Which brings me to the second factor behind the abandonment: how much time I have available to review them.

When I listened to each of these programmes for the first time, it was on an informal basis where I wasn’t necessarily taking in every word but gaining a general sense of the plot. By contrast, an effective review needs active listening, for which I would need to go back and take notes. Fukushima, for instance, contains more than three hours of script, time I doubt I would be able to spare.

When I was studying for my M.Litt Writing Practice & Study degree, I was roped into writing three book reviews for the university magazine. I say three, but for one of these, I’d written the review before the tutor told me she’d only lent me the book for interest; it was still accepted for publication, so my effort wasn’t wasted. It was rewarding to see the finished product, but there was so much input for an article that took five minutes to read.

My third and final reason is the most detailed one.

Let me take you back to a banner advert I used to encounter on the Internet in the 1990s. The headline was Tired of seeing movies based on one guy’s opinion? I’ve long forgotten the name of the service, but it would have been an early aggregator for audience reviews.

At the time, I thought this was a fantastic idea. If I was unsure about Titanic or The Matrix, then instead of relying on the film review in the paper, I could see what others thought before buying a ticket.

But with the crowd-as-reviewer model now the more dominant one, I can see the flaw in hindsight. That one guy, as they put it, generally understood structure, nuance and how to convey this to readers. He was worth a dozen armchair critics who instead based their reviews on the attractiveness of Kate Winslet or had a bee in their bonnet about the science of the titular Matrix.

As such, I asked myself whether we really need any more reviews, albeit in a more niche art-form than cinema. Taken with the other two reasons, my answer – at least for the moment – is in the negative.

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Bond in a Bind

NB: This entry explores plot points from the end of the James Bond film No Time to Die. If you'd rather not know, it's best to skip this entry.

As authors, I’m sure we’ve all written ourselves into a corner at some point.

I faced this problem a few years ago after I published what was intended be a one-part story on a writers’ website. There was an enthusiastic reaction from readers, so I felt compelled to write more chapters, but the characters were all scheduled to leave school and I couldn’t realistically take them all to the same college.

Fortunately, it was an ensemble cast, allowing me to pick a few main characters and introduce others, and the story went on to comprise 25 chapters altogether.

But what if you know millions of people are waiting for you to solve a plot problem? It’s been reported over the last few weeks that the writers of the James Bond franchise have a hit just such a stumbling block.

In all the stories from Dr. No to Spectre, our hero has been forced into some difficult corners, then has ultimately escaped in one piece. But at the end of No Time to Die from 2021, Bond is killed in a missile strike, so the question is how to bring his character into a new screenplay.

If there had been any ambiguity surrounding his death, this problem might already be solved, fudged, or even circumvented altogether. Fans, by contrast, clearly saw what happened in that film and won’t accept being told otherwise.

It’s worth noting here that most of the Bond films from the last 60 years were made by Eon Productions Limited before creative control passed to Amazon MGM Studios in February 2025. I’m conjecturing, but perhaps the former owners knew a sale was in the pipeline and deliberately deployed the fatal storyline with the intention of delaying or stopping future development. This would effectively end the James Bond series on a natural break.

And yet there’s a definite thirst from filmgoers to keep the franchise alive. While it might be difficult to see a way forward at the moment, there are a few options the new writers might consider. Here are a few, starting with the one I believe is least likely.

Write off the previous film as a dream

Because it’s been discussed and parodied so much, it’s not a spoiler to mention that in 1986, the 10th season of Dallas effectively wrote off the ninth season as a dream. While that show was a little over-the-top, as is the Bond franchise in its own way, I’m confident the new writers won’t lower themselves to this ridiculous premise.

Ignore the plot point

Many sitcoms and dramas reset the story each episode, knowing that TV channels sometimes air them out of order. There may be plot points that develop over the season, but these are unlikely to be necessary for understanding the plot of individual episodes.

The key here is that each new conflict tends to be resolved by the time the final credits roll, leaving the characters are in much the same position as where they started.

As such, the death of a main character may be too large of an issue to ignore, so I find it unlikely this will be the approach taken.

Reboot the series

Over the last two to three decades, there has been a trend to give series a reboot, borrowing a term from computing jargon.

We know another actor – yet to be announced – will take over from Daniel Craig. Also, rebooting isn’t unknown to the Bond franchise, with GoldenEye (1995) and Casino Royale (2006) forming fresh starts.

Perhaps this is the perfect time for a third such reboot, ushering in a much younger main character and having him go through the process of learning the ropes.

Show the succession of the identity

Since Bond works for MI6, audiences expect secrets to surface. To my mind, writers can use that to their advantage.

Supposing the code ‘007’ and the name ‘James Bond’ aren’t personal identities at all, but titles passed to each new agent. When one agent is lost, another steps into the role. The concept could easily conveyed through dialogue in an early scene. Besides, fans are already used to actors changing over time, so this wouldn’t feel too jarring.

In my view, the final resolution will be along these lines, while keeping within the established universe and canon.

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Accepting One Invitation and Declining Another

I’m pleased to report I’ve been invited to take part in a Pecha Kucha event on Friday 7 November at the Dundee Rep Theatre.

These talks follow a rigid format. Speakers need to prepare 20 slides, which will be projected for exactly 20 seconds apiece, so the accompanying speech must match the time available. Less rigid is the choice of topic, which can be almost anything, provided it’s suitable for a family audience.

I’ll be talking about my trips around the Millennium Bridges in 2023 and 2025.

My challenge here was to take the complex story of the two trips and weave them into a story that the audience could easily follow. This meant indentifying suitably strong start and end points, while needing to eliminate a lot of detail along the way. If unconstrained, I could easily make the story into a half-hour speech.

I thought the accompanying pictures would be the easy part, since many of the were already taken. However, they all needed to be JPEG files converted to a specific resolution and dots-per-inch value. I’m not arty at all, so I relied on online tools with hit-and-miss results; one in particular kept converting pictures at random from JPEG to PNG.

The hard work won’t be over until the night of the presentation. While I have a good idea what my script says for each slide, I need to rehearse and make sure I hit all the relevant points.

But I can’t take every opportunity.

At the end of last week, an event organiser offered me a ten-minute slot to read poetry at his regular spoken-word event near the end of November.

I’ve wanted to go to this event for a long while, but it always clashes with my weekly writing group on a Tuesday. I was even inclined to write a new piece to fill the ten minutes.

Realistically, our own event has to take priority because our members expect us to be there. If my co-host or I know we can’t make a session, we try our best to cover or to make it an online-only event, depending on the type of interruption.

This time, it wasn’t possible to clear the day because of our other commitments. I reluctantly had to turn down his generous offer, with the caveat that I’d be happy to consider other days of the week.

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Going Off-Script

From 2002 to 2005, I studied for a BSc Music Technology degree at what is now called the University of the West of Scotland. The course taught us how commercial music is recorded, along with related skills such as composition, Web design, and making promotional videos.

Last week, I had cause to rake out a short film I’d made as part of the degree. It dates from around 2003 or 2004, but nobody had thought to write the date on the box.

Although DVD was fast becoming the dominant format, we had to submit the piece on VHS. I wish I’d at least kept a disc-based copy. I can’t say for sure whether the tape has been partially wiped or whether my video recorder is at fault, but the picture is almost unwatchable.

The sound, by contrast, is more or less intact. Hearing this for the first time in years unexpectedly reminded me of the scriptwriting process. I distinctly remember sitting in the student union discussing ideas before someone flippantly said, ‘Why don’t we make it about four students who fall out making a film?’ That flippant suggestion became the backbone of our script.

At this point, I wasn’t routinely writing any fiction, but I recall enjoying the process. This should have been a foreshadowing of where my interest would ultimately lie in the future.

Some of the lines were a little clunky, aside from gems like He’s about as much use as a mic stand, yet the structure was spot-on. Each character blamed one or more of the others for the failure of the film, whether it was the director having a go at the others for not understanding his vision, the technician who kept forgetting to charge up the camera batteries, or an unseen ex-girlfriend who split up with one character to date another.

It really does leave the viewer guessing, and I’d be pleased if I managed to pull off that complexity in a current piece. What’s more, the action takes place in a span of well under five minutes. I vaguely recall our brevity cost us some marks, but it was a self-contained story.

I haven’t yet returned the tape to the cupboard, so my plan is to find someone with another video recorder to test whether my equipment or the tape is at fault. At a minimum, it would be prudent to make a safety copy of at least the audio portion and figure out whether the drama could be adapted into a longer piece.

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Looking at Loqueesha

There are plenty of films released each year that are given a lukewarm to negative reception. However, to make it onto the Wikipedia page titled List of films considered the worst, it has to be particularly bad.

At the time of writing, there are some predictable gems on there, like The Room (2003) and Cats (2019), along with forgotten and obscure features like Reefer Madness (1936) and Glitter (2001).

But one in particular caught my attention: Loqueesha, released about six months before Cats. It’s a vanity project directed, produced and co-written by its star Jeremy Saville.

The plot centres around a white barman who sends an audio recording to audition for an advice show on local radio. When his first attempt is rejected, he sends a second one pretending to be a black woman. After landing the job and fronting a successful show, he needs to maintain the illusion.

There are many reasons why it has a score of 1.6 out of 10 on IMDB and an astonishing 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. For a start, there aren’t enough plot points even to stretch to feature-length picture, and let’s skim over the borderline racism.

If there is one salvageable aspect of this film, it’s the dialogue. In the 98-minute running time, I don’t recall hearing much that I would describe as cliché. Yet it does need a lot of tightening to account for the lack of sub-plots. It could probably be shortened to a half or a third of its current running time, and be turned into a TV or radio drama.

There’s also a lesson here about lessening your control of a project. The staging or filming of a script is typically a collaborative process, with different people taking well-defined roles. The writing credits are shared, but perhaps doing the same for the other roles would have improved this film from bad to mediocre.

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Using Retrospective Continuity

This blog does not normally include spoilers. However, don’t read this if you intend to watch Dallas (seasons 9 and 10), Star Wars (1977), and/or Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016).

Last week, we touched upon the concept of retrospective continuity, where facts established in the plot of a fictional work are adjusted, ignored or contradicted by what comes later.

The term only appeared in the 1970s, and its common abbreviation ‘retcon’ is only 30 years old. Yet the actual device has been used for as long as there have been stories. Arthur Conan Doyle used it with Sherlock Holmes, as have major publishers like DC Comics and Marvel Comics.

In my experience, retconning works best when the change in question:

  • is small rather than sweeping
  • adds to existing canon rather than negates it

Let’s look at when it was done well in mainstream culture, and when it was handled badly.

Season 9 of Dallas was broadcast in 1986, and a major plot point was the aftermath of the death of Bobby Ewing, who had been killed by a car. At the end of the season, however, he appeared again, and the entire season was written off as the vivid dream of Pam Ewing.

This instance was a big change rather than a small one, and took away existing canon instead of adding to it, so many viewers were unhappy with how it was handled. That said, the show continued until 1991.

Now let’s look at Star Wars, the original from 1977. It had been a point of contention among fans that the Death Star had a weak point, namely an exhaust port, that could destroy the whole behemoth.

In Rogue One, however, that weakness is revealed to have been deliberately placed by Galen Erso, so anyone who knew about it could easily destroy the behemoth. Vulture.com explains it in much more detail than I do. Here, it was a lelatively small detail that became important later in the story, and it added to what was shown in Star Wars rather than negating it.

Unlike the Dallas retconning, this move went down well with fans, even impressing the folks at ScreenRant.

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The Plot Summary and the Log Line

When submitting work to a publisher, the writer is often required to summarise the piece, especially if it’s a long-from work. This is one of the most difficult post-production activities, as it can involve removing tone and nuance from the piece, leaving just the key plot points.

Here are the two main types of summary that might be expected.

The plot summary

This type is most associated with novels. The publisher will ask for around 500 words to summarise the entire plot, even if that novel is 100,000 words long.

This means focussing on only the main characters and the key story points, however interesting the side plots might be. There is no sure-fire method of making the process simple, but one tip is to divide the number of words by the number of chapters and apportion the summary accordingly. To make it flow better, the ratio can then be changed once the summary is written.

Note that ‘entire plot’ means just that, and it should include details of how it ends, not a teaser.

Log line

This type of summary is most associated with screenplays.

It’s one or two sentences long, but never three, and acts as a teaser that gives the premise but not the ending. It’s also customary that characters are mentioned only by role, not by name.

There are some good examples at Masterclass.com, including one from Titanic:

Two star-crossed lovers fall in love on the maiden voyage of the Titanic and struggle to survive as the doomed ship sinks into the Atlantic Ocean.

Here, you can see the protagonists (the lovers), the setting (the ship) and the inciting incident (the sinking), but not the ending nor how the protagonists reach it.

Remember that a publisher might form their first impression of your project on a summary or a log line, so it’s worth giving it as much attention as the work itself.

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Your Words Right Back at You

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with a friend Ailsa on Instagram who is a professional actor. She was asking her peers for monologue resources, as she was having little success finding good ones either online or in books.

You might remember in October I made a script submission to the Traverse Theatre in Glasgow. This is in monologue form, and I’d already wanted to hear it read by an actor to check whether someone else would interpret my words as I’d intended. However, I wouldn’t have had time to do this before the submission date.

Nonetheless, I asked Ailsa whether she was interested in making an audio recording. After some discussion about what form it should take and her fees for doing this, she sent on the recordings a few days later.

Holy mackarel, I should have done this a long time ago. Ailsa had added pauses and shifts in tone of voice, all in-keeping with the character. By the final scene, I couldn’t believe the life that had been injected into my own words.

Probably the most illuminating part was how little would need to be rewritten. The corrections identified so far are all minor, and come to a total of less than half a page of A4.

Over the last three weeks, I’ve been working on finishing another play, this time a dialogue. When it’s time to review this, I’m seriously considering hiring other actors to read it for me.

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Packed Up and Sent Away

About a week before the deadline, I learnt that the Traverse Theatre in Glasgow and had an open call for stage play submissions of at least 50 minutes. I already had a piece that fitted the criteria and was in a nearly-finished state, but I hadn’t touched it for many months.

So I hurriedly began work, giving it a once-over for any obvious errors, then restructuring where necessary. My usual way of approaching this is to read the entire script out loud, as this highlights any flaws more clearly than simply reading it over. There were parts that I felt could be beefed up, events that could be clarified or simplified, and even some instances when a character’s former name had accidentally been retained.

As much as I wanted to send it off straight away, I left it for a day or two. Coming back to it after that period lets you more easily spot mistakes that slipped past the first time. Once I was satisfied that the script was as ship-shape as it could be within the timescale available, I sent it in.

This is the first piece of work I’ve submitted for a long time. It’s been such a while that I’ve cleared the rest of my submissions tracker on the assumption that if I haven’t heard back from the listed publishers by now, I never will. It’ll be a nine-month wait before I hear back about this play, during which time I can’t send it anywhere else.

I stopped submitting short stories and poems to allow me to work on longer-form pieces, but now I’ve been working on these longer ones, it’s time to start finding a home for them.