Abi
Blog posts in total 31
Posts
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Surf's Up
The year isn't quite so new now is it? But Happy New Year nevertheless and it's great to see Ceri at Writers Academy blogging here this year! The tail end of 2008 had me battling with my ISP, I was reduced to a dial up internet connection for almost 6 weeks with only intermittent broadband. T...
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Midwifery
I have helped two babies into this world, both in unusual circumstances, both babies hovered on the brink of life and death for a second whilst the viewers held their breath. A regular female character in Continuing Drama takes a huge risk by getting pregnant, the birth will not be straightforwa...
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Montage
I've been stopping by a few other writerly blogs recently, good to read and I like the notion of a writing 'community' (I'm a fantasist I know), we need to keep in touch, talk to each other. I used to go to my local writers group in East London once a week - we'd listen to each others work, dr...
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Baffled
It's an idea to sit down for a dose of Cashzz or Enders with a trained counsellor at your side at the moment, or at the very least with your finger poised to dial the relevant helpline. I had to reach for a helpline of the highest authority after watching the Casualty series openers a couple...
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Goodfellas Day
The work I'd done on my Casualty ep last week was paying off. The guest stories were clearer, the serial was coherent, the pace was good, the exec producer was happy. I glanced at the clock; my lunch date would be around in 20 minutes - a girlfriend I hadn't caught up with in ages. My editor...
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Wind and Rain
Last time I looked it was the beginning of the summer holidays. Tomorrow the kids go back to school. Where did the time go? During the wind and the rain I've managed to notch up a couple of drafts of my current Casualty episode, been to a Holby planning meeting for my next episode, didn't mana...
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"FBCs U's and E's" by Abi Bown.
So what do you make of the new Holby City trailers currently running on the Beeb? I sat open mouthed the first time I saw them. My daughter offered 'Very Ugly Betty' in her dismissive teenage manner but I could tell she was impressed. Sadly no Elliot in a thong however... After I'd managed to...
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Organic, Moi?
The Radio Times has fallen out of love with Casualty I notice. No more warm fuzzy write ups in the 'Today's Choice' section. Now the reviewers seem hell bent on out doing each other with ever more verbose maulings of the Saturday night staple. Maybe I could start a column here reviewing their re...
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Let's Pretend
Firstly, good luck to all the 2008 Writers Academy hopefuls being interviewed this week! My Holby episode is filming over the next month. Transmitted in September, I gave it a bleak autumnal feel at the end - characters battling home against the wind and rain etc. Only we couldn't have rain (...
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It's July - Deck The Halls
"So - have you been writing any of your own stuff?" asked a friend of mine the other day after I'd outlined the exhaustive timetable of dovetailing a Casualty into the end of a Holby hot on the tails of an Eastenders. I stared at my wall planner agog (we were on the phone) - had he not been listening? Does he know just how long these shows take to get right? Well in all honesty he doesn't know, he's not a writer, but even so. "This is my own stuff," I said defensively and it's an answer I often give. "Yeah ... but, It's not really.." he replied, I volleyed back that 'yes' he was right that it was a collaborative work in a sense, but it is my own stuff. I write it. I have to get defensive around this issue, it's delicate - I would love to say I have three or four pieces of work in development, that I'm nurturing several ideas of my own. But time does not always allow for this. I do have a melting pot of ideas on the proverbial back burner and I'm currently very excited at the prospect of developing a theatre piece with the company who produced Peter & The Wolf last year. But sometimes I don't feel like letting people off the hook that easily when they're pressing that 'Continuing Drama is too prescriptive ergo not writing of value and integrity' button. If anything, it's the production values and scheduling that cause these shows I write for to sometimes feel repetitive and implausible - too many stories and too many episodes. You can't tell me that fewer shows a year wouldn't boost quality and engender a 'desire' in the writers and the watching audience as opposed to an 'immunity' to story. Series breaks work that way. How can you know the joy of being sated if you're never allowed to feel hungry? I really enjoyed writing my last Holby, which is in the process of being signed off. My editor was very thorough from the word go. I had several stabs at my story pitches and tweaked, trimmed and refined the Treatment until I felt this guy, my editor, was verging slightly on the obsessive. Same with my drafts, "We're getting there.." would be his opening gambit, until draft 4 he finally said something like, "I think this is on the verge of almost being there.." It was like teetering on a huge precipice throughout, when would I 'be there?' when would it be safe to relax? Where was it I was going anyway? What my editor was aiming for was a smooth ride and we got it, relatively speaking - that's not to say the workload wasn't tough, but with all our preparation work behind us, by the time the exec producer got his hands on the script, it was quite tight. And barring a huge casting/scheduling cock up it shouldn't have needed too much tinkering with. The exec notes were entirely manageable. I relaxed a little. The Director now had his mitts on the script - again his notes were manageable. Now I had to think of a title - I suggested a couple. "I'll run them past the producer" my editor mused. Not that catchy then? I spent yesterday in Bristol discussing the first draft of my current Casualty. I can get quite nostalgic about Casualty - especially climbing the stairs to the offices in the portacabin hell that is the Bristol Casualty Warehouse. They have old Radio Times covers on display on the walls there. Mostly Charlie posing with some nurse or other - usually Duffy, under the title 'Charlie's Angels' and the like. Casualty was a Saturday night staple in our house when I was younger. One particular Christmas episode moved my angsty teenage heart and has stayed with me.. (if you are the writer of the following retro Casualty episode, thank you and please do get in touch!)... It was Christmas on the ward and all was very busy - during the episode an anonymous medic appeared (white coated in those days I believe) and moved from bay to bay surreptitiously 'curing' people in a very unassuming way. The medic left the ED at the end of the episode as enigmatically as he had entered, nobody knew who he was. Oh the true spirit of Christmas and all that... give me a bit of the old magical realism any time. My current Casualty, although not the Christmas episode, is a Christmassy episode and I've officially been given the go ahead to go tinsel mad if I so desire. And I do desire it. Also, someone will have to appear in a hand knitted Christmas jumper at some point, I need to get more crafting into my episodes.
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How High Should The Blood Spurt?
My my it's all kicking off on Albert Square isn't it? I was rather baffled when I read the story document for my recent episode - yes, all the Chelsea drugs business was raunchy enough, Denise coming home early, what a coup. But the suggested cliff-hanger moment: Jase walks into the flat he's d...
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This Friday on the Square
Little scene 20a (see earlier posts) makes its debut this Friday at 8pm, in amongst some 40 or so other scenes that make up my 2nd Eastenders episode to date. It was four months ago that I sat in a room with the other writers of this fortnight's episodes and a clutch of editors and researchers. We had digested our story documents and were there to 'pitch' how we envisioned our particular Eastenders episode to be, iron out any serial problems and ask any burning questions we had. As I was 'week one Friday' I wasn't first to speak and so scanned my notes over and over to calm my nerves. Suddenly it was me. Some writers, being such pros and stalwarts had raced through their questions at breakneck speed and had assured everyone they had it all in hand. Now it was Friday's turn. My first EE episode had been a joy - this time last year Daren and Libby were in the throes of condom heaven/hell, Dot was giving up smoking, Dawn was in love, Carly was in danger. I had a weird sense of deja vu. 12 months down the line and the episodes seemed to be following strangely familiar paths. I won't elucidate - I'll let this week's stories play out then maybe come back to you on that. Needless to say, fundamentally not a lot can change in the life of a soap character - or if they do change, they have to forget the lessons they've learned and get themselves back to square one in order to make the same mistakes all over again. And god forbid anyone learn from anyone else's mistakes. I had some reservations about my second trip into Albert Square - could I do this? Would I have chosen this to happen? Was it fair? How would I write it? But I am in the hands of the storyliners, and EE is a tight ship with some 200 or so episodes to produce, not much space for manoeuvring. Like any artiste worth their salt, I rose to the challenge. The biggest challenge making R 'n' R look like a swinging hep joint and not like your front room with a couple of neighbours dropping in for Karaoke under a 100w light bulb... See what you think this Friday. I am credited (again) as Abi Brown in the Radio Times, I am seriously thinking of adding that 'r' to my surname and have done with it... And please pay attention to the last line of the ep, I sweated over it. Holby draft 3 is coming on apace. Those of you familiar with this blog will know I tend to overwrite and then have to spend hours chopping bits out. Draft 2 notes came back with a plea for another 10 pages. Wow! I have written another 20 so far ... guess what I'm doing tomorrow before my deadline on Wednesday. Casualty have been very quiet. Very quiet. They've had my guest stories for ages... and I've been reluctant to call in case I'm suddenly inundated with notes having to produce 3 more guests and gory accidents out of a hat. An old familiar face is turning up on Casualty in a few months - a character with a lot of Holby airtime. As a result, I've been inundated with DVDs from Bristol so I can get a feel for the guy - you know, see him in previous episodes. Hear the 'voice'. Last week was half term, whilst my lot were out doing museums and Pizza Hut, I was hunkering down in my Shipping Container watching old episodes of Holby and Casualty. Hours of them. Needless to say, I ate a lot of popcorn and got a lot of knitting done.
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On The Lawn By The Flamingos
I'm putting the finishing touches to my latest Holby 1st draft. The deadline is today which can be a little arbitrary - today first thing? Today end of? I used to be under the illusion that the sooner I got the script into my editor, the sooner notes would come back to me, the quicker the whole ...
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Social whirl
Today is a rest day which is just as well as I was at a ritzy Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ party last night. It's a rest day because yesterday, in between ironing my party outfit and catching up on DVDs, I handed in my Treatment for my latest Holby ep. My new editor is very thorough, I've been tweaking my guest stor...
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Scene 20a
You'd think there would be some logic to the notion that a half hour show would be less intensive to write than a full 60 minute job. I have just finished my Eastenders script (well almost - I'm still waiting for it to be signed off) and at one point last week I had to crawl under the duvet an...
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Back in the old East End
Kudos. My Casualty Ep got a mention on Harry Hill's TV Burp (the man's a genius). I have arrived. I've just sent off the second draft of my current Eastenders episode. Since I last wrote for EE, the system has changed slightly with fewer drafts being called for and (I surmise) slightly more d...
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Casualty episdoe 26
The DVD copy of my Casualty episode that was transmitted last Saturday has just landed on the doormat. How I wish I'd had it earlier. This process must get easier, by the time you've penned your millionth episode of a Continuing Drama series I'll bet you don't even bother to tune in.. The tre...
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Balancing
It feels like I have many fingers in many pies at the moment and the work/work balance is just about holding up. The work/life balance is not, balanced. This is due in part to having a life partner who is out on the road touring in a show (with a company on which the Arts Council have just pract...
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Utopias
I like script meetings - gets me out of the house, I get to talk to real people (as opposed to virtual ones on Facebook). Writing is a solitary occupation, not lonely, not with all those characters vying for attention in my head - but I do spend a lot of time alone. It can leave me feeling a bit...
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What keeps you watching?
Isn't it great, those times you can sit through and episode of Holby, Casualty, Eastenders or Doctors and not have to glance at the clock? It's why I watch a lot of telly in the first place - to be merrily carried along through a small window into these characters lives. I don't want to be bored...