Structure-Tastic

The problem with doing a weekly entry is that I get the feeling sometimes that I just don't have anything to say sometimes, and one of those sometimes is now. I look through other blogs and I wonder where people get their inspiration for random musings from. That being said, many people have asked me how I do the writing that I do, so I guess it's fair game.

I'm all about structure, really. I structure all of my stories with spreadsheets and notes and at least several years tweaking to those spreadsheets and notes before I begin writing them, mostly, thus when I do get round to writing them, they pretty much just pour out, because I know everything that's going to be in it already. Take Resistance for example.

I'm writing the scripts for Resistance (which I talked about back in December) and that takes the form of 42-page episodes, 13 to a season and I always plan to 5 seasons. Why? Because J. Michael Strazynski told me too (not personally).

So with 41 of those pages being the full 51 lines and the 42nd page being 9 lines, that's 2100 lines per episode. In order not to go too fast or too heavy, I do 255 lines per day, which is 5 full pages. So an episode is less than 9 days.


Then, since I figured that pages are best broken down into 3 tracks (each track lasting 3 to 4 minutes, simply make a playlist every month or so and listen to it every day), that's 17 lines per track (a third of a page). So I can write a page every quarter of an hour. This has taken years of discipline to achieve, but it now passes like nothing every day.

So, long term. A season is 2100 x 13, which is 27300 lines, which is 107 normal days of 5 pages each (which gets us to 27285), and then one final day where I just do the remaining 15 lines to get us up to 27300. So, 108 days to write a season, which is less that four months. And there are five seasons, so that means that by the 22nd of November, I'll have spent about 540 days of my life writing for an hour or two to create 2684 pages of post-apocalyptic super hero action.


Still with me?


This is how I organise my life, you know. My finances are all on a spreadsheet as well, I'm sure it wouldn't surprise you to learn. My brother says that I'm trying to achieve some kind of robot perfection, to leave the random chaos of humanity behind, but the way I see it, I do all this stuff, get the structure down, done and efficient, that it takes an hour or two per day to do this. Then I get the other 22 to myself.

LIP SERVICE
(A BBC Series)

So, what can I say about Lip Service? Other than BBC3 were really rather keen to get themselves some softcore lesbian porn and call it artistic? Actually, that's pretty unfair, it's a pretty decent show, very well written, very well acted and full of talented cast members.

It's just had its second season, and I'd be interested to see a third, but I'd also be concerned for Fiona Button's career. I'm all for writing out a main character every now and again, but the changes to the line up in the second season were incredibly drastic and I'm not sure they were right.

However, the basis.

Glasgow, Frankie's been living in New York after fleeing a messy relationship comes back home to her aunt's funeral. There's something about her parentage that she needs to discover, while at the same time, we're following Cat, her ex-partner who's finally ready to move on, and Tess, the adorable girl next door who just wants to be an actress.


We follow their heartaches, their tears, their tantrums, their flings and their fears. All the while there's a really, really good supporting cast in the form of Jay (Emun Elliot) and Ed (James Anthony Pearson) as their straight bloke friends, one of whom is in love with one of our lesbians.


Now, not knowing much about lesbian culture and how to really percieve homosexuality as it's depicted in film and tv... I'm not really sure how accurate this representation is. But that's just due to my staggering ignorance and fear of offending anyone in relation to this subject matter.


Are all Glaswegian lesbians that damn attractive? Because if so, I think I'm moving up there. Mind you, a depressing few actually have Scottish accents...


However, following on from my earlier comment, by halfway through the second season, we've lost two of the three main characters and Jay departs after about five minutes screen time, leaving us with a half-reconstituted cast, a whole slew of new faces and the feeling that if this show goes on, we'll be looking at even more in the next season.


Like with Skins, where all the partying and drugs and stuff got sickly sweet and you just wanted them to give it up, all the softcore lesbian action may actually end up driving more of the audiance away after a while, despite it being the main titillating selling point to the whole thing. Hmmm.... anyway, that's about all I have on that.


Watch it, it's good.


Next up: Episodes
(yeah, another BBC show)