Writing for television or film is a different beast to any other writing. And boy, it needs taming.
For a lot of writers, there are constraints in many different areas of their work. Money is chief amongst them of course. Any professional work needs to have commercial appeal if it is to keep you in the profession. If it only jumps off the page to two or three people, hell, ten or twenty, then its a hobby. But writing commercially is a balancing act at all times. What appeals to the general public? Is your work still original, creative, unique? Those questions can go head-to-head like Dane Bowers & Alex Reid (or not) but sooner or later, they have to be answered.
Television and film-writing is tough. Really tough. The British actor, writer and director David Schneider puts it brilliantly in an excellent film blog I came across this week : http://kidinthefrontrow.blogspot.com/2010/01/interview-with-actor-writer-comedian.html where he talks about the difficulty of getting a viable, popular script out there and made. But before that stage, creating the commercially appealing work is tricky enough in itself.
Editing is something that I constantly hear from Producers and other writers is the crucial thing. Writers can have a fear that the first draft is going to be diluted somehow by being edited, that it will lose its original lustre like a dusty vase left in the sun. The opposite is almost always true. Roald Dahl once wrote that the odd writer comes along who writes and is a genius, such as Charles Dickens. He then adds that someone like this comes along once every two or three hundred years, and that you (the writer reading Dahl's immortal words) are unlikely to be the next genius. And boy, is he right. Dahl wrote in a clear, detached way, of course. His first short-story took his seven hours - and a couple of whiskies - to complete. It made him just shy of $1000 unedited. But it was a one-off, and his next collection, upon which some would say his career was built was edited well, and it shows in the text. His career, of course, went from strength to strength and he became the legend he is now, not just for his children's books, but his adult work, the excellent My Uncle Oswald being one I've been enjoying immensely this week.
Dahl, who wrote the James Bond screenplay for You Only Live Twice, told how difficult that project was. Writing for the screen has limitations in size - something that clashed with his Big Friendly...er...imagination. These days, a lot is possible. An apocalyptic disease that wipes out the universe apart from Times square might once have been impossible to shoot. These days, as films such as I Am Legend and Vanilla Sky show, it isn't just possible, the idea is doable for film directors like never before. But the issue of budgetary constraints has hit the TV and film industry hard. Comparatively overnight, Hollywood, Pinewood and Bollywood budgets were halved overnight. Television no longer resists the urge for so-called 'reality' tv projects, most of which cost them nothing to cast, and little to budget in terms of set-up costs. To get commissioned now, your TV script needs to be under budget, low-cost in terms of cast and scenery, as well as appealing to hard-nosed executives, who rightly have to make harsh decisions on what script even makes the practical stage, let alone shooting. Film-wise, even the best script needs to justify itself financially, above and beyond artistic merit. Depressing? It could be - but independent films such as 2009's Harry Brown and Let The Right One In still managed to make good profits as well as warm the hearts of critics and audiences alike.
Perhaps nowadays the challenges and demands of scriptwriting are harder than in years passed. But the rewards are still worth it, and any success earned is more commendable than ever.
