Iron Bitters

Scriptin' Fancy-Like - Part 3
Right then, as I have not finished writing Archbrook we are now moving from a sort of guide into an exposition on what I am currently trying.

As I started to go on about last time, I simplified a lot of aspects of "Tonight..." because I knew darn well that I was still something of a beginner at script writing and that if I tried to overcomplicate things then I was likely to make more mistakes as well as probably lose focus of the main idea I was trying to explore in the first place.

With that experience behind me, as well as a few multi-page forays into a half dozen ideas I've tried to develop between "Tonight..." and my starting "Archbrook", I feel that I can get away with ratcheting the difficulty up a few notches. This includes...

• Sets: Instead of "The Lounge", "The Bar", "Paul's Apartment" etc. I am now trying to fully imagine sets which do more than provide a background to dialogue - or are at least more integral to the mood of the scenes which take place in them.
• Setting: Inspired during a trip to Broadstairs, yes, but I am not just mentally setting this there. I have actually done a couple of simple sketches of the fictional town ("Bethwick") to order things in my mind. I'd like to think this will lead to more consistency, particularly when it comes to lengths of time between happenings and when characters can "realistically" arrive in one place after being at another. Aside from Bethwick there will definitely be at least mention of London as well as the possabilty of the opening scene taking place in Wales.
  
• Characters: For reasons I'll expand upon later, I'm making the entire main cast between the age of 40 and 60. Guess what? I'm not that old. But maybe I can draw upon what life experience I have (particularly my interaction with the middle-aged set) as well as common sense and thoughtful extrapolation?. Also, the characters are mostly English and I am dabbling with one being of Armenian heritage. This might not be relevant past the names, but we'll have to see what is useful to the story and what isn't.
• History: As I am having a millenia-old cult/religion in this script, I have had to do some research. Though I'm not worried about achieving a remarkably high level of accuracy, I don't want to come off as some fool who is just spouting off whatever comes to mind.
• Inventing a religion: This is both easy and hard. Yes I can make up whatever I feel like, but not so much if I want it to be believable (within the context of the story!). Believablity isn't enough as I have to make sure that the religion also allows the story to function as I want it to while not feeling too convenient or forced.

These are the new challenges. Next time I'll expand upon how I am trying to meet them as well as some thoughts upon the handful of binary oppositions which need to be perpetually managed in the (my) writing process.

In other news, life is pretty okay! A tad lonely, but then that is to be expected when you go to a big city and have to build an entirely new social life. However I am investigating more interesting places to go to - I've found Time Out magazine to be very helpful and I recommend it to anybody even passing through London, let alone moving here. Work is still pleasantly free of stress, but damn I want to try and find something where I don't just try to hurry up the day. I guess we'll see where I land when the contract ends in April. Finally, here are two pictures I took of a great rooftop reading area at The British Library.