Scripting and Drifting – Day 1

Welcome to a new daily post.

I have the opportunity to develop a screenplay from an outline given to me by a contact.

Every afternoon, I intend to leave the comfort of the flat and write for at least an hour.

However, every location has to be different.

These posts will reflect the experience of writing in each setting. Hopefully it will be an exercise that illustrates how the creative process works and not an additional cause for procrastination.

I also hope that my commitment to a daily post will help my discipline. The first draft has to be completed by July 31^st - at the moment I'm about halfway through writing the treatment.

So, my first experiment with toddling happened yesterday and I didn't choose the most awkward of locations because I didn't get any further than the local.

I walked into The Alex, opposite Clapham Common tube at 2.40, and doubled the amount of customers.

It is a large Irish bar, popular with Aussies and Kiwis, partly because it has at least 6 tvs, all showing sport. Even in the middle of the afternoon, it was impossible to escape Sky Sports News.

I deliberately picked a pub because I needed to write a scene that takes place inside one and, as the screenplay is set in a post-apocalyptic future, I hoped to soak up the loneliness of afternoon drinking.

Unfortunately, my mental state was focussed but not inspired.

For the first 30 minutes, my ears were subject to Coldplay but the situation approved slightly when the track Dancing in the Moonlight blurted through.

I hate the song.

However, it brought back memories of a particularly ill-judged email I sent to a female colleague and thus made me think of how images in film can transform even the most dreadful music into a hair-raising memory.

I won't suggest Dancing....let's not go nuts......but I need to open my mind, although I will be stunned if we can produce the transformative effect achieved by David Chase when he filmed the climax of The Sopranos to Journey's Don't Stop Believing.

The pub was later enlivened by two aging Irish couples who were experiencing the venue, if not its raison d'etre, for the first time.

They were natural storytellers. For them, talk was free and easy but, unlike many who share the same conversational approach, they left the listener feeling in their debt.

Their topics could have been drawn from the tombola at a village fete in Ennis and they all had a look which suggested they had won big at the bat-a-rat stall.

They got a lot from the bric-a-brac hanging from the pub's ceiling – more, indeed, than me. That was a lesson – I had become too distracted by the artificially whitened teeth on tv and not the pre-industrial revolution tools that adorn the walls.

So, how productive was it?

Time – 90 mins

Word Count – 500+

New ideas – 1. A mishap with an overhead fan.

Overall rating as a writing environment: 6/10.

Stimulating due to adornments but writer was tempted to have a beer and MOR music was stifling.