Life, the Universe and Writing...

Hello once again, dear readers and internet-dwellers! Long time no posts, sorry about that. I've been really rather distracted of late.

So, where do I begin? GCSEs done and dusted, still awaiting results. Work Experience starts tomorrow at some arty-centre place and I have been reading and writing like mad! Four scripts are now nice and neatly written up for Doctor Who, the fourth of which is the first part of a two part episode. Still being very ambitious with the plans for this series, with lots of plans to film in city centres and up in the woods and lots of other all-over-the-place places too! Hmm, what's that? The stories? Oh, don't you worry... the stories are brilliant! I think. I hope...

Anyway, moving on from the frankly rather exhausting world of script writing, there is the novel, "Changing", which I keep banging on about on here. All goes well(ish) on that front too! Up to the fourth chapter of the book (four chapters of the book, four episodes of Doctor Who - coincidence? I think... yes). Of course I could go into more detail and stupidly give away the plot so far, but I don't want to spoil it for whenever I manage to get this thing finished and published!

Now then, in other news, I recently turned sixteen! Aaagh, scary, I know! The "under-age" excuse is no longer available, you can get a lottery ticket, you can leave home, but you can't drink. Yes, we live in a nation where you can *ahem* with someone, but not have alcohol. Wrong way round? Possibly. Anyway, sixteenth birthday, amongst many other amazing items and a nice wad of cash, I got a creative writing study kit. Which, as you readers will know, is the sort of thing that's quite handy for me. Once I've told myself to listen to its advice and not ignore it going "No! Ridiculous! Wrong!" as though I know best! And I have to say, it has come in very helpful with my writing!

And then there's the reading I've been getting done. I believe I am currently reading three or four books at the same time! See, with my lovely birthday money, I chose to ignore the fact I was already reading The Hunger Games (very good book so far, being turned into a film) and Apollo 23 (a Doctor Who novel I got for my birthday), and went out and bought four lovely new books! One of which is a Sherlock Holmes book. I did limit myself, I said only one Sherlock Holmes book... that one just happened to be every Sherlock Holmes story ever written! So I've got about sixty of those to get through. Then there is Neil Gaiman's (who is amazing) Fragile Things - a collection of poems and short stories written by the great man; Hunger, the sequel to Gone, one of my all-time favourite books; and The End Of Eternity by Isaac Asimov, a sci-fi timey wimey novel, which I am yet to start reading.

So! Yes! Been busy reading and writing my life away. No real reason behind this post, other than the recurring thought "I should update the blog". So here it is, updated. Admire its updatedness... if you like. You can tell I'm tired... see you all soon, when I actually have something to blog about!

A triumphant return!

To be precise, the return of my computer! Well, not exactly. I got a new one - but the important thing is it means I can get writing again, and gotten writing I have! Yes, 'Changing' is slowly but steadily getting going, there's been work on 'Consulting Detective' (work which largely involves me taking control of episode one from Adam!) and work on poetry. Yes, you read that correctly, I said poetry. What am I talking about? Poetry, not prose or stories? Have I gone insane? Well, stay right there and I'll explain everything for you, dear reader! It all started a few weeks back when, as part of my school's 'Big Read' week (which ended in an amazing 24-hour Readathon - I'll have to put up a post about it at some point), I was one the lucky people that got to attend a poetry reading and Q/A session, with a poet (whose name escapes me at the minute!), as well as a workshop session with him in the afternoon. Now, he was a really rather inspiring fellow and the whole poetry theme of the day reminded me of the recent school trip to 'GCSE Poetry Live' that I had attended. When we were there we heard from the truly amazing John Agard, as well as Simon Armitage. One of Armitage's poems, called "Kid" was based on the old 1960s Batman TV series, written from Robin's point of view. One of the things he had said in relation to the poem was that it was a way of showing that poems about heroic figures don't have to be written about ancient, mythical heroes and Gods, but can be about... well, whatever you want! So, I almost inevitably ended up writing poems about whatever I wanted - things that really interest me. I currently have two quite nice, light-hearted poems, one about Sherlock Holmes and one about the Daleks! I have recently, however, written one on a more serious issue that I really do have strong feelings about - soldiers and the army. More specifically, the "kill or be killed" mentality of soldiers, which I despise. Many of you might think I'm being ridiculous, and that way of thinking is fine, but one of the greatest and most inspirational people to have ever lived, in my opinion, was Mohandas Gandhi. Some of the quotes I have found from that one man show a greater wisdom than I think all the people of Earth today could ever manage. One of the best examples, which supports my point, comes from during WWII, when Gandhi said: "I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions...If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them." This is a belief and way of thinking that I honestly think we should all adopt and would make us all much greater people. The utter refusal to use weapons or to kill and to be willing to accept death instead of acting as though murder is acceptable. It is this way of thinking I am trying to promote through my most recent piece of writing. And that's one of the reasons I love writing so much. It's a way to spread your message, your feelings, your opinions through so many avenues of the imagination. Through new characters, or new worlds in stories and novels. Poetry, I find, allows you to directly give a message to your reader that they may not normally hear out - it allows you to give your argument with more power than simple, on-the-spot speech ever could. Writing spreads and contains your thoughts, keeping them alive forever. Long after you've left this life, your words can live on and continue to show your thoughts and emotions. That cannot be stopped by anything. And that, my dear reader, is truly why the keyboard is mightier than the machine gun.

Ideas, ideas everywhere...

I've gone into over-creative mode and I haven't got a clue why! Maybe it's my leg injury - physical weakness must make me stronger mentally! Like Davros, or Stephen Hawking (who I secretly suspect are the same person...). Alternatively it could be some complex psychological doo-hickey, due to being at my grandparents house, where I used to spend ages drawing, listening to stories, reading books and playing games when I was young, so some element of that has reawakened, or... I need Derren Brown to explain this properly. (In case you're wondering, the Doctor Who villain I suspect him of secretly being is the Master. Aimon Holmes is a Slitheen, Rick Astley is a Time Lord and wheelie bins are Daleks)!
So, creativity - good! Well, mostly good. When I have too many ideas on the go at once, it becomes hard to keep track and deal with them all! In this rush of new thoughts, I haven't given any thought to the book I'm writing (superhero novel, "Legion X") - in fact I seem to have thought about everything I'm writing and more, except the book! Unfortunately, this also includes new book ideas, which I'm going to want to work on. I know that I should focus on one thing at a time, if I want to get anything published, but now I'm having wonderful ideas of sci-fi and fantasy and writing like the amazing H.G. Wells! Like I said, I have no idea why! Although, for a while now I've been wanting to get hold of Wells' "The Time Machine". There's a whole beautiful atmosphere to older works of science fiction that isn't there with newer stuff. I mean, I love Doctor Who to no end, but there's a whole different style in the original "War of the Worlds". Science Fiction has changed into an almost completely different genre.
Also, I feel like writing something in an older era - maybe a more Dickensian setting, the sort of era "A Christmas Carol" was set in. Or just before WWI. There's certainly a nicer, sometimes much more exciting, atmosphere to these time eras in comparison with modern day. A more stylized feel, rather than cold electronics. For once, I do know where this feeling has come from! It's not so much one source of inspiration, but lots of little things. My recent obsession with Sherlock Holmes, the H.G. Wells books I've been wanting to read, period dramas being fired at us from left, right and centre, the old-fashioned 'steam-punk' style of Doctor Who's last Christmas special and the general brilliance of classical works of literature.
So! After all this, you're either bored out of your mind, wondering why you bothered to read this, or wanting to know what these amazing ideas of mine are! I'm going to imagine you've chosen the latter. In fact, could you please at leasr try to choose the latter?
Now, obviously I hate giving a lot away, because it ruins the surprise (shall I end the post there?), but I shall attempt to say something. This is where I test how formed my ideas really are - I find you never really know how strong an idea is until you write it out. I've been trying to pull together all of these elements I've been talking about into one - something new, creative, science fiction and set in an olden era. I'm particularly drawn to the pre-WWI era, because of a recently-made dramatization I saw a while ago of the book "The Thirty Nine Steps". If you've not seen it, I would thoroughly recommend it - it's action-packed, really exciting stuff! I've never read the book, but now it's another one on my wish list... Anyway, yes, the drama of that is one of my inspirations. "Where does the science fiction come into this diabolical scheme of story-writing which you have concocted?" I hear you ask! Well, I've had the idea of a conspiracy cover-up, probably from listening to my Dad too much (don't worry Dad, I'm sure that indisputable evidence for Global Warming isn't important at all...) and government cover-ups lend themselves beautifully to sci-fi. For example, there are real theories that the Queen is an alien space lizard. No, really...
So, the government are covering up something to do with our little green friends from other worlds. Not so creative and new yet is it? Been done before, you say? Don't worry, I'm working on it! This isn't going to be the same old "UFO Crashes, government stops people from knowing" type storyline. Like all good ideas, this one is taking its time to grow and develop in my head, but I've had a few good thoughts on it. Like I said, I don't want to give too much away, but once some of it is written, or I've got a whole storyline, I may post an extract or a blurb right here on this very blog!
As I said, I am in a very creative mindset and, as if to prove it to you, I have had many other little ideas floating around in the warped labyrinth of my mind. I still love the idea of a Dickensian setting and I'm feeling particularly attracted to a fantasy storyline. Vampires, perhaps? A chance to do Vampires properly, after the saga of "names based on periods of time involving certain stages of the sun and the moon" embarassment. And then there are various ideas of Romance and Insanity on my mind, which will hopefully all be woven into my writing at some point. Also, what do you people of the internet think of the name "Supervillain" for a drama series. It's one of my early ideas for the BBC! My incredible plan is to start writing a script for them now, spend a couple of years getting it perfect and then send it in to the beeb, via their Writersroom website!
Anyway, now I'll have to wrap up this post as it's humungous, I need to knock all these ideas into some sort of tangible shape and order and my brother has just handed me a fez, which I will need to try on. Fezzes are cool!

Holmes is where the heart is...

So! Long time no post, but I'm back - at last! :)

Okay, the biggest news going on in my strange isolated script-writing world is that mine and my friends' Doctor Who series has officially been put on hold. Hopefully filiming will resume/begin during the summertime. The other bit of very big news, though, is that a new series is going into production very soon. Not Doctor Who this time, but, as the title to this post suggests, Sherlock Holmes!
To be precise, a modernisation of Sherlock Holmes, currently entitled "Consulting Detective", which sees Holmes and Watson as students at Baker Street university, currently sharing a room in one of the university's provided flats for students (flat 221b, of course)! The series also stars a range of other detectives, some brand new, some from the original stories, including a certain Miss Adler...
Obviously, I can't give too much away about the series but, if all goes well script-wise, filming should commence this weekend, on episode one - A Study In Black! Unusually for one of the films my crazy lot produce, the script for this one isn't being written by me, but instead, by my friend Adam Lawson, who has starred in and helped write episodes for our past YouTube series. The role of script-editor is the one that has befallen me for episode one, which basically means I have lots of long email exchanges with Adam, talking about which parts get changed, what would work better from the audience's point of view, etc. And I must say it is enormous fun discussing all theses wonderful scripty things with someone!
Little has been decided about episodes three and four yet (except which books they might be based on - but we don't want to spoil that for you!), but three is another of Adam's and, hopefully, we will work together as much as possible on four. Episode two, however, is being written by yours truly! Without giving too much away, think "Sherlock Holmes vs. the EDL"...
Anyway, now I'm going to have to start editing and writing these scripts, like I should be right now, instead of posting on this blog. See you all soon!

"You have a careers appointment booked"...

Why is it, most of the time, whenever people ask me what I want to do as a career, I say I don't know? I know perfectly well what I want to do as a career, and that is to write scripts and novels. But, nevertheless, I probably have many distant relatives, whom I have met at obscure family dos, that think I am clueless about the future!
So, the title of this post - I suppose I should explain it. Earlier this week I had a "careers appointment" at school. What's that? It's a large building where people under sixteen go to learn and earn qualifications, but that's not important right now.
Oh, what's a careers appointment? Basically, anyone in year ten/eleven in my school can have them (or it might just be year elevens) and you go to this meeting with the school's careers teacher/advisor (I'd better not use names, just in case!) and discuss career options. At some point in our school lives, students in my year had to fill out a form giving four career options we would consider, so that was used as a starting point in the meeting. Of course, on mine were author and script writer.
And so, I finally had a serious conversation with someone I don't know particularly well about what I want to do as a career. And yes, we looked at the negatives. The fact that screenwriting is very competitive and many writers only do it as a part time job, but we did look at how it would suit me and what it was like, covering positives and negatives. And, strangely, despite all the negatives, I feel far more confident about going into screenwriting than I did before. Maybe it's because for one of the first times, I've actually looked at it as a serious career, rather than just something I want to do. The negatives almost make it seem more possible!
So I think the meeting went well. I got some good script-related websites out of it as well, which I'm in the process of looking through. Found out that the standard script format is called "mastershot" format, which won't realy help, as I already knew what the format was, but at least I know another name for it now (I'd previously heard it referred to as just "the standard script format"). And, out of all this, as you can probably guess, I'm now in a writing mood!
I know I should work on my book more, because that is something I can publish and earn money from. And I can do that regardless of age. But all I can think about are the fan film scripts for me and my friends' Doctor Who series! Which is annoying, because I want to start episode 3, because I know how it's going to start, but I don't know what happens after the first scene! I'll have to think on it...
Also, in Who news, I've got the script for episode 2 down to 35 pages, which is a massive decrease! How did I do it? I... brought the font size down... no great editing feat there then!
Keep watching the blog for updates! If I ever get round to working on my novel again, then I will hopefully explain more about it on here.
Take care people!

The good, the bad and the Algarve

I have just returned from a holdiay in the Algarve, in Portugal! Which means I'm full of lots of new ideas and I've also lost a few old ones... actually, due to committing the dangerous act of thinking about something too much, I'm now an episode short on my Doctor Who fan series. Damn. The episode that's been lost would have been set on a train, in the old west and had lots of amazingly complex wibbly wobbly timey wimey... stuff. However, I finally convinced myself that there is no way we could film on a train. So now I need another episode. I have one or two ideas, but I'm still not sure...
Anyway, whilst on holiday I found, like everyone does, that there is actually a lot of time in the evening and some time in the morning where you can't go out or do anything and so you just end up watching TV. Which then annoys you, because you realise you could be doing this at home! So you try to kid yourself into thinking it's alright because you have different channels. Ha.
So. TV on holiday. In the evening, after a busy day doing the mad things people do on holidays and then going to a restaurant, so you're too tired to care about what you're watching. And that's why I ended up watching some of the chavvy teen soaps rubbish I never usually would - Wallaby Road (Hm? What's that? Waterloo? Yes, nice song, but now's not the time.). The funny thing is though - from a writer's point of view - there is some good stuff in that show! It was on a dodgy "BBC Entertainment" channel, so I don't know how old the episode was, but they had a school student, who you saw with drugs (I don't know whether his reason for having the drugs was revealed already - if so, then it's not quite as good as it could have been) and all the teachers were having a go at him, saying he was a druggy (a teacher accused him of "sniffing crack" - that was bad! No real teacher would do that!) and later you see him at home, with his mum, who's shaking and not in control of herself. It turns out the drugs were a medicine for her and he's a home carer. That is good drama! And he wouldn't admit to it because he was scared his mum would be taken away by a hospital, or social services, or something. That show might be largely codswallop (I love that word!) but that was incredible. I'd say the writer deserves an award if it wasn't for the rest of the garbage he or she had put into that episode. A boy in a prison school for dangerous driving, whilst his girlfriend keeps going to the police, trying to take the blame for him. ZzZzZzZzZzZzZz... Wouldn't really happen. No relationship is that strong when you're "14" (that actress was not 14!). And then the girl tries to prove it by crashing a van into a bin. HAHAHAHA! BORING! And, again, it would never really happen.
So there was a small glimmer of hope in Wallaby Road (would you stop saying Waterloo?!!! I'm not interested in ABBA right now!) but it was largely consumed by the average nonsense that appeals to the average teenager. But, that show wasn't the worst thing I'd seen. It got much worse...
2 Fast 2 Furious? More like the... you know, 2 *something insulting that rhymes with fast* 2 *something insulting that rhymes with furious*. What a total pile of codswallop! (I said I liked that word!) Dialogue that people would never use in real life, characters that wouldn't exist in real life, doing things you wouldn't get away with in real life in a film that is a gross mockery of real life. It's so childish! According to the vast knowledge of the internet, that film was a PG13 in the USA, which I suppose means 12A in the Queen's English. My brother is 11 and he got bored with that film. It's really aimed at young children that film. Even the over-the-top swearing. Little kids find that cool. By the time you've grown up a bit, you realise swearing is everywhere in modern films and TV, so it's not a big deal. And it becomes obvious they just put the ridiculously exaggerated swearing in to make it look cool to young kids. The problem is, no parent would let a 4 year old watch that film. In fact, no human being should let themself watch that film. A whole gang of muscle cars race down a main road, ducking and weaving in between lanes and other vehicles and not one police car shows up. Lines like "I've got a problem with authority!" really make you cringe. NOBODY SAYS THAT! And if they do, nobody replies "I've got that same problem!" Two main characters talking about the film's cliche girlfriend character. Guy 1: "Why are you checking her out?" Guy 2: "I'm not." Cut to: the two of them at a dinner table. Awkward pause, due to bad editing. They sit down. "Guy 1: "Yeah you were!" Guy 2: "Yeah, okay, I was."
I hate it when writers assume our conversations will randomly stop and then continue a considerable amount of time later, from the exact same point we left off, just so that the audience can convienently hear the whole conversation, whilst one scene can still neatly cut to the next. Also, nobody changes their mind that fast! "No I wasn't." "Yeah you were." "Yeah, okay, I was!" Nobody has ever been so easy to convince in the history of humanity!
So, that's that film destroyed forever. Apart from some dodgy TV, the Alrgarve was great! And I now have a notebook to write down all my ideas and plans for different writing projects.
GOOD NEWS: The script for episode 2 of my Doctor Who fan series has been started! By me, obviously. It's called "Sword And Sceptre"! I love that name because originally I was going to call it "Knightmare" (being a medieval episode) but that was a horrible, pun-ridden name!

AG :)

Finishing touches

I was looking through the DW episode 1 script again. No changes necessary, really. Just one short scene added in at the end to set up a story arc for the series. It was unlikely I was ever going to make changes anyway. I can't stand editing! And, as it's a fanfilm, we can make changes to it as we go along anyway.

Annoying thing about fan films: the storyline is always overlooked! People talk about the editing/cgi the most. There's always mention of acting and locations as well, but the only people who ever pick up on the storyline are other fanfilm makers!

Scripts update

Me and my friends are working on a fanmade Doctor Who series, as we are all big fans of the show and I was easily influenced (or inspired) by other people who had done the same. I love doing it though, because it means I get to write big mad sci-fi scripts.
Anyway, the important update, the script for episode 1 is complete! Woohoo! Now to abandon my plan to write all the scripts before we start filming and leave the episode 2 script until I actually want to write it! It's not that I don't want to now, but there's a difference between wanting to get something written and wanting to write it. Starting something new, whether it's a new script or novel, scene or chapter, is always the hardest part. It's easier to write something when you have something to continue directly from, rather than having to start a whole new piece.
Anyway, I should probably slow down on the posts. The blog's brand new and nobody's reading yet! Oh well, I'm sure they will soon...

Introduction to the blog

Hello there! Welcome to my world!

This is that really awkward and slightly cheesy post where I have to explain who I am without sounding too childish. Hopefully you're all familiar with this sort of introduction, so bear with me!

My name is Andrew Gladman, I'm 15 years old and starting my final year of secondary school. I'm also a keen writer. I spend most of my writing time on scripts for short films, but I'm also currently working on a novel for publication, which I can't give too much away about! Sorry! Occasionally I also write stories just for fun of it; however, I don't tend to do this because the other forms of writing I do are also for fun, even if they have the secondary purpose of being published or used for an amateur film.

In this blog, which has been inspired by Russel T. Davies' and Benjamin Cook's book "The Writer's Tale" I want to talk about the process and joy of writing. I doubt I'm the first to do a blog like this and hopefully I won't be the last!

One final thing: I'm not a chav and this is not a chavvy blog: if I make any spelling mistakes please correct me! If you can comment on Blogger blog posts. I haven't used this much before...