We’re not theatre people. We’re screenwriters. Tim Clague and I. We’ve spent almost three decades pitching to commissioners, waiting for notes, rewriting on spec, and getting very good at absorbing rejection with the kind of stoicism that would impress Seneca The Younger. So naturally, we wrote a play. The honest version of how that happened starts with frustration. Scripts get rejected. Development deals stall. AI starts doing things that make you wonder what you’re actually

T here’s a scene in Train Dreams where a man walks into a clearing and shoots someone dead. It happens in a single wide shot. No dramatic camera push, no close-up on the gun, no slow-motion. I’ve been thinking about the scene a lot (and the film as a whole, plenty to immerse yourself in); it taught me something about storytelling structure I want to unpack. Train Dreams is a film on Netflix, adapted from Denis Johnson’s novella, starring Joel Edgerton as Robert Grainier, a ra

I’ve recommended two scripts in my entire reading career. Two. Out of thousands of scripts I read for Working Title Films, Pathé, UK Film Council, Tiger Aspect, Miramax, and assorted others when I was an active industry reader betwixt 2000-2010. The pay was £35 for a three-page report, £50 if they wanted it longer. Ten scripts per week, sometimes with books thrown in. One-week turnaround, sometimes overnight. Here’s what I was looking for, and the process I developed over a f

Writers sometimes sigh wearily when questioned ‘why’ by execs. It’s become a bit of a cliché or a frustrated punchline. But that...

When I was 20, recovering from a physical and depressive collapse (culminating in an extremely under-active thyroid), I spent most of my...

Writing is rewriting. According to Ernest Hemingway, it’s the only kind of writing. I’ve been doing a lot of rewriting recently but it’s...