Getting the right title makes all the difference. No Country For Old Men tells you that this is going to be about more than a killer with an unusual modus operandi: no, this is a film that has a worldview. There Will Be Blood is a stark title that prefigures not just the blood within a film about the early days of the oil industry, but all the blood that has been spilled since in the pursuit for oil. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind refers to a classification of the type of UFO sighting that the film is about, and conjures up an air of mystery even before the poster is seen.

And then there are other titles, that don’t say or do a whole lot, even though they’re sometimes attached to good films. Michael Clayton could be a VAT inspector or a vet: lucky for all of us he turned out to be played by George Clooney in an excellent thriller. Trainspotting was a brave choice of title for the film it was attached to, and worked because when you did encounter it, it was on an iconic poster that clearly didn’t refer to Intercity 125s.

I’ve come up with some good and some less good titles for projects over the years. Recently I was developing a story that I really wanted to call Pad Thai for reasons that make all kind of sense, and because I like the sound. Only, naming your film after a foreign dish, when that film is low budget and probably won’t get much marketing if it gets made, is probably an unwise move. The alternative I came up with is workable, but not nearly as memorable.

Perhaps the canniest title I’ve come up with is for my series about drug workers, The Sharp End. That references the edgy world in which the drug workers operate, while also alluding to injections, and some people will also pick up a reference to ‘sharps’. Spot on, I think. And the pilot script is titled Blue Tuesday, which is half a skit on the song Blue Monday, and also a real term used by some drug workers (Tuesday is when heavy ecstasy-users will feel at their worst after a weekend of partying).

For some reason, writers of television shows often reference song titles in the episodes they’re writing. But what I find really annoying is the pernicious habit of sitcoms being named after hackneyed phrases. Hence In Sickness And In Health, Pushing Up The Daisies, Man About The House: if they can’t come up with a title that shows any signs of originality, it doesn’t bode well for the actual show.

If you’ve got the name right, then you’ve done an important part of branding your film or tv show. Some people get sniffy about the intrusion of a word like branding into the world of screenwriting, but I’m using it for its accuracy. Good writing of any kind has a lot in common with branding: it’s about getting across a core message succinctly, and that’s a skillset that applies both to advertising and scriptwriting. Plus, I like winding people up, so if you feel that way, maybe you shouldn’t have such obvious handles for me to pull.

There’s a danger that writing for screen encourages writers to think in shorthand, to use stereotypes that are familiar because they’ve been successfully used in film and television before. Don’t expect to find any insight into crime and character in Guy Ritchie’s films, in other words: they exist in relation to other fictional depictions of gangsters on screen, and not the real world as anyone I know recognises it.

Compare Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels with the real life villainy depicted in Donal MacIntyre’s feature documentary A Very British Gangster, and you’ll understand why some people opt for the likes of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall over the joys of the burger van that pulls up outside TK Maxx on a Saturday night to catch the drinkers.

MacIntyre’s film follows the complex life of crime boss Dominic Noonan over three years, giving an intimate portrait of a family that lays down the law in its patch of Manchester. Noonan is a very bright guy, as you’d need to be to track the machinations and deal with the potential problems of a criminal empire involved in importing drugs, dispensing homegrown justice in brutal fashion, and dealing with rivalries within and outside the Noonan clan.

So far, so familiar. We’d expect a crime boss to be smart and capable. But this one is many other things too. He speaks the language of the Asian family who ensured that he was fed when he was growing up and his parents were often too busy in the cells to get dinner ready for the kids. He’s involved in helping the local community to sort its family and other problems out, sometimes acting alongside social workers to ensure that domestic situations are dealt with in ways that assist the most vulnerable. And he’s gay, which is still a surprise for some people when they think about tough guys.

Those facets aren’t contradictory, by the way: they’re human, and scratch pretty much anyone and you’ll find an equally complex mesh of drives and traits and personality quirks. If only more drama reflected that richness. Sure, there always have been some writers, directors, and actors comfortable with rounded characters, but it’d be lovely to see more.

Writers agent and founder of ScriptWriter magazine Julian Friedmann urges aspiring writers to study psychology at degree level, before doing an MA in screenwriting when they’ve got some life experience under their belts. Personally, I’m not at all convinced about the need for any qualifications, though some kind of training can help people shape raw concepts into structured stories.

I won the Times competition that secured me a meeting with Working Title’s Tim Bevan on the basis of the first film treatment I ever wrote without having seen an actual film treatment, or having much clue about what to put into one. And there are times when what I’ve applied myself to learning about the craft of screenwriting since then has got in the way of the stories I actually wanted to tell, and got me involved in projects that, in retrospect, I’d have been better off turning down.

So be it. At any rate I’ve kept learning, about writing, about television and film, and most importantly about people. And the more capacity you have to understand people, yourself included, the more you’ll be able both to work with them and to create fully realised characters to put at the heart of the stories you want to tell. It’s their distinctiveness that will give your script its edge, even if you’re working in a genre where writers get away with two-dimensional characterisation. You don’t have to make the same mistake that they chose to perpetuate.

Last night’s episode of The Bill was even more go-go-go than usual. It was the concluding episode of a two-parter, and the lads and lasses from Sun Hill station were charged with busting an internet paedophile ring before the bad guys could do a live broadcast of an 8 year old boy being abused.

Where The Bill distinguishes itself from other emergency service dramas is in being committed to telling one story at a time. Sure, they often use B stories, but that’s as far as it goes, and B and A stories often dovetail in some fashion. This isn’t like Holby City, where five or so plots jostle for position: what The Bill excels at is mapping out the procedures that the police would use in working on a particular crime.

What you’re getting then, is an under-the-hood look at police operations that, though fictionalised, have at least some basis in reality. This particular storyline was a chance to showcase a unit of police using computers to track down crime – not regular cast members, but relevant specialists whose work was an important part of getting the case closed.

We could get into the realm of whether stories about paedophilia are suitable for pre-watershed viewing, but given the subject is all over newspapers and kids are aware of it, the issue is, I believe, more to do with the way that it’s handled. And on that front, it was all very carefully thought through. The 8 year old victim was of course in serious jeapordy, but at no point did we see anything untoward happen to him, and the story ended with a happy resolution, kiddy reunited with family and evidence enough to bang up a national network of nonces.

Less important than the destination was the journey however, which featured some very strong writing, particularly in the excellent interview scenes. These are a Bill staple, and were particularly well done on this occasion, as a cool customer was broken down with the threat of what would happen to his own children in the event of his non-cooperation. That led the team to an allegedly recovered paedophile, a slippery customer who led the cops on a merry dance and did his best to shake them off his trail. He didn’t bank on the persistence of stalwart Terry, who realised that the man was goading him with the intention of putting him off the trail of a clue, and worked out what it was.

That was where things went wrong for me in an otherwise strong episode: the bad guy had an internet alias drawn from Greek mythology, and what he was trying to keep from Terry’s attention was his Big Book of Mythology. On the entry concerning his namesake, he had ringed a sequence of letters that served as his password for the computer server where all the filth was kept. Hmm.

That device of the password felt a bit clunky, but the pace of the episode was so fast that it wasn’t long before it was forgotten. That meant the audience could instead get the vicarious thrill of the heroes battering down the doors of the house where the live paedo broadcast was coming from, and bringing down a few scumbags in the process.

That makes the story sounds simpler than it was though. There were some interesting stuff featuring the victim’s mother and his hapless junkie uncle, and the dance between Terry and his antagonist was well realised and drew on Terry’s own experience of abuse in an understated way. Very nicely done, and a reminder that The Bill delivers crime drama from a police perspective to a high standard on a regular basis.

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Congratulations to regular reader Griff Phillips on his contribution to BBC7 show Tilt last night. This comes just a while after being a semi-finalist in The Sitcom Trials with his script Art for Art’s Sake, which I did a report on.

Sometimes, just a few words can open up a whole new world. A very down to earth friend of mine of pagan inclination was vexed by a woman who, when various witchy types were assembled in the woods one full moon, asked “shall we go skyclad?”. For those unaware – that will probably be most of you, since it’s a particularly precious piece of faux-Wiccan terminology – skyclad means naked. My friend’s response was characteristic: “I don’t know about that love, but let’s get our kit off”. Perfect.

Yesterday’s Independent presented a similarly novel world in response to a question posed to a fashion designer. Asked where he’d rather be at that moment, he replied “At the gym having a glamour pump to get ready for the weekend”.

Wow. I scarcely know where to start. But let’s go with the notion of a ‘glamour pump’. Face it, that has to be the single least heterosexual reason a man ever went into a gym. Sure, straight men are there partly there to buff up for whatever women they’re planning to impress, but there’s something deliciously camp about the expression ‘glamour pump’, with its implicit resonance of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, a legion of high-kicking Vegas showgirls, and other gorgeously footed women from the biz that is show.

What’s also wonderful about ‘glamour pump’ is that it subverts the notion that the gym is a place for men to work out. No, this is all about preening and play, a fact made clear by the purpose of the activity ‘to get ready for the weekend’. Of course: this is Saturday night we’re talking about. Never mind beefy rugby players aiming for whatever trophies they play for, you need to be just as buff – or at any rate feel it – to score on the dance floor.

When you’re writing dialogue, aim for lines as dense in meaning and implication as the one we’ve pulled apart there. Language can convey many layers within one utterance. A single sentence can convey a character’s worldview, status, perception of another’s status, convictions, doubts, and more besides. Here are a few examples from the notebook I keep to collect random utterances from people I overhear – as well as enjoying them, start to build up a picture of what must be true about the person for them to be saying the words they release into the world:

“Lime has that sublime, beyond lemony thing.”

“She’s definitely retired: Christmas party with the watercolour group.”

“I don’t believe it’s going to happen but if it does happen it’s going to take a long time and be gruelling.”

“I have to acknowledge you right now as a woman.”

“Eating chickpeas off their caravan doorstep.”

Fascinating, isn’t it, the details that people pick up on as relevant in their worldview? ‘Chickpeas’, not chicken and chips. ‘Acknowledging’ someone (how, exactly?) merely because they happen to belong to one gender, and not another. And the more effort we put into creating dialogue that’s rich with assumptions and values, the more convincing the characters we create will be. That doesn’t mean writing lots of dialogue, as all these examples indicate: a few choice words with just the right nuance can speak volumes.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Charles Mingus. I started with the album Ah Um, recognised as a classic and without a doubt featuring a composer with a strong and distinct voice setting him apart from some of the other big names in jazz. And then I took a step backwards and picked up a set of 10 CDs for £8, one of those dubious bootleg collections that I typically avoid. Only, on this occasion, I was curious, and my curiosity has been rewarded.

The CDs chart Mingus’s time as a bassist sideman with a variety of other peoples’ bands in the forties and fifties, and seem (information is sketchy) to be taken from contemporary radio broadcasts. It’s a fascinating glimpse into an era of jazz that I’d not explored much before now, featuring bands playing tunes many of which are now regarded as standards, but at the time were just the pop hits of the day. And there are glimpses of what’s to come for Mingus, in some of the more eccentric arrangements, playful chorus vocals by band members, idiosyncratic takes on the blues.

You can chart much the same progress with some writers. The recently dead Anthony Minghella started out writing for tv on Jim Henson’s The Storyteller, and I’m betting the stories he developed there weren’t as moving and memorable as what he went on to achieve in Truly Madly Deeply or The English Patient. And why would they be? There’s a world of difference between being a journeyman writer on someone else’s tv show and creating your own feature film from scratch. Not, I’m sure, that he’d have put less than 100% into writing for Henson, or Inspector Morse, or whatever else – but there’s a substantial difference between applying yourself to someone else’s intellectual property and coming up with your own. I know this myself from the difference between writing for Doctors and coming up with my own series and pilot episode for it: much as I learned from the first, the second has been even more valuable for me though no one has yet given me any money for it.

It’s traditional to assume that some people are fully fledged genii from birth, but I’m dubious about that. Orson Welles is often raised at this point as an example of someone who wowed people with his first film, Citizen Kane. But a bit of investigation and you’ll discover that Welles wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a film set if he hadn’t already impressed with a strong track record in theatre and radio drama. Welles had been writing, performing and directing for a decade or more at the point that he made Kane at the age of 25.

So, judging by the examples of Mingus, Minghella, and Welles, the issue about when genius strikes is primarily to do with how you learn from your experiences, and what beliefs form about your capabilities and limitations. And some people have healthier beliefs about themselves than others. Why would Steven Spielberg be troubled by self-doubt about his ability to make films when he’s been making them since he was less than ten? They’re just something he does: all that’s changed is the scale.

Conversely, other people have experiences that they choose to let limit them in the future: having had a bad experience working on his biggest film, Once Upon A Time In The Midlands, Shane Meadows has retreated to making films on a smaller scale. Which isn’t to disparage the films he’s made since, Dead Man’s Shoes and This Is England: both have been very successful for him. Not that I’m in any position to tell Mr Meadows what to do, mind, but having heard him talk at screenings about the trauma he experienced working on his biggest film (in financial/logistical terms), it’d be good for Shane to get some therapy and rethink the notion of working on a large scale…I’d love to see his Seven Samurai, or Godfather based on a Uttoxeter crime dynasty.

So, J.K. Rowling has said she was suicidal at some points early on, before a publisher had taken Harry Potter on board.  Thankfully, a GP pointed her in the direction of assistance in the form of cognitive behavioural therapy, and a nation – world even – of Potter fans is grateful.

And it’s not just her.  Poets seemingly adopt depression as a career move, though as a strategy for career success it’s a questionable one.  But is there really a link between mental health and creativity?  Well, inasmuch as the state that you’re in will shape the writing that you do, I don’t see why not.  But let’s not get caught up in the romance of the depressed artist: that’s tiresome bullshit.  It was no fun being Spike Milligan a lot of the time, or Ian Curtis, or Dorothy Parker.

Does being depressed give you any extra insight into life?  Hmm.  Maybe it gives you some added perspective about yourself, a subject people tend to think about a lot when they’re down.  But can those understandings really be said to be applicable to the world at large?  That’s a very Eeyore view of things, and not one I buy into. 

Without a doubt, there are aspects of experience of depression or mental illness that can fuel creativity – in Rowling’s case, it’s easy to map the Dementors in her books onto experience of depression.  I nearly wrote ‘profound depression’ there, which would have been to fall into a trap: depression doesn’t have special meaning or give anyone added insight into the functioning of the world, it is more a filter through which life is experienced.

So, a writer’s – or anyone’s – experience of mental health will shape the way they communicate, for sure.  But will it do so more than their experience of being, say, an account executive, a lover, a parent?  I’m not at all convinced that it does. 

At this point I may as well play the expert card: I have been diagnosed bipolar, so should in theory know what I’m talking about.  Only, I don’t especially agree with that diagnosis, and tend much more towards the manic end of things.  And that experience tells me that, again, mental health experience can shape creativity: I come up with some huge all-encompassing ideas at times like those…but I come up with some huge ideas anyway. 

One science fiction epic I’ve toyed with came about after getting tired working on low budget naturalistic short films: I wanted to let rip with something impossible, and did so with glee.  But was that because I’m apparently manic sometimes (this was before I was diagnosed) or because I was bored of grubbing round at the level I’d been caught up in for a while?

So, I’ve got mixed ideas about these things.  I applaud J.K. Rowling for speaking up about a subject that’s still taboo in some respects.  And like the fact that she’s made no explicit connection between her illness and her creativity.  Sure, it’s there, kind of.  But so is the link between depression and car crashes, schizophrenia and Italian food, anorexia and soccer.

In other words, there is a link…if you want to find it.  Problem being, some of the people who’ve forged links between mental health and creativity have mythologised a universal experience, that affects people regardless of whether they’re paid to be creative or not, blowing hot air up the skirts of Dame Art and forgetting everybody else who goes through the same stuff.

There comes a point in a writing project when you know it’s come together and is waiting to be written.  Which tells you one difference between me and many writers; I don’t write every day.  More than that, I don’t believe it’s necessary to do so. 

Oh, sure, it’s useful to build up your writing muscles by learning how to write consistently for a few hours at a time.  But having got to that point, which I learned to do a long time ago by working in ad agencies, I’ve found that the most important part of the writing process is the gestation period.

This is where self-sabotage and other such bullshit can come in.  I know myself well enough to know when I’m ready to get a sizeable chunk of writing done.  But it can take a while to get there, and there’s no point kidding yourself about it.  There absolutely are times you need to be disciplined and apply bum to seat and fingers to keyboard, make no mistake.  And having been there and found out what that’s about, it’s possible to move on and learn through experience what happens as you’re gestating a story.

Note that the metaphor is a very organic one, and that’s because it feels very much like that.  Put crudely, in the same way that you know when you need to dump, you discover what feeling is attached to needing to write.  And it is a need when you’ve got in tune with that process. 

Somewhere unconsciously, processes have been coming up with a bunch of cool stuff on your behalf: your part of the deal is to get that cool stuff down on paper when the time is right.  Ignore it, and there’s a chance you’ll scupper your relationship with whatever it is that produces cool stuff for you: simply, if you do nothing with it, how can you be trusted to make use of it in the future?

Analogies about elves making shoes, as per folklore, can be made at this point.  Treat your elves well, and they will reward you with everything from steel capped Dr Martens boots to stilettos, snazzy trainers to flip flops.  So, what goes into the proper care and feeding of elves?  Principally, a varied diet of sensory stimuli and the opportunity for regular rest and recreation.  The greater the input, the greater the output.

However busy I am, I find time for catching up with friends, going to see films, listening to music and pottering online.  All of those experiences help build up a sensory and conceptual database that the elves can utilise for…inspiration for next season’s shoes, to stretch an already weary analogy. 

Put your trust in that process, and you can achieve wonders when you need to.  I once participated in a charity event, where over the course of 4 hours in a drafty railway station, I fulfilled nearly 20 commissions at the request of commuters, working at a typewriter on a table.  Some of them wanted short stories, some wanted poems, others wanted a piece to keep their children entertained.  And each gave me some kind of framework for the writing that they wanted, choosing items, characters and themes from a menu. 

Madam wants a story of revenge featuring a crimson dress and a work colleague?  Very well.  Just after I’ve finished Sir’s science fiction drama involving an intelligent octopus.  And then I can get round to a rhyming yarn about Thomas the Tank Engine for the young man in the pushchair.

I’m just ready to reach the writing point for a tv treatment that’s been cooking in my head for a while now.  I’ve already got some of it down, and in the process realised how much more I needed to do, in a style that’s new to me.  Now it’s ready, I can spend time getting it down in written form, and then send it off for feedback before taking it to script stage.

The Spirit was a classic Sunday newspaper detective strip, originated by Will Eisner and delivered by him and his team from 1940 for the next 12 years. Eisner and crew delivered fast and witty crime-fighting action for a family audience, drawing on the vocabulary of cinema while also accomplishing artistic feats that could only be achieved in the context of comics. The stories were short, and often featured mysterious noirish women who would embroil the strip’s protagonist Denny Colt in adventures taking in fisticuffs, fast talking and foreign locations.

From time to time there have been attempts to revive The Spirit under creative teams who have shone elsewhere but typically fail to get under the skin of this very particular piece of comic history. Most recently, and most successfully, that revival has been undertaken by Darwyn Cooke, an animator who’s also made a name for himself in the comics world in recent years.

Cooke is the ideal person to bring The Spirit back, his work emerging from a timeless Americana with elements of deco and diners. And dames. Darwyn loves the dames, and renders them beautifully with the assistance of J. Bone on inks and Dave Stewart’s wonderful colours.

Despite the retro elements, Darwyn Cooke’s interpretation has one foot in the modern world. The first story in the hardback collecting the first seven issues has Denny rescuing reporter Ginger Coffee from the attentions of a mob boss, only for her to turn the tables and declare that it’s she who rescued him, the story of their escape broadcast live using her mobile phone. It’s a neat repositioning of the hero and his world, while still in keeping with old school versions of the story. Plus, it rehabilitates the black character Ebony White, here Denny’s proactive cab driver, formerly a two-dimensional caricature the subject of much debate among Spirit fans and detractors.

The first six stories reprinted are inventive examples of how a concept can be reinvented while remaining true to its roots. The stories are by no means radical, but are executed with utter panache: the visual detail and frame by frame storytelling is often superb. This is pulp fiction of the highest order, and I’ll be picking up the remaining stories when they’re collected on that basis.

What doesn’t work for me is the final tale, a limp Batman crossover that exists merely to showcase the supporting casts of both characters. The effect is like following round a group of tourists in an art gallery. Mona Lisa, check. That Picasso one, check. A random Dali, check. All lined up and consumed within seconds, no time for engagement or contemplation because there’ll be another one along any minute. The story in question is written by Jeph Loeb, and not Darwyn Cooke, whose art remains strong even as the story continues to grind on.

Make no mistake, if you’re looking for edgy contemporary crime fiction, you’ve come to the wrong place. But if you’re at all interested in how one of today’s leading comic creators can reinvigorate a seventy year old title and do so with effortless pizzazz, then Darwyn Cooke’s take on The Spirit is for you.

How do you know when you’ve got a viable character for a story, and what do you do to develop one?  Writers sometimes speak of the experience of a character communicating to them as they write, and determining their actions and the path of the story.  It’s an experience I’ve had and enjoyed, and it’s true to say that the more time you spend with a character, the more likely it is to happen.

But sometimes characters are designed to fit a particular story, which is as sensible a way of going about these things as any.  For instance, I’m working on a low budget thriller, and I want there to be a substantial character arc for the protagonist as the story unfolds.  In a way, the story is like a Greek tragedy, as a father confronts the true horror of his family situation, realised through a simple and inexpensive visual motif that I’ve not seen anyone use.  So: result, a story that uses a visual storytelling method to reveal character over the course of 90 minutes.  And all stemming from the constraints of a single location story.

At other times, character has determined story for me.  A long time ago I wrote a script about very gothic twins, who occupied a leaky Victorian house on the outskirts of town.  Sister Damson couldn’t leave the house owing to her stigmata, so it was up to brother Ethan to be the breadwinner — only all he was interested in was learning how to astrally project.  Once that situation was established, other pieces fell into place.  Ethan sends off for a correspondence course on the magical arts that includes the skull of the twins’ former governess, Mrs Treaclestreet, and our central cast thus grows to three: the twins, plus their governess, who fled the country to elude them, and now finds herself stuck with them once more in spectral form.  All very well for a freeform radio comedy, but not ideal for the rigours and beats of a feature screenplay.

In practice, I suspect that the father I’ve developed for the thriller will start to develop something like a life of his own once I actually get away from planning the story and start to write it.  I suspect what’s meant by ‘a character that writes itself’ is a set of mental knowledge of their biography and shorthand understanding of processes that drive them.  I tend to be very sketchy on the character biography front.  Lots of books recommend doing a detailed one, but in practice I’m a lot more interested in the processes by which they operate: if history is needed, I’ll concoct some on the spot.

One way to achieve that goal of complexity through simplicity is to nominate three rules by which the character will determine their choices.  For instance:

1 – do to others as you would have them do unto you.

2 – there’s always room in life for some more money.

3 – it’s us the Joneses should be keeping up with. 

Which seems straightforward enough.  Where it becomes interesting is when those two or more operating assumptions come into conflict.  For instance, what if the Joneses invest in a swimming pool, and the only way to trump them involves making money by doing something underhand?  Would that be swallowed as part of the character’s belief system, making them a potential hypocrite?  Would they go and make the money but feel bad about what they’ve done to achieve it?  If so, how does that feeling bad manifest itself?  Donations to charity driven by guilt?  Hatred of the Joneses for having driven them to behave badly?  And so on.

It’s an interesting way to develop characters, and one that provides much more fascination for me than lengthy and detailed histories.  It’s also an exercise that can be applied to fictional or real characters of your acquaintance: what operational assumptions guide their behaviour, where do they produce conflict, and how is that conflict resolved (if it is)?  Have that at the back of your mind next time you watch a favourite tv programme, see George Bush addressing the world, or bump into your neighbours.

I’m staying in Anglesey at the moment, and that presents entirely different scenery to what I’m used to in Nottingham.  Mountains straddle the landscape, visible pretty much wherever you are.  Forests reach down to the sea.  And there’s a fraction of the amount of traffic I’m used to seeing.  All of this makes me think in terms of location.  It’s a key aspect of screenwriting with the potential to have a big effect on the audience.

Look at the cosy Sunday night shows that bring big television audiences in.  Monarch of the Glen, Last of the Summer Wine, Heartbeat: all shows with a strong sense of time and place…even the ones that are set in the here and now feel like they belong to a bygone age.  Set your characters against a horizon, and they and their horizons can’t help seem bigger.  Look at No Country For Old Men: the raw story could have been the basis of a middling thriller.  But in the hands of the Coen Brothers, and as adapted from a book by Cormac McCarthy, it becomes a story about life and death itself when experienced through characters living in the space Texas presents.

Contrast that with the world presented in Se7en.  A corrupt city where the protagonist is trying to  get out and build himself a place in the sticks.  A monolith of a place where rain lashes inhabitants like a scourge for their sins.

These things are worth thinking about.  let’s take the subject of yesterday’s blog, a mutated episode of The Fixer, and move it to Anglesey.  Immediately, the story has a different feel.  And a key decision has to be made: what world did Jude the killer come from before being settled in a safe house in North Wales?  Odds are, his crimes happened in a city, at which point we’ve got a world of visual contrasts and metaphors available to play with.  And the fact that Jude kills again even in this safe haven points to the fact that he can’t even be redeemed by being put in somewhere that could be portrayed as a rural idyll compared to the urban chaos he’s used to.

With your eyes open, details just fall into your lap…yesterday, one of our tasks was to pick up a couple of dead thrushes that met their ends hitting a window, and pass them on to a local artist to paint.  That detail, which could only come from a world where people are conscious of nature, and part of a community where they know how to help one another out, and what someone else could make use of, could form an interesting part of the story we’re developing.  Particularly since it points to Anglesey being a place where people view death as part of the natural cycle…so how will they respond to a cold-blooded killer like Jude?

Note, I’m not pointing to any answers here.  Just playing with the possibilities that location presents, and what happens when you shift from some of your presets and explore alternatives instead.  Already, by reversing some of the aspects of a story triggered by The Fixer’s second episode, and shifting its location to rural Wales, a whole new story is starting to emerge.