So, here it is. Portishead’s new album is finally here, and it’s a stunner. They’ve done something technically brilliant that not all of their long term fans will appreciate. Identified with the triphop sound they helped to pioneer way back when, they’ve come back having reinvented their approach to music. Everything is different when you pay close attention, still creating the same kind of emotional impact they’ve always excelled at, prompting melancholy and regret through conjuring memories that, while listening, you fail to realise aren’t your own.

The soundscape of the new album, Third, is comprised of elements unlike anything you’ll have heard from them up to this point. No lazy beats and John Barry-isms here; instead you’ll find acoustic guitar, bassoon, clarinet and hurdy gurdy, as well as a range of blue-grey moods conveyed with more conventional instruments. It’s bravura stuff, as convincing as it is compelling, an object lesson in reinvention for practitioners of any art form.

Which brings us on to Holby City. I’ve become pretty partial to this show in the last couple of years, and for me it’s a far more enticing prospect than Casualty. A hairdresser I visited ably described Casualty’s problem when she described a typical episode as ‘Someone gives birth, someone gets married, and someone pops their clogs’. That transparent A/B/C storylining is not nearly as obvious in its sister show, and Holby City is all the better for it.

Last night’s episode, written by Matthew Evans, was a good example of how to write quality medical drama. The big story was the reappearance of contentious character Abra Durant, returned from Africa via a Holby bar with a bloodied head and picking up his grievances with colleague Ric Griffin where they’d left them months before. Adeptly done, and with a lightness of touch that sidestepped on-the-nose confrontation in favour of more nuanced scenes.

Overall, the ongoing elements of the show were stronger than the two self-contained storylines. One concerned a harried church worker who was being overworked by a vicar, or at least that’s the way it looked until it turned out the vicar knew exactly what buttons to press to get his assistant to take a break away from God’s affairs and pay attention to her own. The other featured a squabbling couple who were brought together again when it looked like one of them might not live. And, err, that was it.

The other, more interesting, storyline featured Jane Asher as Lady Byrne, the hospital’s in-house aristo, arranging a photo-shoot for a charity she was a patron of. Cue a fun filmic sequence in which various female nurses auditioned for the gig before some stitching up was done to secure it for Daisha, who really did need the money from the photo shoot to give to her mother.

All good stuff, basically, and because it was well written and directed it was easy to forget we were cycling between the same few characters and stories: when you’re immersed in the story and not noticing the technical aspects, then one or more people are doing the right thing. Which is something that Portishead and Holby City, both born in Bristol, have in common.

How do you bring new life to a theme or genre that’s tired? One answer is to bring new influences in, the tack that the makers of the Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale took when they wheeled out the James Bond franchise for its latest iteration. The speed and action of the film that resulted clearly owed something to the massive success of The Bourne Identity and its sequels, films which successfully redefined what a spy franchise can do in the post-Berlin Wall and post-Twin Towers era.

Horror films have been faced with a similar dilemma. There’s a danger that werewolves and vampires and other monster staples can feel hackneyed, so what else can be brought to the table? One route is to explicitly explore the horrors that people are capable of inflicting on one another, which was handled with pathos and credibility in Wolf Creek but unfortunately also led to a host of crappy torture porn films such as Hostel and Saw.

But what if you’re still attracted to the old style monsters? Ginger Snaps demonstrated that intelligent ideas about female adolescence could be brought to a werewolf film, in a story that in its own way did for the werewolf what comics writer Alan Moore did for a whole host of horrors in his socially aware run on Swamp Thing.

And now, writer Brandon Seifert and artist Lukas Ketner have reinvigorated the horror comic anew with their title WitchDoctor. In essence, it’s House in a horror setting; the rare conditions explored by the magical medical specialist are vampirism and other forms of monstrosity, framed in a quasi-scientific way that’s a lot of fun to read. The creators have put their demo episode up at www.witchdoctorcomic.com in the hope of attracting publishers, and I wish them luck: it’s a sparky and well-executed concept that’s got the potential to inhabit its own very particular niche with style.

As for how to go about reinvigorating your own concept with the energy of fresher ideas, first look at your core story and decide whether it really does merit the time you’re going to spend on it. If it does, and it’s a new take you’re interested in, check out possible role models by exploring their style and structure: what can you borrow from, say, the new take on Dr Who that will help you to write your proposed security guard drama serial? If it’s family-friendliness, then how exactly does Dr Who manage to attract an audience of whole families, and what of that approach can you emulate in your own script?

This method isn’t, hopefully, about copying: if you learn well from a role model you can incorporate elements of their own success into yours in a way that transcends ripping off. And if not, then so be it; just bear in mind Tom Lehrer’s words: ‘Plagiarise/Let noone else’s work evade your eyes’.

A friend asked me my opinion of the band The Divine Comedy the other day, and I expressed my belief that there’s more going on in the clever words department than recognisable feelings. Plus, there seems to be a lot of ornamentation in the arrangements, perhaps more than strictly necessary. And all of this came to mind having just seen In Bruges, for one reason and another.

Like The Divine Comedy, who seem to be defined by the presence of Neil Hannon, In Bruges was pretty much put together by one Irish smartypants, in this case writer-director Martin McDonagh. And much the same overview applies: while the film was certainly enjoyable, and well crafted, it felt maybe a bit too crafted to actually convince.

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are a pair of hitmen who’ve been sent to Bruges to cool their boots after a job in which a young boy was accidentally shot, as well as the intended target. The two are, of course, a mismatched pair, Gleeson enjoying the medieval town’s culture and history, while Farrell is more about beer and women.

Initially at least, things are quite stagy, though Bruges being Bruges it’s hard not to come across some visually interesting surroundings along the way. Things heat up when our heroes chance on a film being made in the city, and Farrell takes the opportunity to introduce himself to a woman working on it. They arrange a date, and both play the honesty card — a bit too neat and symmetrical for my liking, which applies to much of the film overall. Anyway, she is dealing drugs to the film crew, and there are sparks between them.

It’s all done with tongue partly in cheek, which is part of the problem: funny though the lines are, the balance between that comedy and the attempt to deal with deeper themes doesn’t work. Which is a shame, because McDonagh really does try hard, too hard in fact…exactly my problem with Neil Hannon. They also share a thing for classical allusion that doesn’t necessarily assist what they’re trying to say: In Bruges features some slightly clunky business concerning one of the characters wondering about his fate after killing the young boy, realised through an old painting that is in turn the source of some of the imagery in the film-within-a-film.

McDonagh does not wear his learning lightly, and though he tries to balance it with some amusing potty mouth dialogue, I’m not sure that an equilibrium is reached. And that’s a pity, because much of the film is thoroughly enjoyable, and I sense if McDonagh could put his literary and other role models to one side and instead learn more from the quality end of the American thriller market, he could make something really special. Instead, I sense that In Bruges exemplifies in its protagonists its creator’s own conflict: does he want to enjoy the culture on offer and show off his learning about it, or kick back with the lads and pull the women? Either way, like many a good Irish artist, he’s guilty and conflicted about the choice he makes.

There’s a certain amount of terminology encountered in the world of screenwriting, some of it useful and some of it like the jargon of other fields seemingly meant more to determine who’s an insider and who’d like to be. One of the more useful term bandied about is ‘character arc’. And what that does, as it suggests, is describe the transition of a character from the start of a story to its climax.

You’d think that the genre of the film is one of the bigger factors in determining the nature of the particular arc, and to some extent you’d be right. But perhaps the most useful way of plotting the arc of whatever character you’re wanting to write is to think through what they want and what they need.

Want vs need sets up a dynamic that propels the character through the story. And it can be resolved in one of several ways. A character can have what they want, but not what they need, and be ignorant of this. Or, they can have what they want, not what they need, and realise that they’ve fallen short - you can milk a lot of tragedy out of this one. Alternatively, they can get what they need, but not what they want, which is a classic way of showing maturation. Or if they’re lucky fucks, they get what they want and a side-order of what they need.

Those are the ways it breaks down, but it helps to log it in with some specifics. Let’s say your heroine wants to be a lawyer, but needs to have a better relationship with her sister. If she got what she was after, we’re headed for some kind of tragedy - it’s the curse that afflicts the protagonist of There Will Be Blood, who gets to be a big oil tycoon but loses everyone around him in the process. And that can happen one of two ways: with or without self-knowledge. Realising you’ve got what you wanted but sensing there’s something more can make life awful hollow.

Or, lets say she gets what she needs: one way is for her to make a go of being a lawyer, and realising she was only doing it to compete with her high-flying sister, maybe, and that their relationship matters more than the ulcers she’d get pursuing a job where she gets her name in gold letters on the door. Alternatively, she gets to be a lawyer and by acting as her sister’s legal representative, the two become tight once more.

Get it? From the simple dynamic inherent in wants vs needs, you can do all sorts of useful speculation about the story you’re interested in, and follow the route that’s got the most dramatic potential. And why not get fancy with it? This heuristic (rule of thumb) can be applied not just to overall character arcs, but to what happens in specific scenes, helping to give them some richness they might otherwise lack if you’re thinking purely in terms of getting from A to B.

Anyway, off to contemplate my own wants and needs, since I want breakfast and need to lose weight, and I’ve been told that today is not a day for dieting by the friend I’m visiting for lunch…decisions, decisions…

What is a story, anyway? Is it defined by incident, or meaning?

We hear and tell tens of stories throughout the day, in full or in part. Some of them amuse, others provoke thought, others give insight into the teller. We define ourselves to others, and ourselves, by the stories we tell.

There’s an outfit called the Landmark Forum which grew out of a seventies therapy movement, est. I know a couple of people who’ve had run-ins with Landmark, and though they practice some pretty dubious habits such as locking people into seminar rooms and refusing to let them go to the toilet (which takes me back to junior school if anything) they also have some more interesting things going on. Such as, getting group members to tell the defining stories of their lives and, gently or otherwise, pulling those stories apart.

Why would behaving so impolitely to someone’s stories be useful? Well, when it comes to the stories that define us, we often choose to play archetypal roles. Whether we’re hero, victim, fool or survivor, we’ve identified with a particular stance on life that, arguably, we play out in other aspects of our life, whether or not they’re the most appropriate ways to deal with the situations we’re confronted with. Challenge that role, by bringing other perspectives to the stories people tell, drawing attention to the necessary omissions or weighted descriptions, and that can help people rethink not just the content of their story, but the meaning they made of it and have carried forward since.

So, allowing a bunch of killjoys can be good for you, huh? Actually, done well — and I’m talking about the kind of interaction you can have with a caring friend rather than some of the clodhopping accounts I’ve heard from Landmark — and it can be a very useful experience. Realising that the cherished story in which you broke your mother’s favourite vase didn’t mean she no longer loved you, but was the start of a journey in which by paying for a new one you became a provider for the first time in your life, can be a therapeutic experience.

I’d suggest that one of the things writers do in creating their professional stories is, sometimes, reexamine some of their own fundamental stories. Which would explain the recurrence of particular themes in a given writer’s work. And, knowing that it’s possible to do so, would it be worth asking yourself what your own fundamental stories are and seeing how they relate to the scripts and prose you’ve already written, and the projects you aspire to tackling in the future?

Eek, we’ve finally got onto ‘writing as therapy’ some 90 posts in to this experience. Apologies if I’m coming across a bit Dr Phil — greater apologies still if I’m all Oprah. And mum…sorry about that vase.

What metaphors do you have for writing? Is it something that’s as natural as having a daydream, or as tough as cracking a particularly elusive walnut? And what about ideas? Are they like butterflies you have to catch with an imaginary net, or that you tune into on your mind’s private radio station?

The metaphors we use are a reflection of what we believe, and shape how we behave. I worked at an ad agency once where one of the directors would pair up with a writer to have what he called a ‘braindump’, an unsettling image that conjures up furrowed brows and straining - and is frankly an activity that should be engaged in on your own unless there’s a medical need for assistance. Then there’s the famous ‘brainstorm’, a term some people refuse to use now as they believe it offensive to the mentally ill, so hence we have new terms like ‘thought shower’, one that’s never really convinced me.

If you’re unclear of what your metaphor for creativity, or writing is, ask yourself what your mental picture is of that process. Some people’s mental picture will contain that metaphor very obviously: a zoo full of wild and exotic animals; a solar system where every planet has different physical and maybe even social rules; a garden that needs to be cultivated. If you don’t seem to have a mental image, then ask yourself ‘what is creativity or writing like…?’ and listen for what comes up.

At which point, some of you will be nodding your heads, and others will still be wondering why any of this matters. Well, if you’re in the latter camp and you’re confident in your ability to generate workable concepts and develop them to fruition (…another metaphor, as it goes) then all very well. If, however, you’re someone who feels that their writing is sometimes difficult, that they’re stuck, and that words flow like the last inch of treacle out of a crusted-up tin (..another metaphor) then perhaps it’s time you had some fun with this notion and explored what your metaphors around writing are, and what they could more productively be.

Metaphors for creativity give you some idea of the pre-conditions that need to exist before someone will allow themselves to be creative. If your creativity is such that you require Classic FM, a chilled Chianti, and certain flowers in your study before you can put words to paper, then I wish you all the best and hope you continue to enjoy a steady stream of classical music, wine, and blossoms. But what if creativity could be as natural as breathing, say? It’s not a coincidence that the words ‘inspiration’ and ‘respiration’ have a lot in common…so what if you could literally come up with ideas as easily as breathing in and out, wherever you happen to be?

Start to keep your eyes and ears open for evidence of metaphors that you and others have for creativity, for writing, for ideas, for whatever else you’re interested in. And notice the difference between those who have an abundance of those things, and people who struggle to come up with anything inventive or novel. What metaphors do the generative people use, compared to those who find creativity difficult? And how might you be able to assist them in finding more constructive metaphors, if that’s something they want to play with..?

So, it looks like one particular project has fizzled.  A director I know had chanced on $250,000 American investment, and approached me about writing a feature tailored to work to that budget.  After a false start, we decided it would be best to work on a single location thriller, and I came up with an embryonic treatment that I was and remain proud of.

There’s no regret attached to the fact that the project seems to have fizzled out.  But there is about the way that the fizzling happened: after a few weeks when the director and I were in regular contact, I have heard nothing for nearly two months.  No replies to my phone calls, nor to the text I sent enquiring about the status of the project.  Not much of a finale then, and certainly no sense of class about it.  But, I am not despondent: I still have the bones of a thriller I’d love to write, and now I can take it forward with other parties.  And next week I have a meeting with some very credible producers who’ve already made one multiple award winning feature, and have more films in the pipeline.  We were going to be talking about one particular project of mine they’ve been interested in for a while, and now I’ll be able to discuss the low budget thriller too. 

So, I get to stay happy: I’m not sure I can say the same about the director of the project that seems to have crashed and burned who, from my sense of him, is perhaps embarrassed that he wasn’t able to deliver the goods and feels he can’t face up to me.  Maybe, maybe not: I’m not going to waste mental energy on speculating.

The feature that these particular producers are interested in is one that’s close to my heart, being drawn from traumatic personal experience that I believe I’m distant enough from at this point to be able to write about well.  I’ve tried writing the same piece before, but at that point it didn’t work out.  Now, with time having passed and my skills sharper, I believe I can do it justice.  We shall see.

I also had a very interesting meeting with a woman who wants me to write a screenplay based in large part on her own life story.  Which, since she is a medium by trade, promises to be an interesting tale.  Mediumship is a field I have no fixed opinions on save that I am deeply sceptical about the showbiz end of the market, where middle aged men living with their mothers ask a packed hall if anyone knows someone called David, or is that Dick, or maybe Dennis?  A world away from the medium I met, a charming if dotty woman who was very sincere, clearly dedicated to her calling, and promises to be someone interesting to spend time with.  She also acted out the story beautifully, having to do so because her severe dyslexia limits her ability to communicate with the written word alone.  If we can make the finances of this particular endeavour work, it’s one I’d very much like to take on.

This business aspect of what I get up to may be of some interest to at least some of you: the trick, which I have yet to manage convincingly, is to get a number of projects funded by various sources on the go, and thus add to the pile of completed projects awaiting further development.  If that commitment to screenplays, whether originated by myself or others, can be combined with television commissions, then the consequence is, financially at least, happiness.  In practice, for now at least, other means of earning money must be factored into the equation.  But with possibilities including the BBC Writers Academy on the horizon, and a sample script requested by a primetime show that could result in regular work, the picture could change substantially within the next few months.  The best approach seems to be not to get too attached to any one outcome, instead concentrating more on a direction that will itself generate increasing possibilities.  And if that means the prospect of finding a home for one particular concept decreases for a while, then so be it: another opportunity will appear in due course. 

Interesting, the way one programme can be so insightful about some things and clueless about others. Mad Men last night featured two strands, one that left me frustrated at its clumsiness, the other in awe at its insight.

The clunky scene was all about Don Draper encountering his lover’s beatnik friends when he tries to whisk her off to Paris for a week. They reminded me of the hepcat stereotypes found in John Waters’ Hairspray. In that film they were at least intended to have comedy value, which I guess was part of the purpose in Mad Men, but they didn’t register with the same roundedness as Don and the other ad agency characters. I cringed when one of them said, putting on Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain, “Lets get high and listen to Miles”, but in retrospect maybe that was because it reminded me of a period of my life when I’d do much the same. Please let me not have actually said those words…

Anyway, the beatnik material just didn’t convince me. The clash between daddi-o Don Draper the ad agency square and the hipsters was just too heightened to be credible. Maybe if they’d done it over a longer period of time it would have worked: his counterculture lover is certainly real enough. But the addition of her friends moved the show into using broad brush strokes that didn’t convince this ex-adman and former pot smoking Miles listener.

That was all made up for in a beautifully portrayed sequence with Salvatore, the gay art director. I’ve not caught all of the episodes to know exactly what’s been happening with him, but we know that he’s gay and – clearly in 1960 America – closeted. What I didn’t know was whether he had any kind of love life. To which the answer is, sadly, no.

Salvatore ends up meeting a guy in an after work drinking venue, and they go for a meal together. Nothing unusual about that, and that’s exactly the point: the way for two men to get together in a culture that frowns on homosexuality is to normalise what they’re doing. So while the surface is all about two regular guys chewing the fat, the power of the writing and performance was in the undercurrents.

The longer they were together, the more clear the attraction became, though the talk was still fantastically elliptical. And Salvatore was comfortable with things being that way – in the world of possibility, of fantasies as sure as the ones he helps craft at the ad agency – until his dining partner makes the briefest physical contact with him, touching his hand and drinking from his glass. He makes it clear – or at least clear enough to the viewer, there’s still no direct mention of what’s on offer here – that Salvatore and he could be an item. And Salvatore just can’t cope with it: confronted by the reality of the situation he longs for, he crumples.

For me, the effect was heartbreaking. But maybe for an older gay viewer, the scene was just as clichéd as the beatnik stuff was for me. I think not though: there was a level of emotional conviction about this scene that worked beautifully (if tragically) quite possibly because that same interaction is still being played out somewhere in the world countless times every day nearly fifty years later, despite homosexuality being something that’s a lot more open now.

Water water everywhere, if only they’d just think…

How many times have you seen a character having an emotional birth or rebirth in water in a film? Mr Bourne of The Bourne Identity is found in the sea in the first of the trilogy, and is reborn in it in the third. I’ve lost count of the times that characters are depicted cleansed and renewed as they are immersed in the ocean. And it can happen inland too: Jean de Florette is all about putting the water on, its sequel Manon des Sources is all about cutting it off again.

It’s not always for the good: The Descent played with that nicely, when one of the women was reborn as a goddess of vengeance from a pool of blood. Jaws was all about something nasty that lurked beneath the surface, and caused good citizens and loving families to flee for the hills: only the truly troubled were drawn to take on the creature dwelling in the depths. But for the most part, as soon as a character gets near a body of water, you know you’re headed for some kind of baptism or birthing metaphor.

All very well, but how about we give other elements a look in? A treatment that I’ve developed quite a way features a character who is transformed by contact with fire. And then there’s earth and air, assuming we restrict ourselves to the four elements that were acknowledged when my secondary school chemistry teacher did his training.

The thing being, the elements are symbolic. Water is all about the emotions, swirling within and between us. Fire can consume everything (or at least everything flammable) with its energy. Air is connected with the intellect, lofty thoughts and words in the wind. Earth is to do with resolute practicality, the concrete.

That particular notation is Western by the way: if you explore Chinese thinking, you’ll come across a different grouping, with five elements: Water, Fire, Earth, Metal and Wood. And some symbol systems include a fifth element, sometimes called Void or Spirit, each with their own associations and meanings.

Knowing this, what difference can it make to your writing? Well, why not align particular characters to different elements? Medieval thought had it that peoples’ characters were essentially melancholic (earth), sanguine (fire), choleric (air) or phlegmatic (water). Whole structures were drawn up which indicated how someone’s health, thinking, and appearance would be affected by their guiding element. I’m not saying for a moment that these are true, but if you’re looking for a useful way of distinguishing characters, or strands in a story, then an elemental typology can be of considerable use.

Or, you can get a bit more up to date, and pursue a typology drawn from, say the Myers Briggs personality inventory…itself drawn from the work of Jung – and in turn heavily influenced by classical thinking about the elements. Which brings us back to square one. As you might expect. These are deep waters we’re treading in after all, and it’s possible to look back and see the footprints of many others on this particular beach, as we watch the clouds scud overhead and the sun blaze in the sky…

So, I finally got to see Willy Russell’s musical play Blood Brothers. And I get why it’s so popular, and very much enjoyed it, even if I disagree with a lot of Russell’s beliefs, at least as they come across on stage. Yeah, like he or anyone else is going to be bothered, 26 years into this phenomenon’s international touring history.

In essence, Blood Brothers is old-school Marxist thinking as rendered in three dimensions plus orchestrated sound by Jim Steinman. Steinman, you’ll remember, is the record producer responsible for Meat Loaf, whose approach could be summarised as ‘never knowingly understated’. I read an interview with him once in which he described his job being to produce music “for people who wear chrome pyjamas in leather beds”, and that sums up his melodramatic approach to musical narrative perfectly. Subtle, he ain’t.

The story is semi-Shakespearean, in kitchen sink drag. A put-upon mother of many children becomes pregnant once again, and ends up swapping one of her new twins in exchange for a week’s paid holiday from the posh woman whose house she cleans. No, it doesn’t make much sense if you think about it, even with some swearing on the Bible involved, but please swallow this conceit or what follows really won’t sit with you.

What follows is tried and tested stuff in which the twin brothers grow up in separate homes of very different sorts, but become bosom buddies none the less. Actually, the title of the piece gives away the nature of their relationship with more precision. One brother is socialised with proletarian values, the other becomes a member of the bourgeoisie. It’s put with slightly more subtlety than that, but only slightly.

It’s when the brothers are young – though played by adults – that the play was at its strongest for me. The performers (I was too much of a cheapskate to buy a programme to find out who, save that one of them, the mother of the twins, was a Nolan Sister) did an excellent job at bringing their characters to life as kids. Looked like some time had been spent to good effect getting them to inhabit what kids look and sound like – stuff that wouldn’t have been in the didactic script I’m sure, but was brought out in the rehearsal process. Anyway, it paid off: these sequences were lively and convincing.

Unfortunately, somewhat florid narration got in the way of emotional connection with the audience. Sequences that could have been conveyed by the good actors were rendered redundant by what amounted to voiceover. Perhaps this is because the show has its origins in what amounts to a theatre in education piece, and Russell wanted to make the script immune to the vagaries of directors and performers. Anyway, what it means is that the flow is interrupted from time to time.

This being a piece with a message, it’s no surprise that brother Mickey, the working class one, got a raw deal. Heading for minimum wage work while his middle class sibling swans off to university, it’s not long before Mickey gets caught up in crime, locked up, and hooked on medication to deal with depression. Or maybe that should be anomie, the correct Marxist term for what happens when workers are alienated from the means of production, distribution and exchange.

Yes, it’s heavy handed. But there’s also a kind of truth in that dogmatism, and when put to relatively stirring tunes with super-retro syndrums booming and thwacking away and a sax tootling over the top, it makes for grand entertainment. And that relieved me of notions of my place in the global economic order for a while and allowed me to enjoy myself, which is what musical theatre should be all about.

(Please note that Jim Steinman was not the actual musical director of the show on this or any other occasion: that was a metaphor of some sort.)