Why do we need narrative to help us engage with games? Isn’t the interaction of players controlling pieces enough to provide engagement? Apparently not. The key is in the business already mentioned of ‘players controlling pieces’. Whether those pieces are on a chess board or in a science fiction online game, the key to it all is the player’s interaction with a symbol system. In the moment, symbols are not viewed as pieces of wood or collections of pixels — they are emblematic of ourselves, and our identification with them is what leads people to have real emotional experiences while engaged in play.

It’s the same when people follow football clubs. They get caught up in the action on the pitch, and off — newspapers are full of tales of footballers and even their partners, boardroom coups and bids for foreign players. Again, the whole experience is of immersion in a narrative, and even though the supporters are spectators than participants the emotional engagement is all-encompassing.

Sometimes, a game’s narrative can spill over into other areas of the lives of players. There was a case the other year of a German man who travelled all the way to Britain to kill another participant in an online game. And real world fortunes change hands for virtual artefacts in World of Warcraft.

None of this should be surprising, really. Babies respond positively to a balloon with an upturned line drawn on it, interpreting it as a smile. Our relationship with story is hardwired. So, for those of us engaged with creating games, how do we take advantage of that tendency?

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools in the writer’s arsenal to provide assistance for this kind of thinking. One classic example is The Hero’s Journey — I know of a writer who gained a position with a computer games company based primarily on his knowledge of this story template, popularised by Chris Vogler in his book The Writer’s Journey and derived from the pioneering work of Joseph Campbell.

The Hero’s Journey is a valuable skeleton that can be built up in all sorts of ways according to your intentions. The basic idea of a protagonist who is called to act against an enemy, but can’t tackle that antagonist until they’ve found their inner hero, and then returns to their community changed, is a powerful archetype. And no wonder: it’s distilled from the study of hundreds, maybe thousands, of mythical tales from cultures worldwide.

It’s all about execution. The Hero’s Journey is too often applied clunkily, with stereotypically ‘wise’ mentors imparting wisdom to their youthful charges. But it doesn’t have to be like that. As with any tool, it can be used to create work of quality — or crassness. That said, how about exploring alternative ways of creating story for your game? Vladimir Propp studied Russian folklore and came up with a list of 31 elements that a story could contain. It doesn’t have to use all of them, but the typology is worth looking at, and imaginatively applied could bring fresh life to a concept that you’re tiring of.

Given that gaming is bigger than film these days, it makes sense for developers to pay more attention to story than has traditionally been the case. People complain that Hollywood films are more like games, and at the same time games increasingly resemble films. It’s already the case in terms of design — now narrative has to catch up. And that’s nothing to do with technology and investment, and all to do with attitude and willingness to think in new ways — while making the most of age-old paradigms too. Sure, there are issues to do with interactivity that make games and film fundamentally different, but there’s every reason to believe that games can work with our innate desire to be excited by and involved with story.

Marshall McLuhan was famous for fifteen minutes way back when for trumpeting ‘the medium is the message’, and he had a point, even if no two people can agree precisely what it was. Right now I’m thinking of business models to support an online project, the collaboration with Andy Tudor that I mentioned recently, and like McLuhan in that it involves thinking about the nature of media, and in particular how to create a commercially viable project in the online age.

Getting the model right is important, and what’s interesting with the online scene is there’s no definitive ‘how to’ that will produce the cashflow you’re looking for. Well, that’s true with offline work too — the mainstream comics model is one based on revenues raised from monthly publication. But in recent years that trend has been joined by another, for collecting serialised works under one cover. So you can buy an anthology of Daredevil issues for instance. And that in turn has led to a change in the way that writers conceive of their work: many now ‘write for the trade (paperback)’, which allows them more time to develop a story that works in 120 or so pages with rising and falling arcs and all that stuff you read about in McKee, rather than being five cliffhangers followed by a concluding issue.

The serialise-and-anthologise model works because the costs of producing the comic are covered by the audience that buys monthly comics, meaning the profits from the collection are gravy, and increasingly part of the money that creators make for their work. But that’s only one way to do it. As book publishers have entered the graphic novel field, it’s become common for writers and artists to be given advances for the work they’re going to do.

Warren Ellis is a canny thinker about the economics of the comics business. Interested in creating work that’s experimental by mainstream standards, he collaborated with publisher Avatar to create the Apparat line of comics. The first wave of Apparat were single-issue sized, and the downside of that is they tend to exist in a shop only so long before they’re removed from the shelves. So, next time round, the Apparat titles — one of which is reviewed here, and others of which I may well cover in time to come — were done as 48 page ‘graphic novellas’. Never mind the nomenclature: what it means is that these slim volumes are on the shelves long term, not restricted to the ‘this month’s titles’ selection but filed alongside Watchmen and Persepolis and the other anthologised collections and original graphic novels. Meaning you can buy Frankenstein’s Womb or other graphic novellas at your convenience rather than having to get it in a particular short calendar period, and that Avatar, Ellis, and his artists can benefit from the shelf life of their brainchild. Smart thinking.

Ellis scored again with another Avatar project, the online comic Freakangels. A serial produced in weekly installments of several pages like the 2000AD comics Ellis was familiar with in his youth, this collaboration with artist Paul Duffield is a big hit online, and has also spawned successful anthologies. And it may be that the concept of the story was geared to the audience that Ellis and Avatar have cultivated: Ellis’s online presence attracts a significant number of young people into alternative lifestyles, and the Freakangels themselves are the ultimate outsiders, misunderstood even by their peers. That comment, by the way, is by no means a criticism: what sense would it have made for Ellis to launch into a comic about the Lakeland poets in their twilight years? It’s easier to write with constraints than utterly free of them, and creating work for an identified audience is one constraint that makes a great deal of sense.

It’s not just Ellis that Andy and I have been learning from — the recent piece on Alex de Campi and Christine Larsen’s Valentine has prompted us to think of what’s possible as well. And those are just two examples of the way that the digital scene is changing the way that forward thinking creators conceive of developing profitable properties.

Bloody marvellous. Like scientists haven’t got enough useful things to be doing, they’re now encroaching on the territory occupied by filmmakers. Physics professor Sidney Percowitz of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, is behind a plan that is all about allowing Hollywood creators just one departure from scientific thinking. After that, it’s a slippery slope — and there are real world penalties for shoddy thinking in blockbusters, reckons Percowitz:

“I am not offended if they make one big scientific blunder in a given film. You can have things move faster than the speed of light if you want. But after that I would like things developed in a coherent way.”

“If you violate that you are in trouble. The chances are that the public will pick it up and that is what matters to Hollywood. The Core did not make money because people understood the science was so out to lunch,” he added.

(quotes from today’s Guardian)

Right, so The Core was a box office failure because of poorly thought out science? And not because it was a shockingly dull concept with poor execution? If anything, it would have been more likely to succeed had the science been worse, and those venturing to the planet’s centre encountered dinosaurs and women in fur bikinis, as is traditional for the genre.

Anyway, let’s give this concept some thinking through. Call it a thought experiment. Superhero films are in a mess, for a start. Superman might be able to fly, but if that’s all he can do he’s not going to be of much use against stray dogs, never mind laser-toting alien warriors. Or maybe superheroes should live with the consequences of their difference: Wolverine can have claws, but they rust, and he’s suffering from metal poisoning, and because he’s got just the one power so much for a healing factor to sort out his resistance as adamantium particles clog his arteries. Hmm, not much fun now is it, bub?

And where do we even begin with The Matrix? There’s the business of suspending pretty much the entire human population in a virtual reality, for one thing. What kind of computing power would be needed to make that happen? More importantly, the story is essentially a Gnostic allegory about how people live in a half-life identified with the trinkets dangled in front of them rather than anything of real consequence. Is Percowitz going to ban films that use science as a metaphor unless the metaphor confirms to scientific facts as known?

Besides, what happens when science changes? Which it does. Right now, there are scientists talking about parallel dimensions and suggesting that the universe is best understood as a hologram of which individual consciousness is but a fractal. Man. So does that make Sliders and Quantum Leap ok, despite being a bit pony?

And what of Dumbo’s ears? Did they really aid his flight? Doubtful, but the pachyderm’s zest for achievement has inspired generations of kids to find the courage to make their dreams come true. Best put a stop to that then, if fundamental physical laws are contravened.

All of which is to say that science and stories utilise different forms of logic. And that Prof Percowitz has precious little idea of what a symbol is unless it’s one used in science papers. * sigh * Is it really necessary to overhaul Terminator films to keep diehard rationalists happy at the expense of an audience captivated by a cautionary tale about what happens when machines take over from man? I think not.

If anything, let’s celebrate the extent to which the creative imagination fuels scientific progress. Real life researchers have been inspired by growing up in front of Star Trek. Einstein’s methodology for coming up with the theory of relativity was pretty whacked out, consisting of Albert imagining what would happen if he himself were to travel at light speed, and formulated in part through thought experiments involving steam trains. There’s an interesting ongoing dialogue between science and the creative arts, but it helps neither camp for one to police the activities of the other.

So, I’ve been writing a novel. Did 5000 and some words on the first chapter a couple of weekends ago, and now I’m working on the second. Which comes as a surprise, me being a screenwriter and all. Only, it was not always thus. Many years ago, I started out by writing prose, and the first short story I came up with was a runner up for the 1991 Bridport Festival prize. I’ve written a few more short stories too, one of which was published in an anthology by Route Press. I’m particularly proud of that because my contribution straddles the photos of naked people in the centre of the book, which means I stand a greater chance of being encountered by the casual reader than many of the other stories.

So, the novel. It all started last year when I woke up from a dream about a successful book I’d written, and knowing the core situation of that story. Then, a few weeks ago, I was on a train and knew in a flash that I wanted to write novels. Not only that, but I realised who the protagonist of the book I’d dreamed of writing should be — a prose incarnation of a larger than life friend who influenced me in good ways, and who died a few months ago. I also realised that the book in question would be the second one I wrote. Reason being, there’s one that’s more pressing for me to write. Never mind why, save to say it’s the right time for me to be working on this book, and it’ll stand me in good stead for the next one.

This novel writing lark is very different from screenwriting. I’ve intentionally chosen a style that makes it easy for me to write fairly quickly, by dipping into the narrator’s head and indulging myself in all that kind of associative thought that’s pretty much verbotten in developing film scripts. Writing this blog is a big help: I’ve got used to producing a 600-700 word chunk in 40 minutes or less. That realisation goes a long way when you’re tackling something considerably bigger than a screenplay.

I’ve also given myself a break by not having a plot intensive story. Stuff happens, sure. But it doesn’t need wall charts and index cards to keep track of. And, I’m dipping into the same set of experiences that are at the heart of the screenplay I’m also writing — which is a much trickier beast to tame. I’m creating it piece by piece, facing and hopefully conquering challenges I’ve never taken on before, and though progress is slow it’s very rewarding. Where the screenplay is a psychological drama with thriller elements, the novel is a darkly comic satire. Same ingredients — very different dishes.

I’m figuring this is subject matter I never need go near again in my life when these two projects are done with. They relate to periods of mental instability I experienced some years ago, which though traumatic at the time were ultimately regenerative in their effects on me. And that’s part of what I want to get across: there’s enough bleak material out there about people suffering, and I have no intention of adding to the pile. Not without turning that torment into something useful, anyway.

All of which risks making my novel and screenplay sound terribly pompous endeavours, concerned with correcting misconceptions about mental health. Eek: I’d run a mile if I thought I was doing anything along those lines. No, I want to tell entertaining stories influenced by personal experience that I’m confident a mainstream audience will find fascinating: sorrowful pablum is not on the agenda. Promise.

And after that? Well, the second novel is a science fiction satire. No mental trauma at all, other than that which the protagonist inflicts on those who would oppress him. But that’s another story…

What draws audiences into a film, book, or play is engagement with the story it communicates. Everything else is secondary to that. Unless I’m engaged by story in some form, I’m out of there. Inventiveness about how that story is delivered is welcome, as long as it enhances that immersion in the story and doesn’t detract from it. Which is why the formal inventiveness of the graphic novel Asterios Polyp gets in the way of me liking it, where the creativity John Pham brings to the pages of Sublife makes me warm to his comics work all the more. Asterios Polyp’s creator David Mazzuchelli deconstructs the story he’s telling before your very eyes, drawing attention to the methods he’s using to get it across. Pham, conversely, uses experimental art techniques in the service of story, embracing cubist and other methods to get across the effect of travelling through space beyond light speed on the crew.

It all comes back to character. And that works for pretty much any narrative I’ve enjoyed as a film, comic, book or play. Character and plot need to advance together, or the effect is lost. I read a Jeffrey Archer novel once just to see what got so many people to buy the things. It was very well plotted, but there was zero sense of the characters as living beings. Stuff happened to them, some of it pretty grim, but they carried on regardless, remorsely making their way from one plot point to another like robots. At the other extreme, there’s Tarantino’s Death Proof, where his well known penchant for dialogue heavy writing runs away with him and there’s a disconnect between the verbose exchanges of the characters and the action of the film. They’re talking for the sake of it, which can be enjoyable, but without it being bound to story beats comes across as self indulgent.

Perhaps no surprise then, that some of my favourite stories are those which move the plot forward, have three dimensional characters, and good dialogue — and where the writer’s intelligence is firmly in the service of story. That’s very much the case with one of my favourite screenwriters, David Mamet. And it’s true in a different way for novelist Lee Child, whose Jack Reacher thrillers are masterclasses in creating apparently effortless stories. See also Carla Speed McNeil’s ‘aboriginal sf’ comic Finder, where every line — written or drawn — counts for something in depicting character and situation.

Effectively, stories are a kind of trance, and I don’t like to see that trance interrupted. Not unless it’s done within the context of the artwork itself, rather than to remind you that it is indeed a confection. Yawn: that stuff has very low appeal to me. That said, I do find some metafictions appealing. It’s all about the spirit in which it’s done. Cartoon characters have been finding out that they’re animated since the birth of the medium, in playful ways. But somehow my hackles rise when presented with a Jasper fforde book — there’s an overwhelming smugness about the enterprise that seems to be about a clever chappie telling me what books he’s read. Compare with the delicious experience of Steven Hall’s novel The Raw Shark Texts, which is postmodern and all the rest of it, but keeps you engaged with the story and characters throughout — a sheer delight.

What is it about story that entices? Well, let’s go back to that notion of trance. We go in and out of trances throughout the day: you could argue that each mood is its own trance, shaping your consciousness and consequent behaviour. Sometimes those trances are accidental, a function of identifying with the situation we’re caught up in — stuck in traffic, waiting in a queue, fantasising about someone we find attractive. And the story trance is one in which we have the opportunity to empathise with someone who’s like us, in some ways, but isn’t us. Who is up against obstacles that are in all likelihood on a mightier scale than the ones in our own lives. And who surmounts those obstacles — in most stories — and in the process tells us something about our emotions, raises questions about morality, points to inner truths. Which, if we’re looking at 90 minutes or so of film, or 250 pages of a book, is a lot to ask. But explains why so many of us relish the experience of story, whatever form it’s presented in.

Back in the day, DC Thomson’s comics were free of the names of those who wrote and drew the stories they contained. Children would be confused by the information, so the editors said, and be drawn out of the tales they were reading. More to the point, it meant that the writers and artists were anonymous, making it harder for them to build up a fanbase and use that as leverage to ask for more money, or be talent spotted by rival publishers.

This resentment of the people who wrote and drew the comics that the publishers made money from is a typical attitude of the industry, even today. Marvel and DC like to hook their readers onto characters, and the fact that they and the people chronicling their adventures are largely interchangeable means that creative talents can be switched from one title to another without much impact on sales. And as a system, it works. Particularly if you’re the publisher.

In the sixties, all that started to change when fans started to organise, and wrote to and hung out with the people who created their favourite comics. In turn, some of those fans went on to become a new generation of talent in the seventies working for those same publishers — often with not much more ambition than to follow in the footsteps of those they’d admired. Pop will indeed eat itself.

Fast forward to the 1980s. A band called Pop Will Eat Itself celebrated a comics writer whose capabilities were well in advance of his predecessors. Alan Moore knows the score, said the Poppies. Like them, he was a working class product of pop culture, who referenced high and low art in his work. (One of the Poppies, Clint Mansell, has gone on to become a celebrated film composer, collaborating with the Kronos Quartet for the soundtrack of Requiem for a Dream. Alan Moore’s recent work includes The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which imagines a world based on myriad fictional sources from Camus to Ian Fleming.)

Moore was, and arguably is, most known for Watchmen, his seminal collaboration with artist David Gibbons. It is a work of singular impressiveness, perhaps genius. There sure as hell wasn’t anything like it in comics before the 12 issue series appeared. And it’s appeared ever since, in a number of graphic novel editions, including the superduper paving slab sized one that I invested in the other year. Watchmen is also a truly lousy film, one which Moore had nothing to do with. And he’s taken that stand further, relinquishing his financial rights to the work he created for DC and passing it on to his artists, to give him more time to concentrate on projects that truly matter to him: Jerusalem, an epic novel charting the history of the world as seen from Northampton, and the internationally distributed fanzine Dodgem Logic.

And now DC are planning spin-offs of Watchmen. Prequels and sequels, but you can bet nothing else that equals the brilliance of the original. And DC know that. Which is why led by Paul Levitz they never made such a crass move. Now under Dan DiDio, that’s precisely what they’re doing. Making DiDio even more of a numpty than Simon Cowell, who believes the world wants and needs his banal music, and the preening wannabes who perform it.

Make no mistake: like the film Watchmen, anything that appears bearing that branding is going to be karaoke. Remember that phrase means ‘empty voice’. And sure as hell the comics shit out of DC’s sphincter will bear no more relationship to Alan Moore’s Watchmen than an Oasis tribute band does to The Beatles at their height. But people will buy them, and some of them will enjoy what they read, for the same reason that millions eat at McDonalds when actual burgers are available elsewhere. All of which is a reminder that, for the majority of publishers, the lowest common denominator is what it’s about — even if at least some of the creators signed up to them aspire to writing and drawing work of lasting worth.

It’s been a while since I ran a writing workshop. I’ve been doing plenty of script doctoring and working on my own projects, and that tends to be a great platform for running a class. As you develop your own skills, you come to new conclusions about how they relate to the bigger picture and details of writing, and one of the times I find out where my own understanding is when I’m asked to share it with others.

That opportunity comes next Saturday, February 13th, in a free workshop I’ll be running as part of the Nottingham Loves Learning event. The class kicks off at 2 in The Arts Organisation, 3-21 Station Street, Nottingham NG2 3AJ — just by the train station — and finishes at 5. That said, I can see us heading somewhere we can continue to chat over food and drink into the evening. To indicate your interest, email me: adrian at youdothatvoodoo dot com, or call 07815 158123.

The session will be suitable for people at all levels of experience. There’s always something you can learn, whether it’s by going back to basics or coming across a new understanding. Besides, my approach is to ensure people have a good set of creativity tools to work with that can be used across the board, and not just screenwriting, seeing as it all starts with your ability to play with ideas. There’ll be time for questions and answers as well, and it’s possible we could start some kind of regular group if enough people are interested.

So, get in touch and let me know if you want to participate. It promises to be a fun session, using a range of exercises designed to get you coming up with material quicker than you might have thought possible, and give you some different perspectives on writing — all that, and industry tips too.

The workshop is brought to you by the Department of Business Innovation and Skills, Nottinghamshire: City and County Employment and Skills Board, Transformation Fund and The Learning Revolution. Not forgetting the letter W.

If you were to do a house-to-house search in your neighbourhood, assuming you live in Britain, you’d discover that fully a quarter of homes have a copy of Mamma Mia! The Musical on DVD. The film’s staggering success is built on the equally humungous record it had in theatres worldwide, where it was brought to the stage by producer Judy Craymer, writer Catherine Johnson, and director Phyllida Lloyd.

Mamma Mia! was and is Judy Craymer’s brainchild. She’d worked for Tim Rice for some years, and had a gut feeling that a musical based on the songs of Abba would be a big hit. Fortunately, she got to meet Abba’s songwriters through their contributions to the Tim Rice show Chess, and with their backing went on to assemble the team that created the hit stage show. Not only that, she held onto the same team when Hollywood came knocking at her door wanting to do a screen version, not prepared to do a deal that didn’t include the people she’d brought to the table.

I know all this, incidentally, not through any particular interest in the works of Abba — though they surely do have a way with a tune — but because I watched a documentary on Mamma Mia! last night on Channel 5. What fascinated me was Judy Craymer’s tenacity in making the show, then the film, happen. It’s a given that the story is perfunctory, a means of holding together the Abba songs that are the real reason that an audience has gathered. And I say that hopefully without condescension — the writing in this instance had to be within carefully designed parameters. As such, I’d treat a commission along similar lines (perhaps based on the work of Half Man Half Biscuit) more like I do writing a corporate video script than a screenplay: a job of work rather than something more personal. But still to be done to the best of my ability, and with pride.

All of which raises the interesting question of the distinction between art and entertainment, if indeed such a distinction can be drawn. Music producer Pete Waterman was banging the drum for Mamma Mia! and noting that it’s a film you can see, enjoy hugely while singing along, and then pretty much forget. Well, until some friends or relatives pop over and need to be shown the DVD anyway.

And sure enough, there’s a place for disposable fun. Soap opera is an ephemeral form, providing an emotional connection that’s put aside until next episode. But without soap, would we have had shows like The Sopranos and Six Feet Under? Similarly, pulp magazines were used as padding for packing crates coming over from America, but where would comics writer Ed Brubaker be without their influence on his own sophisticated works, Criminal, Incognito, and Sleeper?

Pop culture’s base metals sometimes prove to be gold, at least in retrospect, and are often used as the inspiration for more ambitious creations. Without pianists playing honkytonk in New Orleans brothels, there’d be no Miles Davis or John Coltrane. No Flash Gordon serial to reach for the stars, and maybe Kubrick wouldn’t have given us 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Which makes me wonder what of today’s apparent junk will prove to be inspiration for mature work in the future. Can something inspirational evolve from Japanese collectable card games? Will composers with serious intentions create ringtones? Can Twitter give rise to a 21st century take on the haiku?

These are valid questions, and interesting ones to ask when some commentators are decrying the emptiness of modern culture. Personally, I’ve always viewed such critiques as bunkum, but rather than do that as a reflex action, consider what could be done if the time and resources that went into creating spam and negativity went into saying or doing something new. And if new is too much of a challenge, one that’s just as great is to say something old in an unexpected way.

How many stories are there? Well, one answer is there are thousands upon thousands, since there’s no shortage of films washing up at cinema screens the world over. But look a bit closer and you’ll start to notice disturbing similarities…

Virtually all American films are predicated on a model that works pretty much as follows: hero/ine achieves their outcome against improbable odds, experiencing a transformation of character in the process. Which is all well and good, as far as it goes. And, to be fair, it does have its utility: if you’re going to be spending ninety or more minutes in the company of an imaginary character you’re encouraged by various dramatic means to identify with, best that the experience is an enjoyable one.

Problem is, firstly that said model omits any number of fascinating and compelling stories in which people fail to get what they want, a life experience which may be frustrating but is an inherent part of the human condition. Second, that the model described is increasingly applied to television, another medium which you’d hope is a broader canvas for storytellers to spin their tales.

Especially in public service broadcasting, which has a wide remit, isn’t there room for a broader spectrum of stories than ones in which people achieve their goals through persevering against the odds? What’s happened in the last decade is that people involved in commissioning tv programmes have been sent on Robert McKee courses and the like, all of which trot out the same old message about three act redemptive structures.

Now, I have high regard for McKee as it happens, but there’s a difference between writers using the likes of his Story to guide their work and script editors and producers using it as a stick to keep errant writers in line. And according to someone who knows a lot more people in the industry than I do, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Similar abuses are made of the Hero’s Journey. It’s an interesting and valid template for story arcs, and one that’s well worth becoming familiar with. But it’s a very selective account of how mythical stories function. It neglects that considerable number of stories in which heroes fail to get what they’re after, and are killed or suffer divine punishment in the process. Now, if all this Hero’s Journey stuff is as significant and archetypal as all that, surely that would suggest that humans have an inherent need to hear stories of defeat as well as victory?

I approached someone I respect recently to ask for their thoughts on a script I’m writing. They turned me down because the story mixes genres, and didn’t believe this would be commercially viable. Which is a fair point, but a defeatist one. We’re living in a world where Charlie Kaufman writes uncharacterisable scripts to great acclaim. Where the likes of Warp X are explicitly interested in genre fusion for the potential it creates for new stories. And tv is breaking new ground with shows like Lost and Misfits.

All of those examples point to a future in which new forms of story will be welcomed. And we’re at a fascinating time for that to come about. The convergence of computer and television in one box, and the use of digital technology to stream films as well as games and tv shows and whatever the hell is playing on YouTube, could well present a tipping point not just in a technological sense, but in terms of the types of stories that audiences want to watch.

Let’s hope so. The alternative is that technology marches on and Avatar becomes the benchmark not just for sophisticated graphics, but for complacent storytelling. And that’s not the future I signed up for.

Every now and then you have an idea that doesn’t fit with the others you come up with. I’ve got used to developing writing projects on my own, though am involved in a couple of collaborations, both with people known for books rather than scripts. But I’ve had a desire to develop something interesting with a designer and illustrator friend, and a few months ago the right concept appeared.

The trick to collaboration, I suspect, is to devise something that has a hook with relevance to the particular pairing. In this case, it comes from a combination of the artist’s way with drawing characters, and his fascination with space: this is someone who works with the latest NASA news in the background. And it’s from that concoction that our collaboration emerged. I’ll spare you the details since these are early days still, and some confidentiality is in order.

What’s been interesting is the necessity for this partnership to spawn ways of thinking and doing that are new to us both. We’ve formed a company that we’re jointly directors of. We’ve spoken to media lawyers, a postproduction company, and a producer. In other words, this is something that we’re taking seriously, and has big implications.

At first, we thought we were developing an animated series for children. And that’s still the outcome we’re aiming for. But what form will that series take, and how will it be shown, given the way that digital media is going? That set us thinking about possibilities other than the obvious television route. And in particular it made us consider how the world of games could be an interesting place to pitch our wares.

I’ve had some experience of the gaming world, having written a whole bunch of supporting material for one the other year. That hopefully means I can go back to the company who asked me to do the work and suggest a partnership. What we have in mind is offering the world and characters we’ve created to games developers. That way, products using our concepts get out there to consumers, to generate income and awareness — both pretty handy if we’re going to stand a chance of realising the goal of an animated series.

This putative multimedia ambition may be all very naive, and is entirely unsupported by anything resembling a business plan. But it is at least interesting, and so far hasn’t taken that much time and commitment from either of its developers. And people who’ve seen the visuals and listened to the concepts are very impressed with what we’ve come up with. Which in turn could be opening other doors, for instance to someone who works in the world of licenced characters. These days, it’s perfectly possible to make toys and maybe other products for well designed characters even if they don’t come with a show. One example would be the cute/grotesque toys developed by cult artist Jim Woodring.

There’s a long way to go on this particular journey, but it’s worth committing to. We’ve come up with a concept we’re proud of that — all being well — could take us to the fabled world of residual income via partnerships with interesting people around the world. What’s not to like? And unlike screenplays, which I am very particular about, this is a project where I’d be happy to be at the helm and not have to sort out every little detail personally: part of the attraction is of creating a sandpit that others get to play in too.

In the next few months, we’ll be having some meetings and putting a website up there to show the world what all this maddeningly unspecific stuff is in the service of. At which point, you can judge for yourself whether we’ve got a winning idea, or we’re barking up a tree that bears no fruit.