I’ve several times received praise from actresses for the female characters I’ve written without being sure why such positive feedback is merited. And then I look at scripts which have made it to the screen and find myself bewildered that the writer has seemingly never met a woman in his life.

One of the primary problems is that many writers continue, even in the 21st century, to define women by their relationships with men. They are wives, lovers, mothers. Which for a start omits some of the more interesting relationships out there, like colleague, employer, sibling or rival.

I suspect part of the issue is the majority of male writers don’t consider the issue of gender with regard to their male characters. ‘Bloke’ is the default setting for so many of the men who appear on screen. So they only stop to consider sex and gender when it applies to those with a different chromosomal arrangement. And particularly when it relates to the fantasy casting of a woman they fancy.

Never mind that writers supposedly have some insight into human character, a claim which is laughable when you consider how many men write women. Insight into character can only come about through a sincere interest in people, and preferably across the contexts they operate in and not merely in their capacity as sex objects.

Fortunately there are exceptions. CCH Pounder’s character in The Shield, Claudette Wyms, is a nuanced portrait of a woman who seeks the captaincy of the police station she’s devoted to so she can clean up its corruption and serve its community. Only, the part was written for a male actor. Pounder loved the character though, and insisted that it wasn’t retooled for her, and the result is a crackling three dimensional performance that reaches parts most actresses don’t get the opportunity to explore.

Soap operas, which have a higher female audience, are notable for some great women characters. But I’m always curious about whether that starts with the writing, or the actress. June Brown’s portrayal of Dot Cotton in Eastenders is a thing of wonder, and some of the show’s best episodes have featured her with just one or two friends, allies, and rivals, such as ones years ago when there were three-handers with Dot, Ethel, and Lou.

But still. I think of the women I know, and struggle to find fictional counterparts as fascinating. My mother, who went through a traumatic divorce to start a new life running a launderette in a rundown part of Birmingham where the most decent people around her were the out-and-out criminals. An ex who has reinvented her career once to do better for herself, and is in the process of doing so again so that how she earns her money is a better reflection of the person she is. An acquaintance who lives in a field that’s literally off the beaten track, in a caravan with her children, raising horses to sell to families who’ll never understand them the way she does.

I’m loathe to subscribe to any particular ideological take on writing, but it seems to me that as long as many male writers continue to perceive women in the role of virgin, mother or whore, that audiences will continue to suffer such stereotypes in every form of popular fiction. Good actresses can rescue bad scripts: imagine what they could do if they were given a good one.

It’s not all bleak of course. Helen Mirren has found some notably excellent writers on Prime Suspect and in The Queen. Meryl Streep dazzles in everything I’ve seen her do, Julie and Julia being a particular recent favourite. And Jodie Foster continues to make shrewd choices, bringing an extra dimension to what could be formulaic roles in thrillers like Panic Room, and developing projects of her own with more personal passions.

It’s amazing what you can do with words and pictures on a page. Comics have such potential, and creators are still finding new ways to work with the way that images and text combine. Sure, there are some tried and tested means of using the form, but what’s exciting is that there is still room for new methods, new effects.

I’d been planning to read Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home for a while, having read lots of praise for this autobiographical graphic novel. I’m glad that I picked up my copy in a charity shop for what I typically spend on a latte, as I’ve rarely been so annoyed by a text. It purports to be a graphic novel, and there’s no shortage of blue chip reviewers singing its praises, but I’m sceptical about how many of those who love it so are truly readers of comics.

Bottom line is that Fun Home is not a graphic novel. It’s an illustrated memoir, with the emphasis on the text. There are pictures, sure enough, but they support and amplify details of what’s there in the form of words. Which in my eyes counts as entry level stuff, and in no way merits the kind of plaudits this book has got.

Sure, it’s welll-written. No disputing that. But in no way does Alison Bechdel explore the possibilities of the comic form. No artful or ironic juxtapositions of form and content here. This is an illustrated memoir, no more and no less, which may help explain its popularity with audiences less used to the beautiful possibilities available to graphic novelists. If you really want to see how this kind of stuff should be done, check out Eddie Campbell’s beautiful mixed media adaptations of Alan Moore’s autobiographical writing The Birth Caul and Snakes and Ladders. Compared to those, Fun Home is child’s play, and the work of a bookish and conventional child at that.

Where Alison Bechdel makes the mistake of treating art as a mere adornment of text, Christos Gage pursues another dead end in Area 10, a collaboration with artist Chris Samnee for the Vertigo Crime imprint. Gage has written for tv and film, and Area 10 ultimately comes across as an illustrated screenplay.

Sure, it’s a more interesting choice than the static one made by Bechdel, but it’s a no less limited approach to the exploration of the possibilities of the comics medium. It’s a well paced thriller, and its twists and turns are straight out of a skilfully executed three act structure…but that’s all it is.

To really make the most of what can be done on a page with words and pictures takes more thought than these creators were inclined to apply. Which is fine in terms of not scaring the horses, but fails to really get to grips with a medium that offers so much to the curious creator.

Take a look back to the roots of comics, and the amazing work of George Herriman in the newspaper strip Krazy Kat. Unconstrained by knowledge of the medium because he was too busy inventing it, Herriman’s ability to juxtapose the different elements of a page led to the creation of paper poetry admired by James Joyce and Picasso among others, while still being accessible to a mainstream audience.

Looking at the majority of comics these days, it’s clear that most creators have retreated from risk and stayed with the clearly depicted linear narrative in their pursuit of a means to get by. Which makes some sense, but makes most comics fairly unsatisfying to read. Books and films are wonderful media in their own right, rather than a role model for comics to aspire to. Thankfully, there are creators who have a fascination with what they can achieve with the means at their disposal, and recent years have seen the rise of Chris Ware, whose award winning Jimmy Corrigan is a far deeper and broader example of what can be done in two dimensions than the limited horizons demonstrated by Fun Home and Area 10.

I’m so impressionable. A few weeks ago, I saw an excellent Australian comedian called Steve Hughes supporting the just as excellent American comic Reginald D Hunter. They share an edgy approach to contentious material about race, sex, and gender that was liberating to hear, both voicing thoughts that challenged my flabby thinking — revealed under scrutiny to be little more than the received wisdom accrued by an essentially liberal reader.

I was challenged, provoked, excited. And took particular delight in the contention proposed by Mr Hughes that ‘no one has the right not to be offended’. Damn straight, I thought, and filed the thought away along with other half-digested nuggets. And, you know, Steve has a point. When it comes down to it, what’s the difference between someone offended by obscene language, and me taking offence at Oasis for aping The Beatles without the bits that made the Fab Four fab in the first place?

More than that, Steve has a follow-up to his free speech stance…taking offence doesn’t damage your liver, or cause anyone to lose money, so exactly what is it that’s at stake? And I parroted that too, as an impressionable full grown man does when taken with a comedian who seems to have the answers to life. I should have spotted the mancrush for what it was — a recognition that someone is doing something cool that I’d like to do, but frankly lack the nuts for.

Just as Reginald D Hunter doesn’t go through life dealing with bullshit in a pithy baritone without encountering some resistance, nor can I reasonably expect to conduct my business in a frank and vulgar manner without getting feedback that my directness is unwarranted. There are consequences for everything we do, and saying that speaking freely has no side-effects is disingenuous. I choose not to remind my size-conscious female friends about that, knowing that the bad feelings they will experience are as real as the ones suffered by the mother of a Downs’ Syndrome child when Frankie Boyle made jokes about same. Where Mr Boyle is concerned, I feel nothing but contempt: humour used against worthy targets is a fine thing. Kids with Downs’ are pretty much at the bottom of society’s ladder — exactly what is achieved by making them the butt of crude humour?

And yet…and yet…I admire the work of William Burroughs for breaking boundaries in its depiction of sexuality and drugs, and for fucking with language itself. I salute Chris Rock for the bravery and honesty of some of his race-based humour. I can see the beauty in the Serrano photo Piss Christ.

Years ago, I came across a gentleman who called himself Rodney Orpheus. He was in a band called The Cassandra Complex, and one of their songs was called — honest — ‘Pagans are the Niggers of the World’. Which just seemed to me to be trying too hard. The title alludes, as you may be aware, to a John Lennon song where women are ascribed that status…and where women are concerned there’s something to consider when the comparison is made. But pagans? Who the fuck even knows what a pagan is in the modern era? Aspiring to being denigrated on the level that black people have been — on the basis of something they have no control over — when paganism is a lifestyle choice…well, it’s a very special kind of ridiculous.

There’s little more I can say, and there is no one clear point to get across where these matters are concerned. Sorry, but that’s how it is with some things. I find myself caught in a dance between poles, one captured in this clip which splices together performances from Richard Pryor and George Carlin, where both are talking about Mr Orpheus’s favourite N word.

I got a message earlier from someone I met recently. She’s worked in tv abroad, and is now based in the UK, and is finding her way in the film community in these parts. Somewhere in the process, she came across a director who asked if she’d be interested in producing his low/no budget film. She was interested, and we talked about getting me involved to look at the script. Only, the director has gone ahead and shot some scenes already. Without discussing it with her. And even less without talking to me about the script.

William Goldman’s famous aphorism about the film industry is ‘noone knows anything’. As a generalisation it’s hard to argue with, but I’d be willing to put money on someone knowing something: that films rushed into production before the director and producer have established their working relationship are unlikely to be troubling film festivals for awards. OK, maybe not the benchmark that matters to this particular director — but at the rate he’s headed I think it’s reasonable to predict a downward spiral that will, at best, result in a film that doesn’t get seen by anyone even if it’s completed. The producer is already edging her way out of the situation, and frankly I don’t blame her, in much the same way that I’d have reservations if the first thing I saw after being asked to strap on a seatbelt is an approaching juggernaut. Life in the fast lane can swiftly turn into a way of becoming another highway casualty.

Anyway, the producer is now returning to her original plan, which involves me working with her to develop and sharpen a script for a short film she’s wanting to make. I was offered the chance to script it, but have plenty on my writing plate already and would prefer in this situation to do what I can to help her do her best. Her concept is fascinating, drawing on personal experience and perceptions that I can’t wait to see her put into film form.

All of which stresses the collaborative nature of the medium. Auteur theory is the creation of academics who’ve never for the most part had anything to do with the making of actual films. It’s an extension of the notion that a single creator is responsible for other artworks, such as paintings. Which itself overlooks the extent to which the grand masters of art frequently had studios whose members had input into the finished product. Sure, the maestro may have had a signature style — but that’s just as true of much classic pottery, where designs were painted by hired hands.

Personal experience tells me that collaboration pays off. I’ve been working with one particular filmmaker for over a year, first on a short film and then on the feature script he’s developing from the same premise. It’s been a fascinating experience for both of us, and one that’s paid off: the short film was singled out by — well, let’s just say a Very Big Cheese — as being the best drama at a festival where it was shown, and VBC expressed interest not only in the director, but in me. The filmmaker’s generosity is characteristic of his attitude, and though neither of us can say what the outcome will be of VBC’s attention his largesse is as welcome as it is uncommon.

These things are what make the days go better. I watched a superb series of filmed interviews with writer Alan Moore, and among other gems was him postulating that we should behave as if our actions will resonate through eternity since, mathematically speaking, that may very well be the case. OK, not the sort of arithmetic I remember from my own school days…but a truly beautiful sentiment from a man who consistently acts from the heart, and in doing so has created work of enduring worth.

So, we’ve had a brief look at stories that stress the individual versus the collective, and the individual against the state. Another class of interactions is all to do with the individual who makes their own way in the world — and may be inclined to toss you a bone if you fall in line with their goals. This is the domain of the deal maker, the hustler, the mercurial figure who always seems to come out on top, even if they’re hankering after an even bigger score.

It’s an archetype that has a particular appeal to filmmakers, since it’s the one that has most resonance with what it’s like to conjure a film into existence. I got an insight into how this worked with a director I worked with years ago, who — when I commented that he must be tempted to shout at people sometimes — confidently stated that he got what he wanted without raising his voice. He did too, pulling off all manner of deals from getting a modestly budgeted short shot on 35mm to persuading a well known actor to play a key role in it in his days off from a feature being shot 200 miles away. I spent a day in the production office, stacked full of cans of fizzy drink and crisps as the result of some or other sponsorship arrangement. Sponsoring who, for what, I wondered…a question that was never truly resolved — but the food and drink was welcome on set.

It’s not far from such shenanigans to the heist movie, which I’m convinced filmmakers like because pulling off a heist is an artform close to their own. Look at what’s going on in Ocean’s Eleven and there’s an aura of smugness that comes from people being selfconsciously hip — the same toecurling vibe that afflicts some of the scenes in Swingers, itself all to do with wannabe-cool dudes getting what they want in their very narrow version of life.

In a more mature form, this world of deals and getting ahead is examined in Michael Clayton, Up In The Air and Glengarry Glen Ross. Those stories explore the personal cost of looking to be one up all the time, of edging forward without having a more holistic view of the world that helps characters realise the essential poverty of what they’re engaged in. You could say it’s a theme of Clooney’s, who features in the first two of those films — it’s a dilemma he recognises personally, and has resolved by investing in socially conscious projects like Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck alongside those that make the most of his matinee idol looks.

Not that such characters and stories are restricted to the here and now. Where would Star Wars be without the swagger that Han Solo brings to the story? He’s the urban fox to Luke’s farm boy, and that dynamic is a powerful one — especially when you slap an impressionable young princess in the middle of it. Legal dramas occupy this space to some extent too, at least where the wiliness of the law professionals is emphasised. And there are, of course, hybrids with the other templates we’ve looked at: Phil Silvers as Sgt Bilko up against the rigid rules of the army makes me laugh like few other tv comedies, and some of Woody Allen’s work is about what happens when fast talkers come up against more rooted family structures.

Whatever permutations you can think of, someone will have got there first. But that’s not the point. The idea is that these archetypes can help you develop your story to get the most out of it. To exploit the potential of a religious community setting, a character who likes to get her own way and now inhabits a situation where those impulses have legal consequences…whatever the dynamic, thinking about the way it plays out in the framework explored in these last three posts will — hopefully — be of benefit.

Last time, the focus was on how an individual deals with tribal groups. And that covers a lot of drama — where would soap operas be without conflict between individual and family? It’s a theme that goes back deep in world literature, and no wonder.

A more recent development is a function of industrial society: the rise of the regulated state. Kafka wouldn’t have been able to spin his tales of the machinations of the state without working for an insurance company. The Trial and The Castle are idea-led stories, but there are more visceral narratives to come out of the conflict between individual and government.

Where would your average urban police thriller be without a shouty black captain trying to keep a maverick cop in line, said line being drawn by the assholes in City Hall? There’s a fundamental distinction between community and society, and it’s all about size. A community can regulate itself through subtle influence from its members against those who would take advantage of it. A society consists of communities rubbing alongside one another, needing a consistent regulatory framework to control the behaviour of all.

It’s an impossible task, of course. The subtleties with which a family or religious group deals with wayward members cannot possibly be codified into black and white. But that’s what happens, and the consequence is the emergence of narratives which celebrate the triumph of the individual against the system. Catch-22 is one famous example, and rightly so, Heller’s novel outlining how individuals can triumph against the insanity of the rules that seek to contain them in times of war.

In film, Cool Hand Luke is a classic story about a rebel with a cause, one man up against the bullshit that society throws his way. As societies develop, become more sophisticated, it’s no surprise that there’s a place for a new breed of hero who can stand up to the system. The rise of hackers as heroes is one interesting example — where they were baddies in an earlier generation of thrillers, and then edgy renegade characters akin to the counterculture good guys of Easy Rider, by the time of Firewall even respectable geezers like Harrison Ford get to defend their families by using hacking skills to turn the tables on the badasses who threaten his nearest and dearest.

Project that forward into science fiction movies, and the central metaphor of The Matrix is one of hacking: reality itself is a programme that the savvy can turn to their advantage. Hot damn: bet you wish you’d paid more attention to computing at school, especially since you can’t even use your iPhone properly. In the future then, you can play the system against itself — a trick exploited beautifully in Robocop when one of the bad guys is sacked from the board, so that the Ed-209 robot which has been protecting him can now make him eat hot lead death.

Alternately, you can learn to ignore the rigid strictures of The Man and just, you know, do your own thing. Which is where the ending of the original Star Wars film comes from: Luke eschews the use of the computer mounted in his helmet to take the Death Star down guided by The Force, mysticism trumping rules-based thinking. (At least until the second trilogy, with its turgid revelation that The Force is associated with midichlorians, which takes us all the way back to school biology lessons and rules-based guff.)

Thankfully, humans seem to win in these showdowns with the overly programmed. Another example comes in the interaction of the astronaut Dave Bowman with computer HAL in 2001. When HAL turns on the people it’s meant to serve, Bowman has to act against the machine in order to achieve a mystical union at the climax of the film. All of which confirms that, cool as machines are, you need your heroes to be even cooler for an audience to really be moved by your story.

There’s a school of thought that says much of what we get up to has its roots in different stages of humanity as a species. Rewind way back and you’ve got two currents. One is all about individual expression and winning through. Your fundamental instinct to survive and make your mark, manifested in everything from a caveman wrestling a sabretooth tiger to Tiger Woods scoring a hole in one more beautiful woman. Alongside this, the need for the tribe to prosper as a group, which calls for individual welfare to be subordinated to the collective, be that a genteel family in a Victorian novel or a Los Angeles street gang.

A lot of drama has its roots in this individual v tribe dynamic. It’s there in Romeo & Juliet, where the hero falls in love with a woman from the wrong side of the tracks, and it runs through a whole bunch of manly films. Gangster films often focus on the pull between a hotheaded youngster wanting to make a name for himself and the loyalty that’s necessary to progress in a crime family. Kill by all means — but only kill the people your superiors tell you too.

One contemporary take on such a theme was presented in the superb ITV drama Father & Son, the first part of which ran this evening. ‘Torn from the headlines’ is the expression some papers use for drama like this, inspired by real life gangland shootings in Manchester. Writer Frank Deasy has done wonders with that exceptionally raw material, translating it into a gripping, moving, and powerful tragedy about families and violence.

Teenager Sean O’Connor is the son of a killer, and in taking a gun from his girlfriend’s hand and holding it himself, seems to have inherited the title himself. Claimed almost as a trophy by an old ally of his dad’s in prison, Sean is under the older man’s wing — but that isn’t to say he’s safe. The ally wants out of prison, and realises Sean is a valuable piece on a chess board that also includes teenage gang members, the aunt who’s brought Sean up and works for the police, and fellow cops who view Sean as nothing more than the latest in the line of murderous O’Connors.

There are strands of tension accreting throughout the story. Sean wants to do right by his aunt, a positive role model, and steer clear of his dad. He loves his girlfriend, and goes to prison rather than allow her to face a murder charge. His cellmate professes allegiance to Sean’s dad — but will sacrifice Sean to get what he wants. And the murder happened in the first place in self defence as response to a friend of Sean’s being shot by gang members.

It’s potent and beautifully played stuff, and though the future looks bleak for Sean O’Connor, there are three episodes to come, and in them the certainty of further twists on the theme of individual will and its relation to collective experience.

These dynamics are at the heart of many a martial arts film. David Mamet’s Redbelt is about a martial arts tutor loyal to his lineage who ends up caught in a fixed tv tournament and fighting against its corruption, in the process winning the heartfelt thanks of his school’s grand master. Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai are honorable warriors prepared to sacrifice themselves on behalf of a defenceless farming community. And so on.

You can find variations on the theme in westerns, and in any film where a new recruit is initiated into a service and needs some of their maverick qualities sanding down — though inevitably it’s the utilisation of same that saves the day and for which the initiate is rewarded by the elders of the tribe. All of which is to suggest that this is a theme as old as civilisation itself — and Father & Son an excellent example of a modern take on it with more of a socially relevant than a mythic interpretation of it.

It’s that time. It’s been brewing a while now, and I think I’m ready. See, there’s a question that writers get asked. A lot. A question you’re supposed to have an answer to when it comes your way, as it surely will. That question being, of course, ‘where do you get your ideas from?’?

* sigh *

As it happens, the best way to answer that question is to tell you a story. A story about a play I wrote, for radio. Years ago, when I had very little idea of how to do such a thing but knew it was what I wanted to do. And what happened was, I knew I wanted to write about the relationship of some people in a lifeboat. Maybe I wasn’t too coherent about the reasoning, but looking back I can see the sense of it. A lifeboat has got characters in jeapordy in a small environment that they can’t leave. And their lives are at stake. Perfect dramatic fodder. Except that I just couldn’t write the script.

Oh, I tried. Had all sorts of goes. But my writing was flat and I wasn’t excited by any of it. Until –

But let me tell you about the screenplay I’m working on now. Which had stalled when I reached a transforming point for my protagonist. I knew how he was up till then. But I didn’t know how to write him in his new guise. Something about it eluded me — until I saw the new version of Bad Lieutenant, and clicked that Nicolas Cage’s delightfully extreme performance offered me a way back into my own screenplay. Since when I’ve been putting the hours in and coming up with stuff I’m really happy about, that fulfils the promise I knew the story had. Phew.

– anyway. The lifeboat story. It all came alive when I realised that it could be cross-fertilised with another idea. I’d read that parrots can live 80 years or more. And I was fascinated by the idea of a parrot that had lived in a room all that time, learned the ways of its owners, been taught by them to speak. Not a lot, but a few key phrases, which in its semi-aware way the parrot knew could change the mood of the people it lived around. Wind them up. Put them down. Because nobody gets on their best behaviour for a parrot.

And that was it. Not only would there be a lifeboat in the play, there’d be a parrot. An evil scrawny bastard that knew just what to say to wind up one or more people on the lifeboat, who would be irritated by it beyond belief but unable to catch and throttle it as the wily bird flew beyond reach of the boat’s oars.

That was it. Bingo. Only it wasn’t of course, since I was still very much finding my way as a writer at that point and had neither the skill nor the discipline to realise the concept to its full potential, let alone send it to Radio 4. Shame. Maybe I’ll go back to it one day.

But I did learn something from that. Which is that inspiration happens when you keep some of your attention available for what’s happening outside. Sure, there’s all kinds of good stuff inside. But things get really interesting when you turn your gaze outwards, and combine parts of your internal world with the one that we share. That’s an enriching experience. Learning by any other name. And it’s what — even in the smallest ways — keeps a writer engaged with the world at large, rather than absorbed in their own navel. Which, when you think about it, means that the answer to ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ could most honestly be answered ‘From you’.

Next Saturday afternoon at the Quad in Derby, Risaria Langley is offering people the chance to participate in a Constellations workshop. It’s a great opportunity for writers and filmmakers to take along the concept for a film and develop it using this powerful method.

Constellations uses non-verbal methods to showcase what’s at the heart of an idea, and give pointers on how to get from where you are to where you want to be. Used widely in Europe, businesses that have embraced Constellations include IKEA and the Dutch railway network.

Read more about Constellations at Risaria’s website. You can have your ideas explored for £50. Be part of the supporting group for £25. Or observe the process for £5. Only the fact that I’ve got a prior engagement in London has prevented me from attending — if you can get along, do so.

I spent a while on the phone with a good friend who is confused and tearful because of a learning process she’s going through. In acquiring the skills she wants to help her develop as a person and succeed in the next chapter of her professional life, she’s increasingly aware of a tension between how she feels, and how she thinks she’s supposed to feel. According, that is, to the stuff she’s learning. To which there’s an answer, of course…the difference between theory and practice is that in theory, theory works. In practice, it doesn’t.

As in life, so in screenplays. Having waded through Syd Field and Robert McKee and Phil Parker and concluding that John Truby offers the most useful frameworks for tackling scriptwriting, I’m increasingly inclined to ignore the guidance of such gurus and set out in pursuit of my own truths.

Of course, I have a sound theoretical basis for such a stance. You may or may not be familiar with Alfred Korzybski. He was a very smart fellow who through studying the slippage between reality and representations of it coined the phrase ‘The map is not the territory’. Meaning, among other things, that words are not which they describe, and that however accurate a map is, it will inevitably miss details that would be pertinent to some observer or other.

As all this relates to screenwriting, Korzybski’s notion could be expressed thus: ‘the script is not the film’. How could it be? A script is a thing of around 100 pages. A film exists in time, and supposedly that time is linked to the number of those pages. I am less convinced of that linkage than I ever was, especially as I write my current script. After the opening sequence, the action moves to a mental hospital. The protagonist is passive, the camera showing us what he sees from a wheelchair as he’s pushed from the back of an ambulance into the lobby, and from there up to his ward. The journey happens in real time, and I know in my head that it takes longer than the pagecount suggests it should. The same applies to other sequences in the script, which are written concisely but I know to have the intended effect would take a longer time on screen.

That’s just one example of the disconnect between what’s on the page and what I hope to see on a screen one day. It’s also impossible to get across just how I want the sound design of the film to work. When the protagonist is in hospital, the building is having work done on it, and he interprets the sound of the construction as his psyche being drilled into and restored. I can point to that, but I know my description is only a very binary version of what I want to see and hear — if the effect is achieved as I’d like it to be, it will be a synaesthetic link between what the character perceives and what it means to him.

Structure is another area that’s mutable, never mind what McKee and the others say. Oh, there has to be a structure, there’s no doubting it. But it should flow from the natural shape of the story, rather than being a cookie cutter to pour a story into. Some stories are cookie shaped, and that’s fine. Not all of them are. And remember how arbitrary some of this stuff is — structure for tv writers is determined in large part by whether there are ad breaks in the show you’re writing. A straightforward commercial consideration dictates how you exercise your craft. Simple as.

Really, all structure is about is ensuring that the turning points in your story work effectively and build up to a satisfactory resolution. There may be three acts. But why not five? Or instead shape your story into ten minute sequences. There’s a way that will work for your story. Mine too. And my increasing suspicion is that the longer writers dwell on the formalities of all this, the less creating they get round to.

I’m reminded of an acquaintance, a talented musician who somehow never gets round to creating any actual music. First it was because he needed a bass guitar. Then because he needed a five string one. Then because he lacked home recording equipment. Finally, he has a studio of his own, with more kit than The Beatles had. And hasn’t produced a sound.