Exactly 4 years ago, I wrote the first piece here. This is the 600th and final youdothatvoodoo blog. Nothing ever ends though, and in this case some of you will already be aware that I’ve started a new site, writebyyourside. It’ll still be me, and I’ll continue to write roughly the same mix as I’ve been presenting here. The difference? You’ll receive the pieces by signing up. And I’ll be changing the mix that I’ve established here. For one thing, I’ll be featuring occasional interviews with some of the writers, filmmakers and other creatives I’ve got to know, some of them since youdothatvoodoo started. And there’ll be a new focus on prose, which coincides with my renewed enthusiasm for short stories. One commission I really enjoyed a few months ago was for a short story, and I’m now reading more fiction again having spent a long time focusing on non-fiction other than in the form of comics.

Writebyyourside is also an exercise in adapting to the evolving situation for writers that the online world presents, and is itself still evolving as some fine-tuning takes place. I’ve bundled together nearly 200 pieces from youdothatvoodoo into two volumes, one on the craft of writing and the other with reviews written from a writer’s perspective. A third volume rounds the package out with previously unavailable scripts and treatments that are compiled with the intention of giving writers a practical idea what the industry expects. All of this has been done with the invaluable support of Edd Hillier, who is also responsible for the sound and music of the video at the new site.

Working with Edd is a good example of the way I approach the business of being a writer. For a start, it’s about recognising where your strengths are. And mine don’t include much in the way of computing skills. So, I reached out to Edd in the same way that I’ve approached producers and directors, with a view to making something happen. This comes under the heading of what many call networking, and which is second nature to those who flourish in the creative sector. It’s also, interestingly, a strategy that helps increase the quality of the work produced by all those within a network. The number and quality of ideas rises as people join forces, and that’s true whether you’re looking to make a feature film or do something online.

‘Something’ is the interesting word there, since it’s in the nature of what a lot of interesting people are doing online these days that there are no strict definitions and boundaries for what’s being brought to life. I was sent an email the other day by someone I’ve worked with in the gaming world, looking for beta testers and funding for a gaming experience that integrates a number of geographically-focused social media programmes into a realtime vampire-hunting game where people try and turn the tables on their supposed undead overlords. There’s something very interesting going on there, with participants using the same sort of suspension of disbelief that would typically be employed passively in front of a cinema screen to participate in a shared fiction.

I can only suggest that more of this will be happening in the future, as immersive media and gameplay and new uses of technology allow us to cast our imagination into the world. That’s part of the journey I’ve been on for a couple of years with artist Andy Tudor as we continue to develop a multi-platform concept including animation, games, and theme park attractions for a concept that we’re collaborating on, and which we’ve attracted the attention of a highly successful international entrepreneur with.

All of which is to say that writing is alive and kicking, and that there’s no shortage of opportunities for writers. In my case, I’m realising that I’ve got the makings of a businessman too, and it’s something I’d urge any writers reading to consider. The world is at a very interesting point right now. Rather than rely on dinosaur institutions which haven’t got your best interests at heart – whether they’re publishers, broadcasters, or studios – why not embrace the potential presented by the digital scene? As a warm blooded mammal with a brain, you’re more agile and adaptive than the lumbering beasts that have dominated the media landscape. It’s not so much about taking them on as doing your own thing, and enjoying the rewards.

Thanks to everyone who’s read, got in touch, and enjoyed. Here’s to a great 2012.

When I was a kid, I sometimes got confused when we went to visit my one grandmother because she’d tell stories that went on and on. I couldn’t distinguish between when she was talking about the latest goings-on among her friends and neighbours, and what she was relating about her favourite tv soaps. The whole became an ongoing stream of low-grade incidents populated by characters who didn’t stand out for me, all the stuff of narrative but none of the pull that it presumably had for her. She was relating stories, sure enough, but had no real sense of how to engage an audience, or at least this younger listener: I had no way of distinguishing between what was happening at the (Crossroads) motel and how her sister Dot was doing.

If she’d been a writer, you’d have said my gran had problems clearly establishing flashbacks and dream sequences from the main narrative she was relating. That’s something where there’s a clear distinction in, say, Billy Liar. Although young Billy is himself prone to fantasy, we the audience have no problem understanding when he’s fantasising and when life is more prosaic. Get this stuff muddled and the audience gets muddled too.

Somewhere along the line, Lost lost me. After a bravura opening, and some strong episodes in the first series, the piling on of weirdness on weirdness got too much. Having an air of mystery is one thing – the show’s writers being unable to explain the inexplicable is quite another. As timeslips and monsters and conspiracies accreted, my attention wavered. Lose the internal logic of a show to that extent, and it’s hard to care about the outcome. Same applies to hotly touted comic series Green Wake – when you’ve got not only an ambiguous setting but mysterious characters within it, it’s hard to form an emotional relationship with the story. When anything can happen at any moment, does anything matter?

I’ve mentioned my soft spot for amiable stoners Harold and Kumar before, liking these gently subversive and humane guys and enjoying the capers they get caught up in. They’re at it again with a new festive themed story, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, in the course of which they run afoul of a vicious Russian mob boss, turn into Claymation through the effect of hallucinogens, perform in a musical being staged at a cathedral, and shoot Santa in the face. Oh, and there’s a baby that develops a taste for Class A substances, a walk-on appearance by Jesus Christ, and a robot that makes waffles.

For all that craziness, there’s a solid core to the story, which however bizarre the circumstances never strays from two men reigniting their friendship under the threat of dire consequences if a Christmas tree isn’t found to substitute for one that the duo accidentally set in flames early on. That resolute focus on emotions and character held my attention in this, the third outing for the hapless duo. It helps that there’s some great humour and real visual inventiveness – but to get over my general distaste for drug stories the team putting Harold and Kumar together are clearly doing something right.

The ability to engage an audience with the plight of characters they care about is fundamental to your ability to tell a good story. Get that right, and anything else is possible. I’ve never experienced vast wealth, but found it easy to empathise with Howard Hughes in Scorsese’s The Aviator (contrast with the poor little rich girl in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere). Never been pursued by supernatural forces, but have been at the edge of my seat in stories as varied as Blair Witch Project and The Omen. As humans, we’re equipped with the ability to empathise with one another. And can even identify with animal (Bambi, Lassie) and otherwise non-human protagonists (Wall-E, RoboCop) with ease. So please, when you’re writing a story, make it easy for us to do that. Get it right, and everything else will be fine.

Subtext is where people say one thing, and it means something different to what they’re saying on the surface. People do this a lot. When your aunt asks you at a family gathering if you’re dating, it can mean a whole bunch of stuff other than the words she uses. We get used to subtext through growing up and seeing what happens in our family environment when people like your aunt ask questions that mean more than they say. And when the people who are being talked to respond in a way that isn’t how you’d expect people to react purely on the basis of the words used. Like, if that aunt were to ask your dad whether he’d called the guy at the fish restaurant yet, and your dad flares up and throws a shoe at her, it’s maybe because she was referring to the fish guy as a means of reminding dad that he’s out of work at the moment and should be doing something about getting a job, such as washing dishes at the fish place because – ceramics degree notwithstanding – really that’s the kind of work he should aspire to. Subtext is funny, but not in a ha ha kind of way.

You’ll come across subtext all over the place. Except in this article so far. That’s because I’m experimenting with the writing style of Akiva Goldsman as demonstrated in the Joel Schumacher film A Time To Kill. Possibly because it’s based on a John Grisham book and his stories don’t have subtext. It’s very interesting watching a story where everyone says exactly what they mean. This runs counter to a whole bunch of advice about writing dialogue that you can find in books on screenwriting. But what do those guys know, huh? If they were any good, then they’d be doing what Joel Schumacher does and making films.

When you watch A Time To Kill you realise some of what it is to be autistic. I don’t mean that in a mean way. Just that autistic people are supposed to find it difficult to understand subtext. Well, this is a film they could enjoy because everything means exactly what it says. It would be great if everyday life was like that, wouldn’t it? That way, you could tell your boss “The thing is, I think you are a meanie. Everyone says so. Everyone except Stacey, who you slept with at that sales conference and got promoted when she came back.” As it is, you probably say something different. Maybe “You want me to do the spreadsheet? What is it, are Stacey’s nails still drying?” Which is clever, because it suggests without stating it directly that Stacey does not do much work, owing to her relationship with the boss, and spends more time getting her nails done than anything else, those nails maybe being one of the things that attracted the boss to her.

It would be great if there was no subtext. People would get what we meant, and we would understand them. A wife would not be able to tell a husband that the reason she is upset is he did not pick up that she is disappointed with him about leaving it to late to book the Spanish villa, even though she told him it was OK, which disappointment has caused her to be furious with herself, that he has failed to notice, which is why she looks down at him and does not do that thing he likes any more. That kind of subtext takes a Nobel standard psychic gymnast to work out.

Having a courtroom drama without subtext is especially impressive. Usually there’s lot of stuff that’s hard to follow if you get a phone call during the movie. Like if someone hums a tune they know the other person hates to make them mad in front of the judge. That would definitely be subtext.

In conclusion, I can say that Akiva Goldsman is a visionary for the way he creates scripts that do without an outmoded tool. And that life would be a bunch easier if we could live in a John Grisham novel, as long as we weren’t bad guys.

The notion of an old school detective story with an occult angle is a fine one, so I was really looking forward to my first viewing of Angel Heart. I’m all in favour of mixed genre yarns, and figured a thriller set in Harlem and New Orleans with jazz and voodoo would be one I’m all over. Only, in practice, it just doesn’t work for me. Why would that be?

The problem starts with Robert de Niro, who plays a character called Louis Ciphre. Now, de Niro’s performance is pretty fine. The issue is his name. Louis Ciphre = Lucifer. Yes, Satan himself takes on the form of a bearded and boiled egg eating Bobby de Niro. Even our hero says it’s a cheesy name, and it takes some cojones to call out the Lord of Darkness on stuff like that. It demeans the Fallen Angel even to hint that he may have a weakness for dodgy puns that you can imagine heavy metal bassists signing in to hotels as on 30th anniversary tours.

It doesn’t help that there isn’t a shadow director Alan Parker (also responsible for the script) doesn’t like, and that he can’t get enough of them in combination with spiral staircases, rotary fans, and any other damned circle he can put in the shot, all the better to signify lurking menace. Well, that’s the intent. In practice, it means everything looks like an overly styled music video, complete with cats slinking in alleys and moody sax. Much as it pains me to say it, as someone who once loved Pink Floyd’s The Wall, you can see why Parker got the job directing the film of the album with his thing for clodhopping symbolism.

What’s interesting is that there could be a much better film made with the same concept, if only it was handled with a lighter touch. Rather than have yer actual Satan being a puppetmaster for the evil that unfolds, wouldn’t it be much more powerful to hint at that possibility without confirming it? As it is, there are times when the direct occult aspects of the story seem heavyhanded, straight out of a fifties EC horror comic. And they’d have probably worked better there, where a short pulp tale with suitably moody artwork might still be regarded as a classic. Spending a fortune telling that story with cameras and actors only makes its inherent ludicrousness clear.

Much of the time – in storytelling generally as well as film in particular – ambiguity is your friend. It’s arguably more powerful to show someone to be devilish than to give them the horns and tails of Beelzebub and remove any doubt. And certainly chimes with contemporary understandings of evil in the world. From that point of view, Elephant and We Need To Talk About Kevin - both responses to the Columbine shooting – are far more haunting than Angel Heart could ever be.

What all this comes down to is that it’s generally better to hint at things than state them outright. Imagine the dilemma of a protagonist believing that Satan is after them, but knowing it sounds ludicrous and that it will get them sectioned if they admit it outright. How much more powerful a situation to play with than having an actor – even one as notable as Bobby D – with a forked beard and some dodgy effects on his eyes to make it unmistakeable that this is the Lord of the Flies leering at you.

Shadows are interesting because of what might be hiding in them. The French film Them made that abundantly clear, relating a night when a couple are terrorised by what turns out to be children – the tension and ultimate revelation made it one of the scariest films I’ve seen in recent years. Dragging things into the light, stating starkly that this is how things are, is a choice to be made with full thought given to the implications. Angel Heart demonstrates what happens when that thinking process isn’t engaged with.

Metaphor is an important part of how films work. We might not be in hock to the mob ourselves, but we know what it feels like to experience stress from financial pressures, and so we can empathise all too easily when a protagonist does things we’d never do in response to their plight. We feel like blasting someone with a gat – the character in the film actually takes that extra step and blows the mofo away. If only our own problems were resolved so easily.

That’s one use of metaphor. Others pop up all over the place. Zombies as stand-ins for consumers. Aliens as migrants. You get the idea. But it can be taken further, which is what writer-director-producer Andrew Niccol has done with In Time, that like his previous sf outing Gattaca takes a somewhat cerebral approach to a story built around a simple premise – in this case, that time serves the same function as money in the world of the film.

Essentially, to get past the age of 25, you have to earn extra time. You get it for work you do, and pay it out for things you want or need. Sound familiar? Our hero comes across a jaundiced centenarian – still looking youthful – who gives him all his remaining years before choosing intentional death rather than continue a life he considers pointless. That’s the start of things, but just as Spider-Man needs the death of his uncle to kickstart him into heroism, our protagonist here suffers the death of his mother, who dies because the bus has increased the cost of a ticket to 2 hours and she has less than that before she plans to hook up with her son to get more time.

The steely look of the film encourages a detached response, as does the emphasis on wordplay. For the first half hour in particular, phrases predicated on time are prevalent, hooking you into the mindset not just of the characters but helping you realise just how much our own lives are bound up with time. Consider the implications of ‘taking forever’, ’seconds to spare’, ‘time to give’.

If that somewhat heady approach is one that sits well with you, fine. It won’t work for everyone. And effective though the metaphor of money as time is, it’s not entered into conviction by all the actors. The leads are fine, but there’s a dodgy bunch led by a bad guy who’s supposed to be intimidating, whose performance says otherwise. To what extent that’s because of the degree of abstraction involved in the core concept, rather than poor casting, I’m unsure.

That said, would you expect visceral performances in an essentially Kafka-esque story? Arguably it’s unfair to expect the same story to deliver intellectually satisfying notions and get people excited by fight scenes. Only, audiences have been spoiled by the likes of Adjustment Bureau, which made an emotionally engaging thriller from a ridiculous premise, and the spiritually-centred Source Code.

The real issue here is whether you like the films of Andrew Niccol. There absolutely should be room in the market for filmmakers like him, who have an imagination that doesn’t begin and end with product placement deals and Happy Meal tie-ins. And it’s great that he’s doing somewhat challenging material, that in its own polite sophisticated way is sending out the same message as the Occupy Wall Street protesters and their supporters.

Tintin can wait. It’s got Spielberg behind it, and there’s no danger of it disappearing from our screens any time soon. If you want to see a film that will stretch your thinking and leave you wondering, rather than full of gee-whizz, then In Time is absolutely worth investing some of your time in.

Every now and then I pop into the local cinema and catch a couple of films, rather than just the one. That gives rise to some interesting double bills, and in the case of today’s reflection on an issue I perhaps wouldn’t have picked up on were it not for seeing two movies back to back that otherwise have no place together. One was the George Clooney directed political drama The Ides of March, the second was robot-fighting kiddy feature Real Steel.

It has to be said I wasn’t expecting much from Real Steel. Just some metal-fisted hokum to act as light relief after Clooney was done with parading ethical issues. The surprise was how good the film looks. Seriously. Much of the photography is gorgeous, and between that and the art direction, which gives the futuristic film a touch of an old carnie feel, there’s a bit of a Ray Bradbury tinge to the proceedings. And hey, why not? I can imagine Bradbury writing a story about a father and son bonding through their love of a beaten-up old boxing robot. Sure, the story is entirely predictable, but it’s very well executed by director Shawn Levy, and I’d absolutely recommend it to anyone looking for some good family viewing.

What connects it with The Ides of March is theme. Real Steel sees a son connecting with his father as the principle narrative, having been let down by him in his life to date. And they do so through a shared passion for robots. Dad was a boxer who turned to controlling robot boxers when the real sport fell out of favour, and he was no more successful there than he had been in the ring himself. You won’t be surprised to hear – first – that they surprise the robot boxing fraternity by working with an antique, and – second – winning the day by getting their ‘bot to shadow the father’s own boxing moves.

The bit that becomes interesting in light of Clooney’s robot-free yarn is that though the kid and dad undoubtedly win the fight against the badass robot, the result technically goes the other way thanks to the politics of the sport. Meaning, that father and dad get their reconciliation (the point of the whole thing), but are cheated of victory in the strict sense.

So, what happens is essentially dad and son win because of their love, which outweighs the fact that the world is corrupt. And there’s a similar dynamic going on in The Ides of March, with the protagonist a man of undoubted integrity at the start of the story, who is working to progress Democratic governor Clooney’s presidential chances. Only, the thing here is that our man does side with the forces of corruption and compromise, assisting his own and Clooney’s professional prospects, but at who knows what personal cost.

Interesting stuff. And what connects the films is the theme of loss of innocence. In Real Steel, it’s there but doesn’t really affect father and son. It’s an indication of the world the kid is growing up in, that has already defeated his father in so many ways, and driven him to cynicism and complicity. The Ides of March features an adult protagonist who does sell out, and knows that’s exactly what he’s done regardless of how he chooses to describe what he’s done to others.

In a nutshell, that’s the difference between adult and child protagonists. It would be a very harsh writer who chose to script a story about a child knowingly succumbing to the forces of darkness in the world. But that’s exactly the sort of material that makes for rich material for adult audiences where they’re seeing people who are likewise grown up, since we will all have some stab of recognition for the moment that a choice is made that introduces grey into a world that we may have kept black and white for years.

If you’re interested in finding out how brilliant people get to be brilliant, how do you do so? One route I’ve discovered useful, given my interest in writing, is to go to talks by writers doing publicity tours. All kinds of good stuff comes out, and you get the chance to ask questions as well. Which is what I’ve been doing tonight…

I went to see thriller writer Michael Connelly, author of heaps of crime books that have sold in bucketloads internationally. Now, I haven’t actually read any Connelly at this point, but it strikes me that if you’re going to learn from people familiarity with their work is no obstacle if what you’re interested in is the structure of how they do what they do. That was very much the case: a good chunk of the questions came from people fascinated by this or that character he’d written about, which is fair enough. My eyes and ears were open to other matters, and had I been a devotee I might have been too fascinated by the content to notice the things I did come away with.

Time and again it becomes apparent that you can’t divorce what someone does from the life they’ve lead. There is no way that Connelly would be writing what he writes, and approaching it the way he does, without his particular background. He worked as a journalist in Los Angeles, and was troubled by a reality of the job: the city had so many murders that they vied for the front page. Only the most ‘interesting’ ones – with a celebrity angle, or an especially gruesome aspect – would be singled out for coverage.

There’s a moral stance within that perspective which informs Connelly’s worldview. It’s at the heart of his interest in the stories he writes, and I got real insight into how he develops his books through his description of how he put together his latest novel. I asked a question that built on that revelation, which made things all the more fascinating, and the following is my take on how to approach writing in the same fashion as Connelly.

The key element of what Connelly does is to use a striking image as an organising principle for a story. His newest book, The Drop, takes its structural inspiration from the twin helix formation of DNA, which can be found – for instance – in a drop of blood. That’s one of the meanings of the title, and it has two more: the drop a body takes from the roof of a famous hotel that his hero investigates, and the LAPD acronym DROP which relates to the hero’s forthcoming retirement.

So, what we have in this instance is two stories which circle around one another but never meet, which struck Connelly as being more representative of reality than stories which do coincide. His choice many years ago that protagonist Harry Bosch would age in real time is also important, since it accounts for the fact that he is facing the end of his career after a long sequence of books. And each of them features repeated thematic aspects, concerning the growing role of technology, the nature of evil, and Bosch’s relationship with Los Angeles.

That’s one example. Another is a forthcoming book that coincides with a 20th anniversary, and to explore that Connelly has gone back to 1992 and his vivid recollection of a riot that he witnessed as a journalist. Etched in his mind is the memory of a bottle of Southern Comfort being thrown towards him, in such detail that he can recall the writing on the label. That specific visual will feature at the climax of the story, as other key images have shaped the structure of other books Connelly has written.

Even if you’re not planning to write a novel, the idea of having an image as an organising principle to work towards is one that can usefully be explored. Ken Campbell used a candelabra as the inspiration for the structure of a one man show. The influence of that image may not be apparent to the audience, but if it helps a creator shape the material they’re working with then it is invaluable.

In Connelly’s case, he has such faith in that process he does not need to plot out the story in detail, allowing himself to be surprised by what comes up. But then, why wouldn’t he be? One way to describe what he does is that he experiences a trance through focusing on a detail, allowing the whole to emerge in its own special way. Hmm. That reminds me…

A long time back, I interviewed comics creator Dave Sim, who said something very similar:

Sim As Neil Gaiman put it, it’s as if you’re building a bridge, but you’re not building a bridge sequentially, the way you have to do it in the physical world. The moment you start building it on this side, it starts growing from the other side. And you just start trying to predict where all the curlicues and whatnot are going to be, and all of a sudden one of them shows up, and you’ve got a chunk of the bridge about 30 feet out in mid-air that’s about 15 feet higher than you thought it was supposed to be.

AR And you don’t know how the hell it’s going to work.

Sim You don’t let that trouble you. You just start building the rest of it, and eventually some dramatic curve comes in and you go ‘Oh, alright, it’s going to rise up in some way and hook up with this side. And I can see now looking at all this stuff that’s getting built on the other side in my unconscious mind that yeah, this could be quite attractive when it’s done. You know, it could be quite symmetrical.’

I’m pretty sure that Paul McCartney’s first piece of music wasn’t Blackbird, or that Pablo Picasso didn’t just wake up with a fully formed Guernica waiting to be executed one day. No, these masterpieces were the result of a considered process by their makers, the culmination of years of application at skills of craft. Such aptitude is necessary so that, when an idea comes along, a creator can express it in whatever form best suits it. King Crimson founder Robert Fripp says of practicing guitar that it’s by mastering the instrument that he’s capable of expressing whatever music wants to be heard. It’s his idiosyncratic sound that marks out Fripp’s work, and while there are times when his technical prowess is undeniable, some of his best work has simplicity at its core — the essence of virtuosity is not to dazzle all the time, but to be able to express yourself in whatever way is appropriate.

Why then, do some screenwriters set out with the idea that their first piece will be their masterwork? More than a couple of times now, I’ve seen questions on writing forums from writers determined to write film trilogies as they contain the very best ideas that they’ve had. Well, one question to ask is how many ideas they have at all. If you’re set on a writing career, you need a lot more than one story’s worth of concepts, even if they’re spread over three films. You need to be able to come up with stories on a consistent basis. You need to work with bringing them to audiences as part of a team of industry professionals, some of whom will give short shrift to the notion that a trilogy is somehow sacred. Both of which point to a need for a certain kind of unlearning: you’ve got to have the humility to be a graceful team player at times, as well as the ego to push yourself on regardless of whatever others say. Particularly at the outset, when you’re developing craft and voice, it might serve you well to listen to those who’ve trodden the same path, to see if they’ve got anything worth sharing.

Besides, what’s so special about a trilogy? Are you really certain that your idea is so special that audiences need to sit on their asses for six hours to get it? Is it perhaps plausible that the central concept could be explored on a smaller scale first, perhaps in a tight 90 minute script? I’d be wary of letting a novice writer loose on a trio of screenplays before I was sure they’ve got some of the basics down properly. Conflict, pace, characterisation, genre, visual storytelling. Show me you can do those well in a single script, and I’ll concede you can take on a three-parter.

Whether the industry actually wants such a thing is another matter entirely. At the very least, make your first part self-contained, so that the performance of that movie at the box office can be used as a barometer for the likelihood of an audience for more along similar lines. One of the problems with Green Lantern was its overconfidence in the mythological aspects of the story, the assumption that audiences would click with all the tiresome outer space history lesson that the film commenced with, and which succeeded in propelling me out of the cinema.

By all means go away and write your trilogy. But first, show me something that works in its own right on a more intimate scale. Do me a Die Hard riff set in a fruit canning factory. Nothing more adventurous than that. Treat it as a technical exercise the same way that painters learn colour by doing paintings that focus on just that. If you can show me a solid and entertaining single location thriller that has me wanting to know what happens next, I’ll be willing to read all three parts of your epic. But not until then.

I caught some of a radio play the other day — I’m talking with a radio producer about doing one, and am paying more attention to them as a result. It concerned a medieval monarch, and there was a scene in which a game of chess was played by rivals. And pretty much all interest in the play withered at that point. How many times have you come across equivalent scenes, when opponents face each other across a chess board, and in the course of their conversation reveal the depths of their own conflict? Well, you probably can’t give a precise answer any more than I can, for the same reason — it’s been done entirely too often.

There are other scenes which I wish we could see the back of. The one where, having said they’ll never do such-and-such in one scene, we see them doing exactly that in the next. Where would sitcoms be without that? And how about that routine where characters clap eyes on one another in one scene, and are thrashing about in bed next?

If you can’t entirely avoid such scenes — and really, you should be able to — then at least play with the form a little. Wouldn’t it add a trace element of novelty to the eyes locked/shagging routine if one of the players goes to a toilet to purchase condoms and one of those disposable toothbrushes? Same info conveyed, cliche avoided. Though in that case, I suspect someone involved in the programme wants naked flesh on the screen to keep the viewers awake.

I played with that overfamiliar dynamic in a scene in which a woman takes a moribund male friend out to a club, hoping they can find another woman to join them for a threesome. In the end the third party leaves them to it, recognising what the woman fails to that her real desire is for a 1:1 relationship with her male friend. OK, it takes us somewhere that’s relatively conservative, but at least we get there by an entertaining route that presents a form of conflict we’ve seen less onscreen.

What about the dread chess game? Given that you can show conflict in any activity, why go for one in which there are two sides? Could a metaphor be more on the nose? Think of The Odd Couple. In the Neil Simon scripted film, taken from his play, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau are two bachelors looking to impress women. Matthau meets two likely candidates and invites them for dinner. He’s casual about the details, his fixation being on the prospect of sex. Lemmon is infuriated because he’s planning the meal and needs times to be precise, and that distinction is just at the surface level of the differences between the two men.

The conflict between Lemmon and Matthau lives and breathes precisely because it isn’t set down at a chess table, where everything would be brought into the open. Think of other domains where people interact in ways that express difference. Decorating a room. Buying a car. Booking a holiday. Ordering a pizza. If you’re settling for a metaphor that’s overtly about conflict in the first place — as chess is — you’re really not trying.

As soon as you realise you’re headed for writing a scene that you’ve seen before and is done in a certain way far too often, stop and think. What can you bring to the execution of this archetypal scene that hasn’t been seen before? It doesn’t have to be something groundbreaking (though, why not?). Just stop, and think. What’s the outcome of what’s about to happen? Double check that it really is necessary for the story. And if it is, consider at least three alternative ways of playing it.

Think how you can mix things up. What if the feared character who is just about to visit has just come from the dentist and can barely speak? What if the room they last met has sprung a leak? Who would be a good third party to be around at a time when two other characters need to get things off their chest? Stay nimble, and you’ll never have to resort to use of a chess table.

OK, so you’ve written your script. It’s been locked down, and not a word now shall be changed from the sacred text that you’ve created. The director will go on to interpret your words faithfully, and your intent will at all times be clear as actors imbue your characters with life, cameras capture every nuance of the scenes that you detailed, and music is used from time to time to heighten your artfully created mood.

Only, it’s not like that. The carefully chosen words you selected to convey precisely the meaning you had in mind — implying one thing on the surface but with another meaning in the subtext — are in practice mutable for all kinds of reasons. Like, you might be faced with actors who are faithful to their interpretation of the character and not your version of them. Which could be sincere, and let’s hope that if so the performer will bring things out that you’d not conceived of as they use your text as template rather than following it precisely. Equally, it could be you’ve got an actor whose fidelity to the script is approximate, for reasons including but not limited to conviction in their own choice of words, issues with learning the script, and hangovers.

The classic example of an actor creating their own part from what the writer has written is Benicio del Toro’s portrayal of Fenster in Usual Suspects. Noting that the character didn’t really have much of significance to say in the film, del Toro chose to portray Fenster as someone whose relationship with the English language was itself suspect. His eccentric enunciation makes him a stand-out character: you can hear what he’s saying when it actually matters, but much of the time he might as well be quoting Dr Seuss. Whatever he does, it’s cool, and the role helped get del Toro recognised.

It may be the case — brace yourself — that the director has a better conception of how to get a scene across than you do yourself. I knew someone who’d directed quite a bit of tv, and was working on a historical drama with a female lead. There was a scene where the character is overwhelmed by the calamities in her life, and the director hit on a way of getting that across visually. She would shoot the star from a distance, her tiny silhouette against the backdrop an indication of how overwhelmed she felt at that moment.

The director made a smart choice there. But she hadn’t banked on the actress, who basically had a hissy fit. Having read the script version of the scene, where she gets to be all sorry for herself and emote to her heart’s content, she was set on doing just that. Leading to a confrontation with the director that’s always a tricky one to resolve. Bear in mind that a starring actor has a camera pointed at them a lot. That’s what defines them as a star. Which means that they’ve got the greatest leverage in the situation if they want to play awkward, as this actress did.

The trick then, is to allow your actor to think they’ve got what they want. So the director dutifully shot the scene with the actress railing against whatever, and having a fine old time doing so — a three tissue scene if ever there was one. And later, when the actress retired for the day, drained from dredging up the darkest parts of her soul etc, the director sneaked out and got the shot she wanted…a silhouette can be pretty much anyone after all, and that’s what happened on screen, the vulnerable form of the character etched into a brooding sky to the strains of a melancholy violin piece. All of which would have been an interesting and hopefully welcome surprise to the writer by the time they got to see it on tv.