Things became real...

Friday: 
My Mum due to some insane feeling of concern for her baby boy, decided she wanted to give me a lift to and from Eden Court. It wasn't something I objected to at all, but I'm still not sure why she was worried about me. I've traveled across the world, all alone, but a trip to Inverness and she was worried for me.

I arrived around 10-15 minutes early, and was directed by Pippa upstairs to Studio 2. When I walked in, there were a few people already there, including David and Anna. All sat in silence. David introduced himself, as did Anna. I sat down and one of the other writers, Brad, quickly gave himself an introduction, too.

Slowly, but surely, the circle of chairs that had been put out started to fill up. Once everyone had arrived, we were asked to go around, taking it in turns, to tell the group our names, our favourite TV show, Film, and Play (if we had one). 

I went with Martin, for my name. It was weird going an entire weekend and barely hearing the word "Ken".


There were some fairly standard responses and some surprising ones, based on first impressions -- which, due to the quiet nature, was basically looking at the people. Stereotypes playing a massive role in the snap judgements.

Watching everyone take it in turns, going around the circle, it did start to feel a bit like an AA meeting, "Hi, my name is Martin, and I'm a writer". At least we all had that in common.

Trying to remember what came next is difficult. The whole weekend was a bit of a blur. I think it was the ideas and the log-lines.

When I applied for the course, I used an idea -- The idea for "52". Which, I hadn't really thought all that much about since applying way-back-when. So I opted to use the World War III story that I'd written a while ago. Having given the story to Matthew for a comic, and now using it for this, it'll be interesting to see how the two things turn out, when based on the same base story.

Anyway, we split up into groups and were asked to present the idea for our story and then scrutinize it, by going through a list of question prompts. "How does it end?" "What genre would it be?" What medium would it be?" etc. Encouraging us to think more about the story as a whole, instead of just the basic idea.

My story, being that it was already a story, held up reasonably well to that. Then came the first five questions.

It was during this that some of the less formed ideas started to fall apart. A boy in my group, during this excercise opted to give up on his story altogether, because the questions couldn't be answered with what he had.

We were asked to present the idea we had, to the group, as a log-line/action premise.

During this, it was shown that some people had some interesting ideas. Some moreso than others. But over the course of the weekend, it was really interesting to see who was able to create something that both worked as a basic idea, as well as a script being acted out infront of you.

Saturday: 
Saturday started in the "Jim Love Studio" -- Why it's called the Jim Love studio, I'm still not sure. There was a plaque, apparently, telling the story, but I didn't get around to reading it.

We were again split into groups and asked to complete another five questions which looked more at the idea/story we had. Once again, to see if it stood up. Our group had a new addition. We helped her with what we'd been doing the day before, and with the current round of questions. She was thrown into the deep end a bit, I think. But it worked out.

After those five questions, we were given a character sheet. Which I'll be honest, I don't really think helped me much, but I'm sure it would have helped others. You had to answer questions about your main character. From little details, from height, to name, to religious beliefs... hobbies... Yeah. A lot of the questions though, just weren't applicable (at least in my mind) to a lot of stories and characters.

After lunch, we were introduced to the actors who we'd be working with that afternoon and the next day. From the moment they came in, what had been a quiet room became a slightly less quiet room. I opted to go into the second group of writers who went with the actors. Purely although I had an idea of what scene I was going to do, I wanted to open up the WWIII story and read it through to see if it was the scene I was going to pick.

It was.

I was put with one other writer, and three actors. We went off to a room on the other side of the theatre and got down to improvising the scenes. They started with Madeline's (The writer I was with), seeing how they worked with her was good. I really wasn't sure what to expect from the actors before I was in the room with them. They all seemed like a nice group of people, but...

I've never really been around, or wanted to be around when people are reading my stuff -- at least not for the first time. And although there was no actual readings going on,  on the first day. It was still a weird thought knowing that these people were performing something I wrote, essentially -- what with the story already written and already in my head.

The improvisation strongly influenced the scene I wrote for the next day. The actors were playing it fairly straight forward. They came in, they talked to each other, they left sort of thing. It was Anna who suggested that one of them didn't talk. And when they went on to perform that, it just seemed to click.

After the improv, we went back upstairs. We were told we could leave if we wanted to, or we could stay until 8. Knowing I could get a train at 8, I opted to stay for a while. During that time, I started work on the script, getting David to check it over before I left, to check formatting and the general idea of it. He gave me a couple of suggestions, which I took on board and then I left for the train.

Sunday:
Over night we were told to write a script and have it emailed in by 10am. -- I completed it around 2am before going to bed.

I arrived at the theatre around 20 minutes late -- but still, earlier than if I'd caught the train, due to the first train not leaving Elgin until 11:30am (we had to be there by 11).

Anyway, when I arrived, I headed straight to Jim Love again, only to be met by David and Mary coming out of the Studio. They greeted me and told me where I should be.

Having no idea where the hell they were talking about, they both showed me the way. I found the room and walked in, finding out which actors I'd been paired with for this day and also which writers I'd be in the group with.

The actors were Flora, Frankie & Andrew -- Andrew had been with me the day before, so it was nice to have someone who was already familiar with the story I was doing and someone who had been partly responsible for influencing the way the current script had turned out.

We sat as the actors did a read-through of each script in turn. Then they started rehearsing them. Giving us oppertunity to chip in with an ideas we had to improve their performances. Of both our scripts and the others.

For me, there were some minor things changed, but what they ended up doing was more or less what I had on the page. Which may have been a good thing or a bad thing, I'm not entirely sure.

Watching Frankie, as a Shark, climb into the boat of the man she wants to eat was ... amusing to say the least, as was Flora trying to get her way through all the 'Sorrys'.

Once they'd rehearsed, we were free to go for lunch. I didn't wait around to see where any one else was going, instead opting to just go to Tesco and grab a sandwich. I then came back and surfed the interwebs for a bit, before going to sit with some of the others in the restaurant, before heading back to Jim Love for the afternoon's worth of performances.

In front of a semi-circle of around 30 people, the actors performed each of our scripts one after the other, with breaks inbetween each for comments and criticisms. Constructive, obviously.

It was during this that we really got to see, for the first time, just how far some people had come, or who hadn't quite made it in terms of producing a successful piece.

One of the guys, from Glasgow. He came in on Friday with no ideas, no story to go on and, in the end, for me at least, had written the most powerful piece of the weekend. You could tell it was a personal story, which would have, of course, helped with the idea of it all. But the actual writing was amazing. Credit, too, goes to the actors who performed it. But the script alone... Amazing.

My script was performed second-to-last, after his, I knew I couldn't do better. So I was fine to just go with it.

Feedback for mine was generally positive though. A lot of questions were asked about the rest of the story, where it'd go, where it'd been. But the questions seemed to come from a genuinely curious place, not just trying to find out if I had a place to go -- if that makes sense.

We were due to finish at 6pm. However, the remainders were there until around 7pm.

With the next train not until 9, I hung around with a few of the actors for a bit, before going to wetherspoon's and getting some food with Rachael -- Also from Elgin, I'd recognised on Friday, she'd worked with Out of the Darkness. We got the train home together and did a run-down of the weekend. She'd started as a writer on Friday, then switched to the acting side of things on Saturday/Sunday. It was interesting hearing from the actor side of things. The goings on behind the scenes, so to speak. We agreed, for the most part on the highlights of the weekend though and the highlights of the performances. 

Overall, I'm so glad I decided to do the course. I had considered backing out of it, looking for any little excuse I could. If it'd been all day Friday, I was just going to say "Ah, I can't... I've got to look after my Granny..." -- Based purely on nerves of actually having to face up to people who knew what they were doing, who would be able to look at something I've written and tell me what was wrong with it. I like writing, I don't and didn't want to be told I was bad at it.

Not all of the course was completely helpful to me, but more of it was than wasn't.

One regret I have is not actually making the effort to speak to more people. I spoke to the people who were in my group a bit, but there were others who I think I could have/would have gotten on with if I'd made an effort to actually speak to them.

If I get to go back in December, hopefully that'll change..