I've been attempting to write a script for which has been going a bit slowly, although I was, when I last wrote anything on it, on target to finish it by the end of the month. I was a bit worried I didn't have enough plot though.

On Saturday I went and looked at textbooks in Blackwells and I found a small one on screenwriting. I started reading it to see what it was like and got entranced in what it said, so I bought it. There are lots of books out there about scriptwriting, but if they're boring then there's not a lot of point reading them because I'll never take it in.

I read most of this one on the train to and from London on Monday, and as I read I realised there's a very good reason as to why I think I don't have enough plot: I don't have enough plot and it's not exciting enough. So I thought about it and came up with various different additions.

Then I came to the bit where he talked about a schedule for writing a script, and what he said he found what worked for most of his students was to start with writing an outline of the story and then work out exactly what's in each scene. Which is actually what I did with the Soap Opera and the sequel. Part of the reason they were really easy to write was that I only wrote a chapter at a time, so I didn't write a 5000-odd word story, I wrote 15 1000-odd word stories.

So I pulled out my notebook and wrote myself an outline and I feel a lot happier about the plot now. The next thing to fit in is working out what's in each scene, and what order they're going to be in, then I can start again. And change one of the character names.

The other thing he talked about was knowing your characters, so that when you come to write it's easy because they're effectively telling you what to write. There was an interesting post by recently where she talked about knowing your characters to the extent that you're living with them and can hold conversations with them.

Usually when I'm writing something I think about it and I think about alternative plots - some are silly, some are soapy, mostly they're just me going 'what if' and deciding that the original idea is better. And the thing with writing fanfic is that you tend to know the characters quite well anyway. It occurred to me, though, as I read it that I do that with my RP characters. Alt!Harry would really rather I didn't read shippy RPs between Four & Sarah, and I regularly fight with Ian to get him to sleep with Adric (I still haven't talked him round to a yes). Whether of course it helps is something else...

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