NG: Do writers ever get rewritten on Hollyoaks?
ES: It takes a lot for me to resubmit something to get somebody else to do it. I think a lot of that comes from the fact that I was a writer and you really should be given the opportunity to make it better. If you really can’t, then you concede ‘well OK’. We have to be so up against the deadlines to bring on somebody else.
NG: Are there things you don’t want to see on Hollyoaks?
ES: I think I’m pretty much open to most things actually. There is very little that I’ll just say no to. Two things perhaps: one is the irresponsible storyteller. For me, and maybe this comes from the fact that I started at the BBC as a career where the audience to me is my first concern. The audience that we cater for is 16 to 24 and have a wide spectrum. I also think our audience looks at a show like this almost as an emotional encyclopaedia. It’s kind of real-life learning in many respects. Every storyline I consider has an absolute duty to the audience. So irresponsible storytelling such as encouraging our audience to do things that I just don’t believe are right, without getting worthy or dictating how someone should be. That’s one thing I’m against. The other thing is unnecessary smoking, taking drugs; it’s not just compliance for Channel 4, but in general. In terms of style, as a long as every writer that comes to the show really wants to write for this audience and has a passion for storytelling. Above all it’s the storytelling. When you meet people, meet writers, meet directors, you kind of know instantly whether they bounce off this audience. I think it is the most exciting audience to deliver for because they are not going to hang around. They haven’t developed habits. They are not Guardian readers, Telegraph readers. They are very channel and platform blind. They don’t care how they consume it or where they consume it. It is just a good show or it’s not a good show. So for me that’s hugely challenging but as long as my writers and my directors know that’s the mark they have to hit every time I’m open to any subject, any form of storytelling; in fact, the more unconventional the better. I think it is all in the planning as well. It can be as a sophisticated as a story as you want it to be but it has got to be prepped.
NG: Do writers need to be the fan of the show? Or at least become a fan of the show?
ES: When they first join the show they don’t need to be a fan of the show necessarily. They need to very quickly engage with the show and enjoy who they are writing for. I think if I made that a prerequisite I’d be drawing from quite a small pool at the moment because I think the show could afford to be more intelligent, wittier, more sophisticated. I want to make Hollyoaks a destination for writers and for directors creatively. Not just to put on a show, not just to get their foot in the door, but a lot of writers that we have are still passionate about the show and you can tell that when they write; you can tell when they pitch and that is a breath of fresh air. So for me the prerequisite is that they have to be passionate about the audience.
NG: Does that mean writers need to be younger-skewing?
ES: One of things I did in conference was to ask everybody to bring in a photo of themselves when they were a teenager and to put it on the Hollyoaks writers’ wall of shame. When I did that it was to say to everybody in the room that everybody is qualified to write for this audience because everybody in that room has been that audience at one time. Being 16, 17, you know, it’s shit being a teenager. Sometimes these saccharin and glossy American shows make it look so cool and so effortless but it’s not. And we’ll keep talking about that and just remembering. The Hollyoaks I want to be the producer of is the one that tells the story that the smaller things in life are actually the biggest.
NG: What advice would you give writers?
ES: It’s just doing it. I think the most useful thing I think is reading scripts. I really do. I don’t think because of deadlines you can get caught up in a soap bubble when you’re writing for a soap and quite quickly it can become navel-gazing. I think if you watch other TV dramas and read the scripts it just works offering more ideas. That’s really important. In terms of getting a writing job, I think it’s a case of being really brave, and if there is a show you really want to write for it’s just finding a way in at any level. There are a lot of people who come into our script department for work experience. They’ll come in and ask me if they can come into conference or they’ll ask if they can come in for a first draft and sometimes they’ll pipe up with a brilliant idea and totally solve the story problem. They’ll just be brave and they’ll be tenacious.
One thing I wish somebody had pointed out to me and it may seem an obvious one, but knowing the world of your story and remembering what it’s like to be our audience watching it. I could read a script, take the writer’s name off it and know who it is by the detail they add in; they’ve watched all the back episodes, they know the world they’re dealing with. Once you’ve got that, it’s half the battle because then you just close your eyes and know where you are and know what’s going on around you. You’ve got so many characters to think of, but if you’re in that world it will come quite naturally and that’s the same for every show I think.
Casualty
Casualty is the world’s longest-running medical drama about the staff and patients of the accident and emergency department of Holby General Hospital. It goes out in primetime every Saturday night on BBC1. It first opened its doors in 1986.
Nicola Larder was script producer and producer on the show from 2010 to 2012. She had previously been a script editor and script executive on New Tricks and produced a two-part mini-series, Mister Eleven. In 2012 she joined Waterloo Road as a producer.
Nicholas Gibbs: What kind of show is Casualty?
Nicola Larder: When it was originally greenlit it was because of the uniqueness of having a central male nurse. It was more politically driven. It was about the NHS and its existence. Nowadays it is a popular piece of primetime entertainment, not least because of its competition. We are always up against The X-Factor or Britain’s Got Talent.
NG: What makes a good Casualty episode?
NL: Well, we’ve a new exec, Jonathan Young, take over and we’ve asked ourselves that question: What makes a good episode? We’ve returned to a lot of the core values. Our audience are happy when they are able to enjoy a damn fine stunt. They like the feeling of the anticipation of something going very wrong and they like, more than anything, the two very strong, self-contained guest stories. They tune in, our audience, on average one out of three episodes. They don’t tune in for the soap element – i.e. the continuing relationships, trials and tribulations of the regular doctors – although the audience, according to research, are, in particular, huge fans of Jordan and huge fans of Charlie.
So that is what they like – the self-contained element of the patient guest stories – and when it is at its best those stories are well targeted at the core demographic and our core audience. They are well told, with a beginning, middle and end, and are emotionally absorbing, with high stakes and with a very natural integrated use of medicine. We tend to create scenarios – writers will tend to pitch guest story ideas which naturally integrate medicine, albeit they won’t have technical detail but they will say how the story is going to fit in very nicely with your two bits of serial drama that we’re going to give you. So what happens is you might have an episode where you’ve got Zoe and Jordan’s relationship becoming more intimate, for argument’s sake, and below that Linda struggles to deal with her new boss. So the writer is given those and they have to find a way to tell those stories well and in a way which will naturally integrate themselves into their own original creations. A writer should never be literal and say, because Linda is struggling with her boss, we are going to have a guest story with somebody struggling with their boss who gets into an accident. You should feel that the whole episode is a cohesive, harmonious whole –therefore, what story is going to highlight Linda’s dilemma of the week? What other guest stories are going to highlight Zoe and Jordan’s dilemma that week?
NG: Is the pr
ocess that writers come with guest stories first or do you present them with the serial element stories first?
NL: It’s a 12-week development process from the writers being commissioned to the script being delivered as a shooting script. The writers within a 12-episode run will all be given one central story document and that will cover Episodes 1 to 12. They will look at what episodes they are writing and look at the serial story they’ve got to cover. They’ll be a couple of paragraphs on each. There might a line about other characters they have to feature: like Lenny is in a bad mood because he has been assigned to cubicles; Tom is enjoying working with the nurses. So they’ll get that and off the back of that the writers will come in and pitch their ideas for guest stories and very broadly speaking we like to work in a five-act structure.
You’ll pitch it and it is something that is wonderful and personal but exciting to you as a writer. So you pitch ideas and then the team work with you to develop that to five acts and then, within two weeks of that original commissioning meeting, you then have to deliver a scene-by-scene. Once that’s signed off, you then have to deliver within two weeks your first draft. You work on three or four more drafts to take you through to production. Off the back of the production draft you then have the medical meeting. After the medical notes the shooting script is released within a week of the shoot.
NG: In terms of an episode, what are the practical constraints – for example, what actors are available, how many outdoor locations are allowed, etc.?
NL: You do have to impose some restrictions. You have to create these scripts with an eye for them being feasible to actually go into production. We always want to block two shooting blocks simultaneously. You are given restrictions according to cross-scheduling with another unit. So if you have Jordan and Zoe in an A story, your parallel block won’t have Jordan and Zoe in an A story; otherwise you will need them in two places at once to shoot the majority of the scenes. So the story document helps diminish the likelihood of getting notes like: ‘Can you change the main actor because the other unit needs them?’
NG: So the writer would get that from the outset – these are the actors available etc.?
NL: If it’s not from the outset, it is quite early on in the development. You are also given a guide which tells you approximately how many pages of your script can be set on location, how many pages of your script need to be set in Studio A and then how many pages of your script need to be set in Studio B. For argument’s sake, let’s say 15 per cent is generally speaking where your accident is going to happen away from the hospital. Studio A is pretty much all of our hospital set: it’s the reception area, it’s resus, it’s cubicles, it’s the admin area where the nurses are, staff rooms, the family room where the bad news is delivered. That’s really where you are going to be shooting the majority of your episodes. Studio B is an extra set which is called CDU – the Clinical Decisions Unit - and that’s a big ward or Exterior ED [Emergency Department]. I actually think it is quite good fun as a writer to work within those parameters – it kind of harnesses how you tell stories. You can tell the same story a million different ways but if you know you’ve got these parameters it enables you to focus on the most precise way of telling your story. You are given, at the moment, seven guest characters to play with, so if you split that across two guest stories, two are patients and the rest are people’s friends, relations, perpetrators.
NG: So it is after the first draft that the harsh practicality of being able to do it comes into play?
NL: We shoot an episode of Casualty in ten days. That’s generally speaking Monday to Friday – five days of it in the studio, two days of it are in CDU or ED and three days are on location. We work within tight budgets so there’s no point in encouraging the writer to write something that is never shootable. We create good relationships with our writers so before you begin you have a conversation about what we are able to do. We take you round the set. We show you how you can write an episode with flow and groove. I’ll always make the things that are important to the story a priority and those that might not necessarily need to be part of the story I’ll ask that writer to compromise on and we’ll negotiate.
NG: Where do you source your writers?
NL: Well, we have eight episodes already allotted thanks to the Writers’ Academy. They obviously got their own process for choosing all those writers. So that’s eight out of 42 or 48 episodes a year. We have core writers, the numbers of which fluctuate and they’ll write between three or four. There are commissioned episodic writers and that can be through our Shadow Scheme writers. In 2011, we took ten writers because we’ve got an initiative at the moment which will evolve year-on-year to encourage local talent to write for the show. We got some extra funding to enable some Welsh writers to come on (Casualty is made in Cardiff, Wales). I think we had ten. We also get lots of ideas from agents. Every single person who submits a piece of work to the show has their script read by one or two members of the editorial team. Everyone gets feedback on their script. Everyone on the Shadow Scheme writes a version of a Casualty but everyone else will submit something from their slate, albeit something that has been transmitted or something they’ve developed.
NG: Where someone submits an original piece of work, what element do you see that suggests they can write for Casualty?
NL: Generally speaking, it is wise to look for a full-length script, for something that is a transmittable hour of TV. Half-hour scripts are always going to pose questions about whether a writer is able to plot across a longer form or not. You want to see that writing x factor – good writing. You want to see not only a compelling plot and compelling story but that this writer can create rounded, three-dimensional exciting characters with a joy that makes you read. It’s like anything – you want to feel: ‘That’s not hard to read.’
NG: Are those the people, then, whom you don’t feel you can give a direct commission, so you guide them to the Shadow Scheme?
NL: Not necessarily. I commissioned a writer off the back of having read his Shameless script, which is a completely different show. It’s Channel 4. It’s post-watershed. It’s subversive. It’s sexual. It was a really, really good script. I invited him to meet us and he knew about Casualty. He talked about it. We exchanged ideas on it. He’d engaged in the show, and so any writer who wants to write on any show needs to be well prepared. So one should watch it weekly and should watch a run of it because you can’t really get the measure of a show by just seeing one episode. The thing is with Casualty you can never say it’s not on. It is always on. It was a combination of me being excited by his writing samples and then being excited about what he had to say about the show which meant that he got taken on a commission. It has also worked in reverse. I’ve got excited about a writing sample and invited the writer in and they have had so little knowledge of the show and you think ‘Really?’ That’s not the best. I don’t want encyclopaedic knowledge because you begin to grow that the more involved in the show you are.
NG: So the writers come through the Writers’ Academy, Shadow Scheme, and submissions via agents?
NL: We do get unsolicited material. It is very rare to have a writer that is not represented or commissioned. I think: they’ve got through the process of competitively seeking an agent, who is a quality control already in part. Writers most certainly don’t have to have a transmitted television credit to get a commission on Casualty, although it is very helpful, particularly as Casualty is very challenging to write.
NG: What about rewriting?
NL: Well, it is something that we try to avoid and, therefore, it is something that only happens in extremis. We have every intention of getting the majority of writers who are commissioned through. The reasons it happens can be manifold. It is not something that we want to do and rewriting doesn’t exist within the editorial team. Rewriting involves the writer being let go and the reasons being explained and then another writer is commissioned to replace them.
NG: Casualty often opens on a big
event. How do you maintain the pace so you’ve got somewhere to go?
NL: It’s interesting. What we advise the writers is that they don’t structure the A and the B story in an identical way. So the A story will have its own five-act structure as will the B story. It doesn’t mean that both patients are attacked or involved in accidents at the same point simultaneously. They don’t degenerate simultaneously. Running the two stories out of sync will mean when one hits high the other can rest and vice versa… What you want to do is to use your locations as creatively as possible. You don’t have to use it all up at the start. You want to leave the hospital in the middle.
One thing writers need to consider is how grave the situation is in their A and B story. The problem is you can sometimes push yourself into making that person so poorly that a) they wouldn’t realistically remain in the ED and b) they are unconscious so they can’t say anything. So, you know, you use the medical advice and say, ‘Well, you know I like them to be so ill here that they are going to need a procedure that we can perform in the ED. I would like by Act 4 for them to be able to regain consciousness and not look like we are entirely fabricating medicine.’ So you want to hook the audience in at the top but you need to create reasons for them to keep engaging, so if all the excitement is top-loaded then there is something structurally wrong with the episode. If we have a moment’s reprieve with the guest, then surely that’s when something from the serial story could kick in – for example, where two of our doctors have an incredible disagreement. So it’s about looking at every moment where you can to create a dilemma because as soon as everyone agrees the conflict dies and, therefore, the drama dies because drama is essentially about conflict. It’s not always about arguments. It’s about differing opinions.
Writing Television Drama Page 18