Last night saw a bumper episode of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe on BBC4, and I demand that you all go watch it NOW.
Instead of the usual half hour of different subjects, this 50 minute episode was dedicated to TV writing, and the wonderful Charlie interviewed some very notable guests: Russell T Davies, Tony Jordan, Graham Linehan, Paul Abbott, Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain. (No ladies, sadly.)
They talk about their own writing processes and it's interesting to see the differences in the way they write and approach a screenplay. For some, outlining is imperative, for other's its not important. Some can't write without exactly the right characters, for others the characters simply pop into their head, fully formed.
My favourite two snippets came from Tony Jordan and Graham Linehan (who looked very shifty, sitting half in shadows with his fringe hiding his eyes).
Tony Jordan said that if you want to be a writer, you write! The clue is in the title.
Graham Linehan compared getting a script on the page to doing a poo.
It's available on the iPlayer until 9th December, 2008.
