Podcast Ep013: How to Navigate the Screenwriting Journey, Lessons from a Master with Rowan Joffé at LondonSWF

Stephen: I want to welcome Rowan. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. And I wondered if you could just start giving us a sort of potted history as to your screenwriting journey and how you got to be on this stage with whatever landmarks you think are important through that.

Rowan: Okay. So just before I. Just before I do that, and in the spirit of what Stephen was saying, my mission’s quite focused because I don’t have you for long. And this means as much to me as I hope it means to you. Not just because it’s the chance to be geeky, but because what I want to do in this hour is I want to zero right in on the thing that I think whatever success I have is dependent on. I want to focus right in on the thing that I’m wrestling with now. That means that I’m not wasting my time at the laptop and that what I write is going to be paid for and go into production. So I want to zero right in on those things and I want to talk about them forensically and clearly. And I want the people who leave here after this hour to think, preferably to feel excited, enthused, clear, focused. And this is. I would say this to anyone at any level. Like, I don’t think the things I’m wrestling with change if you’re super successful or if you’re just starting out. It’s the same thing applies all the way through. So that’s why I’m excited, because I’m sharing with you this morning the thing that I was wrestling with yesterday. I started at seven in the morning. I finished at seven in the evening. It was pretty non stop. I moaned and bitched to my wife about how much I hate my job. But actually, I love it. I love it and I want to share with you yet all the things I’ve learned over the last year.

Stephen: Basically, LSF as therapy. We’ve often talked about this. This is group therapy. We’re all writers. Hello. Welcome. We all have the same problems. Let’s talk about them for an hour.

Rowan: So to answer your question, I. I studied language and literature at university. I wrote plays. It occurred to me that if I was going to write plays, I would never be able to afford anything more than a sandwich. And I grew up in an era where movies were it. Apart from occasional things on television written by Dennis Potter. Telly was rubbish. Movies was where the glamour and the art happened. So I started writing movie scripts. I sold my first movie script. I don’t know how I managed it. Yes, I do. It was on the advice of a literary agent sadly no longer alive. Her name was Jane Anakin. She worked for William Morris back when they had a little office in Soho Square. She said, I’ve read all your plays, I can’t make head or tail of them. You might be talented, I really can’t tell. Go away and write something you know about and make it a script that I can sell. And so I thought, gosh, what do I know about? I know about what it’s like to be raised by a single mum. So I wrote a story about a single mum whose two kids try and set her up with Mr. Right because they’re worried about her being lonely. And I set it on a council estate because I’d just seen Gary Oldman’s Kneel by Mouth. Even though I didn’t grow up on a council estate, I lived in Brixton at the time and I was surrounded by them. And for some extraordinary reason I made her an alcoholic. I don’t know why, it just seemed to make her more interesting. So I went to an AA meeting as a bit of research and that script never got made. But it got handed round. It got handed to a director called Paul Pavlikowski, who has won Oscars since for movies like Cold War and Ida and various other things. So that’s what got me on the journey. The next chapter of that is I started to resent giving all my scripts to directors because I thought I could do as good or better. So I elbowed my way into directing a movie called Brighton Rock. No, that’s not what happened. I got given a chance by Jane Featherstone, who ran a production company called Kudos at the time, to direct a television idea I had called Secret Life. And, and basically they wanted the idea. And I got my agent to say, you can only have it if he can direct it. And you know, back it was very low budget, it was very doable. It was a one off single drama for Channel 4. So that was. It was a realistic gamble to make and it paid off and I found myself behind the camera and then I never really looked back. I carried on writing and directing. That’s who I was, that was my stamp. I made a couple of movies. You know, the movies did okay, but they didn’t do amazingly. And as a writer I was doing much better. I wrote a US box office number one as a writer. It was the all time lowest grossing US box office, I think in history. But I was at number one for about three days. Whereas as a writer director, it was more kind of like, eh, it’s good, but the reviews were mixed. And it’s hard to survive unless you’re right at the top. And that’s one of the things I want to talk to you all about today, is how to get into that top tiny percent that actually gets their stuff made. So with everything else going on, I sort of drifted in a dignified and graceful fashion back into being a writer. And with everything that’s going on in the world we live in at the moment, and the way the industry is changing, that has served me very well. I’m sort of. I’m gung ho writing, you know, 24, 7, 365 days a year. No regrets. If the Chancellor direct comes up again, brilliant. But my plate’s full and I hope I don’t sound resentful. Better. Sorry. There we go.

Stephen: You said you have no regrets, but you literally told us that yesterday you were bitching that you had loads of regrets about being a writer. This is the life of being a writer, right? I have no regrets other than this, this, this, this, this and this. But I love it.

Rowan: Yes.

Stephen: I told you he was one of us.

Rowan: That’s. That’s it. I only hate me and everyone else and everything I’m doing have any problem with anything. Yeah, so. So yes, it is. I think you’re right to raise that, because the one thing I want to say before I kind of go into this is I wrote a movie that never got made for Ron Howard. And I remember Ron Howard saying to me that he didn’t think that what divided the successful from the unsuccessful in this industry was talented. He said, there’s a lot of talented people out there. The question is, why do some make it and why do some don’t? Wow. Okay. I can’t speak English.

Stephen: First draft.

Rowan: It’s fine.

Stephen: We’ll get it punched up.

Rowan: His theory was that you had to love your job with a kind of insane passion. And the reason you have to love it is it’s like you have to be. It’s like you have to love the person you marry. Because marriage is hard, and it’s only the love that will get you through the hardness. This is an incredibly hard job, being a writer. It is incredibly hard because what you basically do is you fail at every single stage. And what I mean is. Well, we’ll go into what I mean in a minute, but it’s. You have to be prepared to work really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really hard. And that’s probably the first thing that I need to Say, because I think the people that aren’t prepared to do that won’t succeed.

Stephen: You have to be absolutely bonkers to do it. But given that you’re all here on a Saturday, it’s too late. You’re already one of us. So let’s do it properly. I think, given that we’ve got this bug. Do you want to set the terms of these two projects that we. That you’re. So these are actual projects you’re really working on now, but we’re going to. And everything you’re going to say is true, but you’re obviously going to be cagey so that you don’t get fired from them, which would be a terrible outcome for a talk on a Saturday morning. Yeah. So how are we going to. What can you tell us about these two projects that you’re currently working on?

Rowan: Okay, so they’re both thrillers, which I think hopefully that’s. That’s exciting for everyone because I think it was probably advertised. And also we’ll maybe speak in a little bit about why I think thriller is the ultimate genre. I think it’s sort of often viewed as a B genre or a sub genre or somehow with less integrity than drama. But I think that all good drama works like a thriller. And I think Alfred Hitchcock thought that as well. But I’m not, I’m not a geek in that way. So we’re going to two thrillers, one we’re going to call Project A. And all you need to know about Project A is. Project A is an eight part first season television show for a streamer. And then we’ve got Project N and Project n is a 90 minute one off movie, also for a streamer. But everything is these days. Right. So hope that those terms are clear.

Stephen: Yeah, very good. And if we think we’ve lost them, if we think we’ve lost the connection with them, we’ll go back and repeat them bits. But functionally that’ll be useful. So let’s, let’s define terms then. So there’s a spectacular part of development and the development process that we’ve been talking about that we want to talk about today and that you’re going through and to set it up. One of the things that we were talking about was the idea that in America there is a particular thing called development hell, which is a particular sort of cycle of getting notes and never getting anywhere and it just sort of not really happening. And in the uk I’ve realised that people use development hell to mean development, just development. So I’m hoping We can split up development into more nuanced point, you know, more. More landmarks and more points along the journey. But do you want to explain specifically the. From where to where are we going to talk about today in the creation process?

Rowan: Okay, so what I want to cover in this short time is I want to get you from the idea so that I’m going to assume that’s the beginning, right the way through to your first set of notes, when you’ve handed in the script that you love. Okay? And I’m going to weight it all on everything that happens before you write the first draught of the script. And the reason I’m going to do that, which I shared with Stephen, is for this reason. I think that all the hard work, all the magic and all the teeing up for success happens before you write, fade in on your script. It all happens with various bits of paper before you go to script. And I cannot emphasise that at all. Now, remember, I’m not giving you advice, I’m not selling a formula, but I am passionately and earnestly telling you that this is how I stop myself failing. This is how I’m able to pay the mortgage off what I do. Okay? The secret is, the first thing I’m telling you is forget the script. Now, the analogy I want to give you when I say forget the script, let me give it a little bit of context, is think of it as a long jump. So what I’m going to give you, a long jump works because the athlete has a run up before they jump. So the jumping moment through the air is the script. And we will talk about that in a little bit. But what I really want to talk to you about is the run up. Because the run up is what will give you the momentum. The run up is what will make you fly further than anyone else and get you over that line that you have to get over to get the script produced and to stop you spending the next 5, 10, or 15 years of your life being an unproduced writer. Because nobody wants that. I mean, there are people who do very well in that in Hollywood, but, you know, they’ve got swimming pools to make up for it. We don’t over here. So we want to get everything made and we want to be able to look over the last five to 10 years and look at our batting average. How many things did we get made per year in the last five years or 10 years? You want to look back over that and you want to be high up the pecking order and you want to be proud you want to say, I got something made every year, or I got two things made every year, or I got one thing made every two years. But you don’t want to really be falling below that. So I think all of that magic happens in the run up. And the very first part of that that I want to start with is the idea. It’s a single piece of paper and it’s somewhere between a paragraph and a page. And I want to talk about that first.

Stephen: I don’t think we need a question. Do you want to do that? Then?

Rowan: Is that. By the way, I want to cheque in with you guys because, you know, you’ve bought tickets, you’ve, you’ve come here, some of you maybe come from quite a way. Is this all feeling? So stick your hand up if this is all feeling thumbs up, reasonable thumbs down.

Stephen: Okay, I’m only seeing thumbs up.

Rowan: Okay.

Stephen: So very good.

Rowan: Awesome. Okay. Because you’re the reason I’m here. So. So the idea with the mic. Just with the mic. Sorry. So the idea now with reference to Project A, the idea was a book that I was given by a producer that came through my manager and I sat down and I read the book and I enjoyed the book. It was a very well crafted book. I could see why these quite successful producers had optioned the rights to the book. And I felt that sort of salivating, adrenaline, fuel sense of, oh, I’d quite like to do this. I wonder how many other writers they’ve sent this bloody thing to. Like, what’s the competition? How small is the hoop I’ve got to jump through to get this? So basically I read the book and the very first bit I want to share with you is you’ve got to love the idea. Okay? This goes back to the marriage analogy. You know, don’t have an arranged marriage because, you know your parents want you to or you know, the partner’s got a bit of money that won’t get you through to the end of this. At the end of the day, all the way through this process, your stamina and resilience will rely on how much you love the idea. Okay, so that’s Project A, Project N, which I’ll remind you, was a movie. That was my own idea. And here’s how that worked. I went away with my wife for our first weekend away in months and felt like years because of the pandemic. Our 12 year old had a granny looking after her and we went away for a weekend and I said to my wife, I want to come up with an idea. This weekend. And it was partly because I thought, well, maybe the idea could be a novel or maybe the idea could be a movie. But I just felt it sort of. I felt that discomfort you feel when you’ve got something brewing. And I wanted to get it out there. So I set myself a goal. I said to my wife, I’m really sorry, but over this next 72 hours, I’m going to work on an idea and I need an audience. I need you to be my audience. I need to.

Stephen: You’re on holiday with your family on a weekend. Yeah, yeah. When you were talking about the mad, passionate stuff like that makes you succeed. I can see that. I’m sure being on a weekend, we’re here. But, yeah. So you. You had that feeling that something was a coming and you. But you needed an audience. You couldn’t just do it in a room by yourself.

Rowan: No. And that’s. That’s one of the things I want to share with you about the idea stage. Test the idea on someone who’s going to listen and who is, what they call in the States, a friendly read. So someone who’s not going to dump on your idea, because the idea is a seedling at this stage, and it won’t survive a storm and it won’t survive, you know, it’s got to be watered and it’s got to have sunlight. So you want someone who’s going to listen attentively and be encouraging, but also kind of go, I like that bit, but I don’t quite understand that bit. Because that will help you shape the idea very quickly. Because two brains will work on a problem much faster than one. And as a writer, we’re very isolated. You need to be pitching the idea all the time. Now, some of you might not want to hear that, and some of you might think, well, who am I going to pitch it to? But you’ve got to find solutions to those little problems early on, because the thing I’m going to share with you is this. David Mamet. Do we all know who I’m talking about? Okay, great. Go out, buy David Mamet’s books on writing. He’s written some wonderful books on writing, but one of the things he said is that ultimately, a story, whether it’s a play or a movie or whatever it is, should be structured like a joke. Now, he meant that in two ways. He said, first of all, the way jokes are structured is there is no extraneous element to the joke. Everything in the joke is relevant to the punchline. Everything in the joke leads up to the punchline. If there’s any element of the joke that isn’t relevant to the punchline, it falls off, you cut it out, you get rid of it. Jokes are very well crafted, so structurally a joke is important for us as writers to understand that all the elements must lead up to the punchline. The second thing about the joke, he said, is that you can deliver it briefly, knowing exactly where you’re going, to a crowd of people in a noisy bar who may not want to pay you any attention, and you’ll grab them from the minute you say, I’ve got a joke, then you’ll hold their attention up to the punchline. That has got to be happening on your first page. I want you to think of it in those terms now. I don’t want you to crush yourselves with a sense of, oh my gosh, how the heck am I going to achieve that? Because all of this is within the context of my wife, you know, so she’s not going to fire me or divorce me if my. If my. My early idea isn’t any good. But at the same time I’m trying to get her attention and hold it, you know, and she’s busy and I’ve already bought the pants off her.

Stephen: She’s on holiday.

Rowan: She’s on holiday. So. So I. I want to. I want to say to her, is this interesting to you? Like, have I. Have I got your attention? Is this cool? Are you liking this? Oh, yeah, no, that. I really like that. That’s giving me goosebumps. Or. And then I want to practise pitching this whole thing in a paragraph or half a page and I want to start there. I’ve got an idea. I just. I don’t want to grow it beyond a way into the idea, a kind of fudgy middle bit and then where we’re going at the end with it. And I want to keep. I want you all to be thinking about the idea you love and wrestling with it in very broad brushstrokes, beginning, middle and end in a few paragraphs to a page. And I want you to understand that everything starts there. And the reason. I want you to understand that, as Stephen has attested to, I’ve seen, we have witnessed people sitting in cutting rooms of very expensive shows and movies trying to figure out what story they’re telling in the cutting room. I’ve seen arguments happen while something is in production about what story we’re telling. So if you’re not clear on the story you’re telling from the get go, nobody else is going to be. And it’s going to be very hard to deliver a script that feels like it’s teed up for success if people are reading it going, well, there’s three different stories going on here. Or there’s a story that starts and then it. You can’t track it beyond page nine because it turns into another story. And so you understand why I bring everything back to the joke and the punchline. Fundamentally, what do you love about this idea and how can you tell it briefly and keep working on that brief version.

Stephen: Brilliant. That so much in there to unpick that’s useful as a brief aside. Anyone here who does anyone put your hand up if you feel like you don’t immediately know who that other person would be that you would pitch to that just raise your hand, keep your hands raised, look around, find each other in the break. Okay? Because you now have a buddy. Okay, thank you. You have no excuse now. I just took away your excuse. So how linear or indirect is that process are you pitching? Do you have your wife sitting there and you’re just going, okay, so a guy walks in a bot. No, not a guy, an elephant. Like. Or do you actually have. By the time you were pitching it to her, you’re fairly there and she’s just going to knock off some rough edges? No.

Rowan: And this is an important thing to say because the reason why one’s buttocks clench at the idea of having to tell someone your rudimentary story is, you know as well as I do, it’s going to be really awkward, isn’t it? I mean, if you’re anything like me, the first few attempts to tell this story, and by all means write it down first, kind of back of a fag packet type thing, get your mobile phone out, open inotes and write out a paragraph or two. Or just even if you don’t have that, what’s your central idea in a line? The reason why it’s so awkward is because, you know, nothing works until you figured out why it isn’t working. So you have to fail. The reason why the joke analogy is misleading is I don’t want you to think you’ve got to go in from the get go, grab everyone’s attention and deliver the punchline, whatever the heck that is in story terms. And we’ll get to that in a second. But what I do want you to do is I want you to get to the point where you’re looking someone else in the eye and you’re going, I’ve got this idea. And the other Person is going, well, come on, what is it? And you go, well, it’s not really very well formed, but it’s to do with. What if there was a person a bit like this, and the other person’s going, yeah, okay, it was a person a bit like this and this thing happened and the other person’s like, yeah. And you go. And then as a result, they have to do. Wait for it. They have to do this. And the other person goes, oh, no, I don’t know. I don’t like that. That’s really offensive. Or they go. Or they go, no, no, no, you got me that. That’s interesting. And then what happens? And you say, I don’t know. I don’t know. But I. But I know there’s a sort of bit of Argy bargy with so and so. And then I was thinking the end would be a bit like this, or I have no idea what the ending is, but I know there’s this really cool moment when this happens. So you see, what I’m saying is the joke part, the fag packet sketch, the one paragraph, it doesn’t need to be complete and it won’t be. All that I want you to do is I want you to get to that goosebumpy stage where you understand the bits that you think are really cool about your story. And I want you to force yourself to start trying to communicate it as a story to someone else, because you will immediately realise in that little communal experience which bits really are cool and which bits you thought were cool but no one else does, and which bits of your sketch really need work and where the gaps and the holes are. Because when you go away with your rudimentary sketch and you share it with someone else and they respond to it, you will immediately find yourself wanting to get your notes out and going, oh, that person had a really cool idea. And I’ve just realised, as I was telling you, that that bit needs to be changed. And of course, it’s not a hero, it’s a heroine. What was I thinking? And you’ll start building that. You’ll start doing revisions on your paragraph to a page. Your paragraph will start growing into a page, and that’s okay. And you’ll start making changes to it. And this is a really exciting part because this is when you’re figuring out the rudiments of your story. And then go back, go back to the person and go, okay, can I. I’m really sorry, can I read it out to you now? Because I’ve gone from a paragraph to a page. And I’ve got that middle bit sorted out and I think I’ve got a better idea for the ending, but can I test it on you? You’ve got to test because it’s trial and error. And that’s why being a writer is such a miserable effing job, is because you’re always going to be failing. That’s how you succeed. It’s by falling off the beam that you figure out where the beam is. Because you can’t see the beam, the beam’s invisible. And as a writer, you will never sit down unless you’re a genius and there are some out there, but you’re never going to sit down and go, I’ve got the A to Z of this story and it just got downloaded by God into my head. Let me just tell you it right now. And by the way, I’ve got all the cliffs, twists, turning points and chapter breaks in my mind. No, that’s not going to happen. And don’t put horrible false pressure on yourself. Get ready to fail. Someone much cleverer than me, who I think sells lots of screenwriting books, says it’s. It’s fail fast. It’s your. It’s your willingness to fail that will be the secret of your success.

Stephen: Sometimes you feel like you are being an idea downloaded from God, but on a crappy old modem, and you’re like, I lost it. I lost it. I had it. It’s gone. It was great, but it’s gone. I think one of the nice things about that process, let’s say you are talking to your buddy or your partner or whoever, and you’re failing because you’re in the sense that. In the way that in the good way you’re giving an idea, they’re like, meh, meh. When you actually hit the right idea and they go, ah. Like, the more you failed, the more honest that moment, is because they were bored and sick of this process. But then you’ve got them an idea that’s so good that’s got over all of that and then it’s got them hooked. So it’s almost like the more you fail, the easier it will be to spot it when you don’t. So I feel like that’s quite a forgiving process. You’re just storing up the potential energy for when you do crack it. And they’re like, suddenly they go from this to. And then what happens? So on this project and this sort of, I’m going on holiday, I’m going to come up with an idea. What was the chronology of how long that took. Took from the decision to come up with an idea to having an idea that you’ve then felt. This is my idea.

Rowan: Okay, so here were the critical bits of this. We’re still on the very first part of the long jump run up. Okay? So just to really beat the analogy over the head, this bit, the one page bit, the beginning bit, the idea, this is like the long jump runner just taking off. It’s that first push. Okay, makes sense.

Stephen: We’re not sports people, but I think we get it right. We get. We’ve seen. We’ve seen it once or twice. Right? Okay, good. We got it.

Rowan: The crucial bits of this, that particular weekend, I’m just going to try and give you visual, physical details. I remember walking on a shingle beach with my wife and telling other story. So that’s the bit I’m trying to. I’ve pitched you a little bit. Now. The other bit I remember was sitting up in bed with my laptop and writing until about 2 in the morning because I got that white hot fever. I got that like, I’ve got to get this down. I’ve got to get this down. And that’s another crucial bit. If you don’t have the white hot fever and you don’t want to get it down, that’s okay. That’s okay. But you got to be in love with that idea. So find the thing in. Find the thing in your writing that you’re really excited about and focus on that and forget all the stuff you think you ought to be doing because someone told you that ITV are looking for this. You know, just, just go for the thing that makes you goosebumpy and excited about this story. Even if you think it’s offensive or irrelevant or anything, just. Just go for it. Because that’s, that’s the alchemy. So it was. It was writing it down, then it was reading it out. I’ve mentioned that too. So you go back to your partner.

Stephen: Did you wake her up?

Rowan: Didn’t wake her up.

Stephen: Oh, well done.

Rowan: I was in the spare room.

Stephen: Of course you were.

Rowan: She doesn’t like the sound of the tapping.

Stephen: God, she’s not a writer, is she? Doesn’t get it.

Rowan: So read it out, get a bit of feedback. Go back to that one page, rewrite it, rewrite it, rewrite it. Because once it starts to have a beginning, middle and an end, the writer in you is going to go, that bit’s a bit weak. I haven’t really. I need to kind of work that up Bit. Let me explain about this rewriting bit, because it’s the same all the way through. So let’s say you’ve got your one page, you’ve pitched it a couple of times, you’ve got a bit of feedback, and you’re working on a successive draught of it. Everyone with me, okay? What you’re going to experience is you’re going to experience the fundamental challenge of being a writer. The fundamental challenge, which is there are parts of the story you like. It may only be one part that genuinely excites you, and in order to deliver that part to the audience, you’ve got to write loads of other parts that lead up to it. And then you’ve got to write probably loads of other parts that sort of pay it off and have some kind of an ending. Now, that’s okay. That’s our job. If you can bifurcate that look at the thing you love and crack it like a nut and break it into smaller elements, can that one bit that you love actually be two bits? Can you then crack it into three bits? So if the thing that you love is, you know, when this boy meets this girl, or when X happens to Y, or when. When something happens, can you break that something happens down into its constituent elements? Why does it happen? Why does it happen now? What are the immediate implications of it happening to your key characters? Do your key characters require other key characters in order to share their experience with? Or is there an obstacle that you need to put in the place of the thing happening so that it really feels earned? These are the fundamental questions, which are logical questions. You don’t need a script editor for them, you don’t need a producer. They’re just common sense questions. How can I crack the thing I love apart into smaller pieces? How can I lead up to it and what are the consequences going to be? Those are the things you’re going to be asking yourself as you develop your one paragraph into your one page. And your one page may now start growing into two or three pages as you begin to break things down. Now, here’s what I’m going to suggest. Don’t write once upon a time all the way through to the end. Don’t start at the beginning of your story, which may bore you to tears. And you feel that you’ve got to wrestle with now and get that right before you get to the bit that you love and that you know you’ve cracked. Forget that. Don’t write the story in order. Start with the thing you love most and work outwards from There. Because if you try and write the story in order, you will crush your creative spirit and you will feel like you’re in a school lesson, an English lesson, a creative writing lesson, and you’ve just set yourself homework. And you’ve got to get from all the bits you’re not interested in, you don’t understand, to the bit you like. So start with all the bits you like down on your page. And even if your one paragraph is only the bit you like, but you don’t know kind of how to frame it in a context, that’s okay. And what you’re then figuring out is, what bits do I need to join up the bits that I like? So if there’s. Well, in order for X to happen, y’s got to happen. And I don’t really know how Y happens because I’m not an astronaut or I don’t really care how Y happens because I’m single and I’m writing about being a parent. Okay, well, at least you focused in on the problem. You can say, I need to get interested in this part of the story. Because if your story is peppered with bits you’re not invested and interested in, it’s bringing everything else down and it’s framing the thing you love and that you’ve written well in the context of something boring because you’re bored by it. So find a way to get interested. And often what that is, is research. If I don’t understand how this bit of the story works, don’t fudge it. Just put a placeholder in going, this happens. And I don’t understand how, but I’m going to figure it out later. I’m more interested in the bits that I’m interested in now. And I’m going to get all those working until it’s got to the point where the page has got three clear holes in it. You know, the marriage ceremony. I’ve never got married. I don’t know how it works. You know, the rocket takes off. Actually, this bit’s got to be plausible. And I’m not an astrophysicist, so I don’t know how they navigate. And build yourself in your writer’s schedule. Okay, tomorrow I’m going to spend two hours looking at astrophysics, you know, or tomorrow I’m going to have a cup of coffee, coffee with somebody who recently got divorced, and find out what it’s actually like rather than what I think it’s like. Because if you’re writing about what you think it’s like and you haven’t invested in the research you will be writing cliche and the cliche will again lower the resonance and power of your story.

Stephen: I love this. I love the idea of writing from passion, writing from what you love and expanding the love rather than filling in gaps. And I also think it reflects the writers lifestyle that you’ve got a to do list which is, you know, write three pages, date an astronaut, you know, ask astrophysicist about rockets, you know, finish typo cheques. So just because I want to make sure that we get through to the, we, you know, we set ourselves a very narrow part of development and we’re still on the very early part of that. So let’s say you’ve got your story and it’s down to how many pages you think it should be. One, two, three, whatever. And it’s passed the wife test. She’s now you haven’t ruined the holiday, she’s gone. All right, fine. I was a bit annoyed, but it’s quite a good idea and I quite like that. What happens next?

Rowan: Okay, so if you’ve, if you’ve turned your one paragraph into a page and you’ve, and you’ve done everything I’m talking about, which is you filled in your gaps so that you have a complete story, you have something with a beginning and a middle and an end. And I’ve not got into genre and I’ve not got into specific things like cliffhangers or twists or reveals or any of that, because I want to be maximum use to you now in a brief period of time. But let’s say you’ve got a three pager and forget all the technical details, the light bulb moments, whatever the heck those are, just forget all that. If those three pages interest you and you love them and someone else is interested by them, then you’ve got your pitch. You’ve got your pitch. That’s what the three pages is. It’s in five to 10 minutes. I can say I’ve got a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. And I know the story I’m telling and I’m passionate about it and I’ve tried it out on a couple of people and they think it’s good too. So I’m ready to go now. Where do you take the pitch to? That’s a separate discussion. That’s the professional side of the industry. But what you want to do is you really now want the pitch I think is ready to be read by a literary agent or one of those kind of functionaries in the industry. That sounds like I’m Insulting literary agents. But I mean, but I mean someone who serves an important function for us as a writer. Someone who is going to say, eh, or there’s a market for this because ultimately we’re going to have to take the cow to market if there isn’t a market for it. There may be a really good reason and you shouldn’t be crushed. Maybe you move on to something else, but you’ve learnt a lot about the process or maybe there’s a market for it if you just make the heroine a woman. But either way, you’ve got a pitch document and the next stage is you’re increasing the professional acumen of its feedback. So you’re going to a literary agent, you’re sending it to a producer friend, you’re getting a bit of feedback and that will help you in your subsequent draught of the pitch. Get it to the point where you and your producer friend know that you know, Netflix is looking for something a bit like this and then you get your pitch window and you pitch it. I can be less helpful to you on the producer friend and what Netflix is looking for. Those are challenges we all have to go through. What I hope I’ve done is help you get to the three to five page pitch document and how you get there and more to the point, make you understand it’s not a sales document first and foremost. It’s the spinal column and the organs and the heart and the blood. It’s the life of your project as a storyteller. And you’re going to go back to that three page pitch document when pat, you’ll probably never look at it again. But the point is you’ve set proper foundations, you’re standing on solid foundations as a writer and you’re, you’re, you are, you know the story you’re telling and you, you’re the master of that story and you’re excited by it. That’s the stage I wanted to get you to before we go on to the next one.

Stephen: And what’s interesting there is that the temptation for many writers might be I want to crack it first and then I’ll start telling people about it, I want to write it, then I’ll start pitching it, you know, and whereas you’re talking about being open the entire time, not to everyone, in all contexts, you’re picking loved ones, you’re doing it in a con, you know, you’re not being too open, but you are still talking about always testing at every stage. That’s quite scary, isn’t it?

Rowan: It is, it is quite Scary. And obviously, you know, I just want you to be open to a level of discomfort and to understand that you’re never going to get it. I mean, that you’re not going to sit down and write a brilliant story in one go. You’re going to have to write millions of versions of the story. Even T.S. eliot said writing is in the rewriting. So I think what’s important is to understand something about this process that I want to sell to you. This process is the sketch. So another analogy coming. This process is the sketch and the screenplay is the painting. Now, the reason why it’s important to understand that analogy is that it is much easier for you to change a three to five page document than it is for you to change a 90 page script or a 60 page script. Because 60 to 90 page scripts, no matter whether or not you’ve got some tool from Final Draught called Scene Navigator or some other crap like that, it’s hard to see the whole story in your head when you’ve got a 90 page script. Very hard. If I move scene four to scene 50, it’s very hard to know what the implications on the whole ecostruxure of that piece is going to be. Whereas if I’ve got a three page document and I move paragraph one to page two, I can pretty quickly see what’s going to happen. That’s why I want you to linger in this part of the process. The more work you do here in the run up, the longer the run will be, the more successful the script will be. I aim to get to the point where I’m writing a first draught, where I know so much what I’m doing that I sit down with my outline and I’m going to get onto the outline now and I literally cut and paste it one paragraph at a time into Final draft. And I say to myself, how can I turn this paragraph into visual information and dialogue? Now I’ve got to be really confident if I’m cutting and pasting that I know the story I’m telling. I want you to get you guys to that, that stage. So the next part of the process is to talk about the outline or the treatment. And I’ll do it in terms of Project A and Project N, so we can. So we’re moving this on.

Stephen: So we’ve got about 20 minutes. We’ve got about 20 minutes and I’m going to try and open up for questions and things like that in a bit. So think of your questions, but stay in your seats for now. But yeah, let’s do it in these two projects. So reminders. So Project A is a TV series for a streamer and Project N is a movie for a TV series and.

Rowan: Project N is a movie for a streamer. So Project N, my ambition is to get to a 90 page script. And where I am with Project N is I’ve only done the first bit I did. I’ve done the first two bits I did the idea. So that was the one I talked about. Came. Came on a weekend with my wife and it was initially a 3 to 5 pager. I sent it to a producer that I’ve worked with before. I also sent it to a publisher because I wanted to compare the two results. The publisher was a bit lukewarm. She said, I think this has potential. I think this is intriguing.

Stephen: That’s brutal.

Rowan: I think this has potential. I think we could do something with this. And then I sent it to the producer and she basically said, wow, this is great. I want to do it. I think there’s a place at Netflix this. So I compared the two and I thought, well, I’m going to go where the enthusiasm is. And also I’ve never written a novel before and I don’t know how to. So we’re going to, we’re going to leave that, we’ll leave that to one side. So she liked the three to five pager and then I sat down with her. So, you know, you’ve got your collaborator now, you’ve got your pitch. And the idea is how can we grow this pitch document into something that I can actually pitch to a real person from Netflix? And what I did was I grew the five pager into a 12 pager. But I want you to consider that 12 pager to be stage two. And I want you to think of the 12 pager not as the idea, but I want you to think of it as the outline or the treatment. A. Treatment’s a great word. It’s an old fashioned word. It’s probably out of date now, but treatment’s a good word because what you’re doing is you’re taking that initial idea, you’re taking that three to five, that, that, that one para that then became a three to five page doc. And you’re turning, turning it into a. The sweet spot for me is 12 to 15 pages. I know that sounds formulaic, but it’s worked for me for years. If you’re drifting into 17 or 18 pages, you’re probably going to too much detail. If it’s an eight or nine page, it might not be quite enough. Twelve to 15 pages seems to work. I know that probably sounds a really kind of odd thing to say, but it’s this, it’s the sweet spot for an outline or treatment for a 90 minute. And actually it’s worked quite well on project A for eight hours of television, eight one hour episodes. A 12 to 15 page document was what the streamer wanted and a 12 to 15 page document was what the producer wanted to prep us for our pitch to Netflix. Now, what are we doing in the 12 to 15 page document? This is what I want to zero in on. Now you’re going to focus on two things. You’re going to focus on the content and you’re going to focus on the structure. And you’re going to be thinking about structure at a much deeper level now because you could kind of get away in your three to five page document with a beginning, middle and end structure. But when you’re in 12 to 15 pages now we have to start looking at what in your very first scene or the very first bit of story element that you’re putting down, what keeps me reading, what makes me think, wow, this is an amazing story. I need to know what happens next. That’s called the hook or the way in. So I want you to be thinking in your outline about the hook or the way in. And if you don’t have a hook or a way in yet, that’s okay. Do what I said before. Write the hook or the way in, question mark. Don’t know yet, and move on until you get to the bit of the outline that you thought. Oh, I’d always wanted to expand that bit into kind of two or three pages, but that idiot at the Screenwriters Festival told me I had to stick to five pages. Now’s your chance to let rip on expanding all the bits of the story you like, but you’ve got to expand it with structure in mind. Now here are some structural ideas. Don’t go beyond 12 to 15 pages if you can help it. For this pitch document or outline or treatment, don’t forget things like twists, cliffhangers, reveals. And reveal is really just a twist. A twist is like a sort of. In my mind, a twist is like a sort of super reveal. It’s not just a twist. Is a reveal where we discover something that’s really interesting, but what makes it twisty is it’s the opposite of what we thought was going on. So a twist is what Aristotle called a reversal, although Aristotle really meant by a reversal of fortune. But it’s the idea that A twist is a reveal on steroids. Cliffhangers are those moments where you end a paragraph or a page or your beginning mitt, your beginning bit or your middle bit or your end bit. A cliffhanger is your conscious attempt to say to the audience, I bet you want to know what happens next. That’s all it is. I bet you want to. And they can be really subtle. Cliffhangers don’t need to be, you know, action thriller cliffhangers. They don’t need to be is my hero going to live or die? Although those are great. It might be, you know, will she say yes, it might be. What are the results of the test? You know, but whatever it is, be conscious of those. And I’m giving you these, these are structural points. You need these points to make this 12 page document sing. So I know I’m going straight into test technical, nitty gritty, and I’m sorry, but I’m doing it. Okay? So cliffhangers. Reveals, super reveals or twists the hook or weigh in. What’s the midpoint? What’s the midpoint of your story? I hate this. The midpoint is my least favourite thing in the world. But the reason why the midpoint is important is that the middle of your story will always be the soggiest, vaguest and muddiest section of your story. It’ll be the bit you don’t want to write, that’s full of the bits you weren’t interested in to get you from the really exciting opening to the really exciting climax. So the reason a midpoint is useful is I want you to ask yourself this question. What happens halfway through my story geographically, if it’s a 12 page document? What happens on page six? What happens that I could put the heading midpoint and it would be really exciting, really interesting or a turning point. So the midpoint can be anything. But I want you to root it to something concrete that you understand that is cool. Because that will stop your middle section being muddy and heavy and soggy. And by the way, my midpoint always changes, okay? So don’t be wedded to it because as the story length shrinks and grows and as I move stuff around, what was the midpoint suddenly ends up at the beginning or sort of in the middle, in the middle section of the beginning? Just keep looking. What’s happening in the middle of my story? And can I make it more interesting? Weightier? Can I make it a turning point? Now I want to talk about turning points. Turning points are moments where your character makes an important decision where something of Consequence happens that sets your story on a slightly new trajectory. A turning point is a moment in the story where something of consequence happens happens. And what I always want you to be thinking about is consequences. How many parts of my 12 to 15 page pitch have no consequence? Look at the page and go paragraphs one through five. What’s the consequence of paragraph one? Well, you couldn’t have paragraphs. You couldn’t have the rest of the story without it. Great. What’s the consequence of paragraph 2? Well, that’s a bit iffy, but I just really liked my description of the colour purple. No, go, cut it. Here’s a tool I want to give you. Put at the end of your 12 to 15 page document a heading called floating. Floating is where you put all the ideas you love and you don’t want to delete and you don’t want to consign to the oblivion of another file. You want to keep your eye on them, but put them at the end of the document. Don’t let them clutter the forward momentum of everything else. Because here’s our great enemy. I remember I told you the worst thing as a writer is the boring bits between all the interesting bits. Here’s our other enemy as a writer, the bits we love. Because the bits we love might not be serving the story. Wow, that’s a bit of a mind game, isn’t it? You just told me that the bits we love were everything that were important about the story. That’s true, but I also want you to be mercenary. I want you to look at the bits you love and go, are they really crucial to the story? Because if they’re not, I want you to put them in the floating section.

Stephen: Plot twist.

Rowan: Yeah. Okay, so these are the tools I’ve given you. The weigh in or the hook. The midpoint. I want to give you two more tools. Sorry, Before I do a summary, I want to give you something called the final battle. We all know what that is. I don’t need to tell you what that is. That’s when the opposing forces in your story have their final showdown and whatever is going to be dominant in your story wins the day. Now, this may sound all very puerile, but I don’t know how to tell stories in sophisticated, modern, abstract ways. Ultimately for me, ultimately for me, stories are good versus evil. That’s not popular these days, but that’s how I write. There’s something I’m rooting for that I want to succeed. So the final battle is when that thing succeeds and it can only succeed when just before the final battle, it looked like everything was lost. So another bit that I want you to think about in your 12 to 15 page structure is the low point. And the low point must come just before the final battle. So the low point is when your hero looks like he’s completely beaten everything, screwed. Everything we hope for is messed up. There’s no way he can get out of this. Now, if you’ve got a low point, that’s going to force you to go, well, how does he get out of it? And you’re going to have to go back through your story and sew in the thing that gets him or her out of the low point so that it’s not a deus ex machina. You can’t have your hero, heroine completely broken and then this coincidental thing happens that then gives them the power to win the final battle. No, the thing that happens has got to be sewn into the story. And I want to give you another point. This thing that allows your protagonist to get from the low point to winning the final battle should preferably be something to do with their flaw or weakness as a character. Because that, to me, is where the truth of storytelling comes. That your hero or heroine will have a weakness that they’re embarrassed about, that they don’t want anyone to know about, that it looks like it was the thing that was going to make them lose the final battle, and that’s somehow the key to them winning. That’s the Holy Grail. You don’t have to do it that way. It could be just that they made a friend early on in the story that nobody else liked, and they were kind to them. And that friend gives them the match magic sword that allows them to win the battle. Now, you see, that’s organic. They were nice to the person that gave them the thing they needed to win when nobody else was. So they’ve kind of morally earned their victory. But however you do it, low point to final battle and what gets them from one to the other just.

Stephen: I mean, I don’t want to cut you off. I just want to make sure there’s a time for a couple of questions. Is there another thing on the end of this? Or you.

Rowan: Yes, there’s the denouement.

Stephen: Let’s do it.

Rowan: So the denouement is, having won the final battle, what is now new and different about their lives? The final battle is the moment when they walk off into the sunset. What is new and different about your protagonist’s lives? That is kind of satisfying, and that is a testimony to everything they’ve earned. So if it’s, you know, if the whole story was about a Neanderthal village, needed fire, then your denouement is going to involve a feast around a great big bonfire. So whatever it is about your denouement, if your story was about boy meets girl, then the denouement is the happily ever after moment. It’s a moment where you try and squeeze their entire future, you know, or boy meets boy, or girl meets girl, doesn’t matter. You’re squeezing their entire future into that denouement. It’s a little taste. So I’m going to go back through the summary. I might not get it completely right. So forgive me. And you don’t remember, these formulas are there to serve you. You’re not there to serve the formula. So the way I want you to use all these is as follows. If when you look at your 15 page document, you’re thinking, this is flat, this is boring, I don’t feel confident about this. That’s when you use these formulaic ideas I’m giving you to say, well, do I have a midpoint? Do I have a hook or a way in? Do I have enough turning points? Do I have a character arc? That’s the last thing I want to give you. Your character must be different at the end than they were at the beginning. I know, we all know that, but I’ve been doing this for 25 years and producers are constantly saying to me, how’s he different at the end than he was at the beginning or she at the end? And I’m constantly going, oh, I don’t know. I lost sight of that because that’s my particular weakness. So don’t apply. Only apply the formula to serve the story and to serve your passion and freedom and to help you when the story isn’t working. Don’t think. Actually what I need to do is arrange these formulas in the right order on a page and then kind of fill in the blanks because that won’t work. It’s the spirit of the process is your creative freedom and individuality. The technical aspect of the skill is can I deploy these formula to my, my benefit. So we’re going to go through them quickly. The weigh in or the hook, the turning points. You might want to, by the way, structure three acts. So you’ve got a beginning, a middle and an end. You want a quest. I mean, listen, I’m not the person to go to for all these. You’ll get them much better from screenwriting books. But these are the tools I Use you want a quest, you want the reason why they’re here. Hero doesn’t want to go on the quest. You need the reason why the hero must go on the quest, the stakes. So he’s going to. He or she will make loads of objections about why they can’t do it. And then there’s going to be a real reason why they have to. And that’s got to be visceral. We’ve got to care as the audience. Then you’re going to have the moment where the quest begins. You know, it’s the famous moment they talk about. You’re no longer in Kansas. It’s quite good if you can change location or get some kind of movement going on to get some qualitative change to the story somehow the quest beginning. Listen, better writers may not need any of these things, by the way, and I’m sorry if this is just awful and embarrassing, but I’m giving you what helps me. I go through them as a checklist once the quest is underway. I’m looking at turning points, I’m looking at consequence, I’m looking at reveals, I’m looking at twists. I’ve got a midpoint. I want to pepper the story with cliffhangers. I want to always be asking myself, where’s the threat coming from? There’s got. And if there’s no threat, where’s the conflict? And this will pay off. When you hand an actor a script, if there’s no conflict in the scene and it’s a good actor, the actor won’t want to do the scene because an actor needs something to be in conflict with. So where’s the conflict? Turning points, cliffhangers, twists, final battle, low point, final battle, denouement. There’s enough to be going on with. But the point of this, I just want to say the point of this was not to give you none of that’s fresh information. You all know that and you’ve all read it in books. But what I want you to understand is that I use these things to shape the 15 page documents, to give it a shape and to make it marketable and to make my story better. But this is also what I want you to understand, that ultimately, as you’re working on this 15 page document, the two things I started with are the two things that will be in play. The content and the structure. All those formula I gave you were structural techniques as you deploy them. Let’s say, for example, you realise you want a big twist, roundabout here because your story’s boring. If you want a twist you may need to change the content. You may realise that your idea needs to be slightly altered in order to deliver that twist on page six. So what I’m trying to get you to understand is that the big picture here is that your idea, your content, the content of your story will change and develop as you muck about with the structure. And likewise, your structure will change and develop as you become clearer on the content of your story. And what I’m trying to get you now finally to is a point where you have a 15 page document where you think, ideally, I’m now commissioned to write this, but even if I wasn’t commissioned and it was a spec script, I feel like I can import paragraph one of that 15 page document into final draft. And now I’m at the point that Rowan told me I’d be at. I’m at the point where I’ve had a long run up and I built loads of momentum and now I’m jumping. And as you jump into your script, you will jump into it, not wondering where the story’s going, you know, thinking, I’ve just. I’m so good with dialogue, it’ll come to me. You’ll be starting the script knowing that I’m writing a script and I know roughly where it’s going. And by the way, you don’t have to start the script in the middle either. In the beginning, you could start the script at the scene you’re most excited about. So when you cut and paste your paragraphs, you don’t have to cut and paste paragraph one, you could cut and paste paragraph 19 on page six, because that’s the one you’re dying to write. And if you do it that way, you’ll end up with 30 pages of script full of stuff you love and you’ve only got another 20 pages or 30 pages to fill in of the bits you didn’t love. And you see, it’s, I’m trying to give you momentum.

Stephen: What a journey that is. You know, it’s so easy to dismiss development and to say and to jump into this idea that writing is typing and, you know, where’s the script? At no point we got script. You ended all of this on, and now you start the script when, you know, we would traditionally think that’s when the writing begins, but when you do you like with your analogy, we’ve got so much momentum, we know where we’re going, we feel comfortable, but also we’ve ironed out things that we don’t want to be ironing out in the edit room. You know, that we don’t want to be audiences telling us this makes no sense or whatever. And I also, personally, as a writer, love the idea that there’s a time for passion. There’s a time for. I just love this idea. And let me try this. And it’s like you’re on a shingle beach and you’re chatting with your partner on your holiday, and then there’s a bit like, where’s this? What’s the consequence of that? And it’s all you doing it to yourself. But there is a time and a place for all these things, and towards the end, they become symbiotic. And you might be playing with them, but each of them you fully immerse into. You know, when you’re trying to come up with that early paragraph or that early sort of idea, you’re not worrying about structure at all, right? You’re just trying to worry about something that’s going to, you know, blow the 406th idea you pitched to your wife, and she really wants to go to the beach, and that’s the one that’s.

Rowan: That works.

Stephen: Is that a fair summary of.

Rowan: Very, very fair. And stick your hands up, whoever found that helpful. I just want to go, brilliant, because it’s so hard for me to know, and I’m so grateful to you guys for even being interested in this thing. So thank you.

Stephen: I think the biggest thing we’re annoyed about is that it’s not four hours long. So, as in, we could carry on for a long time. Ollie? Yes.

Audience: My question is, firstly, thank you for your generosity of ideas and everything and passion.

Rowan: Really appreciate it.

Audience: Would it be fair to say that the whole thing about the runner doing that run up and putting that work in, that timing is kind of like a dance between structure and event and sort of character meaning and content, so that they’re both working together? That’s kind of what I heard. Is that how it feels like to you when you’re in that development process or not?

Rowan: Okay, that’s a really good question. I don’t quite know is my honest answer. And the reason why I don’t want to divorce character from plot. I don’t think character and plot are quite the same thing as content and structure, because to me, character and plot are all content. Structure are the formula I gave you that aren’t really to do with plot. Although they’re plot points, they don’t contain any content to them. The other thing I think you have to be a bit careful of is Aaron Sorkin, who’s a Much better writer than me said that there’s no such thing as character. He said, there’s only quest. So I want you to really understand this about your character. It doesn’t matter what they wear, what their accent is, where they come from or any of that. If you haven’t got a quest, the most important thing about your character is what do they want? And why do I give a shit whether they get it or not? And you have to ask yourself that question in every single paragraph of everything I’ve told you. And every single paragraph must serve what’s the character’s quest and why does it matter? And they’re either moving closer to it or further away from it. And if they’re not doing any of those things, your story has gone adrift. And that’s why it isn’t working. So that’s a bad answer to the question. But it’s the best way I know how.

Stephen: It’s the difference between character and characterization, isn’t it? Like having an accent is not a character. It’s just a, you know, character point to them. Yes. Question.

Audience: Yeah, thank you so much. Very useful. You mentioned content and structure is the two things you want to go in. I wonder if you can talk about things that shouldn’t go in at this stage and the kind of parts that go off and call the sax that are mistakes away from the tightness of this document.

Rowan: Okay, that’s a great question. So look, don’t write about what actors you envisage in the role. Don’t go into too much visual description because that’s really the sort of the director’s job. I mean, by all means, give a geographical location, give a flavour of atmosphere. You might, on this 12 to 15 page document, want, and I think indeed you need a section called style or atmosphere or visual. And you also. Or tone, but keep it to a paragraph. You know, the brutal news is no one’s that interested in a writer, in a writer’s view of what the movie should look like. What they really want to know is more or less, is it a good story. So I think that can be a distraction. And other things that I think are distractions might be, oh, gosh, anything that isn’t serving what I talked about just put it in floating.

Stephen: You know, I call it when I’m doing writing, I call it all the slides. I call it the farm, because I’m sending them off to live on a farm because I know that. I know they’re going to die, but I’m not ready to let go of Them, but they need to get out, so they get sent. When I got. I’ve got some slides later on, I just, I’m not going to show you because they were great slides. They just didn’t serve anything. So I put them in the farm and now they’re gone.

Rowan: Don’t in your 15 page document put camera angles, for example. It might occur to you that’s a really good idea. I don’t think it is. I don’t think they care at this stage.

Stephen: Last question.

Audience: I want to ask about character flaws and also theme and kind of when that emerges for you and if it’s consistent. So is it something where when you have that initial idea you go, right.

Stephen: Okay, this character is going to have.

Audience: This lore and the journey is about this and deep down, story is how this. Or is it something that you only find out at a later stage? What stake is that?

Rowan: That’s a really good question because I forgot to mention theme. It’s another weakness of mine. Like character arcs. What’s the theme of your story? Now look, I only learned this about a year ago. I didn’t really understand what theme was. And I’m so. I think I’m so clever. I don’t understand myself half the time. So, you know, theme. I didn’t know what theme was and I sort of fudged it for about, know, 15 years. So I mean, to a certain extent, maybe you don’t need to worry. But I did learn from listening to. What’s that podcast with screenwriters script notes. Okay, so on script notes, Craig Mason told me what the theme is. So I’m just going to tell you what he told. He told us. He said that theme was the dramatic argument. And the dramatic argument is in a line. What’s your story about? Now that’s quite interesting, isn’t it? Can you boil that? The really hardcore version of my one paragraph is your theme. What’s the story about? Because in development Speak, script editors think the theme is the ideas lurking behind the story. Now, they’re partly right, but the two must be interlinked. So let me give you an example. I’m going to give you a hardcore example. Project A that I’m writing. Here’s the theme in terms of its absolute abstract message. Because a streamer these days want to know what’s the message. They didn’t used to want to know that 10 years ago. Why are we saying what we’re saying and what are we saying? The theme is this. The more responsibility you take for your own life, the more freedom you will have. That’s my theme. And it’s in a line. Now, it may sound like something you read on a cereal packet, but it’s quite hard to develop into a story. And that’s why you’ve got to have the other bit of the theme. The theme of Project A is a professional thief who is addicted to stealing. That means he hasn’t been able to perform his craft or his trade for 17 years because he’s been clean of stealing and working a programme of recovery for people addicted to stealing. And then he’s asked to steal something. Okay, so you see, how on earth does my theme A overlap with my theme be. Because the way he’s kept himself clean, the programme of recovery he’s worked, has all been about taking responsibility for his life and stopping blaming others. He grew up in a difficult situation, he ended up in jail and he became clean of crime when he took responsibility for his life. So I’m saying the theme is important, but it’s got two wings. It’s got the, what are we saying? Why now? What’s the message? And then we’ve got, how’s that embodied at the level of character and story? And they should both be really crisp. And bear in mind, don’t be hard on yourselves. Those ideas will develop all the way through this process. But you should be clear, roughly clear. When you get to the pilot or the film script, if that is on.

Stephen: A serial packet, it’s like muesli or something. Something miserable. Right? Because you’re just throwing it away. But it’s not going to be on the side of cocoa pops. We’re out of time. But I just. I would really like to extend a huge thank you. You’ve been so generous with your time. You’re actively in doing these projects. These are things you’re challenging. And there you’ve said, I don’t know, many times, which is amazing, because it’s the vulnerability and the openness and the honesty that, you know, it’s a hard process and it’s not. It’s not. There’s always a construct of the stage and the audience, and I just. That’s not the way it is. It’s an ongoing, symbiotic process of doing it. And I know that you spent time thinking about it and walking here and we, you know, structured it. So I really appreciate that you brought both the passion of the idea, I’m going to come and talk to these people, and then you structured it correctly so that we would do it. And I appreciate that. So guys could you give us a huge round of applause, please, for Roan. Thank you so much. That’s a real round of applause.