This Friday on the Square
Little scene 20a (see earlier posts) makes its debut this Friday at 8pm, in amongst some 40 or so other scenes that make up my 2nd Eastenders episode to date.
It was four months ago that I sat in a room with the other writers of this fortnight's episodes and a clutch of editors and researchers. We had digested our story documents and were there to 'pitch' how we envisioned our particular Eastenders episode to be, iron out any serial problems and ask any burning questions we had.
As I was 'week one Friday' I wasn't first to speak and so scanned my notes over and over to calm my nerves. Suddenly it was me. Some writers, being such pros and stalwarts had raced through their questions at breakneck speed and had assured everyone they had it all in hand.
Now it was Friday's turn.
My first EE episode had been a joy - this time last year Daren and Libby were in the throes of condom heaven/hell, Dot was giving up smoking, Dawn was in love, Carly was in danger.
I had a weird sense of deja vu. 12 months down the line and the episodes seemed to be following strangely familiar paths. I won't elucidate - I'll let this week's stories play out then maybe come back to you on that.
Needless to say, fundamentally not a lot can change in the life of a soap character - or if they do change, they have to forget the lessons they've learned and get themselves back to square one in order to make the same mistakes all over again. And god forbid anyone learn from anyone else's mistakes.
I had some reservations about my second trip into Albert Square - could I do this? Would I have chosen this to happen? Was it fair? How would I write it? But I am in the hands of the storyliners, and EE is a tight ship with some 200 or so episodes to produce, not much space for manoeuvring.
Like any artiste worth their salt, I rose to the challenge. The biggest challenge making R 'n' R look like a swinging hep joint and not like your front room with a couple of neighbours dropping in for Karaoke under a 100w light bulb...
See what you think this Friday. I am credited (again) as Abi Brown in the Radio Times, I am seriously thinking of adding that 'r' to my surname and have done with it...
And please pay attention to the last line of the ep, I sweated over it.
Holby draft 3 is coming on apace. Those of you familiar with this blog will know I tend to overwrite and then have to spend hours chopping bits out. Draft 2 notes came back with a plea for another 10 pages. Wow!
I have written another 20 so far ... guess what I'm doing tomorrow before my deadline on Wednesday.
Casualty have been very quiet. Very quiet. They've had my guest stories for ages... and I've been reluctant to call in case I'm suddenly inundated with notes having to produce 3 more guests and gory accidents out of a hat.
An old familiar face is turning up on Casualty in a few months - a character with a lot of Holby airtime. As a result, I've been inundated with DVDs from Bristol so I can get a feel for the guy - you know, see him in previous episodes. Hear the 'voice'.
Last week was half term, whilst my lot were out doing museums and Pizza Hut, I was hunkering down in my Shipping Container watching old episodes of Holby and Casualty. Hours of them.
Needless to say, I ate a lot of popcorn and got a lot of knitting done.
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