dreamer_easy: (WRITING)
[personal profile] dreamer_easy
OK, the context here is a little embarrassing. Fanboy boasts he can write better than RTD, produces Doctor Who/The Prisoner crossover fic, Jon shoots fish in barrel.

That said, Jon's detailed response is full of insight on writing - so much so that I printed out a copy to keep. It's here:

http://www.doctorwhoforum.com/showpost.php?p=6695559&postcount=5

I know not everyone can access OG, so I'll get Jon's permish to repost it here.

ETA: Okay... I'm weighing in on this because of the other thread in which Tim said "hey, I could easily write some fiction which will match RTD's offerings". He's to be commended for putting his money where his mouth is... and the fact that compared to RTD, he's quite a few dollars short, is only embarrassing if he doesn't acknowledge it.

Over in the other thread, I've already talked about the first, huge thing which RTD does in his scripts which is conspicuously lacking here, which is that he tends to have the occasional idea of his own. But apparently pointing out that this makes the comparison a non-starter isn't entering into the spirit of things properly.

So, to engage more specifically with the text of this story, I've put together a list of Nine More Things Russell Davies Does That You Haven't:


1) Feature sharp, concise characterization.

Take a look at how many different details of personality Russell squeezes into Jackie Tyler's very first line in "Rose": "I know, it's on the telly, it's everywhere. Honestly, it's aged her, skin like an old bible. Walk in here now, you'd think I was her daughter. (MICKEY ENTERS) Oh, and here's Himself--" From that one speech, four sentences, he's already revealed that this woman (A) is Rose's mum, (B) reacts to a crisis by nattering on the phone to the neighbours, (C) cares, but in a fairly superficial way, (D) is a touch on the self-deluding side about her age, (E) has a contemptuous relationship with Rose's boyfriend. And that's before her next two speeches, which highlight her grasping sense of money and her refusal to bail Rose out.

Now look at any of the characters you've created in this story. If you can find any amongst the ones you've pinched. How much can you say about Number Twelve based on what you've written? Yes, she's a walk-on, but if you compare her distinctiveness to that of Annalise from "Smith and Jones", who has about as many lines in total, it's no contest. Or what makes your Number Two different from all the others we've seen?

You haven't demonstrated any complexity of characterization of that sort.

2) Revealing new facets of the regulars.

Even when he uses characters who already exist, every RTD script points up some aspect of those characters which hasn't previously been spotlighted. The way his cheery love of danger looks monstrous from the outside in "Tooth & Claw"; how easy it is not to be up to companion standard in "Long Game"; the pains of those who stand and wait for the companion in "Boom Town"; redefining the Doctor/Rose relationship as romantic in one stroke in "New Earth"; "Don't ever mistake me for nice" in "Love & Monsters"; his strongest traits turning out to be his biggest weaknesses in "Midnight". Et cetera. Your story... we don't see anything new in their personalities. The line about the Doctor always running is a nice one, but it's still an idea which has already been expressed, repeatedly.

Even the "this takes place during Jack's two missing years" business is more a matter of plot rather than characterization... plus it's a tease, since we don't find out anything substantive about what they wiped or why. It shows us no side of Jack's character that we haven't seen before; arguably it shows less characterization than usual, since every previous glimpse we've got of his past has shown him at a significantly different stage of his life, whether as the self-interested con-man he was immediately before he met the Doctor, the out-of-control drunk who was recruited by Torchwood, or the sort of maniac who'd have a thing with Captain John during his time at the Time Agency. But this Jack is indistinguishable from the cheery, devoted follower of "Bad Wolf"; nothing new.

Arguably, you'd have a more interesting story if this Jack were working for the Village throughout, attempting to gain the Doctor's confidence, with the two of them cat-and-mousing each other -- Jack playing along with the break-in while planning to betray the Doctor, the Doctor also playing along knowing this, but working on Jack to try to appeal to a better nature he might not have really developed yet.

Which leads nicely to...

3) Character-driven storytelling.

In RTD's scripts, action serves to demonstrate character. The players have to make dramatic decisions which change the situation: who to listen to, who to trust, how far they're willing to go. Everywhere from Jackie's decision to phone the hotline about the Doctor in "Aliens of London" to Martha's actions with the Osterhagen Key. That's all glossed over in your story; the closest thing to such a decision, Jack trusting the Doctor, you present as a foregone conclusion.

4) Serious movement in the plot.

By halfway through any RTD story, you've usually found out that the situation is radically different from what you started out thinking it was. "New Earth" has gone from a bodyswapping comedy to a zombie movie. The monks' secret weapon turns out to be a werewolf. "Turn Left" goes from a personal what-if to a tale of global catastrophe. Nothing in the first half of "Midnight" so much as hints at the creature's repetition, or the effect it will have in making a mob.

In your story, once you know the Judoon are after the Doctor and the Doctor's in the Village -- right after the opening credits -- you know everything there is to know about the situation, really. Because the Village is not a surprise; certainly not to us, and not to a new viewer once Number Two explains the situation, because that situation doesn't change. There are no further twists. There are no reversals of fortune, where the Doctor and company are suddenly farther away from their goal than they thought. There are no complications. These are crucial to the construction of plot, and things RTD does all the time.

5) Raising emotional stakes.

The threat here is purely mechanical, and largely undramatized. It doesn't affect the Doctor or Jack personally; for most of it there's no immediate sense of danger either on the life-or-death level or the emotional level. There are a couple of lines giving lip service to what could happen, but no sign of anything freaky actually happening.

As an aside, it takes a certain amount of perversely determined unimaginativeness to tell a Prisoner story with no mind-games, no psychological betrayals, no threats to the main character's sense of self, no air of disorienting madness... hell, you even managed to make Rover into an ordinary sort of Doctor Who monster, rather than something inexplicable, Cthuloid, and fundamentally insane.

6) Expressing a theme.

You haven't got one.

You could, of course, quite easily; there's a hint in the early line about how the Doctor is always running. A Village-type environment would be great for exploring what it's like for the Doctor to be stuck in a situation which he can't run away from; what's he like after his first thousand escape attempts are all foiled? What if he has to see the consequences on those around him? (Of course, I would say this, since that was the jumping-off point for part of "Seeing I".) Russell routinely finds something which his stories are about; you haven't gone there.

7) Loads of clever dialogue.

Look at the "Smith And Jones" script on the BBC webpage; try to find a page of dialogue with the Doctor in it in which he doesn't say something in a clever or inventive way. Now look at your Doctor/Jack scenes in the Town Hall. The lines are purely functional -- they're just stating what the situation is, at some length. The closest you get to any kind of grace note is the Doctor saying "So much for multi-tasking." They're just stating exactly what they're thinking and feeling, showing none of the more complex ways in which people interact. This is not the most interesting way in which a hyperactive genius Time Lord and the biggest flirt in the galaxy could be talking.

8) Varying tone.

An RTD script generally includes major shifts of mood; there are some exceptions, but more often than not a story which features highly upbeat bits will also feature another bit that's much deeper or darker; whether following the funny bits, like the journey home at the end of "The End of the World" or the death of the Face of Boe, or in horrible contrast to them at the same time, like the disco apocalypse in "Sound of Drums". The emotional journeys these contrasts create are one of the reasons people love his work. That's a skill you haven't even tried to match.

Which seems particularly shortsighted in this story, because the Village is all about contrasts in tone: an idyllic holiday home which masks paranoia and torture. But you haven't really explored either of these extremes.

9) Write to length.

An average 45-minute TV script is about 12,000 words. What you wrote is just over 6,000. And this is despite you saying you wanted to use prose format to fill in more descriptive stuff. That's a pretty clear sign your story is too slight to fill an episode; there's just not a lot there. This isn't a matter of being a few minutes off one way or the other, even a "Voyage of the Damned"-size fudge factor -- it's half the length.


Oh, and one more point, on a non-RTD-specific level:

Attention to detail.

You have two different characters identified as Number Twelve: the woman in the opening village scene, and the man in the control room. The Judoon have suddenly developed time travel capability, and lost their prohibition against seizing prisoners on Earth (they used the moon in "Smith And Jones" because it was neutral territory). The all-seeing all-powerful Village authorities, used to dealing with trained secret agents, don't even seem to suspect that Jack's wristband could possibly conceal all sorts of spy gadgets. These aren't story-killers, but they're signs of not thinking through the details.

I've set this aside from the main list to forestall the "Ah, but RTD drops stitches too!" excuse for ignoring this. These details are pointed out as advice for you, not a reflection on what anyone else has done. Though RTD at least has avoided giving two characters the exact same name!



Now... you can dwell on this being a drubbing, or you can turn all ten of the things I've pointed out into a list of things you can do to make your own writing sharper. Find a new idea; work on bringing your characters across in concise, striking strokes; reveal new facets of the characters you're borrowing; make the action reveal their character; create a situation which changes dramatically; make the action reflect and heighten the stakes, both physical and emotional; make the action explore a theme; look for richer ways of saying things; play with mood and tone; work out how much story you need for a given length. All these things are within your power to try to improve on, if you want to. A lot of them are the sorts of things I'm still working at myself -- if I can get one character across as concisely as Russell does the cast of "Midnight", or learn how to pack that much story into a precise length, I'll be a happy man. These are all things you can work at. Give it enough time and effort, you possibly could get up to RTD's level as a writer.

But based on this, you really can't claim that you're anywhere near already there!

(There's only one other profession where people with no qualifications, experience, or credentials claim they can do as well as or better than the pros: abstract painting, which people claim their children could do.)
This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
No Subject Icon Selected
More info about formatting

Profile

dreamer_easy: (Default)
dreamer_easy

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11 121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 21st, 2025 10:38 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios