A new home: our first session in The Society Club, which was both exciting and rewarding. We have a new cosy, private room in a lovely, independent bookshop. If that doesn't tempt you along, I'll have to start offering bribes as well.
Attendees (all-stars): FB, AS, AP, SC, JW, SN
Read: Mischief (SN first page for TV); One Trick (FB short story); Sugar (Opening pages of SN TV pilot)
We opened with a little bit of Mischief, Sandy's story of a mother coming to terms with her daughter leaving for university. The pair are best of friends, we are to believe, and the pilot opens with Aminah in full dream. Dream sequence leads to train station, leads to the title's mischief as she toys with the other passengers' perception of her. The concept behind the series is an interesting one: a straight-laced character deciding, on losing her closest friend, to entertain herself with out-and-out bad behaviour and satisfaction at the cost of others. As per Fas standard, we picked apart how much we understood this central character from the first two pages of her existence, as well as how easily one might move from dream-like state to action, and how much an audience would buy into the misbehaviour. There was the characteristic Nicholson streak of refusing to comply with expectation.
Inaugural session at the Club so I felt I could not come empty-handed and offered up my story One Trick, a tale of Nick, an alcohol and sometime poet, trying to get back with his woman Annie. It's interesting for me that I saw this story as very London based, but Nick's voice, all short on his participle endings, Ts and Ds, comes across more often than not as American, and particular down-and-out impoverished American. I'm not sure if that actually damages the story, but if there's confusion, and it's unintentional, then perhaps more needs to be done to sharpen up the piece. Then again, it felt as though his tone is consistent enough, and Fas understood that he was a jerk trying to be less of a jerk, and that meant the story did its job. If you want to read a copy, drop me a line.
Finally, the sweetly-titled Sugar, the opening to another television idea of Mr Nicholson. It began so beautifully: a playful, dancing reading from Adam and Sarah, and some excellent domestic dialogue between the two opening characters to this piece. Would it lead to a tiff? Or them falling under the covers of their new house? Well, neither, as some very monstrous, very scary things happened very quickly, enough that Adam was kind of shaking and the violence was graphic, terrifying, and very well written. I'm desperately trying to avoid spoilers, and we're hoping to do a reading in a future session of the entire episode, but suffice to say there is lots to talk about with this one, and the interplay between bright domesticity and horror leaves lots to be considered. Watch this space.
Next theme: scams. If you're really short on something to write, please compose a scam email with which to lure me to send you all my bank details. Prose or verse, of course, or even a little scene of scammee confronting scammer.
No comments:
Post a Comment