Secret Life Of Authors – Confessions of a Hat Wearer

I have a number of hats. I have a brown Batersby ‘Weekender’. I have a straw Panama that rolls nicely. I have a Greek fisherman’s hat that used to belong to Emile Dulcas.

I am particularly fond of my black wide-brimmed fedora as this is called ‘The Author’. I wear it when I’m being an author. It is great for being an author of fantasy novels in particular – with some detective and comedy elements thrown in.

I am not here to write about that hat though, as much as I like it. I am not actually here to talk about my passion for hats either or the great hats that I have had and worn. Although I would like to mention, in passing, the green felt Trilby I wore as a teenager and the flat cap that got blown into a river near Biaritz.

I am here though to write about another hat I wear. That hat says ‘writer’.

Hang on, I hear you saying, there’s a difference?

Oh yes. This is a very different hat. Not everybody appreciates just how different it is. With this other hat on I write scripts (mostly) for film, television, Internet, stage, radio and – basically – whatever I get hired to do.

And thereby hangs the main difference. My ‘writers’ hat is a shared hat. It is a collaborative hat, because this sort of writing is very much a collaborative activity.

Which is fine with me.

This hat means that you get to work on all sorts of interesting projects with all sorts of interesting people. Recently this hat has allowed me to work on a Greek history TV drama series, science fiction based mathematics teaching videos, a war musical, and a feature film based on a Czech award-winning novel.

Oh, and an hour of comedy. It was the comedy hat that I first put on when the science hat, along with my electron microscope, were left in the laboratory. The comedy hat is a fun hat and it intrigues a lot of people when I wear it. They want to know where I got it and if it’s a good fit.

Well, I first got my comedy hat from the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC used to have a writers’ ‘open door policy’ for a couple of ridiculously popular topical comedy radio shows. For those of you not in the UK, radio here – being national – can still pick up audiences in the many millions of listeners.

The open-door policy meant you could, twice a week, visit the venerable BBC Broadcasting House, pass under the words etched into stone: ‘Nation shall Speak unto Nation’ and be briefed by a radio producer. They would give you a list of current news stories, not being covered by commissioned writers, and you would go away and write. As simple as that, or not. There was a lot of competition of course and you needed to learn the show style, but you might eventually get the occasional line on and actually earn some cash.

Being funny for money! Wow!

And if you worked at it you might – as I did one day – get a tap on the shoulder from the script editor to be told that the producer wanted to see you. Probably, like me, you will be wondering what you have done wrong. Topical comedy being very close to slander sometimes.

There in the actual office of an actual radio producer you might be told to bring your material directly to them next week. You’ll nod and say thank you and leave the room slightly unsure what just happened, only to be told by the script editor that you have just got your first commission.

Huzzah!

That means you get to go to a different meeting now with the other commissioned writers and the gates to the Kingdom of Comedy Writing Success have been opened to you. You’ll get paid whatever!

However, you now learn that this sort of writing is actually a collaborative process. There is a show to put out and you’ve got two days to do it!

Seriously – you do only have two days to write a 30 minute show and it needs to be funny! Egos have to be put aside for the good of the show. You’ll be commissioned to write a specified number of minutes of material but some weeks you might write more and some weeks less. Best week ever for me 9 minutes – worse week 0 minutes! 

So it goes. The point is that you will get a good grounding, not just in being a good writer, but also in the whole concept of collaborative writing. That can then become your day job – if you’re lucky. You might never get to see your exact vision on the big screen, because film writing is very collaborative and as you will find out there are people better than you at visualising what exactly the audience wants and needs to see. You might not get to hear the singer belt out your lyrics in a musical exactly as you imagined them, because there will probably be somebody better than you present to nail the hook on that melody. The animation might be a different style than you had in mind, but heck, it’s better! That’s the great thing about collaborative writing, as part of a team, you work with good people.

And of course, when you ‘go home’ and you put on your author hat, probably the wide-brimmed black fedora, you can write exactly what you want to! That’s the joy of authorship after all.      

This ‘collaborative hat’ though, you’re probably wondering what that one looks like. To be honest, it’s what looks most likely to get me the job. I’ll wear what fits. After all, I’ve got a lot of hats. 

Terry Newman is the author of the #1 Kindle Epic Fantasy Bestseller ‘Detective Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf’, described as a mixture of Terry Pratchett and Raymond Chandler. He is also an award-winning comedy and drama scriptwriter for film, television, radio, stage and the Internet.

In another life he was once a medical research scientist working on heart and lung function. And doesn’t that seem a long time ago?

The new Detective Strongoak adventure ‘The King of Elfland’s Little Sister is out now published by ‘Monkey Business’, an imprint of ‘Grey House in the Woods’. http://www.greyhouseinthewoods.org/mb-kels14.htm

You can find out more about Nicely Strongoak (and the writer) at www.nicelystrongoak.com and explore the full of Terry’s activities at www.drtel.co.uk