Friday, February 08, 2008

Mark Catley interview

On the BBC Writersroom website, Mark Catley talks about being the lead writer on Casualty and his experience on the BBC Writers' Acadmey programme.
...the greatest thing was learning structure. All of a sudden I was given tools, whereas before you were just trying to work off instinct and, you know, some wankerish writer knowledge or whatever that you think that you're born with. I don't know. But then to actually sit down and learn it in a very mathematical way - which is how John [Yorke] teaches it - looking at archetypes, looking at story structure, character change, and how it's reflected throughout storytelling throughout history.

And then because I'd managed to develop an original voice it was really easy to put my original voice on that structure. And then every show that I've worked on they've really liked the way I've approached their characters. But all I see that I'm doing is making them my characters from the theatre place that I was writing from, sort of trying to melt the two things together.

1 comment:

  1. If this is what appointing a showrunner can do to an old warhorse like Casualty then every long running series should have one. The flashback episode looked like a show that writers might actually want to write for.

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