In the past few months I’ve been working as a ‘journalist’ for the prestigious news website The Leaky Wiki.
I’ve had four articles published so far.
As I’ve said before, I will start writing an introductory blog post to each article I write at The Leaky Wiki, complete with any backstory the reader may need to understand the sloppy, badly written jokes I’m trying to make.
The line written in bold will be the link to The Leaky Wiki.
Plans for 2012
It seems I’ve let things slip a bit on the blogging. I started off relatively well, but fell away after a few weeks – before this post I’d not written since December 9th.
I’ve not just been sitting on my backside staring out the window though – at least not all the time – I’ve been looking into writing for a few different sites.
Spoiler Alert
The following contains spoilers for The Walking Dead up until episode 2.07.
The Walking Dead has just reached it’s mid-season finale here in the UK. Like many people who want to enjoy the visceral thrills of seeing a man beat another man to a pulp while remaining in denial about the serial killer within, I’m a fan.
The adverts in the week leading up have shown bits from the upcoming episode. Where The Walking Dead is different from many other programmes, is that rather than showing action shots from a variety of scenes, that look exciting but are difficult to gain any meaning from, The Walking Dead adverts on the FX channel have been an extended scene, taken, I think, from the preview at the end of the previous episode.
‘Journalism’ on the LeakyWiki.
I’ve recently branched out my writing, and have started to do a little bit of journalism, on the up and coming American news website The Leaky Wiki.
Already I’ve covered the scandalous emails showing that the Qatar World Cup was not chosen as the result of corruption, and sat down with a leading member of the American Tea Party.
Hopefully there’ll be more to come in the coming weeks, I’ll do my best to keep up the habit of regularly updating my blog and twitter accounts when a new edition goes up.
There are two editions a week at present, Monday and Thursday, if anyone reading wants to bookmark the site and check back regularly. The site has just started up over the past few months, and is becoming a very good site, which already has a lot of entertaining articles.
Review: The Cafe, episodes 1 & 2
Sky One’s new sitcom The Cafe comes from the pens of Ralf Little and Michelle Terry – the former made his name playing dopy younger brother Antony on The Royle Family, and starring in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps; the latter experienced mainly in stage work, including spells with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The pair are mentored by Craig Cash, best known for playing Caroline Aherne’s boyfriend Dave on The Royle Family – which I hadn’t realised he also co-wrote with Aherne – and Early Doors, which he co-wrote and appeared in.
The Royle Family and Early Doors share a downbeat, realist tone. There’s a sense that runs through both shows of understated realism, that everything that’s seen really could happen.
Along with The Office and Smoking Room, these are probably the best Brit sitcoms of that type in the last decade. (Possibly including Peep Show as well, the doubt being about style rather than quality.)
So, in short, the creators should know what they’re doing with this style of comedy – the phrase ‘from the makers of’ is often used to promote a new programme or film, given that The Cafe aims for the same style as it’s predecessors, here it’s pretty much as accurate as it can be.
My use of NaNoWriMo
Like many across the world who want to be writers but keep putting it off, I’ve been taking part in NaNoWriMo.
But rather than using the month, as intended, to get an entire novel written, I’ve used the thing for two different purposes – to get a short story written, and to get started with writing a blog.
The blog so far has been a partial success I’d say – got a fair few things down there, starting to get into a rhythm.
The short story, a science fiction story set on a space ship in the distant future (I never said it was anything profound) is something I’ve went back to on and off for a few years.
I’ve had greater problems with this. Mainly around self-consciousness – I tend to feel, when I’m writing, ‘did I do this right? Does this work?’
So I’ll obsess over whether jokes are funny, action sequences are exciting enough, and so on.
Review: Life’s Too Short episodes 1 & 2
A note – as the show features a lot of actors playing a fictionalised version of themselves, I’ve referred to the characters in inverted commas. So, the actor Warwick Davis plays the character ‘Warwick Davis’, Ricky Gervais plays ‘Ricky Gervais’, Liam Neeson plays ‘Liam Neeson’, and so on.
A bit of background – in the weeks leading up to the show’s beginning, Ricky Gervais has gotten himself involved in a stupid bit of controversy. He’s returned to Twitter, and gotten involved in an incredibly annoying argument over the word ‘mong’. He’s been arguing that the word has lost it’s social stigma (an insulting word for a retarded person), and that it’s now only a word for idiot. He’s been refusing to back down or accept that, with language being an elastic concept that develops and changes over time, it could have a meaning for some people beyond what he understands it to have.
It’s been a very stupid argument that I’ve deliberately avoided hearing too much about. The two options are that Gervais is extremely overconfident of his opinion, or that he’s been deliberately causing a controversy to promote his new show. Pulling a Trump, in other words.
Also, the concept (Warwick Davis plays ‘Warwick Davis’ in a mockumentary about life as a dwarf actor) sounds a little like a spoof to me, closer to the show-within-a-show When the Whistle Blows in Extras. So, I wasn’t optimistic going in.
Episode Analysis: Friends – The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break/The One The Morning After 3.15/3.16
The aim of this blog is to analyse, take apart, look at technical elements of stories – TV episodes, films, and so on, to look at the story, characters, jokes, look at what, in my opinion, works and doesn’t, and why.
I’m going to begin not by looking at any particular story element, but looking at one episode in particular, from whatever angles I can see.
Self Doubt & My Writer’s Contract
I started writing a blog with the intent of getting myself writing regularly. The idea was that if I blog regularly, take a look at different stories from an analytical point of view, as well as finally completing a version of a story I’ve referred back to a few times over the past couple of years, giving me the momentum to keep myself writing regularly.
I’ve been looking at an old TV programme, an old sitcom episode, analysing and applying the various bits of story structure I’ve picked up over the years.
I’ve more or less written notes out, but I feel like I’ve got nothing new or interesting to say, and take a long time saying it.
So yeah, my habitual, ingrained self-doubt is still there, nagging away at me.
About the Name
You may recognise that my blog name is a paraphrasing of a Samuel Johnson quote – ‘No man but a blockhead ever wrote, but for money.’
I first came across this quote, probably when I was a teenager, in a ‘Thought for the Day’ section in a local paper. I accepted this as being correct, despite how easily it falls apart under scrutiny.
I’m not completely sure what connotations the word ‘blockhead’ will have held in the 18th century, but I think it’s fairly safe to assume it means foolish, stupid, and so on.
SciFiFootball 