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Boundaries Are Your Friends! - Interview with Chris Dows
45 Plays1 year ago
Thanks for making us a part of your audio worlds!
In this episode we are joined by Chris Dows, author of Star Trek, Warhammer 40K, Jackie Chan Adventures & much, much more. Chris shares with us his methodology for working on creative writing projects, insight into multi-sensory world building & his unpopular opinions of William Shatner!
As always, ArtsPod is an @thelincolncompany production.
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Transcript
Can Creativity Be Taught?
00:00:00
Speaker
Because there's another argument, which you may be aware of, which is you can't teach creative writing. Well, no, that's not true. You can't teach people to be creative.
Introduction to Chris Dows
00:00:55
Speaker
Hello and welcome to TLC ArtsPod. I'm joined today by Chris Dows or Christopher Dows. How do you like to trade?
00:01:07
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining us today, Chris.
Career Beginnings and First Professional Experience
00:01:10
Speaker
For those of you familiar with Chris's works, you'll instantly be thinking about things like Star Trek and Warhammer 40,000. But those who aren't, welcome. We're going to hear more from our guests today and find out more about Chris's practice. But Chris, could we start by just sort of hearing an overview of your career? I hope you don't mind. I've dabbled in your LinkedIn profile.
00:01:29
Speaker
You finish school, you have an experience at Nottingham Trent University doing your bachelor's there and then how do you get here? Well, I came back from Nottingham in a brief working career in Newcastle and a friend of mine, good friend of mine, he asked me if I'd be interested in writing comic books and I went, yeah, go on then.
00:01:56
Speaker
because I was like, you know, if you want. And previous to that, in fact, another friend of mine who was a professional actor at the time, he asked me if I wanted to get involved with a Channel Four film rewrite of a script, which was another case of, yeah, let's let's let's give that a go. And that was for a film called Paper Marriage, which was a kind of a Channel Four ripoff of Green Card, if anybody remembers that, but we don't talk about Jared Depp at the moment. So
00:02:25
Speaker
I did, that was my first professional job, although I had to wait a while to get paid for various reasons.
Writing Star Trek Comics
00:02:33
Speaker
But yeah, that was the first professional writing job. But shortly after that, or overlapping that, it's nearly 30 years ago now, Colin Clayton, who's my comic book writing partner, he said, do you want to get involved? So we started off with an independent comic book company called Calibre Comics, which is still actually going in the States.
00:02:55
Speaker
We got the first working with them and then within a couple of weeks, because this was just before emailing and so on and so forth, it was still faxing and sending letters, we got a letter back from Paramount Studios saying we understand that you'd like to try out for the Star Trek Deep Space Nine comic book.
00:03:16
Speaker
which was with Company Called Malibu Studios, which was an offshoot of Marvel Comics. They'd had a massive fallout. This was just before Marvel went bankrupt, which not a lot of people can remember these days, but they did. And a lot of their talent created their own Company Called Malibu, which was hugely, hugely popular. So much so that when Marvel finally got back on its feet, the first thing it did was buy out Malibu and shut it down because it was its major competitor where it'd been keeping everybody warm.
00:03:45
Speaker
So within that first year in, I think, 1994, 1993, 1994, Colin and I got published in Caliber Comics with our first unique story. And then we started working on Star Trek license.
Transition to Teaching
00:03:58
Speaker
And it was an interesting situation because Colin absolutely hated Star Trek. And I wasn't that big a comic book fan. But we kind of traded on each other's weaknesses and strengths. And I was writing comic books professionally for about 16, 17 years.
00:04:16
Speaker
and right at the same time within weeks of getting first published I started teaching and so that's nearly 30 years ago and that was at the Grimsby Institute and I started off on A level film and then went to H&Ds and then went to writing and teaching degrees and that was up until 2014, 15 when I sparked my dummy out with them because they were shutting all the HE courses down
00:04:45
Speaker
I know my own HE consultancy, which you probably picked up on LinkedIn, which I really enjoyed. But for various reasons, I left my consultancy down and that's when I started with LinkedIn in 2017.
Exploring Writing Forms and Academic Bias
00:05:01
Speaker
But in the meantime, I've kind of begun to change from comic book writing to prose.
00:05:10
Speaker
And it was about 2016, 15, 16, I started getting involved with Warhammer and going on to writing pro short stories. Most comic book writers sooner or later go on to writing prose. I'm not going to compare myself to the same breath to people like Neil Gaiman, but that's the kind of thing everybody ends up doing that. I've also had a quite interesting run with nonfiction and even technical writing. At one point I had a business with somebody and we were writing
00:05:37
Speaker
training manuals for x-ray machines in airports. That was quite interesting. But this whole idea of being able to do different things, I've traded off over the years with my teaching because the one thing that I found immediately, like I made no distinction whatsoever between being a professional writer and being a professional educator. And I started off teaching all sorts of things, multimedia amongst other things. And that was when you like CD-ROM software, that kind of thing. It's great.
00:06:06
Speaker
first very, very early 3D software from Apple. But primarily I was interested in teaching writing because, like I said, I was doing it professionally and I didn't see any reason why I couldn't share my experiences and techniques and approach and so on with students. Obviously with me favouring franchises like Star Trek and
00:06:37
Speaker
Warhammer I've kind of become the genre guy for science fiction and fantasy which bothers me not a jot but it's an interesting kind of situation when you are not only a writer which puts you at the lower end of anyone's respect as a creative person but if you're also a writer of genre and particularly a writer of science fiction there's only really children's writing which I've specialised in as well which puts you right at the bottom of the pile.
00:07:04
Speaker
But to some extent, that's from an academia perspective as well. Oh, you write genre. Well, that's nice. But I don't care because I know how popular it is and I know how much the students love it. And I'm in an interesting position by which the good majority of students who I, for instance, talk to on open days, they probably, if they don't know me, they know the genres that I write because a lot of students want to come here and practice their own
00:07:31
Speaker
science fiction, fantasy, YA is a big thing as well at the moment. Not everybody, obviously. There are other forms of writing. But I've covered graphic novel scripts, audio drama scripts, film scripts, short story prose, novels in prose, non-fiction. I've pretty much done everything over the 30 years and I've always been writing and I'm happy to
00:07:59
Speaker
to boast that I've had an unbroken run with Star Trek for 29 years. I've always had something published with Star Trek. In fact, last year, it's probably what been one of the most successful years as outputs have gone for the last 20 years.
History and Perception of Comics
00:08:13
Speaker
So it's been really interesting and varied. But as my academic career developed, I did the PhD. My PhD was on comic books. I did it as a process and practice thing.
00:08:28
Speaker
I also investigated negative bias against comic books in the United Kingdom. All sorts of things come out of that. All the way back to the Bayou Tabestry and Archbishop Odo commissioning it as a piece of propaganda and this whole idea of the Reformation and the break with the Catholic Church and the idea of idolatry and image-based and triptych storytelling and all being literally wiped out by Henry VIII.
00:08:58
Speaker
And that also explains why comic books are viewed so differently on mainland Europe, because there was the backlash after the Reformation. And the whole idea was if you couldn't read, the only way you could see a story was in a church, because it had images. And that is such one fascinating thing that I came across. The whole issue with comic books basically being for children in this country from the turn of the century, 1900s into 1920s, 1930s, in A Roop at the Bear,
00:09:28
Speaker
that kind of historical perspective. Second World War, GIs coming over to the UK, giving comic books away, comic books being used as ballasts in troop ships because they were at the value. Then you've got the whole post McCarthy, Frederick Wortham attack on comic books in the 1950s, the whole idea of horror comics because
00:09:50
Speaker
comics were to blame for juvenile delinquency, just like radio was, just like videos were, just like film was, just like games are.
Aligning Research with Passion
00:10:01
Speaker
So it was really, really interesting area of research for me, not an awful lot being done. So I really enjoyed doing the PhD and I was very happy to find a couple of excellent supervisors up at Lancaster University who dug that kind of thing. So I've always tried to kind of
00:10:20
Speaker
keep things roughly aligned to my own interests, because I don't see the point in writing research on the concept of doing something when you can actually do it and publish it. It's a philosophy that Rachel Bainton recognises in a previous episode here. If you want to do the thing, just do it. And if it's in your ballpark, even better.
00:10:46
Speaker
And so the event does come the slight issue of it being recognized as valuable, but that's a whole academia discussion, which I probably won't get into that. Let's just talk about that instead.
00:10:59
Speaker
So let's pick apart some of these milestones then in your writing career thus far. Let's start with that big one then, that prolific writing relationship you have with Star Trek and the Star Trek series. Independently of writing, what has your relationship been to that franchise, to that universe, if you will? I always, always loved Star Trek.
00:11:23
Speaker
I've always had issues with it, which I think is quite healthy when you're not being 100% fan, but I've got to be a fan person, shall I say, 99.9%. Never, never, ever liked Kirk as a character, just like everybody else. In fact, I thought Chris Pine was a much better Kirk, much more agreeable Kirk to my palette than Shanna, but there would be Star Trek fans all over, horrifyingly saying that. That's just my opinion.
00:11:50
Speaker
What's the phrase? Opinions expressed are those of the blah blah blah and not of hotspot ink.
Star Trek Writing Journey
00:11:58
Speaker
But I always loved Star Trek and when Colin and I got involved with the comic books scene, Next Generation had come and gone. I've just been tailing off because Deep Space Nine started just as Next Generation finished.
00:12:14
Speaker
we had an interesting situation by which we had no idea other than a few bits of publicity information what this new iteration of Star Trek was going to be. So we kept getting these very exciting packages from the States and I even remember I'm going to go to Currys and buy an NTSC capable video player so we could watch rushes of the first few episodes that were just being broadcast. So that was really quite exciting and we had a run on
00:12:44
Speaker
Star Trek Deep Space Nine for about 18 months. And then it got shut down because Malibu basically went out of business when Marvel came roaring back and bought them all out. Most of the Malibu people went back to work for Marvel again. This was way before the films were massive. This was when it was still like primarily a publishing company. While we were developing the Star Trek stuff, Colin and I really did get to know a lot of the UK people. And that's when we started our relationship with
00:13:17
Speaker
newsstand publications who had licenses for Sony and Nickelodeon. So we did things like Rugrats, Comic Book, Action Man, Comic Book, the Jackie Chan Adventures, which was a bit later, because that was a huge series. And we had about a two year run on the Jackie Chan Comic Book. We did all sorts of stuff. That's where I learned how to tell a story in five panels, rather than five pages. That was really, really good.
00:13:45
Speaker
And that was all developing one really nicely, but we never quite got a feet under the table. Marvel UK we worked for, but we never really worked for Marvel US or DC. We had meetings with them because of the convention scene in the 90s was very, very strong in the UK. In fact, DC had its own offices for a few years in London, mostly on the back of Vertigo Comics, like the Tony O'Game and Sandman, all that kind of thing.
00:14:15
Speaker
coming out. Comic books for people who don't write comic books, they used to give the scrap line. And it was hugely successful. But I mean, I was teaching full time and I had a young family. It was a really, really busy time. So there's only so much you could do. But I did drop onto a publication called Star Trek, the Star Trek fact files. And that was supposed to be the definitive guide
00:14:45
Speaker
to Star Trek. I talked to the editor on that, an absolutely dreadful convention, one of the worst conventions I've ever been to in Manchester, dismal.
Writing for Star Trek Fact Files
00:14:57
Speaker
There's no business whatsoever, it was awful. But I got introduced to this editor, and she said, oh yeah, we've just started this magazine, I kind of knew it. And it was, right, it's a bit odd to call it non-fiction. But it was a non-fiction approach to a fictional universe, and I
00:15:15
Speaker
kind of tagged onto the mechanical stuff. And so I asked if I could try out on it. And so I did a 600-word article on a device that appeared for about 30 seconds in one episode in Space Nine. So that was a bit of a stretch. And then she gave me another article, a 1,000-word article, and it was on the Borg Queen Escape pod out of Star Trek First Contact. That lasted about a minute on screen and gets blown away.
00:15:45
Speaker
I thought, are you testing me here? Anyway, I did those two. And then after that, I wrote 604 articles for them. Wow. At an average of 800 words. So yeah, I did about half a million words for that magazine. And were you given creative license to populate the world around those artifacts? No, it was only strictly. I had to describe what the thing was, what it did, how it lived in the universe. It was totally non-creative. It was the fact files.
00:16:15
Speaker
articles on what x valve does on the warp drive, what y valve does on a runabout, all this kind of thing. So it was hugely intensive. I usually get batches of 20 or 30 articles to write a month and it was a massive amount of research. But yeah, it was a really, really good gig and on the top of that, when that finally finished, that's when I jumped onto the
00:16:42
Speaker
official Star Trek magazine. I did a similar thing for them talking about science and I've been doing that for 20 years. So it's been it's been really, really good. And what's really nice about the the technology articles that are right. I managed to jump on the back of that Pint of Science, which is this national science thing every year. I did Pint of Science last year with Lincoln and I had a full house, which was really nice. Just effectively talking about the
00:17:09
Speaker
the relationship of real science to Star Trek science, technology as it's called. And that was really, really nice. But I've survived five relaunches and six editors. And every time that I get picked back up, and this only happened this time last year, I said, well, are we going to continue with technology? Has everybody had enough of it? Oh, no, everybody loves it. No, no, no, no. That stays, that stays. So that's been good. But I have recently been writing
00:17:39
Speaker
Star Trek short story nonfiction, which I hadn't done before. And I've had three stories published so far. I've got another one commissioned for September this year. And that's been fun because going back to what you said earlier on, that allows me to have quite a bit of creative license. But when you're working for a licensed product, you have to stay within the continuity of when you're writing, which gives you some restrictions, but I enjoy it. So yeah.
00:18:05
Speaker
Sure, sure. And how has your relationship changed with that, with Star Trek going from being a fan or 99.99% of a fan to contributing to the law, the
00:18:22
Speaker
technology of that world, has that perpetuated your love of that franchise? Has it in some ways sort of revealed the nuts and bolts and the nitty gritty that's not so wonderful to see?
Critique of Newer Star Trek Series
00:18:36
Speaker
Has the nature of that relationship changed since you've been a content creator for that space? A content contributor? It's made me more critical, particularly of the new Star Trek. I tried and tried
00:18:49
Speaker
to enjoy Star Trek Discovery, and I simply can't. The first few episodes I thought, all right, okay then. And then they did this just extraordinary thing with the Klingons. And if you haven't seen it, you'll have to forgive me, but what on earth are you doing? I'm not on it, all right, what on Chrome are you doing? What are you doing? You can't understand the word the same. What's going on? So I persevered with that.
00:19:20
Speaker
I'm not a great fan of Lower Decks or it's okay, but I mean, I know quite a bit about Star Trek and even I don't get some of the jokes, it's like, right, I don't really know what this is for. Picard, I absolutely love, but that's probably more to do with the sort of misty eyed retrospective of seeing all of your favorite characters back again, but I absolutely think it's,
00:19:48
Speaker
It's really, really well written and I like what it's done. A lot of people don't. A lot of the new Star Trek fans don't like it. Strange New Worlds I like a lot. I thought it was a bit patchy, but Anderson Mount, who plays Christopher Pike, he's a fabulous actor and he does looks right. And he's got a good cast there. What we've done with Christine Chapel is really interesting in Spock. And I like it very, very much.
00:20:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's just, it's made me, it's made me more critical. And I mean, if I got a phone call or an email saying, would you like to write some fiction for any of them? Of course I would say yes, because I'm a professional writer. But I do favor Deep Space Nine Next Generation original series, because it can quite often be a generational part of the poem.
00:20:45
Speaker
as well because they were more of my time, although I was getting quite old when Next Generation came along than Deep Space Nine. I don't really talk about Star Trek Enterprise. This is funny, so I was going to mention it. Enterprise is really my generation and I quite like it. Yeah, it's good if that's what comes along. I mean, there were some good parts to Enterprise. The biggest issue by far was casting Scott McCullough because he was already
00:21:14
Speaker
associated with a major science fiction program. And I just never understood why they did that. Never understood it. Discovery, I love discovery. I thought it was, I thought it was tremendous. Some of the best, some of the strongest science fiction Star Trek writing since Next Generation, although Deep Space Nine, when Ronald Moore took over Deep Space Nine from about season three, season four, and it got very, very dark. But it was great. And then he,
00:21:42
Speaker
went on and did the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, which is just the best television ever made. It doesn't matter if it's fiction or fantasy or whatever. It's just fantastic television. So I did always like the darker places, which a lot of people criticize and say, oh, it's not Gene Rottenberry, blah, blah, blah. But everybody forgets that Gene Rottenberry had enormous support from other people. A lot of them
00:22:07
Speaker
told him that's not, you're not doing it right. You're not, you shouldn't be doing this. You shouldn't be doing that. And the curtain began to slip a little bit, the sort of Wizard of Oz analogy, when he was just like executive producer on The Next Generation.
Star Trek's Cultural Influence
00:22:22
Speaker
And then basically, it got, it kind of got taken off and went, not to be disrespectful, but I think it was for the better, for the franchise in particular. There's nothing wrong with being an optimist.
00:22:35
Speaker
But I think the best science fiction often comes with a healthy dose of authenticity and reality, shall we say, which is a really interesting thing when you get in the classroom, when you're talking to people about fantasy and science fiction, when you're talking about logical magic systems and you're talking about authenticity in writing and characters. Because it doesn't matter how many big robots and spaceships you've got, it's always about the characters in science fiction and that's what I try to focus on when I'm
00:23:05
Speaker
when I'm teaching football, when I'm discussing different aspects of world building, character design, character creation, all of the good bits in fantasy and science fiction. Because that's how we access these stories, is through recognisable journeys and emotions of characters and then throw them into worlds of new things. Well, that's it. And when the Star Trek The Emotionless picture was actually launched, the scrap line was
00:23:34
Speaker
the human adventure is just beginning. And it's always about, that was a very obvious and very good aspect from Gene Roddenberry and having a multi-generational, multi-ethnicity cast. Fantastic, unheard of, but fantastic. And that, particularly with gender and sexuality, Star Trek have really, really pushed the envelope on that. And it's been great to see. It's been a bit awkward at times, but clumsy at times,
00:24:03
Speaker
but science fiction is like one of the best genres to make your point sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly. I'll ask one more Star Trek question and I promise I'll move on so we're not filling this all with Trekkie content. Thoughts on the JJ Abrams trilogy? Love them.
00:24:25
Speaker
I absolutely love them. Any insider knowledge on the fourth that is rumoured and not rumoured? I keep asking my editor and they keep telling me they don't know and I keep thinking they're fibbing. But I hope it happens, is all I can say. As a pure fan, people had problems with the second film, with the portrayal of Khan. I didn't. People had problems with the third film.
00:24:53
Speaker
great, particularly dynamic between Zachary Quinto and Carl Urban. I thought it was fantastic. And I just want more. I just thought it's great. In fact, I remember when they were doing the teaser trailers for the rebound first film and they got this, the guy was a real welder doing this welding and he didn't really see it. It was unclosable and it zoomed out and it was pulling the enterprise together in dry dock. I just thought, this looks fantastic.
00:25:24
Speaker
And it was, and is, absolutely. In fact, I was in a charity shop the other day and I managed to get the third Star Trek JJ Abrams film on Blu-ray for £2.50. Fantastic. I've got the full set for under a tenner. Very, very happy. Nice, nice, nice.
Writing in the Warhammer 40,000 Universe
00:25:40
Speaker
OK, so we go from one science fiction universe to another. And I want to talk a bit about Warhammer 40,000.
00:25:49
Speaker
How do you go about writing for something that the nature of the relationship from the audience to the content is different? So in Star Trek, it started off as a TV series. We recognize it that way. With 40,000, it's a game first, or it's an adaptation on Warhammer, the base game. It is something that the audience has agency with in the beginning. How do you then start to think about writing stories in this universe when
00:26:16
Speaker
the people who are reading them are so used to playing the content? That is a fantastic question. That's really, really good. I'll start by saying that when you work for the Warhammer universe, even the mighty Dan Abner, you are effectively given a part of the universe because it's so ridiculously big that you just cannot hope to cover
00:26:45
Speaker
everything. So I quickly got funneled into, and I was perfectly happy about this, what's called boots on the ground, just basically not space Marines. So it was basically normal troops and I kind of
00:27:06
Speaker
got an affinity with Elysian drop troops, because a good friend of mine was an ex-paratrooper, and he used to begale me of stories of paratrooper. Wow, yeah. If I remember doing an interview with him for the three-part Elysian audio drama that I did, and I wanted to talk me through the mechanics of jumping out of an aeroplane with your kids on, because the logic was that if you do that as an Earth paratrooper,
00:27:35
Speaker
whether you've got a jet thrust to pack on your back or not in the year 40,000, it's going to feel the same if you're a human being. You've got to go through your feet and then go through the top of your head. You're going to spin, you're going to be in all sorts of bother. And he told me about a thing that they practiced, my friend Joe, like a mid-air rescue thing if someone shoot files. And I actually put that directly into one of my audio drama sequences, which I was really, really pleased with. It worked well. I originally started, I was
00:28:05
Speaker
I went for a beer with Nick Kine, who was an ex-student of mine when I was teaching at Grimsby Institute, also Grimsby Institute. And he went on to write for Warhammer and then he got a job for Black Library as their editor. He's like super top senior editor now. I went for Grimsby over 10 years ago now. We were in Wetherspoon and Grimsby who was like,
00:28:32
Speaker
Do you fancy having a crack at some short stories for 100? Yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. So I did. And that quite quickly progressed into audio dramas. And they, because I've been script based before, Nick kind of knew my way around the script. There's some surprising similarities between comic books scripts. I mean, Colin and I went for a beer a few weeks ago,
00:29:00
Speaker
And we were trying to work out how many comic books issues we'd had and it's at least 250. So we were quite prolific. And so we got used to writing scripts and the audio drama script format was very, very familiar to me because I've done written audio dramas before. And so I kind of got, I was focusing on these and so I did a three parter, which had never been done before.
Franchise Writing Challenges
00:29:29
Speaker
And then I did a few more things, a few more short stories. And then I did Titan's Bane, which was like probably my most famous piece of work, most certainly the best received. So I was setting real time in a tank. And then I did an Augur of Despair, it was called, which was a Black Fortress story because they were kind of relaunching the Black Fortress part of the universe. But that
00:29:59
Speaker
that they took quite a bit of time because there's quite a bit of tooling and throwing scripts and then they would go to the sound producer and then they'd have some input. So it was quite a long production process from concept to actual final production. Unfortunately, COVID came along and the studios shut down because they had their own sound studios
00:30:29
Speaker
Warhammer built at no small cost, it has to be added, and they've never reopened. And because I kind of got my niches as audio drama, that's kind of not really been picked up, which is a bit of a shame because I would like to adapt some of the unrecorded scripts, because I actually wrote a couple of extra scripts based around the Titansbane universe, but
00:30:58
Speaker
they're basically not been picked up. And to be fair, I've kind of diverted back to Star Trek over the last 18 months. So they've not really said anything and I haven't really said anything. So we'll just leave it at that. I've got a body of work with 40K, which I am really, really proud of and very, very much enjoyed doing. If, you know, I've got an email tomorrow saying, hey, do you want to drop onto this? I have loved to.
00:31:24
Speaker
for the moment I think I'm just concentrating back on the Star Trek universe again but working for the for the Warhammer franchise it was was very very very hard work all writing's hard work. A lot of it is to do with continuity you've got to be very very careful with continuity so that holds things up as well and continuity is checked but you do get materials to do the research and it's it
00:31:53
Speaker
You have to be respectful, and it doesn't matter whether it's Star Trek or whether it's Warhammer, you have to be respectful, not only the franchise, but you have to be respectful of the fans as well because you don't want to alienate them, you so as hell don't want to upset them. And I found, because for a couple of years I was quite active on the Games Workshop convention circuit, and I loved it, and then lovely, lovely people. And you get a lot of really useful feedback talking to people, and I always made a point after I did
00:32:23
Speaker
signings of if there's somebody recognised who I'd done a signing for I'd go and talk to them and see what they thought what they felt about the characters and about the approach that I'd taken and that's always reusable you don't always hear what you want to say but what you want to hear but it's good to know
00:32:40
Speaker
And I think it's really important. It's very good for deflating egos as well. So it's good for people to tell you, yeah, that was good. But I want to show about why you did that. Oh, I didn't think that was quite as successful. Oh, OK. Fair enough. You can walk off smiling thinking, well, I've got your money. But that's not really that's not really the way to look at it. If you want to have any kind of longevity as a any of the creative creative writing, you've got to be a little bit respectful of your
00:33:10
Speaker
of your audience, you've got to know what their expectations are.
Boundaries in Writing and Teaching
00:33:13
Speaker
You've got to know what it is they want. And when you work for a franchise, it's made very clear what I want. It still gives you a license to be creative there. It still gives you license to express, which a lot of people don't think it does. They somehow consider working for a franchise or for a license as somehow inferior or less creative. And I used to have this argument all the time when I went to the comic book conventions.
00:33:38
Speaker
Quite a few people I knew would be at the conventions every year clutching their scripts, eager to thrust them at would-be editors over the convention tables, which would then be put in the bin as they walked away because you just don't work like that. And they would say, oh, all you do is say to columnarize, oh, you just work for, you know, Rugrats Action, and Jackie Chappell, it's not creative. Yeah, we've got about sales of 30 to 40,000 a week. So we don't care. You know, it's creative work.
00:34:08
Speaker
someone somewhere is picking up one of our comic books and it's the first comic book they've ever read and that makes us happy. You can't be too precious and conceited and egotistical about your work. It's not hard. I don't write high ads. I write stuff that entertains people and that entertains myself.
00:34:31
Speaker
And do you find that actually with those expectations sets you some really nice boundaries to operate within? You know, you can't, you can't change the purpose of a thing, right? Yeah, I'm really glad you use the word boundary there, Danny, because I teach my creative writing. Boundaries are your friends. Having an outline, if you haven't got boundaries and
00:34:57
Speaker
This is, anyone who's listening is a student who will be mowling and rolling their eyes, but my argument goes to something like this. The worst thing that can possibly happen to you as a writer, somebody comes along and says, write me something. And you're like, well, what? What do you want me to write? And the second you decide on an audience, a format, a structure, a size, well, they're boundaries. They're a framework.
00:35:28
Speaker
So you can't write without boundaries. If you want to do this infinite stream of consciousness nonsense, then fine. Good luck on finding a publisher. So all writing is defined by boundaries, genre, word counts, whatever. It just so happens that licensed products give you some additional support if you like. Yes, it can be.
00:35:57
Speaker
a hindrance because you've got a character you particularly detest. You can't kill them off because they're an ongoing character. But you just have to be a little bit more arty with your storytelling. So by all means, you introduce a character at the beginning and then they leave at the end, but they don't become a member of the permanent crew or whatever so and so forth. And of course, if you're writing Warhammer, everybody dies. So it doesn't really matter. Planets, universes, people. So you've got that. It's
00:36:27
Speaker
If I'm keeping someone alive for a three-part story, it's quite a feat. I'm proud of that. So yeah, all this idea of boundaries, they have to be embraced. You have to have structure. I like the idea of seeing the shape of a story, seeing the shape of a narrative. I don't get the shape if I don't get where it is. And that's about balance, whether it's a three-part narrative, an ABC narrative, basic linear narrative, whatever.
00:36:57
Speaker
Because there's another argument, which you may be aware of, which is you can't teach creative writing. Well, no, that's not true. You can, you can't teach people to be creative. That's the distinction. So you can show them structures, you can show them approaches, you can show them methodologies, you can show them all sorts of things. You can obviously lift the curtain up and show them all the narrative theory that's working underneath it. You can show them
00:37:27
Speaker
audience theory, genre theory. Well you can't make people creative and I'm always upfront about that. I say that at interviews. There's two things I can't guarantee. There's two things I can't do.
Scriptwriting for Audio Dramas
00:37:39
Speaker
First of all is guarantee that you can be published and secondly make your creative person. That's down to you. And so boundaries are a part of the structure of teaching creative writing.
00:37:53
Speaker
And I suppose thinking about some of the things you've mentioned about the different forms as well, I want to ask about some of your audio works and certainly the process of developing audio work. We're thinking about another boundary that might exist in a practice. When you're making something that is intended to be distributed via audio means, do you work with a Foley director, an audio director, because
00:38:22
Speaker
some of the or do you write the audio descriptions in you know you're creating a world with your words and with the sounds around that and how does that relationship work is that you as well is that another person um yeah tell us about about sculpting the sound as well as the writing and that relationship this is where i found quite surprising similarities between being a comic book script writer and being an audio script writer in that when you're a comic book script writer there's a
00:38:48
Speaker
There's a misconception that all you do is write the dialogue in speech bubbles. Well, you don't. If you've ever seen an example Alan Moore script, you'll know that that's not the case. Everything is
Collaboration in Creative Projects
00:39:00
Speaker
described by the writer. The description, the panel descriptions can be quite extensive, depending on what it is that you describe it. Size of the panel, size of the pages and so on. So too, with audio dramas,
00:39:16
Speaker
never actually got into the studio and never worked with any of the sound guys, the director at all. It was entirely script-based. So audio directions, so you had background sound and then you had like foreground effects. So for instance, there was several scenes where an interrogation room in a desert, well on the corner of a desert compound and so there was
00:39:46
Speaker
the background sound throughout the whole scene was low moaning wind, occasional sound of sand being blasted against the windows. And then of course you had the foreground sounds, which would be the scrunchie of boots, anything banged on the table or screeching of a chair, so on and so forth. So you had two layers of sound there, which were really fun to play with. And then of course, on top of that, you had the dialogue.
00:40:14
Speaker
And the thing that I really enjoyed with the audio drama was writing, the challenge of writing visually for sound, and it might sound a little bit, that sounds ridiculous, but no, it doesn't because you quite often close your eyes and visualize it and then you haven't got the vision because all you've got is the words of the script. And there's quite a lot of direction
00:40:44
Speaker
in an audio script. Now the director can choose to follow it or they can choose to, they had a few changes, a few nips and tucks which just made it even better. And then of course you've got the voice actors who then might alter the structure of a sentence slightly or edit it a little bit to give it a little bit more impact. I never had a problem with that as long, and this goes back to comic book writing as well because as a comic book script writer only,
00:41:13
Speaker
you are at the mercy of up to three or four extra people after yourselves, pencil, ink, colourist, ledger, or it might be one person. And you kind of have to trust the artist team that you're working with and your editor as well, who will be the liaison. I mean, more often than that, Colin and I got to know our artists really, really well, and that had a dimension to it. Never got to know any of the creatives, sadly.
00:41:41
Speaker
at Warhammer with the audio dramas. But going back to the comic book writing, and even now when I teach comic book writing to students, you must give as much description as possible. Don't go mad, don't give pages and pages, but if you don't give any description, the artist will pretty much do what they want. So the best case scenario is you get something similar to what you've asked for. The worst case scenario is you get nothing like what you've asked for and it ends up not looking like your work.
00:42:12
Speaker
Colin and I had a couple of occasions where the finished product with the comic book wasn't what we'd anticipated. There was only actually once where we were disappointed with it. And that's not bad for 15 years, really. It's not bad at all. We worked with some fantastic artists. Lots of different media, gouache, all sorts of stuff, watercolor kind of effects, really, really high in graphic, lightning, particularly our friend
00:42:39
Speaker
Oris in Germany, who's a major comic book artist. He's a fantasy writer now. And so this idea of collaboration is really, really interesting. Mostly the collaboration happens with the editors, which is, again, is fine by me. But there was a lot of direction in the audio dramas. But also, I am given the opportunity to build layers of sound and tell story with not just the words, the spoken words,
00:43:09
Speaker
And then, of course, it's not just dialogue because you can have a narrator. So you've got up to four different levels of sound you can use. You can use narration, dialogue, foreground sound, background sound. And then there's music, which Warhammer, Black Library, audio dramas, I mean, they love their music, massive sweeping scores. So it's great. It's just like literally all singing or dancing. It's really, really good.
00:43:36
Speaker
the idea of writing in a multi-sensory way. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And comic book writing is kind of similar because you are, again, trying to describe the visualizations. They're on film, on film storyboards, really, if you think about it, comic books. But to be a writer artist would be just the greatest thing in the world, massively time intensive, of course. But I just had to be just a humble script writer, which suits me. I am more than happy.
00:44:06
Speaker
to trust the creative abilities of specialists who can do things that I can't do. And that can cause people sometimes problems with writing. This is interesting. This is my next question to you, actually, is given that you work in that capacity, how do you navigate the stuff you've worked on as being
00:44:29
Speaker
How do you hand it off knowing that someone else might tweak it, adapt it, change it? Are you quite protective over your work? Have you had to sort of develop your skillset to become less protective over your work or has that gone the other way?
Professionalism in Creative Careers
00:44:41
Speaker
Yeah, what's that like handing over? It's mostly a relief in that you've hit your deadline. You know, I've never ever really worried about what's going to happen to afterwards because I'm pretty much trust the people
00:45:00
Speaker
who are going to be taking it on. Rather, I've developed a thick skin. That's for sure, because sometimes I've heard things or I've read things or seen things and kind of often thought, that's not exactly what I was after. But that may be my fault that I haven't communicated it clearly enough. It might have been an editorial decision. The thing that you have to bear in mind is that it's a profession. It's a job.
00:45:28
Speaker
And that's not to say that you don't enjoy it. And that's not to say you should never realize how lucky you are to be able to do it. And this whole business approach to it is particularly a thing that Dan Pantano and I concentrate on in the MA creative writing. I mean, I'm utterly upfront with the undergrads as well about the realities of being a writer. It ain't easy at all. And you do have to
00:45:57
Speaker
understand that pretty much regardless of the old singing or dancing newfangled multimodal format that you might use pretty much you're going to have to be working with somebody there'll have to be some form of collaboration to expand your influence and possibly make some money and that might be all the way from working with a traditional publisher or an agent to
00:46:22
Speaker
voice actors for collaborating or just having somebody else in the studio if you're doing a blog or having a podcast or whatever. So you have to understand that you don't always work in isolation and you can't be precious once you have finished the work. Well, I say finished, no creative work is ever finished. It's as good as it can be at that point.
00:46:52
Speaker
You have to have this professional approach. And I don't ever remember not having that. It's been quite a while now. I don't ever remember feeling, oh, my poor baby's going off into the world. Sure, sure. Not really. OK, you've got it. I've paid. Next job. That does not mean I don't care about the artistry. I don't care about the craft.
00:47:20
Speaker
I don't care about the creativity, of course I do deeply, but not to sound like some old hack, which I am. I've just done so much stuff over the years that it's almost like, oh, well, that's that job done. When's the next job? And you never stop wanting another job. You always want another writing gig.
Notable Achievements and Humorous Writing
00:47:48
Speaker
Nice, nice. So it sounds like trusting the person who takes the baton from you next to do its service, it's just goes part and parcel with the portfolio career writing for different objectives.
00:48:03
Speaker
You know, you trust their artistry, you trust their creativity, you trust their professionalism, you trust their skill. You have to. Nice, nice. I have a couple of quickfire questions from students if you're willing to take them. So in your career thus far, could you identify one standout achievement in either your sort of writing portfolio or a particular
00:48:30
Speaker
Getting onto a thing or doing a thing and if you were to look back and say that was my my one favorite thing. What is that? First novel calm the red path I was hugely hugely proud of that. I'm really pleased with that Because I've always wanted to have a I mean, I've had other novels published but with small press and this was like a major novel Which was great really pleased with that
00:48:58
Speaker
Titans Bane, the audio drama, I think is probably the best thing I've ever written. And I was really happy to get the short stories, the Star Trek short stories last year, and I got pretty much three in a row with them, and I was happy with all three of those. But I'm actually quite happy with a lot of the stuff that I've done, a lot of the comic book stuff, because there's just so much of it.
00:49:27
Speaker
The early Deep Space Nine stuff I was really pleased with as well that Colin and I wrote. Yeah, I've been really lucky. I've worked with some lovely people and I think I've done some really, really good work over the years. It's not been the most high profile stuff in the world, but I'm really not bothered because I've been consistently published for 30 years. So that's fine by me.
00:49:51
Speaker
As a consumer of, again, showing my age, Jackie Chan comics, when they were coming out, I'm particularly a big fan of the Jackie Chan comics. So, you know, at least your work is, you know, your work is being, is important to people. And I suppose that's, that's what you're like. That's absolutely right. I mean, you know, if you can start writing for uncle and hack food and things like that, I mean, what's not to like? It's
Ideal Dinner Guests and Advice for Writers
00:50:16
Speaker
great. In fact, the hardest writing job I meant to bring this up earlier,
00:50:20
Speaker
The most difficult writing job Colin and I ever had on the comic books was the Rugrats comic because it was nine panels a page and every other panel either had to have a site gag or a dialogue gag and it was six pages. So it's 50 odd panels. That was hard work. Got to be funny to sustain that. Yeah, absolutely right. But I mean, writing for Phil and Lil, why would you not want to do that?
00:50:44
Speaker
Nice, nice. Okay, another one. If you can invite anyone, living or dead, not necessarily a writer to a dinner party, you have three invites. Who's at your table? Fictional or non-fictional is also allowed. Okay. Barack Obama, Chris Pine, because I think he's undervalued and he could deal with a good meal. Actually, probably Carl Ehrlich.
00:51:14
Speaker
If I now kick Chris Pine, Carl Ehren, because I love him, because he's absolutely brilliant on the boys. I absolutely love him. So you have another C. If Chris Pine's not on the C. Yeah. Try to think. He's not with us anymore, Michelle Nichols. OK. Yeah, that'd be fantastic.
00:51:35
Speaker
Mmm, what a party. Yeah, I think Chris Pine were looking from outside looking Yeah, I mean he's just he's just landed the Dungeons and Dragons movie. He'll be fine for a couple He's all right. He's all right. There's all the Chris's, you know, there's Chris Pine Chris Pratt there's Chris Evans, you know Chris Pine just seems to keep getting a bit overlooked and that's really unfair because I think he's really really good
00:52:04
Speaker
Like you say, what, your words, not mine, better than Shatner. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, last one from me, last one for today. What do you think is the most important piece of advice you could give to emerging writers in 2023? Read. Be aware. Everything? Yeah.
00:52:34
Speaker
read around your genre, your area, whatever it is you want, try and get an idea of who the audience are outside of your head. Because another thing that I say to students is, obviously if you're writing genre, you're part of that fan base, but you never write for yourself. Because if you write for yourself, you can turn into Mark Gatiss when he was writing some of the
00:53:05
Speaker
shark home scripts, some of which were just like, legendarily good, and some of which were appallingly self-indulgent. You don't write for yourself, you write for someone very, very similar to you, standing next to you, looking over your shoulder. And that would be my advice. Fantastic. Well, thank you very much, Chris, for your time today. You've been listening to ArtsPod, presented by the Lincoln's Company, and we'll catch you on the next episode. Bye for now.