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256 Martin Smith & Will Adams | Satirical Sci-fi Authors and former Douglas Adams Collaborators
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Satirical science fiction writers and former co-writers of Douglas Adams, Martin Smith and Will Adams are with us this week, chatting about their debut novel 'Consequences', stories of their time writing and performing with Douglas Adams and a candid chat about the publishing industry and the problems they ran into whilst publishing with Amazon.
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Transcript
The Gamble of Writing
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. love it. Because the writing is sort of everything, right? Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writer is there. So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
Meet Martin Smith & Will Adams
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. On today's episode, I have two guests who have co-authored a novel together. Many years ago, they were part of a university comedy group called Adams Smith Adams. One of those Adamses was the one and only hitchhiker Douglas Adams. But joining us today, we have Martin Smith and Will Adams. Hello. Hello. Good morning morning. Hello. Hello.
00:00:37
Speaker
um Thanks so much for coming on guys.
Creating 'Consequences': A Game of Writing
00:00:39
Speaker
Let's talk first off about the novel, Consequences. So which one of you has the better elevator pitch for the book? Well, it was it was initially your idea, Martin, I seem to recall. So...
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Some years ago. It was, yes, a while back we decided that having not written together for a while, we'd start again. And we decided a novel was the best way to do it, even though we'd only written scripts prior to that. And the as we live about, you know an hour and a half's drive away from each other, that was... meeting regularly was was a bit of a problem. So we decided to do it as a game of consequences.
00:01:22
Speaker
And as you know, with the game of consequences, you write something, you fold it over and pass it to the next person to see what they write. And that's precisely what we did, only only with a sort of bit of internet getting in the way. So basically, one of us wrote ah of the first chapter, we then passed it to the second person who went, Oh, my God, what do I do with this then? And then worked on it. and then passed it back. And that's how we wrote the book, basically, on the on the grounds that if we could continue to surprise each other and also make each other laugh, then probably a reader might also have that of that of that reaction.
Writing Without Constraints
00:02:00
Speaker
it was also it It was also very, very liberating because, you know, you were presented with a piece of text with sort of ah you know a cliffhanger or a springboard at the end of it, and you could take the story wherever you liked there were There were no constraints. You could introduce characters, get rid of characters, introduce plot points, you know because we had no plot and and until the sort of the very end.
00:02:26
Speaker
and so we we yeah sorry so just so so we we We had just the one meeting on it, which was about two-thirds of the way through. um we decided to get together and decide what the last chapter should be about.
00:02:39
Speaker
and And that's what we led to in the end. Yeah, so and and even then, ah it's it didn't really kind of gel together until the very end. We were still bit able to to riff on it a bit. But it was very liberating because anything went, you know, and yeah and and never did.
00:02:59
Speaker
martin say to me oh i don't think that's very good i don't think we want to go that way and neither and i never said to him oh no no i didn't see it going that way you know yeah we accepted where it was going and took it on you know but picked picked up the ball and ran with it so it was ah it was a very enjoyable experience i think i think I think the interesting thing about it is that you've got to bear in mind that we'd we'd we'd written together, we wrote together a hell of a lot a long time ago.
Solo vs Collaborative Writing
00:03:25
Speaker
and we wrote ah the way comedy is quite often written. You know, if you think about it' we're not alone doing it this way. You know, people like Gorton and Simpson, they tended to they all tend to write as as pairs.
00:03:38
Speaker
ah And you know not least because you can actually you can you can you can live off each other's humour and you can react to things quite quite well. Writing on your own is quite a lonely experience, as I'm sure most of the people listening to this will agree to. but writing together provides real opportunities for for for moving things on in rather
Brexit & Time Travel in 'Consequences'
00:04:00
Speaker
interesting ways. But I do think that if we had sat down together to write it,
00:04:04
Speaker
it wouldn't it would have been a much more difficult process yeah probably a good one yes and probably not as successful um and the the nice thing is that that people who've read the book who know us um can't really tell who wrote what which is nice because we we've um we obviously we've got got a got ah well we know we've got a similar sense of humor because that's what brought us together in the first place over 50 years ago ah Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, okay. That's great to know. So obviously that's where the name came from consequences. Yeah. um And it has a sort of a bearing on the, on the plot as well. it' Sure. you know Things that happen as a result of things, you know,
00:04:43
Speaker
you came together to sort of figure out how it all ties together at the end can can either of you you then tell me as someone who's like you know or anyone listening is like interested what's what is the book actually about what's the story well the prime the prime the prime thing is about is it about it's about brexit really i mean it's turned it turned into being about brexit because neither of us thought brexit was the best idea that a country's ever had you know actually and mean managing to damage itself
Satirical Exploration of Brexit
00:05:12
Speaker
quite badly. a country doing that is quite odd. and we And we kind of wrote about how maybe using time travel, you could avoid it
00:05:21
Speaker
okay but by by you know by going back changing the circumstances coming back to the the present and seeing whether changing the circumstances worked and if it didn't going back again and having another go i see says's a lot of back and forth and there's a lot of back and forth yeah so the the the main protagonists are are unwitting time travelers who didn't know they were until they met someone who who told them they were and the the whole development of how they become time travelers ah you know it's it's not it's not doctor who this you know it's ah it's much more grounded uh but uh once they knew they were time travelers um then they were sent on these assignments to just see if things could not have been worked better or avoided altogether
00:06:10
Speaker
yeah yeah okay okay and you said it wasn't sounds like it wasn't initially going to be about brexit was it were you always going to write satire or was that just kind of where you guys naturally found yourself i think it it was it was where it found itself going i think um uh you know it it gave a a point to the toing and froing in time as a means of um try experimenting with with changing circumstances to see whether whether that that ridiculous vote the old 4852 vote could have been changed a little bit more decisively and in favor of staying
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, and and but and the idea was, because we have a couple of unwitting time travellers who need to be trained in time travel, that's the other thing. I mean, they are they're having to learn about how to do it because they've they've never they never considered it before. So a lot of the first half of the book is about them learning the pitfalls and the opportunities and the you know the the dreadfulness occasionally of travelling back in time throughout their own lives.
00:07:20
Speaker
um and yeah and and you know they they they have all kinds of odd experiences not least when our main protagonist meets douglas adams in a pub in islington i don't know he got in but you know yeah i have no idea elbowed his way into the book you know he got he's got his own way of time traveling yes yes indeed well the whole thing really was ah conceived as a mean not only as an opportunity for us to write together but it's a little bit of a nod back to those days when the three of us were writing together and then you know douglas's subsequent career yes i mean speaking of douglas adam you guys have said that you very much shared ah the two of you share a sense of humor to the point where some people you know have read the book and they can't tell which one if you wrote which part is that a similar similar sentiment to like it's similar to the writings of hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and the stuff that you guys used to do
00:08:16
Speaker
i don't I don't really know.
Collaborating with Douglas Adams
00:08:18
Speaker
I think i think that the the interesting way we worked together as a threesome was very much Douglas working on his own. Then coming to our college, where we were both at but move but Cambridge, we we were at the same college, Douglas was at another one. He would write something, he'd bring it up and and and perform it to the two of us. And we'd say, well, that's a very good...
00:08:40
Speaker
paragraph um where does he go exactly and he said have no idea but it's very funny isn't it and we think we it is very funny but it doesn't seem to go anywhere no no no anyway were we'll leave it with you and we'd sort of move it into something like a sort of two or three minute sketch and then take it back to him uh only to discover that he'd already know change it from a paragraph to a sentence uh because he he was very good at as john lloyd once said of at unwriting I think basically he was trying to find the funniest single word ever. Right. He was a great ideas man and I think that's borne out by Hitchhiker and his sequels. But was Martin and I, I think, that put the structure onto his ideas and his thoughts.
00:09:31
Speaker
and and you know Because a sketch has got to have a beginning, a muddle and an end, you know. um and you know you can't just do a funny line and so it really was it was it it was ah it was a good partnership because it was you know we obviously we we had ideas as well but but we had this knack of actually writing a sketch rather than just a couple of funny sentences and We ended up, I mean, the three of us ended up in one, i think, i've seen one term. I think we wrote 70 sketches together. Wow.
Feedback from Comedy Legends
00:10:01
Speaker
and and And then delivered them to John Cleese, who marked them.
00:10:05
Speaker
he Actually, he gave us a supervision, a tutorial at his at his at his home, and marked all the all the lines that he liked ah with a blue marker and all the lines he didn't like with a red marker.
00:10:19
Speaker
And there was there was one bit in particular. He said, this is a particular sketch. It's an incredibly bad taste. And I do love that taste. I mean, that that all arose through, again, through Douglas' sort of great self-belief.
00:10:36
Speaker
I seem to remember the story was that he bounced up to John Cleese on Holland Park tube station and said, you know, that's right hello, John, i'm you know I'm Douglas Adams. I'm not famous yet, but you you know you you'll be hearing about me soon. And, you know, he had that kind of self-confidence and self-belief.
00:10:52
Speaker
which which got us into this quote tutorial. Please, you know, but we did do we we did have all the pythons come to to one sketch show that we did in London. So we it was that that was great i mean these are things that uh you'll carry with you forever you know um having met these people yeah there was one but one particular sketch that we wrote um about it it was just generally known as the paranoid society and and afterwards graham chapman came up to us in the pub and said
00:11:25
Speaker
Bloody hell, I wish I'd written that one. and that was That was the closest he ever came to a compliment, really. but that that That sketch went went on to have a long life, recorded by various people you on LPs and and such like. It was probably the best-known
Career Paths Post-College
00:11:45
Speaker
sketch we wrote. I mean, a lot of them.
00:11:47
Speaker
obviously obviously disappeared into obscurity following the uh the cambridge years yes okay yeah so obviously very collaborative the three of you back in the day yeah yeah and i think as but as performers as well we were all three very different uh which helped well you know when when we were actually performing this material other than being the bloody martin smith from croydon in the hitch state of the galaxy um so were you guys like did you kind of give feedback to to douglas and and things while he was writing it were you involved in its creation no yeah the interesting thing was though that when we i seem to recall it was the the our final
00:12:32
Speaker
um vacation before our final term sort of thing, just before we did the final Footlights review. We were there writing the review, writing sketches for the review, and Douglas had come back from a ah trip to Greece, and he'd used the Hitchhiker's Guide to Greece or whatever, and he thought,
00:12:51
Speaker
he he was talking about the idea of a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy wouldn't that be a great idea and i think the closest he got to collaboration i was saying to douglas look shut up we're trying to write these sketches for the review and then please concentrate uh and that was as close as we got if we'd known then what we know now you know but that's uh that's life isn't it you know yes and um i mean the other thing is that you know we did i don't know how many reviews it's three or four or five reviews all together i suppose and and there's virtually no photographic evidence of any of it um you know the number of photographs we've got of the three of us there's about half a dozen photographs yes you know and again if we'd known them what we know now we'd have taken loads and loads of photographs and made a fortune Yeah, nobody carried cameras with them all the like they do now.
Success in Publishing & Advertising
00:13:42
Speaker
no Yeah, that's true. Photography was expensive.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it all it all went unrecorded. Yes. I'd love to hear a bit more about what you guys did sort of after that, after the the the comedy and stuff that kind of led you to this point now. So, Will, am I right in thinking that you you have had a long career in publishing?
00:14:03
Speaker
Yes, yes, basically. I mean, it it all... It's a long sort of spine that starts the day that Martin and I met quite by chance at college, which was one of those great but nodal moments in life.
00:14:16
Speaker
um Anyway, we we we decided that we would become famous script writers, you know, Galton and Simpson or whatever. And we we moved to London. uh and we we we weren't making a fortune from our script writing in fact i think we're making virtually nothing uh we think it was four pounds a minute on weekend in radio four yes yes and we probably had a minute a minute so it's four pounds a week you know um But we we got jobs temporary as industrial attempts with manpower to supplement our income.
00:14:47
Speaker
and And I got a job with a ladies knitwear wholesaler in the West End and then a temporary job. And eventually the guy offered me a permanent job as as his assistant.
00:14:58
Speaker
So I started off in ladies knitwear, as it were. um in a in a firm that was that was quietly dying and i i was sitting there doing nothing i said you know i started doing the crossword in the paper then i started making up crosswords then i saw an advert for uh an editor for a puzzle magazine went for the job got it and and that was when i how i got into publishing through the back door via puzzle magazines and then ended up with the book publisher many years later and then and then when they sold themselves to the great Harper Collins conglomerate I decided to take the the redundancy option effectively to go freelance and I've worked for myself for the last 35 years as ah as as a freelance book editor and now book author but this is non-fiction not not novels
00:15:45
Speaker
Okay, right. So you were in editorial for most of that time in publishing? Yes, I was commissioning and and editing. Well, Transport Nostalgia, which is my thing, which always has been since I was a kid.
00:15:57
Speaker
Trains and trams and whatever. Oh, okay. And and um I'm now writing books. on that subject i don't do any more editor editorial work i'm so-called retired but of course when you're self-employed you never retire yes so i'm so i got with all the things i don't like and kept the things i do like which is basically writing i'm puzzle compiling i kept the I kept the puzzles going, so I still do crosswords for people and such like.
00:16:23
Speaker
Oh, so it says there it does a publish You're publishing non-fiction stuff as well? um' ah um' um I'm writing for a publisher of non-fiction Oh, right. Yes. Okay. Okay. That's cool. um So you have you have actually have quite a lot of knowledge and experience within this industry when it comes to... Yes. not The non-fiction side, which is very different from the fiction side. Very, very different.
00:16:45
Speaker
because um it's all about small but specialist publishers which are much easier to get on with than if you write if you write a novel and try and get into a random house or whatever then forget it okay yeah i mean it's it's a it's a it's a big it's almost impossible to get to get in unless you're richard osman or jk rowling you know Sure.
00:17:07
Speaker
it's It's the size of the fish and the size of the pond yeah or something or other. Absolutely. Yeah. um Okay, cool. And Martin, you, am I right in thinking that you worked in advertising?
00:17:21
Speaker
Yes, well, mean, unlike Douglas and Will, who did English at Cambridge, I was an economist. And and ah when I was suddenly finding myself looking for a job, I was thinking, well, you know, I've been writing comedy and I'm an economist. How does that work? um So I tried to find a job as a stand-up economist.
00:17:42
Speaker
ah And the closest I could get to it was working in advertising, really. So I started off as a copywriter, um writing ads, and then realised that there were sort of constraints like clients and creative briefs and things like that. I wasn't used to that when I was writing comedy. And so somebody sent in the lifeboat for me and moved me into the marketing side, and into the the management side. So um I basically worked at an agency called Ogilvy's and at Sarch's and at TBWA and then was one of the founders of an agency called Bartleby or Hegarty back in 1982. were kind of renowned for doing things like the Levi's campaign and the Audi campaign and they oh wow and the Boddington's campaign. and Boddington's was a favorite of mine at that point. And and basically, yeah i we I worked at that agency for...
00:18:36
Speaker
Longer than most people work at most companies, about 18 years, and then I became CEO of an a big American agency. So i I kept in the business for a long time um and then moved into sort of slightly odd areas of it as as technology took over.
00:18:53
Speaker
ah from classic advertising. And I started yeah tech company, marketing tech company in 2015, which basically stopped when COVID stopped because but COVID started because 90% of our business was in the States and we could no longer visit the States.
00:19:09
Speaker
So I decided that that was time when I could I could actually politely retire. And and so I sort of did. Having said that on the way, um i I, I, like Will, carried on writing and co-wrote play back in 2006, which was on at the the Actors Centre in Covent Garden.
00:19:31
Speaker
with a guy called Paul Twivey, who was also in advertising. And that was another one of those wonderful near successes insofar as it nearly became a radio series. At the last minute, the BBC lady decided that they were no longer doing satire, and it was sort of satirical. So that was the end of that. Yes. I mean, I've also, like Martin, continued to write comedy.
00:19:59
Speaker
you know i think you can you can take the the boy out of the footlights, but you can't take footlights out of the boy. I have an alternative, Martin, locally here, and he and I have written plays and pantos and what have you for the the the local local Amdram company for the last, um well, getting on for 30 years, actually.
00:20:21
Speaker
um And and so yeah, that that the the the joy of comedy performing is something that you you never lose. you know the the The joy of hearing people laugh at something that you've said or written is an incomparable experience, I think, and something that hope I'll never lose.
00:20:42
Speaker
No, exactly. Exactly. I mean, was that but in fact, I mean, I suppose the the biggest of those experiences we've had in the last sort of decade or so was ah the the celebration of Douglas's virtual 60th birthday at the Hammersmith Apollo, where a group of us got the Hammersmith Apollo.
Celebrating Douglas Adams
00:21:02
Speaker
She has ah an audience about 2,000, and it was packed one Sunday afternoon.
00:21:07
Speaker
with a whole bunch of us who'd worked with him over time, performing old scripts, all holding the scripts, because we didn't have time to rehearse anything. um And it was the most extraordinarily long show, but ah immensely immensely successful. i mean, an awful lot of people arriving in wearing dressing gowns and carrying towels. yeah sitting and sitting in the front row. But it it was it was an extraordinary experience. it it really was of course, the the Paranoid Society sketch was performed.
00:21:44
Speaker
Absolutely. Inevitably. With some of the original performers in it, Griffiths-Jones and cle Clive Anderson and people like it was ah i mean They were our contemporaries.
00:21:56
Speaker
uh back in the day so it was quite a sort of college or yeah uni reunion really it was indeed but it was but also included others like like you know um richard curtis and terry jones and people like that wow david gilmore yes well yes dave gilmore did uh in fact it was half a pink floyd and half a proko haram who came together uh to serenade us at the end That's another experience that we' you know' we'll take with us. you know yeah every which time Every time the the is it the event in Apollo or something, now it's called, every time it comes on the telly, like um live at the Apollo is filmed there, I always say, oh, yeah, I've i've appeared there. you know just so Just casually. Just casually, yeah. Oh, would oh really? to anyone To anyone who's not listening. Anyone who's not listening, anyone at all. There's people at bus stops, yes, anyone. you know
00:22:50
Speaker
Amazing. um we yeah That sounds like an incredible, incredible memory and experience to have had. We are at the point in the episode where I ask you both the question, if you were snowed in at a cozy woodland cabin in the middle of nowhere, which book would you hope to have with you?
Favorite Snowed-In Reads
00:23:10
Speaker
um shall i go first i mean go and this is just sort of i like a good thriller yeah okay but for for for reading i particularly have enjoyed over the last few couple of years michael connelly american author brilliant thriller writer um and i'm reading one at the moment and ah that that would be really good because they're they're they' they're good chunky books they're very linear there's not a lot of uh or exposition whatever it's almost almost like um real life crime you you because he knows i think he's ah an ex-crime reporter so he you know he knows how it all works so it's very very authentic and they're they're very absorbing um yeah other books that that made a big impression on me years ago were the pritchett patricia highsmith ripley books they were also very gripping so i think yeah i'd i'd want a good a good chunky doorstop of a thriller
00:24:04
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's a cool choice. And thrillers always, it's always fun to just have something that's all about the pace and just has so much forward momentum when you're reading it. Yeah. Yes. and And it's resolved at the end. So, you know, yes that's all, that's that's the beauty of any, of any thriller. Usually that you get a resolution.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Which you don't get in life. Well, well got kind of, if you know what I mean. Sometimes. Sometimes. if you like Martin, how about you?
00:24:33
Speaker
a i I find it quite difficult to think of a single book because I kind of flit from one sort of genre to another. But yeah i'm very um I very much like the writing of Jonathan Coe.
00:24:48
Speaker
And i' very keen I'm very keen on books like his books like Middle England, which are of of are amusing, they're satirical, but also incredibly intelligent.
00:25:01
Speaker
And i love the I love the structure of the books. And, i mean, they're quite often quite they're quite often quite complex structures, but very interesting ones. And so I think, yes, if I could have more than one, I'd probably have all the ones who's written them, because i think I think, you know, i could i could I could finish them all and then start again and enjoy them again.
00:25:24
Speaker
Yeah. OK. And is that historical fiction or is that nonfiction? No, it's it's it's it's it's modern. is rich I think the Middle England was about um the the struggles to get to grips with what was going on in the in the mid the last last decade and and the Brexit. So there's ah there's a degree of crossover with where we are.
00:25:45
Speaker
okay But there's's there's nothing better than a well-written book. No, exactly. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction, the pleasure of reading well-written and, dare I say, well-edited book is, you know, there's nothing more irritating than reading a book that's badly written, badly edited or whatever. You know, I've abandoned books because I just can't.
00:26:06
Speaker
I can't bear the absence of full stops, you know. Semicolons and things, you know. Sure, yes, punctuation. but so yeah um' pun Punctuation is is the, you know, it's the bar lines in music, you know. it's um Writing is music.
00:26:20
Speaker
Yes. And, yeah you know, that it's good if it's discordance, then you don't enjoy reading it. Yeah, no, yeah, that makes sense. um Awesome. um some Some great choices there from both of you. Neither of you I noticed picking up The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but that's okay because that's probably one of my choices. so I thought there was, in a sense, that's too predictable, isn't it? Yeah, I we we we read We read that. Yes. but um There's um there's a a line in Hitchhiker, I mean, and keep on dredging this little story out, but there's a line in Hitchhiker which actually does appear in one of our sketches and actually it is filleted out and put in dictionaries of quotations and so on about talking about space. You know, you you you may think, what's what is was the phrase, Martin? You may think it's a long way down to the post-it books.
00:27:15
Speaker
and um uh yeah that yeah the the chemist that's right yes uh you may think it' so it's a long way down the street to the chemist but that's just peanuts to space um and that's actually in a i've got the handwritten because we all the sketches were handwritten in those days we didn't yeah i think douglas had a typewriter did no i had i was the one with the typewriter you have you have the time afterwards yeah we used to write we used to write them longhand yeah and i've and i've got this bit of ancient paper with the peanuts to space line written on it tucked in my copy of hitchhiker oh that's nice for for prosperity prosperity i hope certainly for posterity maybe prosperity one day yeah yeah a great auction yeah okay yeah amazing um awesome so next up um we're going to talk a bit about um self-publishing a bit more on the co-writing stuff um that will all be available on patreon at patreon.com forward slash write and roll
00:28:13
Speaker
As I say, we we keep being told that it's it's far too expensive to make nowadays. and you know So we'll see. Yeah.
00:28:24
Speaker
The things I've heard about TV is like your best bet is if it's contemporary and it's set in a real place because they they'll see it and they'll they'll say, oh, we can we can afford that. that's just We just go to go somewhere and we can film that. yeah exactly well that's why starting starting in cambridge it hasn't changed that much if you just stick with the old colleges yeah yeah um awesome well that's exciting hopefully watch this space and maybe we'll see some more from from from the two of you together and apart indeed the future and that brings us to the end of the episode so thank you so much for coming on and telling us all about consequences and everything else that's been going on with you guys and and a little bit
00:29:04
Speaker
ah down memory lane with your time at the
Concluding with Gratitude
00:29:07
Speaker
footlights and things like that. It's been really, really fun chatting with you both. Thanks for inviting us. Thanks for inviting us. It's been great fun. yeah Yeah, it's been great. And for anyone listening, Consequences is out right now. You can get it on Amazon and probably other places too, but Amazon's probably the best bet for getting it. You have to put it, you have to put in our names as well though, because it's too difficult. Martin Smith and Will Adams, because I think we discovered rather too late that there are four or five other books called Consequences, maybe maybe more than four five hundred.
00:29:34
Speaker
okay well you'll know for next time to call it something very obscure yeah exactly to support this podcast like follow and subscribe join the patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcasts the chosen ones and other tropes thanks again to martin and will thanks to everyone listening we will catch you on the next episode Shout out time.
Shout-Out to Lee Foxton
00:29:55
Speaker
One of my amazing patrons, Lee Foxton, is querying their debut novel. It's a family drama, commercial fiction, along the lines of Jojo Moyes and David Nichols. Fingers crossed. I am rooting for you. Good luck.