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How To Guides

by Don Webb

Don Webb is a former Thames Television Theatre Bursary winner and was resident writer at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield. His television scripts include Rockliffe's Babies, Juliet Bravo, The Bill, Casualty, Joint Account and Byker Grove.

1) Examine the genre

Sometimes it seems that at least ninety per cent of the written drama output on the small screen is about coppers. If you want to write for a police series remember the following:

Examine the genre you're in.
Not always as easy as it looks.

The first clue is the timing.
The watershed is nine o'clock and fairly strictly adhered to. Programmes like The Bill and City Central have a solid compliance policy which means very little swearing, very little blood, very few guns being fired and not many corpses. Also the powers-that-be have embargoed open menace with sharp edges and guns can mainly be waved and not pointed at heads. This just makes it more interesting. You can invent different swear words and find subtle ways of threatening.

After the watershed, things are different, not necessarily easier, just different. The temptation is to fill the screen with gore and rotting corpses. Resist it. Use the opportunities for realism sparingly. A good yardstick is to imagine whether you'd like to watch and eat a Meat Feast Supreme at the same time. Also maggots and prawns don't mix, so take care when you're doing forensics.

Study the programme you want to write for.
They tend to fall into two broad categories. One sees everything from the point of the police protagonists, the other cheats and shows the action from the criminal perspective i.e. you'll see the crime being committed. I can't recall any series that mixes this way of working, although very occasionally, a series will tease you with the hook, showing the crime and then resorting to the police approach. Make sure you know where you are.

2) Police experts/dialogue

Any police show worth the price of admission will have a police expert or a series of police experts. Get the wrong side of these guys at your peril. They can and will make your life impossible if you ignore them but if you take them on board, they are not only a very fruitful source of storylines, they can make you laugh until your eyes run dry. If you have anything in one of your scripts that they won't pass, the buzzword is to ask them how you can get round it. They will leap to attention, salute and show you the way.

Police radio dialogue would need an entire article to explain. Either ignore it, writing scenes which begin or end before or after the dialogue or ask the police expert to fill it in. They will, anyway, whether you write it or not. If you're working with CID personnel, they all use mobile phones, so you're laughing.

Uniformed police and CID talk differently. Basically, CID call senior officers guv, uniformed plods call senior officers Sir. Senior officers always call juniors by their Christian names and each other as Mister when talking to juniors. To vary this, juniors on each side refer to seniors as sets of initials, the DCI, the DI, the DCS and so on. Sergeants, uniformed or plain clothes are called sarge. Equal ranks use Christian names. Got that?

3) Script Editors

As with any series, your best friend and worst enemy will be the script editor.

It is very silly to try to circumvent the script editor. Script editors on police series tend not to have a very long shelf life. They get fed up and disappear, they get promoted and disappear, they have children and cry. Keep saying this to yourself.

Good script editors are like gold. If you have a good one, it is perfectly permissible and often desirable to suck up to them shamelessly. Take their advice and listen to what they say. Good ones won't try to rewrite your work but they will show you what they want and how to get it. Listen, learn and follow. Don't forget, they are the only ones who know what the producers are looking for when, often, even the producers themselves don't.

Finally, always get your first draft in quickly. This will gain you a reputation for reliability but, more important, there is often a quarter payment due on delivery and it's better in your pocket that the production company's bank account.

4) Useful links

Writers Guild of Great Britain
Tel: 020 7723 8074

WritersNet e-mail on: npt@easynet.co.uk

www.screenwriterstore.co.uk

London screenwriters workshop site

The Official 'The Bill' website

The Police Service UK site