Radio In Its Own Right
Nick Warburton has written drama for stage, screen, print and radio. His credits include Eastenders, Holby City, Doctors and Born and Bred. He’s written children’s novels; stage plays and over 50 radio dramas, among them the award-winning Conversations from the Engine Room. And while he’s happy scribing for all these worlds, radio, he reckons, is still his preferred medium.
Who do you write for?
I suppose the easy answer is, “I write for myself.” Is it true, though? Yes, I think it is – but only up to a point. There are at least four other possible answers...
- I write for the producer
- I write for the actors
- I write for the audience
- I write for the money
Writing for myself
The easy answer – that I write for myself – is true in this sense: I keep my own critic and I write for him. This person is really me with a different hat on. I try to be objective, to put some time and distance between what I’ve written and the person who wrote it. I need to read the script I’ve just written as if I’ve never seen it before.
This internal critic can be quite tough. In fact, he should be quite tough. No one sees what I’ve written until he’s had his say. So my first draft – the draft that I send out – is usually a third or fourth draft. Unfortunately, I can’t always do this in television: the quick turn-arounds don’t allow it. (“When do you want the script?” “A week on Tuesday” “Please may I have longer so I can edit it myself first?” “I think not.”)
So I do write for myself – but it’s not the same self who wrote the thing in the first place.
I suppose there’s another sense of writing for myself: the self expression thing. But that’s more to do with therapy than writing. If you’re writing scripts you shouldn’t be expressing yourself, you should be expressing your characters. Sometimes I can express something of myself when I write, but not when I’m trying to. This is one of the paradoxes of writing: by looking for your characters’ voices, you sometimes find your own.
Writing for the producer
Writing drama is a collaborative business. You’re part of a team and answerable to at least one producer – and a script editor, possibly a story editor, an executive producer, a director. And so on.
Do I keep these people in mind while I’m writing? Well, I try not to. It’s not helpful to second-guess the production team. I do listen to them – writers have to, frankly – and I do take note of what they say, but I don’t think about them while I’m writing. I have to do that on my own.
Writing for the actors
I always hear the characters speaking when I write. In fact, I sometimes catch myself reciting their lines out loud, to make sure the voice and rhythm are right. I also see their faces, of course, and the way they move and do things, but it’s their voice which matters most.
In shows like Holby City or EastEnders, many of the characters are already cast and established. In that case I’ll see and hear specific actors – usually the good ones. They have something to bring to the character, just as I do. I feed on what I see and hear them do. It is, I hope, a symbiotic relationship.
When I was writing Father and Son for the Classic Serial on BBC Radio Four, I started to hear Derek Jacobi’s voice in my head. The main character, Edmund Gosse, is an articulate, witty man describing a sensitive and lonely childhood. In the radio version he both recounts his impressions and relives them: he is both man and boy. And Derek Jacobi’s voice was doing all this in my head.
I often find this happening when I write for radio, probably because voice is at the very heart of the medium. I always hear my characters’ voices anyway, but sometimes they take on a particular quality – a recognisable voice. Character and voice are not completely interchangeable, but a great deal of character is in the voice.
In the case of Father and Son, Derek Jacobi did agree to play Edmund, and the voice in my head became the voice that the audience also heard. And he was brilliantly both man and boy. That complex relationship – the switches between the man speaking and the boy speaking, his conversations with himself, the easy leaps backward and forward in time – is an example of radio’s unique flexibility. And it’s only one of the reasons I love radio so much.
Most of the time I want to keep my characters consistent and truthful – and, by the way, consistent doesn’t necessarily mean predictable. The more truthful I manage to be, the more the characters themselves shape the story I’m telling. They demand certain courses of action – and refuse others. Plotting is sometimes a matter of listening to what the characters are saying to me.
So I don’t just write characters, I write for them, prompted by them and faithful to their demands. And sometimes I write for the actors who play them.
Writing for the audience
Do I write for the audience? Or with the audience in mind?
Someone once told me they couldn’t finish the story they were writing until they’d seen the results of a survey they’d sent out. This survey was to tell them what their audience wanted to see in the story. This struck me as daft and pointless.
When I’m working on a story, I imagine what happens but I don’t imagine an audience hovering around to watch. The story occupies real space, not studio space, in my imagination. (Although, now I think about it, sometimes I do imagine a stage, but writing for the stage is a special case. You’re aware of the theatricality of things in a way you’re not with TV and radio.)
So does that mean I never think of the audience when I write?
No, because I’m engaged in a form of play. I’m playing with the audience. I lead them to believe one thing is about to happen, and then spring surprises on them. I plant clues and make references, place one image next to another for effect, withhold information … and so on. I deceive and trick them, for their own good – or, at least, for their own entertainment.
It can be helpful to know what kind of an audience you’re writing for. Writing for a radio audience is a particularly private and intimate activity. You can count the audience figures in hundred of thousands, but in effect you’re talking to one person on her own; you’re almost whispering in her ear. If you’re aware of that when you write, it can make a huge difference to the way you go about things. It’s also another of the reasons I love writing for radio and find it so rewarding.
So does this mean I am thinking of the audience when I write – and, at the same time, I’m not?
Yes, because the kind of thinking I do when I’m trying to be truthful about my characters, is different from the kind of thinking I do when I’m playing with the audience. I engage in both kinds simultaneously. More or less.
Writing for the money and the fame
I don’t write for money but I do get paid. Actually, when I was thinking about this question – who do you write for? – I almost forgot the money answer. If you want to make money, there are easier ways. Money might, I suppose, influence what you choose to write, but it shouldn’t make any difference to the integrity of the writing itself.
And fame? Novelists and stage playwrights can become famous. TV writers, with a few notable (and deserved) exceptions, don’t. And no one knows radio writers at all. Even the most brilliant of them – people like Mike Walker or Robert Ferguson – are all but anonymous. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. Radio is not yet ratings driven, and people trust you and leave you alone to get on with it. Which is another reason why I …
So who exactly … ?
There’s one more possible answer to add to my list, I’ve realised. Who do I write for? Well, whenever I can, I write for radio. Not because it’s an apprenticeship for television, but because it’s wonderful in its own right. You can achieve things on radio that you can’t in any other medium.
So to sum up the rest:
- I keep in mind my internal critic – but not, I hope, my ego
- I think about the needs of my characters, and sometimes the contribution of the actors who play them
- I take note of the observations of producers and script editors – but not while I’m actually writing
- and I write for my audience – but only in a subtle and manipulative sort of way.
Which sounds like a lot to keep in mind.
Luckily, it’s not as complicated as it sounds. Most of the time it just happens. When I sit down to write the story I want to tell, that’s exactly what I have to concentrate on: the story. And the characters – which is very nearly the same thing. Those other things tend to take care of themselves.
Relevant Links:
Nick Warburton:www.doollee.com
Nick Warburton’s agent David Higham: www.davidhigham.co.uk
Nick Warburton - Acting: www.bawds.org
BBC Radio Arts & Drama: www.bbc.co.uk/radio4
Holby City: www.bbc.co.uk/drama
EastEnders: www.bbc.co.uk/eastenders
Doctors: www.bbc.co.uk/drama
Writers Guild of Great Britain: www.writersguild.org.uk
University College of Chicester: www.ucc.ac.uk
Prix Italia: www.prixitalia.rai.it
Arts Council of England: www.artscouncil.org.uk
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