The Art Of Writing

Many years ago a group of Oxford University academics was debating what sort of a person Shakespeare's Macbeth was. Suddenly one University Don interrupted;

"Gentlemen, please. Can I just remind you that Macbeth never ever existed, he was a fictional character created by the Bard. It is preposterous that you are all arguing like this about somebody who never actually existed."

Some years before, one of my best writing friends, Tom Elliot, a writer and Chief Storyline Editor for the world's longest-running soap opera, 'Coronation Street,' told me of an exchange he had with a TV viewer of the program.

"So what do you do on the program, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I'm one of the writers," replied Tom.

"How do you mean, what do you write?"

"I write the words that the actors speak," replied Tom.

"Oh, I thought that they just made it up as they went along," said the man. "I thought they were real people."

I suppose therein lies the art of the writer, to create characters that speak in what sounds like a believable, authentic conversation. A writer of a script, novel, or short story, has to write all of the words spoken by all of the characters and write them so well that people confuse those fictional characters with real people in real situations.

I think above all a writer has to be an empath, to relate so well to the thoughts, ideas, feelings, and behavior of so many different types of people. The writer has to see the points of view of everybody. For this, a writer has to possess an open mind and be able to put him or herself in the shoes of all of the different characters. Then he or she has to create a variety of rhythms of speech, accents, pronunciation, and colloquial expressions reflecting the attitudes and ways of the people from a given region.

Sadly, Tom passed away a few years ago, and I miss him a great deal. I miss him because he was such a modest, down-to-earth man who despite his success, never got above himself. He and his lovely wife Beryl lived a humble life and never forgot their background.

They started out living in a small council house, not too far from where I lived. Tom took a job as a milkman, rising before the break of dawn so that he could do his milk round, delivering milk to people's doorsteps. By noon he was finished and would rush home to get out his typewriter and tap away to his heart's content.

I got to know Tom through the woman he lived next door to, a woman who used to babysit my three children. She was such a lovely woman we used to take her on holiday with us. The children loved Shirley like a member of the family. Then she introduced me to Tom, for which I was eternally grateful.

Tom always had time for anybody, especially if they were another professional writer. At the time, I had a very successful career as a freelance advertising copywriter, and Tom and I would exchange all sorts of stories about the craft of writing and life in general.

At one time, when I was very hyped up about my first acrimonious divorce, Tom summed me up in one very astute observation. "Ralph, you're like a mix between Groucho Marx and Dan Dare," he chuckled.

Around the same time, I had to remove some personal belongings from the marital home and asked Tom if he could store them for me for a couple of weeks. "Of course," he said, "errr, It's not boxes full of drugs by any chance is it?" he said with a naughty grin.

Tom tried to help me get on in the writing profession and recommended me to a man who was looking for a ghostwriter to write a book. He also put me forward to his literary agent in London. Sadly those leads led to nothing.

However, following Tom's advice and teaching, I did have some comedy sketches accepted by the producers of a comedy program called Hale and Pace. I also wrote and directed a half-hour program which was transmitted on Channel Four.

I also made a short film called Russian Catwalk which was broadcast on Spanish TV and on Channel One in Paraguay, South America. In addition, I acted in that film, composed almost all of the music, and wrote all the Spanish to English subtitles for it. You can still watch Russian Catwalk on YouTube. It's called Pasarela Russa.

In the end, Tom and I drifted apart, both of us moving out of the area. I never saw him again after that. But I am forever grateful for what he taught me about writing and life in general.

One thing of Tom's that I still have and treasure is a script of an episode of 'Coronation Street' he had written. He gave it to me so I could learn how to set out a TV script. That was an enormous help to my progression in writing.

And now, almost thirty years later, I realize that they don't make them like Tom anymore. What a pity it is he is not still around just to have a hot cup of tea with and a good old natter, putting the world to rights.