Wow, He's Just Like Us

Wise and reassuring words from Doctor Who/Jekyll/Coupling writer Steven Moffat, in the current issue of Moviescope magazine:

"Every new script makes you an amateur. There isn’t a process. You walk around until you think of an exciting idea, then you try and make it all fit together in your head and then you write it down. This is an ambition, not an accomplishment. You try to write nothing that you’ve seen before - something new, exciting and different. You pack every moment with as much comedy and pathos or emotion as you can.

"When I was writing Coupling the process is that you stare out of the window until you make yourself laugh. Now that sort of sums up writing for me. Stare out of the window until you make yourself “something” - moved, excited, passionate or any of those things. It’s always good towards the end of a script if you’re standing up because it’s too exciting to sit down to write. You want to be “Oh my God will The Doctor save the day?” You want that huge feeling of a climax. But that’s as much of a process as there is.

"It’s different every time. I’ve never written a script that I didn’t despair of even being able to finish. Experience is so useless. Experience is just yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems. Nothing in the past works for the present, you have to invent it — you have to keep it brand new every time."