So after a long hiatus on the blog, I can finally reveal that Tess is a fully complete draft and has even had her first demo track recorded.

With things moving on rapidly, details of Tess's progress are now switching to other forms of information, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and so forth. Links are on the Tess: The Musical page.

If you've been remotely interested in the progress of this new musical, please sign up to one or all of these to keep right up to date on the latest developments, including recordings, photographs, production news and more.

Thanks for sticking with us!

Like a cowboy recovering after a hernia, we're tentatively back in the saddle. After a hiatus of a few months (see previous lesson 5 below), the Tess of the d'Urbervilles musical blog is back.

In fact, it's not strictly true to say it's tentative. That was a bit of artistic licence for the hernia line (as was the 'hiatus' reference). The truth is that Tess is back with a vengeance. I probably wouldn't go so far as to say it's personal, but it's certainly progressing with a pace and passion that we haven't experienced before.

In fact, that's not strictly true either. It would be more accurate to say that Michael's musical output is progressing with a pace and passion. I'm merely trying to keep up. Having returned form Down Under in March, he's bombarded me with a veritable cornucopia of compositions, chief among them the all-important opening number, which not only sets the tone for the whole enterprise but also introduces the audience to the key players.

Mind you, in return I've supplied lyrics for a strategically important song in the second act, which I knew I wanted to address before he straitjacketed me with yet another sublime melody. It all harks back to an early blog post trying to work out which comes first, lyrics or music? The answer remains as slippery and unfathomable as an octopus doing quadratic equations.

We can both identify advantages and disadvantages to doing our bit first. Equally, there are pros and cons to filling in the gaps afterwards. The opening number, for instance, has been a joy to work on, not least because Michael has  followed our scene-by-scene plan rigorously, leaving me merely to do the decorative stuff with the words. Conversely, I know there's going to be another big second act section that I'll want to construct lyrically before handing to him to compose.

The lesson? It's been vital that we've been on the same page with regards to the way the story unfolds. Part of it's planning, part of it's lots of talking, but the end result has been that there's been no disagreement over how much airtime a character's getting, or the way they're being presented on stage, or any of those endlessly tricky little questions.

I recently read a fascinating post from Wolfblood creator Debbie Moon about the transferability of the scene-by-scene outline from the world of television, where it's pretty much ubiquitous for a variety of sound production reasons. I hadn't considered all of these, but I find myself in solid agreement, and I can't imagine tackling a project these days without including a SxS in the process.

Everyone's got their own way of doing things, of course, but if you haven't used one in the past (or if you have), I'd strongly recommend giving it a try. It certainly helped this cowboy to get tentatively back in the saddle.


Next time... Social media and the marketing minefield.

The next post in this occasional series about the process of creating a new musical was to have been a light-hearted little affair. It was intended to explore the unlimited variety of senseless and trivial distractions available to any creative artist to throw them off the tenuous tightrope of actually doing the bloody work.

In fact, what happened to delay that post was anything but trivial. My writing partner, composer Michael Blore, suffered the horrendous personal tragedy of losing his husband, theatre director John Smith. It was sudden, completely unexpected and devastating.

With typical dedication and dignity, Michael remains committed to our musical adaptation of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. You'll forgive us, I'm sure, if we take a little time to reacquire our balance on the tightrope.

Tess will return. Watch this space.

With Lorenz Hart, Richard Rodgers did it first. When it came to Oscar Hammerstein, he usually waited until afterwards. WS Gilbert made sure he had everything nailed down before Sir Arthur Sullivan even got a look in.

So which is the right way to do it – words or music first?

If you’ve never written a song with someone else, it may seem like a spurious question. In my own experience, I’ve usually written music to existing lyrics, or else the two have emerged seamlessly together, either sparked by a musical idea or a catchy phrase or line.

But this is new territory. For a start, my main focus is the musical’s book – although my background fortunately allows me the advantage of thinking musically as I write. Secondly, we’re working with source material that is not only extremely well known and loved, but also richly textured and full of wonderful imagery, courtesy of Mr T Hardy (see Part 3 below).

And perhaps most significantly, neither I nor (I think I’m right in saying) my composer Michael has ever written a full-length musical before. I’m sure he’d have mentioned it if he had...

So guess what? We’re trying it all ways round. Maybe we’ll find the way that works for us. And first out of the starting gate (to use a metaphor from a sport I know absolutely nothing about) is our heroine’s big Act One introductory number, about ten minutes into the show. This song has been dubbed The ‘I Wish’ Song, courtesy of Julian Woolford in his book How Musicals Work.

Now I don’t want to go off on a digression about the merits or otherwise of How To... books and blogs. That would seem a little perverse and self-defeating. Suffice it to say that Mr Woolford’s tome has much useful advice on the subject, although we have opted to cherry-pick the bits that work for us. I advise you to do the same. The fact that he has had musicals professionally produced and this is our first attempt should have no bearing on the respective value of the advice proffered. No, really.

Anyway, the idea is that your protagonist needs to lay out their goals and desires nice and early, so the audience has a clear notion of where they think they’re heading, even if this later become subsumed, reversed or otherwise trampled in the dirt during the course of their journey. So far, so scriptwriter-theory-ticked-off.

For Michael and me, it presents a challenge: this is the number that will be teeing up much of the subsequent action, not to mention many of the musical ideas that will also be reprised, reversed and otherwise trampled as the show proceeds. So it’s important. (Of course, every number is important in its own way, but you know what I mean.)

And for me, there’s an additional challenge: Michael’s already written the music. Bastard. Not only has he written it, he’s arranged it, structured it and developed it in such a way that its immaculate construction, tying in with themes that will be explored later, will stand little or no tweaking on my part. Double bastard.

Now, this should feel like a constraint. In fact, it’s a liberation. Why? Because my composer has already done the hard work of prescribing the tonal shifts, character growth and overall shape of the song, leaving me with the relatively straightforward job of expressing the same in the accompanying words. (Incidentally, if you ever catch me using the phrase ‘relatively straightforward job’ in relation to any part of this project again, you are at liberty to mock, ridicule and mercilessly taunt to your heart’s content.)

So, having applied the aforementioned words to Michael’s sumptuous melody, it’s then a case of negotiating with him the changes I’ll need in order to make the lyric work. This is an interesting process, wholly reliant on mutual respect and admiration, which results in him adjusting a couple of quavers and me completely rewriting the lyric. I guess respect and admiration can show up in various guises.

The rewrite is necessary, though it pains me to admit it. And it actually leads to few more (albeit minor) modifications on the musical side, all of which refines the number and improves it considerably. I also know there’ll be a time when I’m telling him, in the nicest possible way, that some tune he’s dreamed up just doesn’t cut it for that pivotal moment in the story, so it’s swings and roundabouts.

And now we’re going to try it a different way. I’ve got a pretty clear idea for the shape of another number elsewhere in the show (the benefits of thorough planning are already paying off), so I’m going to write the lyrics in isolation and hand them over to him. See how he likes them apples.

So Lesson Four in How Not to Write a Musical? There’s no right or wrong way to do it. We’re still experimenting, and I imagine we’ll go on using a combination of different approaches throughout the entire process. What’s essential is a shared vision of where we’re going, what we want to create and how it’s going to look by the end. It’s a kind of mutually understood destination, I suppose. It’s just that on our way there, sometimes we’ll use the sat-nav and sometimes we’ll look at a map.


Next time... Shiny things and other distractions.

When is a script not a script? When it's a half-formed mess of ideas, scribblings and random notes. Which pretty much covers everything until the final draft you'll be delivering to your agent/publisher/producer (delete as applicable).

At some point in this development period, sometimes known as Hell, some variation of the following question will arise: When should I tell people what I'm working on?

Like many things in the writer's life, there are extremes of viewpoint on this. On one hand, there are those who cling desperately to their project until the last possible moment, never intimating to a soul what they're up to for fear of their precious baby being stolen, copied or otherwise snaffled in some way.

There's more than a whiff of paranoia about this approach, and loads has been written on t'Interweb about its lack of foundation. For a start, ideas are ten a penny and if your writing's any good, why wouldn't a producer simply buy your script rather than risk an expensive legal battle? Presumably, unless you're Aaron Sorkin, your services will come cheaper than a lawyer's. Yes, of course there are horror stories about examples of copyright theft, but the fact that they get talked about means they're the exception, not the rule.

What's more, this stance is unlikely to endear you to the aforementioned agent/publisher/producer, who generally like to imagine they know what's going on, at least to some extent.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who willingly scatter their seed upon the ground (metaphorically speaking, and stop sniggering at the back). They offer up loglines, pitches, treatments - even full scripts - for public consumption or competition entry without a second thought about protecting their intellectual property. These folk are generally glass-half-full people, ever ready with a cheery smile and an optimistic outlook.

Well, you know what the pessimist said in answer to the argument that optimists live longer: it serves them right. And keeping your powder dry can have its merits too, if it means added 'Ta-daa' value at the right moment, or avoiding casting your pearls before swine (not meant to refer to any agent/publisher/producer in particular but if the cap fits...).

There is, as you might expect, a middle way, if that doesn't sound too Blairy-touchy-feely for you. First, a couple of personal experiences that helped persuade me that keeping things quiet didn't make any damn difference anyway.

A few years back I was involved in a scriptwriting project based on a brilliant concept: a week-long stripped drama about a multiple car crash in which each episode followed the occupants of one of the vehicles involved. As the eps went on, a game of detection would unravel for the viewer. Our title? Impact. Three months into the planning, ITV announced they would soon be screening a week-long stripped drama about a car crash in which each episode followed the occupants of one of the vehicles involved. As the eps went on, a game of detection would unravel for the viewer. Its title? Collision. ITV's version was written by established scriptwriter Anthony Horowitz. Ours was dead in the water. I still think we had the better title, though...

More recently, I pitched a series of young adult novels to a well-known agent based on another brilliant concept, which I can't reveal here. I know it was brilliant because not long afterwards  it became a successful published series of young adult novels. By another writer. Represented by that same well-known agent.

My point is not that I keep having brilliant ideas stolen, but that brilliant ideas do tend to float around in the ether at the same time, and your stunning concept is quite likely to be rather similar (or, as in my cases, extremely identical) to someone else's at precisely the same time.

Which brings me to Lesson Three of How Not to Write a Musical: Letting the cat out of the bag. Ultimately, only you can decide when and how you're going to reveal your project, and who to. My own feeling is that, provided you've taken reasonable steps to cover yourself (see Part 2 of How Not to Write a Musical), you might as well put it out there. Let's face it, keeping it to yourself probably won't make any difference anyway, and at least publicly you've claimed first dibs on it.

So, having thus convinced myself it's OK to go public, here's the moment you've both been waiting for.

The exciting new project that is now well under way, courtesy of writing team Michael Blore and Michael Davies, is a large-scale musical version of the Thomas Hardy classic Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Don't all copy us at once...


Next time... Which comes first, the chicken composer or the egg lyricist?

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.”
– Herman Melville

SOME people have jobs they hate. They struggle to rouse themselves when the alarm goes off, they drag themselves to the shower, force down some breakfast (after the shower, hopefully, otherwise it could get horribly messy) and trudge unwillingly to work. Others tolerate their job on the basis that it pays the rent, gives them something to do between family time or soap episodes, and someone’s got to keep the economy going, right?

Then there are writers.

I’ve never met a writer yet who didn’t love getting out of bed to work on their latest project. No matter whether it’s splurging a first draft or handling some particularly tricky development notes from a spotty teenage executive with no more idea of how a script works than his Hornby train set, the true writer simply loves it. Every glorious, hard-fought, embattled, problematic, hair-tearing moment of it.

I have been that office worker. I was one for 20-odd years. And I enjoyed my job, as far as it went. But my willingness to get out of bed for The Man was as nothing compared to the eagerness with which I leap up these days to face the morning.

Why am I telling you this? For one simple reason, which I have learned over the course of the past few un-officebound years: when you’re writing something – anything – you’ve got to love what you’re doing. A project without passion is doomed to failure, even if it makes it into production. It’s always palpable, that sense of drive behind a passion project, and always noticeable when it’s absent.

I won’t name names, but we’ve all seen those TV shows or rapidly-produced sequels that just don’t quite cut it – and nine times out of ten it’ll be because they’re born out of expediency or sheer, unadulterated commerciality.

Don’t get me wrong: commerciality is vitally important if you want your project to get made, but if it’s there on its own, with no real passion behind it, it’ll stand out as clearly as a pimple on prom night.

Which brings me to my point. Lesson Two in How Not to Write a Musical: choosing your subject. My writing partner and I debated long and hard about this because if we get it wrong, the whole project’s stuffed before we write a note or a word. We toyed with creating an original story but vetoed it on precisely those grounds of commerciality (i.e. no one would have any idea what it was, and without at least one of us being famous, that would be a tough sell). We contemplated adapting a well-known film or play but vetoed that for a simple pragmatic reason – acquiring the rights could be both tricky and expensive.

In the end, we found ourselves a ‘property’, as these things are known in the trade, which fulfilled all our criteria: it’s an iconic novel, has an inherent appeal for our target audience, is in the public domain (i.e. out of copyright and available) and – perhaps most important of all – we both love it.

We checked it hadn’t already been done, which it hasn’t – at least, not in the way we’re planning – and started our writing process by not writing at all. We read it again.

Oh, but how silly of me. You’ll want to know what it is, won’t you? Well, allow me. Our source material is...


Next time... Letting the cat out of the bag – is there a ‘right’ time to do it?

GOOD musicals don’t just appear, fully-formed, out of the ether. Do they?

No, they don’t. They have to be worked on, crafted, redrafted and thoroughly tested before they can be unleashed on an unsuspecting – and all too often unforgiving – public.

I never meant to write a musical as my next project. I’ve come off the back of several years working on television scripts, radio plays and, most recently, stage plays, winning the national playwriting award in the process and seeing my play Rasputin’s Mother staged successfully earlier this year. I’ve got another play already being circulated by my agent and I’ve got further talks coming up with radio producers about possible commissions later in the year.

My intention next was to pitch into either a young adult sci-fi novel (the first in a proposed series) or a rom-com feature script based on a high-concept premise. So why do I find myself embroiled in the early stages of planning a full-scale, heavily-orchestrated musical with no commission, no producer and no idea how much of my life this is going to consume over the coming months?

The answer to that question provides – rather neatly, if I may say so, almost as if it were planned that way – the first lesson in a long list of things this blog is expecting to be all about: How Not to Write a Musical.

First things first. I make no claim to being an expert in writing musicals. In another part of my life I am a theatre critic, so in a professional capacity I have seen quite a few of the beasts in my time, and I would definitely call myself a fan. I figure that’s a good starting point. Quite why anyone would want to write something they didn’t like is a mystery to me, although plenty do, it would seem. My musical pedigree has so far been restricted to songwriting, short schools entertainments and a panto. Oh, and a 10-minute video opera for my brother’s video production MA. On their own, these would hardly qualify me to be ready to write a musical, except that everyone has to start from wherever they’re at.

Enter the second protagonist in this little enterprise, my co-writer Michael Blore. Let the record show that writing a musical together was his idea.

Which brings me back to that earlier question: why?

There are many reasons to write a musical. Obviously, fame, wealth and the adoration of a delighted public are high on my list, although awards and artistic credibility are up there as well. But what’s really got me hooked is the challenge.

I’ve never written a whole musical before, and the chance to tackle one alongside one of the most talented – not to mention charming – composers I’ve had the good fortune to work with is simply too appealing to pass up.

It helps that we’re both totally committed to our subject and are desperate to tell this story in this particular way, but more of that later. For now, it’s enough to have established that we’re approaching it from the same standpoint, with the same aims and objectives, and with a mutual respect for each other’s capabilities and work. It may not be enough to carry us through to the finish line of a fully staged production, but it’s a hell of a bonus out of the blocks.

Lesson One in How Not to Write a Musical, then? Pick your writing partner with extreme care. It’ll probably feel a bit like a marriage (though his husband and my wife really don’t need to worry unduly), and you’re going to be in it for the long haul. If you’re really lucky, you might even forge a career together.


Next time... Choosing your subject and why you’ve got to love getting out of bed.