I finally got round to reading
The Writers Tale: Final Chapter by Russell T Davies and Benjamin Cook. It is, quite frankly, one of the best books on screenwriting that you could possibly buy. This book is a collection of emails between Russell and Ben. It ignores all the 'structured-storytelling guff' and gets to the heart of the writing process.
The book is a collection of email correspondence between Russell and
Doctor Who Magazine journalist Ben Cook. What started out as the seed of a small article on writing becomes a whole book. Through these emails we get a glimpse into the side of Russell T Davies which had previously been unseen by the public: the chain smoker who dreads deadlines and deals with difficulties. Anyone who thought Russell could just knock off Doctor Who stories while laughing should read the emails where he struggles to get the climax of
Journey's End right, or working out what should transpire in
The End of Time. Of course, it's probable that some of these emails were omitted. We'll never get a full picture of what happened but all the same, what we have here is very fascinating.
Where the original book focused on Series 4, the extra chapters in
The Final Chapter allow us to see the production of the gap year special. The Doctor Who Specials might well have turned out very differently.
The Next Doctor was almost a completely different tale with J.K Rowling as the guest star. Instead of
Planet of the Dead, the Easter special might have been a space opera int he style of
Star Wars, or even a Star Trek parody.
Waters of Mars might have been a Christmas special, or could even have been a sword and sorcery tale set in modern London.
All the while there are glimpses of the future to come, the correspondence with Steven Moffat, the day when Russell finds out that the new Doctor will be Matt Smith, or liaising on the use of the Daleks. It will be interesting to see whether Steven Moffat ever does his own final chapter after he's written a series or too.
The moments when Russell and Ben contemplate their own lives are equally as fascinating as the fiction writing. Russell occasionally reminisces on his family history including the story of his family's relationship with the Welsh Rugby team , coming out as a gay man, the time his mum died and his relationships. Their just as fascinating as the fiction he likes to write. Very few script-writing books deal with the personal lives of their authors.
The correspondence concludes just as Russell and Julie Gardner are about to head off to LA. It feels like a happy ending, although time will tell whether this turns out to is the case. We know that David Tennant has already got a pilot in
Rex is not Your Lawyer, but will he get a new series? What will Russell and Julie do? Will Russell's
MGM series come to fruition. We'll have to check the art news to see.
In short: This is a book that every Doctor Who fan should own a copy of, An insight into the way that Russell T Davies time on the show was constructed along with helpful advice for budding writers. Even if you have a copy of the original book I would still recommend the extra chapters of
The Final Chapter.
