Ben Paddon

Category: Writing

  • Revealing my Incompetence

    If you’ve known me for any length of time, you’ll know that one of my favourite novels is Incompetence by the incredibly funny Rob Grant (perhaps best known, much to his chagrin, as the co-creator of Red Dwarf). It’s a superb book – part crime thriller, part gut-busting comedy, part social commentary. I usually make a point of trying to read it at least once a year.

    For a while now I’ve had the urge to adapt the novel into a screenplay, just for my own amusement. I’ve never done an adaptation before, and I feel the story in Incompetence would lend itself well to a feature film adaptation. So my project for January is to get a first draft of Incompetence: The Movie: The Screenplay knocked out.

    Wish me luck.

  • Jumping Ahead

    I will confess to you – about a year ago, I began to lose interest in writing Jump Leads. I was having severe difficulties coming up with stories that interested me. That’s the most important thing at the end of the day, and if I’m not satisfied with a story why the Hell will anyone else be? Dozens of scripts were started, dozens of scripts were shelved.

    A few months later, I hit upon a way of revitalizing my interest in the story by giving Meaney and Llewellyn some direction. I won’t spoil anything for you, but over the last few months Eugene, Euan, Andrew, Paul and I have been working on the direction the comic is going to take, and in doing so we’ve actually scrapped about two years’ worth of future scripts, finished or otherwise, to make these changes.

    We have a story arc, spreading out over about six issues in total. We’ve more or less got an idea of where it’s heading although we still need to join the dots. What’s more, I know where it’s going once that arc is finished.

    It’s a remarkable feeling, knowing where your story is going. I must confess that when Jump Leads first started I had only the vaguest of ideas of what I wanted to do with it. The concept has a formula and a loose structure but it’s difficult to write for, and now we’ve worked together on giving it something to work towards I feel completely revitalized. These are decisions I wouldn’t have made a or two ago, but as I become more confident in myself as a writer I feel more prepared to take risks, and more capable of pulling them off successfully.

    Gentlemen, to the future. …Oh, you don’t have glasses. Well, just pretend.

  • On A Seven-Day Diary

    This is without a doubt my favourite poem of all time. It’s called “On A Seven-Day Diary” by Alan Dugan.

    Oh I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    and ate and talked and went to sleep.
    Then I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    from work and ate and slept.
    Then I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    and ate and watched a show and slept.
    Then I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    and ate steak and went to sleep.
    Then I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    and ate and fucked and went to sleep.
    Then it was Saturday, Saturday, Saturday!
    Love must be the reason for the week!
    We went shopping! I saw clouds!
    The children explained everything!
    I could talk about the main thing!
    What did I drink on Saturday night
    that lost the first, best half of Sunday?
    The last half wasn’t worth this “word.”
    Then I got up and went to work
    and worked and came back home
    from work and ate and went to sleep,
    refreshed but tired by the weekend.

    This poem epitomizes exactly the sort of life I have sought to avoid. The grind, the chore of merely existing as opposed to the joy of living. It’s one of the reasons I left the UK and came looking for something better in the United States.

    It’s also probably one of the reasons I’m presently unemployed. Bugger.

    As an aside, I wish I could write poetry like this. I which I could make words flow like liquid half as well as Dugan could.

  • Of Plums and Puddings

    Michelle recently told me that I use name-calling far too often on But, Sir…, which undermines the entire point of the blog. She is not wrong. It used to be that I would use insults sparingly, but recently I’ve been using them a lot. A lot of a lot, actually. It’s lazy, and I’m sure I could justify it all by saying “I’ve had it with these motherfucking morons on this motherfucking petitions site”, but if that were true why bother writing the blog at all? Why half-heartedly consider the possibility of putting a book together at some point in the next twelve months?

    This week Andrew and I had a lovely email conversation with a man who objected to me calling him a “fucking plum”, and then changed his position so that he’d only objected to me using the word “fucking”, and then threatened to call the Police. It highlighted two very important points – that there’s nothing wrong with name-calling, and that I really should tone it down a little. So I have done. I posted a bunch of petitions on But, Sir… today and there’s nary an insult amongst them. Considering one of those petitions came from recurring problem petitioner Keith Jones, I think I did rather well.

    Jump Leads is updating again, and I have to say it’s a bit of a relief. JjAR had taken a month off to try and work on becoming a freelance artist, but the work just isn’t out there in Russia so he’s stuck behind a desk still. I’m hoping I can pull from my exhaustive list of contacts to try and get him work on this side of the pond – maybe even a Work Visa. We’ll see what happens.

    There’ll be a new episode of Ben Paddon’s Feeble Excuse going up hopefully tomorrow featuring an awesome interview with the Grand Daddy of Nerdcore himself, MC Frontalot, and I’m once again collaborating on a project with Kill9 Studios that should be oodles of fun to write and shoot provided we don’t all get exterminated in the process.

  • io9 post list of top 100 scifi shows, have big ugly face that’s as dumb as a butt

    io9, the scifi & fantasy blog owned by Gawker Media, have taken time from their busy schedule of Googling for pornographic Futurama fan-art to post a “Top 100 Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows Of All Time” list. I happen to side with Mil Millington on the subject of “lists as journalism” – namely, it’s bollocks – and their list is more reprehensible than comprehensive. Let’s take a look at some of the items on that list, shall we?

    (more…)

  • On the subject of Wheelchairs

    On the subject of Wheelchairs

    Perhaps one of the most annoying plot devices that comes up in bad sitcoms and most teen drama shows is the “You Think You Have It So Tough” story. In this story one of the central character’s quirks or disabilities – usually something like blindness or being in a wheelchair – is “simulated” by the other lead characters, who end the experience with a renewed respect for the disabled character and a deeper understanding of the adversity that said character has endured.

    The first season of ABC’s Fox’s Glee is going to have a story like this. I know this because I’m an extra in that particular episode. A bunch of the characters wind up being told by a teacher that they have to spend the whole day in wheelchairs to get a better understanding of just how rough the one character who is actually in a wheelchair has it. One of the scenes we filmed involved one of the able-bodied characters rolling down the corridor in his loaner wheelchair for the first time, getting his head pushed, prodded, poked, whacked, wholloped and banged by the various other students who were apparently totally oblivious to the fact that the fucking High School Linebacker (or whoever) is now in a fucking wheelchair.

    Those sort of stories bug me for a number of reasons. Firstly, it’s been done to death. It’s the sort of story that writes itself because the writer has invariably already seen it done somewhere else. That isn’t what makes it lazy writing, though. What makes it lazy writing is that it never deviates from the established formula. Nothing changes. Nobody has ever done anything interesting with the concept. I can’t think of a writer other than Joss Whedon who might decide, for example, to have a Horrible Accident occur during the One In A Wheelchair that actually leaves one of the other principle characters permanently in a wheelchair for some reason.

    Secondly, the characters don’t learn anything. At all. As in the comic above, they can get out of their chairs at the end of the day. Wheely McWheelerson, the Only Disabled Kid In School, can’t.

    I forget how I was going to end this rant, so I’m going to stop typing now.

  • James Moran is not your Bitch

    From Torchwood writer James Moran’s blog, concerning some of the angry, bitter feedback he’s had from a small group of “fans” about certain decisions they made during the story plotting process:

    So here’s the deal: I’m a professional writer. That’s my job. I write what I write, for whatever the project might be. I have the utmost respect for you, and honestly want you to like my work, but I can’t let that affect my story decisions. Everybody wants different things from a story, but this is not a democracy, you do not get to vote. You are free to say what you think of my work, even if you hate it, I honestly don’t mind. But the ONLY person I need to please is myself, and the ONLY thing I need to serve is the story. Not you. I will do my work to the very best of my ability, in an attempt to give you the best show, the best movie, the best story, the best entertainment I possibly can. Even if that means that sometimes, I’ll do things you won’t like. I won’t debate it. Either you go along with it, or you don’t. None of it is done to hurt you, or to force some agenda down your throat, or anything else. It’s all in service of the story.

    I have to say, I agree with him entirely. Read the entire post here.

  • Technology Crisis

    BEN sits at his computer, ready to work.

    BEN

    Okay iTunes, give me something AWESOME to get me PUMPED for work.

    ITUNES

    Here, listen to Jonathan Coulton’s “When You Go”, followed immediately by “I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You” by Colin Hay.

    BEN

    (Gently sobbing)

    You bastard.