So this is Burns Night in Scotland then? I spent it sat on my own with a plate and fish and chips ... or a fish supper as it's known up here. Going to the chippy tonight was an education though, haggis suppers available (well they're always available to be fair) but I've never seen wee Jimmy fritters advertised before, complete with broon sauce.

Week 2 of the script writing last Wednesday. Interesting stuff although I can't help feeling a tinge of stupidity having revealed last week that I thought I'd give script writing a go because people had always commented how good the dialogue in my books was. This week the tutor revealed that film scripts was nothing to do with dialogue and everything to do with what you saw, not what people said. So then I came home and continued reading my book containing a series of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock who had this to say about the end of the silent film era (before going on to talk about his first "talkie", Blackmail).

"The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema ... since all that was missing was natural sound, there was no need to go to the other extreme and completely abandon the technique of the pure motion picture, the way they did when sound came in.

In many of the films now being made there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema, we should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise. In writing a screenplay it's essential to separate clearly the dialogue from the visual elements and, whenever possible, to rely more on the visual then the dialogue."

So there you have it ... so much for my "brilliant" dialogue. Humph!

Oh, and to find out what I should have been doing instead of eating fish and chips on me tod ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burns_supper

I should probably also mention an amazing thing that happened over Christmas ... I got engaged, but that's not the amazing thing, the amazing thing how a new pair of glasses and haircut has transformed my fiancee into Mel Perkins (the gay one from Mel & Sue).

I also recorded 2 pages of notes during the build up to the engagement of things people did or said to (unbeknown to them) put spanners in the works of my plans. Good idea for a book. You have funny wedding stories so why not engagement ones? So if you have any, get in touch because I think we could be onto something.

A belated Happy New Year to one and all. The break went all too quickly ... and now it's back to earth with a bump. I've started the script writing course at Edinburgh Uni and the class appears to boast a wide spectrum of students. Enjoyed the first week although we've already been given homework to read up about Aristotle's Poetics. Might sound complicated but then I was already three quarters through a book on the subject before I started the course, so no drama (or as Aristotle might say, "tradegy")

I should explain that this picture has been added to the blog because I keep getting badgered to do so.

I have the pleasure of working with these people (in my normal day job) and they wanted to show their support by having their pictures taken with the books.

In reality, whilst Iain has read the first 2, Laurette has been on about page 13 of Digging Deeper since last November which is not quite the advert for the "real page turner" I'd hoped, but there you have it.