Now That I Have Your Attention

Put your answer on Twitter with the hashtag #pigz (DON'T do it as a @reply). The first three to make me laugh out get codes to unlock the PC version of Left4Dead2. Also, we'll arrange for a time, convenient to us all, and play a campaign together. Sound good? Then off you jolly well go!

(Note, obviously, a lot of people will enter this game for the fun of it. I hope they'll pass on the code to someone who can use it. Also, try as many times as you like).

(UPDATE: Here are the first three I saw that made me laugh out loud.

"Someday, son, all of this will be yours." (via @starsturncold)

"Kid, it's hard enough trying to get a curly dongle in without you watching" (via @peregr1n)

"Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown" (via @moonjam)

Well done to all the winners!)

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How about that Chris Ware cover? It just kills me. It's so sad, so perfect.

A few years back, Ware's book 'Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth' won the Guardian First Book award and, presumably for that reason alone, it popped up on 'Late Review'.

Before I go further, I should tell you that 'Jimmy Corrigan' is a massive, and massively ambitious work. It's 380 pages and it doesn't give up all its secrets at once. It's too thick with ideas to finish comfortably in one sitting and it was a deserved winner of the Guardian award.

The book was treated appallingly. Mark Lawson had the nerve to start the discussion on whether the book could be considered literature. Tom Paulin ignored the question and said the book was 'ugly'. Miranda Sawyer danced around the subject and I couldn't understand why she was being so vague. I forget who else was on.

Anyway, some time later I met Miranda and complained about the segment. Miranda is a good egg and I knew she would be completely honest with me.

She looked embarrassed.
"So why were you so vague about it?" I asked her. "It's an astonishing book."
"Well," she replied. "I just didn't have time to really explore it. They gave it to us half an hour before we went on air."

(UPDATE: Thanks to @crgn, I now know that Miranda said straight out on the show that she hadn't read it. As I say, she's a good egg.)

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I don't tend to write about what writing software I use, because so little of it is any good. I write my scripts on Final Draft, which would be great were it not for the constant, pointless upgrades that break more things than they fix, but it's still the script formatting software I'm used to so that's all that can be really said about that. As for script structuring, Scrivener is sort of OK, but I find it a bit hard at entry-level and have never progressed to that wonderful moment when you start relying on it. But I've had such success with Supernotecard For Scriptwriting that I had to post something here. My hope is that they sell a million of them and start making improvements, because unlike Final Draft, Supernotecard could do with one or two more functions.

WHAT I LOVE
Supernotecard uses the incredibly grokabble system of cards and decks. I don't want to go into a big explanation of how it to works because I should be writing the show, so I'll just tell you the basics.
Start by creating idea cards...
Turn them into plot 'decks' if they start feeling like a story....
...copy related idea cards and paste them into plot decks...
...turn ideas in plot decks into scenes...
...copy and paste decks so that you can refine plot structure and always have a previous version in case you take a wrong turning somewhere

If that sounds like gobbledigook, forgive me... it's just my way of working. But the software is so easy to use that you should be able to develop your own system. All you need to know is this: Decks and Cards are the fucking coolest when you're getting a story together.

The split project function is also lovely and so easy to use.

WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE IN FUTURE UPGRADES
(Please, please!)
I'd like to turn off the 'factors' and 'categories' buttons. They'd probably be very useful on a film script, but working in half hour chunks, I don't need it.
I wish I could drag cards into decks without removing them from the original deck. In other words, I'd like a copy and paste effect whenever I move a card or deck. I'd like that to be the default. (It's easier for me to delete originals if I don't need them in a deck). (Pressing CTRL while dragging a card or deck achieves the copy and paste effect)
The Cloud version needs to be a lot less static, just a tad easier and more fun to use. I never go there, I hate it.
The whole thing could be a bit prettier. A better default font....The decks could look a bit more like decks to differentiate them at a glance from cards....the colours could be a bit more funky...it might be nice to play with the shapes of decks and cards a bit more...

So please, Mindola, get on Twitter and start a dialogue with your customers. I think you have an excellent product, one that could easily match the success of something like Final Draft. But at the moment it sort of feels like it's being neglected, and this is a huge shame when it could easily become an industry standard.

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(via @Pentadact) German initiative inviting gamers to hand over 'killer games' strangely unpopular http://bit.ly/liPuO

(via @miserybear:  http://bit.ly/11ozbc (very sweet. But why does he throw away the drawing? Why does he run away from the other bears?)

( via @TwitterBulletin) 5 useful Twitter secrets few people know about: http://j.mp/uDQHl

(via @Azrael1) Useful service for unfollowing people who aren't tweeting http://untweeps.com. radiohead

(via @trendhunter & @jeremygutsche)  Someone tweeted a complaint @pfchangs and HQ phones the restaurant and comped the meal while the tweeter was still there.

(Via @ColinPeters) All the things that Obama has rendered unamerican, by doing them. RT @doggo RT @patsymoore http://snipr.com/sfsi1

(via @dragonboysuede) Today I shot a man just to Shazam his screams.

(via @mattgway:  http://bit.ly/CtLK2 great little short film

(via @mediaguardian) Five to air Steven Seagal docusoap http://bit.ly/FbmfC (Yoink!)

(via @stankeye) http://www.americanartarchives.com/popp.htm (@MKupperman has probably seen most of these)

(Via @brokentv) From SOTCAA, Peep Show: the pilot script - http://is.gd/3ZjMx

(via @Cacophanus)  http://bit.ly/2fZ1zQ (Chet wrote to me to say that Gabe actually did write some of Left4Dead, so nyahh!)

(via @willshome) http://bit.ly/we4gO (Laurel and Hardy 'Tainted Love')

(Via @craigary)  #FollowFridayscreenwriter style: @scriptcollector @CreativeScreen @ScriptGirrl @UncompletedWork @johnaugust @BrianLynch

(via @stephenfry)  I think it was fair and right to sign this letter: http://twurl.nl/s71fxn

(via @TheLittleChef)  This is almost unbelievable. http://bit.ly/yiDIy

(via @Polstar)  swap you one beautiful thing for another: http://tinyurl.com/yboclm5

(via @gamesdog)  The origins of Tim and Eric http://bit.ly/FJHCj

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I met an Italian gentlemen the other day. He admitted to having downloaded 'The IT Crowd', so I tackled him to the ground and sat on him until the police arrived. Not really!

No, instead I patiently waited for him to finish while I secretly called the police on my mobile. He said "...I downloaded it and showed it to two or three friends. When I asked them if they wanted to watch it again and they told me no because they had already bought the DVDs."

In other words, because of one illegal downloader, three Italian people, who might otherwise never have heard of my show, all bought the DVD.

Now, I'm no Stephen Hawking, but let me see if I've got the maths right here... where I could have made no money, I made some money. Is that about it? Hurray! I could use some money! Conversely, "no money" is of very little value to me.

The annoying thing about a rule like #threestrikes is that it completely ignores the nature of the world most of us actually live in. I guess the view from the Rothschilds musn't be that good, because here on earth, we like to SHARE, and laws like #threestrikes are merely temporary, obnoxious bulwarks against an aspect of human nature that should be, if anything, encouraged. Of course, the flipside to a ravenous fan who acts as an unpaid publicist for something they love is someone who steals without giving anything back and yes, we need to talk about that too, but something like #threestrikes doesn't separate these two groups. That's just one of the many reasons why it's a bullshit proposal.

Needless to say, when the police arrived, I pointed them in the direction of Peter Mandelson, who was nearby, having dinner with a giant novelty cheque. They chased Mandelson but he got away. He's always one step ahead!

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I can't believe all the people who want to give me money at the moment!

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