Writing Animation - by Ciaran Murtagh

Over the past few weeks I've been asked to give some hints and tips on writing animation so I thought I'd put a few thoughts down here for anyone who might be interested.

As ever with these things, they're not hard and fast rules, nor a guarantee of success, but they're certainly things I wish I'd known before falling headlong into the industry. 

1) Watch lots of animation. Lots. 

Everyone knows that the way to be a good writer is to read, the same goes for animation - watch. Watch as much animation as you can, particularly for the age group you would like to write for. 

There are HUGE differences in tone, subject matter and style in animation and it's good to get a feel for what's out there before you start trying to do it yourself. 

Trawl through the BBC player, have a look at the furthest reaches of Netflix and Disney Plus, and see what's on CITV. They all broadcast cartoons, but they're all very different. Something like The Rubbish World of Dave Spud on CITV is very different from Dennis and Gnasher Unleashed on CBBC,  yet both are about British kids for predominantly British audiences. 

 

Channels have a house style and a house tone. They are keen to be distinct from each other and that is reflected in what they commission and how they are written. Have a look where you might fit best and work towards your natural home. Of course, over time you'll be able to bounce about, but in the first instance specialise. 

2) Age Range

Animation for kids, much like books, falls into age ranges. There are predominantly two - Preschool and Junior. So CBeebies, Disney Junior, Nick Junior, Milkshake are predominantly preschool, up to the age of about 6 give or take. Other channels such as CBBC, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network aim older. 

Within all that there are also lots of different styles from something like Hey Duggee to Sarah and Duck to Messy Goes to Okido to Paw Patrol all falling under preschool. Tone is all important. Once you've narrowed down where you think you might fit channel wise, have a look at the age group you prefer to write for and analyse the content the channel shows. 

Are you more didactic, something like Numberblocks for example, or are you more left field - something like Hey Duggee. 

3) Know the Rules

All animation is different but most have consistent rules. Episodes are usually 11 minutes long, sometimes they might be 22 minutes long but that's not so common. For younger audiences there is more flexibility in length with some being 5 or 8 minutes long. Do your research and make sure that when you come to write you are writing a story that is exactly the length of the animation - it can't be a few seconds longer or shorter, it has to be what it is. 

Make sure your stories are stand alone, most series still broadcast self contained episodes and they want them to be broadcast in any sequence. You don't need to have seen episode 12 to understand episode 13 or vice versa. Sometimes you might get the opportunity to pitch a double episode, but they'll tell you that before you pitch. 

With the onset of streaming services this is changing somewhat, particularly with animation for older children, and series arcs are becoming more common - but again, they'll tell you if that's the case and it is still the exception rather than the rule. 

2D animation is usually cheaper to produce and there can be greater flexibility in creating new characters or locations. However, in the first instance try and reuse what you know already exists -  it will make you very popular. 

3D animation is expensive and it is often harder to make new characters and locations. Bare that in mind when pitching stories. There will never be a cast of thousands and asking for a new character to be created is a big ask unless the story really needs it. 

Know how many episodes are in a season - usually 52, but sometimes 26 or 13. Animation is usually commissioned in batches of that number. 

Know what has gone before, you will need to avoid overlapping with ideas or stories that have been  used in previous seasons. One of the keys to being a successful animation writer is looking for the gaps in a series that haven't been plugged yet. What stories haven't they told with the characters and locations in play and can you come up with something imaginative and new that they haven't yet used. 

4) Tips for Success

Listen to your head writers / producers and ask them questions if you're unsure. Even if you manage to come up with a great story that no one else has told and utilises things you know exist in the story world, there may be a reason why it hasn't been told before that you don't know about.  

Different channels have different rules and regulations and wish lists for what they can and can't do. Your producers and head writers will know that and will try and guide you towards what's possible. They want you to have strong story ideas, but they also want you to listen to guidance, you can have the best story idea in the world but if they know the BBC will never show it they have to guide you towards a version of the story that they will. 

Be prolific. When pitching ideas have six or seven topline stories that you might tell. Pitch them all and you may get one or two away. Pitch lots of shorter ideas rather than spending a long time on one or two. Producers are looking for 52 episodes, if they receive a document with six ideas, they'll usually have to dismiss a couple for not being feasible, a couple for being ideas other writers are working on and what's left over is the sweet spot! You stand more chance this way. 

The first animation I was commissioned on, I pitched over 50 stories until I got one away - be tenacious, and be persistent and learn from your mistakes. 

Keep to deadlines. 

Be nice. 

That's your lot - if there's any questions pop them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer. Good luck. 

What is a universal story in 2019?

I am currently head writing a new cartoon series. The show will air in 2020 and will be broadcasting in every country in the world. Sounds great right? And in one way it is. It gives me a tremendous sense of satisfaction to sit in a shed in Croydon and know that the stories I am creating will be seen by millions of children in countries I will never visit. However, the flipside of this is that every story I and my team create has to be just as accessible to a child in London as it is to a child in Hanoi - and everywhere in between…. There’s the rub.

Now you might think a child is a child is a child. Certain stories will always appeal no matter where that child is from. And again, to a certain extent, you’d be right. What that doesn’t factor in is the restrictions different broadcasters put on what you can and can’t write about.

In the Middle East there’s no magic or witchcraft. You can’t have homosexual characters and only the most conservative mixed relationships can appear on the screen. There’s no pork products – so ham sandwiches are out – as are pizzas just in case they have pepperoni on them.

On the subject of food, the French broadcasters are on a healthy eating drive which means all food shown on screen needs to be healthy, so pizzas would be out anyway. So too would be any sweets or biscuits, pasta, noodles, meat that isn’t grilled and an ‘abundance of bread.’ But they’re fine with gay characters. Not that we could have them.

The British are keen to model good behaviour and are hot on imitable stuff that may lead to letters in the Daily Mail. So – and I kid you not – we have one particular story where some animals hijack a vehicle from some humans. That’s fine. But they have to wear seatbelts, drive on the road and use a designated slipway when driving into the sea. 

As a sidebar, if you’ve ever wondered why Dennis the Menace has become Dennis and Gnasher, look no further – we can’t have kids being menaces these days. This also makes a particular form of universal visual humour very difficult to get away –slapstick.  If you do have slapstick humour, no one can get hurt. So there’s definitely no slapping with sticks in slapstick.

The Chinese have some issues with other races, in particular the Japanese, so we can’t show sushi. Chalk that up with pizza. They are also conservative in what relationships can be shown on screen. They are however very keen on fireworks. Unfortunately all the other broadcasters hate them so they’re out too.

Maybe fairy tales would be a source of fun? You’d be right. But only for certain cultures. How can you be sure that the kids in Bangkok know about Goldilocks or Sleeping Beauty? And if they do, have Disney already done the definitive version? In which case you can’t touch it with a bargepole.

A good old Christmas Special should be hard to argue with. Unless your culture doesn’t celebrate Christmas of course. And if it does celebrate Christmas is there snow? And Christmas trees? Best not call it a Christmas special just to be sure. A case in point – my recent Danger Mouse Christmas Special has no references to Christmas at all.

So how do you create a story with all of these restrictions? More importantly how do you do it 52 times? The answer is, with great difficulty. I liken it to playing one of those buzzing wire games. If you can get to the end of the wire without anything buzzing, you’ve got yourself a story. Maybe. So long as it comes in on budget.

This is quite a modern phenomenon. We live in a global society. Previously, if a cartoon was going to be made for the UK, then the BBC would pay for it and they’d be the only broadcaster we would have to worry about. Fifteen years ago, the very idea of an American network being able to sell a cartoon and the ensuing merchandise to Saudi Arabia or China would have been unthinkable, now it’s all part of the business plan. Cartoons have become more expensive, to get them made you need global partners, that means those global partners have a say in what gets made and naturally they want to make sure their interests are served and represented.  

Where the TV world leads I am sure the world of books will follow. I already know that there is a lack of appetite for rhyming picture books – it makes them hard to translate. I was asked to tone down the girlfriend/boyfriend plot in a recent series of middle grade books so that it will sell to the Chinese market and on one memorable occasion I was asked to remove a reference to a sausage dog in case it offended the Middle East. I did point out that it wasn’t literally a dog made of sausages, but dachshund was our ultimate compromise.

Where does that leave us as creators? Is there still space for the stories we want to tell? Is there still space for region specific stories, or as publishers become multinationals are we obliged to create work for a multinational audience if we want them to buy it?

The stories I am creating are still fun. I am still proud of them. They still work. But increasingly they are stories no one can argue with. Perhaps that’s the true definition of a universal story in 2019.

What the world of TV can learn from the world of books - or maybe not.

This blog was supposed to be about what the TV world could learn from the world of books, but it’s morphed into something else really.

I started to think about that question, and the one thing that really sprung to mind was the idea of respecting the story. One thing the book world does really well is that it respects the author and it respects the story. And when I say ‘respects the author’ I mean it respects the unique talent that the author can bring to the table. There are other issues with regards to payment and communication that belong in another blog, but when it comes to creative choices made about my words I feel I am asked and listened to before a change is made.

The same cannot always be said of the world of TV. As a TV writer I am part of a much larger creative process. When I write a book the creative input is usually limited to three or four people – my editor, my agent, my illustrator and myself. When I write a TV episode all that changes.

If I’m not the head writer on the show then I need to get my idea past them – they may have suggestions. Then there’s the producer, the executive producer and the broadcasters (of which there may be at least four). On a recent show I counted up the email chain and there were twenty five people cc’d from one broadcaster alone, if there are four broadcasters you can multiply that by four!

They all have a say on my story. I have to do a pitch and outline and at least three drafts before my story is signed off and they’ve all had a say.

You’d think that story would be fairly locked by the end of all that, but you’d be wrong. I’m just the first part of the process. It then goes to the voice talent and voice director who may want to play around with the lines a little. After that is goes to a storyboard artist who turns my words into a visual form through a storyboard and then an animatic. They may need to chop and change to make the story fit the creative visual choices they would like to make.

More often animated shows are being driven by storyboard artists. Their creative input is vital but can also fundamentally change the way a story is told. The Amazing World of Gumball is at the vanguard of this. I co-wrote the episode this clip comes from, but as you can see from the visual, really, who has had the final creative say here? Not me! But I love what they’ve done!

Then we go to the animators and director who bring it all together.

It might be 18 months before I see the finished result of a story I started with my words. It’ll say ‘written by’ front and centre, but sometimes – not often, but enough to notice – it won’t be much like the thing I wrote and I won’t have been contacted once in all that time to see if I agree with the choices made, but my name is there reagrdless.

I get paid much more to write a TV episode than I do to write a book, however my creative input feels much less when it comes to story. It seems strange to be paid for expertise, but then not to be called upon throughout in order for the show to benefit from that expertise. I understand why – time is money, there’s a schedule to hit and a production company is also paying lots of other people very well to make their creative choices too.

When I get asked what I prefer to write – TV or books – I answer that they each give me different things.  I have much more creative control over my books, but my mortgage doesn’t get paid. I have much less creative control over the TV shows I write, but I’m paid well enough to be able to write the books. Eventually... 

So it’s not a bugbear, and it’s not really what the world of TV could learn from books. It’s more that it’s nice to be respected in a world of words and sometimes I take that for granted. 

Creative or Industry?

I work in the Creative Industry. It's an oxymoron really isn't it? There's nothing industrial about creativity - or is there?

I straddle the book and TV world with my writing and I often wonder if they could learn something from each other.

TV writing is definitely an industry. This week alone I've had a hand in editing or directly writing over 20 scripts on five shows. I've also written a bible for a new show and spent a day in a creative meeting with colleagues from Norway and Ireland punching up ideas for another new series.

When you're working at that rate to deadline, you'd think creativity is the first thing that goes out of the window. You'd be wrong. Actually, working to tight deadlines on shows with large budgets means you are often forced to come up with even more creative solutions to problems. There's no time for anything else. As illustrated by this frankly terrifying image:

If I'm working on episode 123 of Mr Bean for example, I know there have already been (excuse the pun) 122 good ideas that someone somewhere has already written. It's my job to come up with idea number 123.

Sometimes I'll be told that I can't have any new characters. Sometimes I'll be told he can't leave the house. Yet I know, whatever it is I get him to do it will need to be distinct from every other story told about that character already. That pushes your creativity. If I were writing a book I could have him do ANYTHING at zero cost, but in the world of TV, solutions need to be creative in a different way.  And that doesn't mean it's not successful, this one's been watched over 10 million times on YouTube alone:

It's unheard of to write 100 books about the same person in the same situation - where would you even begin - but in the world of TV it's not a success unless you do!

In TV, I don't have time to procrastinate and search for my muse, however, I do create story after story after story every single week.

The world of books could learn a lot from the TV world. We live in an 'on demand' society. Writing for children this is even more the case. Not only do they want something now, they want, and have come to expect a lot of it - every series of Peppa Pig at my finger tips now please!

What's worse, unlike in adult media, the audience ages out of things in the space of two years - or two months at the current rate of my 5 year old - so we don't have time for them to 'find' it.

However, in the world of books, something is bought, it might get published in 18 months, then depending on it's success they might publish another in the series, or maybe even commission two more to come out six months after that... By which point the audience who enjoyed the first book are gone and you're starting all over again.

I don't think creativity can be measured in volume, nor in sales, nor in success or financial reward. One of the reasons I enjoy writing books is because of the creative freedom it gives me that I don't have in the world of TV. It's like stretching different muscles.

However, it frustrates me that in a global media world, we as authors sit in an arcane little bubble of long lead in times and slow response times to demand from our audience.  There's a lot to be said for allowing creative people to be creative in whichever way they want. There's a lot to be said for industry too.

Next time I'll take a look at what the world of TV could learn from the world of books - let it never be said I'm not an equal opportunity offender!