Pudsey, Paul Rose and Writing A Dud (A Great Piece on Failure)

So, to help break up the recent run of beefy articles on dos and do-not dos, figured I'd signal boost one of my all time favourite musings on screenwriting: childrens TV and games journalism veteran Paul Rose, recounts his experience of the writing of the critically reviled X-Factor tie-in, Pudsey The Dog: The Movie.

https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/panel-4-both-sides-of-the-fence

Posts like this help illuminate the flip side to screenwriting: it's all well and dandy talking about success and awards and influence, but when you write a P.O.S, what? It's a sad reality of the business and something you have to be willing to face if you're serious about screenwriting or just any creative endeavour period. Nobody sets out to make something bad on purpose: you just get snake eyes sometimes.

Rose isn't excessively bitter or childish about the whole business: he accepts it didn't work and discusses it with maturity and even a little humour. He discusses how his vision was not the one that ended up on screen: he saw something more old school and wholesome, squarely for the young 'uns. He makes no pretense: he knew this was a silly project, but he tried to find the nuggets within that to really motivate him to write.

That too is an oft-underexplored facet of creativity: finding the drive to plough through on work that didn't come from your imagination. How do you adapt to someone else's idea and chaarcters and make them not only your own, but honour what made said thing special? Granted, that's a bit much in relation to Pudsey, but the basic idea stands.