Paul Abbott Face to Face with Kate Rowland

The Literature Festival and BBC's writersroom teamed up to present the multi-talented Paul Abbott in conversation with Kate Rowland, the BBC’s Creative Director New Writing. Paul has a unique ability to connect with an audience and tell stories we can all relate to. The success of his work demonstrates the continued appetite for original 'authored' drama in British Television. This insight into Paul’s work was followed by the chance to put your questions to him in a rare Q&A session. Paul Abbott is one of British Television’s leading writing talents. His multi-award winning work includes Shameless, Clocking Off, Linda Green, State of Play and Cracker. Paul has also been pioneering in bringing numerous other talented writers onto our screens. A transcript of part of the interview is below...

What made you start writing?

Well the truth is, from about the age of five, I always wanted to be a doctor. I didn't plan to be a writer, I didn't want to be a writer and it was the furthest, most remote, most embarrassing career option that anyone from my background could pick. I wanted to be a doctor, I had an obsession with doing cataracts in Africa and I set my sights on that without any realistic appraisal that my qualifications would never get me there. The first my family knew about my writing was when they saw a picture of me in the paper with a trophy and a cheque. Of course they blanked the trophy and said 'where you going to get that cashed?' It was a really weird epiphany. I was fifteen and it all kind of happened behind my back, partly I think because we were a big turbulent family and I was way down at the bottom, being in the youngest two. I chose to write as a means of not being contradicted. If I wrote things down on paper, I could say things the way I wanted to. It became a real powerful thing to be able to express myself carefully. I had to, it wasn't a choice.

At what point whould you show someone else your work?

I think now I've learnt not to do the first draft on paper, I do the first draft in my head and spin it round. The minute you put something out there that might not be ready, somebody else might like it. You've got to be really careful, to make sure that's the best you can give, the best you can despatch at that point in your life and you can't do that the day after you have delivered it. You've got to read it. It's the best thing you can do. Lock it away and give someone else the key so you can't read it for a week, because when you read it in a week's time you'll deliver it to the people who are paying for it three times better. A big problem with new writing is that you are so pleased to have finished a script that you send it out. The minute you put it out, you're automatically changing the grammar of the way that people speak to you because you could have improved it.

You worked on Coronation Street for quite a while. What did that teach you?

Well, it teaches you a lot. But, it does not teach you to write well. Your voice is minimised to a few millimetres, between one episode of Coronation Street to the next, you're supposed to export a DNA that's yours and in a soap you have to belong to a lot of people and I think that's fine, because you earn money for that. All writers want to learn how to make money, becoming a professional writer is about making money. Except, that is the most toxic principle of it, because you earn money and whilst I was working on Coronation Street I would say 'oh no the car's broken down, I'll do another episode and then I can afford to buy another car'. No script should be done for that reason. Soaps are allowing that to happen, because their frequency is so minute and that doesn't make it corrupting, it's just if you are not attending to your own work at the same time you are doing that to yourself. I remember realising that I was going down the wrong avenue and I started writing radio plays again and stage plays for the first time and this scared me shitless.

What would you say to writers starting out?

Do ten times more than you think you ought to. It's not like any other job when you learn in incremental stages, there are no boxes to tick. You're sharpening your own voice and to sharpen your own voice, you've got to see it coming back. Anything you write, a week later, if you think its good that's crap! Because a week later you are a different person, you will have slept on what you have written and when it comes back you read it again, you're meant to be embarrassed about it and this is where most writers stop writing, but if you don't realise it's shit now, what have you learnt in a week? Re-writing makes you write better.