And on ABC3…

The “kids’ channel” has some of the best young adult stuff around, some of it engaging some of our most creative talents.

Example 1: Gabrielle Lord and Conspiracy 365.

When this project was first pitched to me by Andrew Berkhut at Scholastic publishing, I couldn’t have known what a huge undertaking it would turn out to be. Sure, writing 12 books would be a big job, I realised that, but they were only 35,000—40,000 words each. I was used to first drafts of a 130,000 words. Somehow, that thought – ‘they’re only 35 thousand words– assumed more importance than it should have.

My first job was to find a story that was big enough, and a hero and characters compelling enough, to sustain the reader’s interest over a story arc as huge as this one.

I knew there would have to be an amazing secret at the heart of the story, something ticking away, something counting down to a thrilling climax. Then there was the problem of the time span to overcome. All good thrillers have their action happening over a number of days at best, weeks at worst. To have a thriller running over a year seemed a bit like trying to put some tension into a mile long race with snails instead of horses. Somehow, I had to find ways of creating tension and suspense over a whole year.

One of the great things about writing is that after 30 years in the game, this writer has learned to trust the process. And it is a process – with a large unconscious component in which seemingly unrelated and unconnected strands, ideas and characters eventually start to mesh, arising as a series of ‘Ah-ha!’ moments, which often solve seemingly intractable plotting problems. While the huge unconscious part of mind is on a global search reaching back 3 million years to when the first hominids started grunting at each other, drawing on personal experience and race memory covering aeons, conscious mind, too, is hard at work organising facts, actions, possible plot twists, reversals, characters, settings and moods…

Harrison Gilbertson plays Callum Ormond in Conspiracy 365

Example 2: Tony Ayres and Nowhere Boys

Chinese-born Tony Ayres (b.1961) has had an amazing career. Just read the filmography!

Dougie Baldwin, star of The Nowhere Boys

The final episode was shown last week.

Example 3: You’re Skitting Me is one of the funniest shows around – uneven, of course, as sketch comedy often is, but really lively and often quite original. Great potential. I love Internet Girl.