Just know you're less important than the catering truck

(or how to survive on set if your book becomes a film)

(Me and Sam Claflin, last day of filming, Paris 2015)

I’ll write about the adaptation and writing process – how to turn your book into a script - another time. But I thought I’d share a little about the process of being a writer on the film set of your own work.

If you have been lucky enough to publish a reasonably successful book, the likelihood is that someone, at some point, will ask to option it. The first time this happens is mind blowing. You will tell everyone you know, post “Something really exciting is happening but I can’t talk about it yet!” type updates on social media, and scour Net-A-Porter for your red carpet outfit. At some point you will meet a producer called Zac in a hotel in Soho who will tell you that there are exciting people almost attached, and that they’re aiming to shoot in Spring.

You will never hear from him again.

As the years pass, you may have more books optioned. You will learn to look on them as lottery tickets, with odds to match. Some will be renewed, but most won’t. You will come to regard option money as a nice weekend away or a family holiday.  Or maybe a puncture repair.

And then, one day, if you’re exceptionally lucky, it happens. The thing gets greenlit. In my case the full Hollywood experience – being flown to Burbank, meeting with studio executives, (surreptitiously taking pictures of the Oscars in reception), being ferried in an Uber Black before I knew what an Uber Black was (I was painfully excited that there was free water and a copy of the Hollywood reporter in the back). I think the meeting actually ended with the words: “Jojo! Let’s go make a movie!”

I spoke at length to the producer (not called Zac) who said: We wondered if you would like to write the screenplay. And I laughed because high in the news at the time was a story about a bestselling writer and a director on a very high profile adaptation repeatedly coming to blows (cough - Fifty Shades - cough). I thought that having the author around would be your worst nightmare, I said. No no, she said. We feel that the authentic tone and voice of this is key and having you write it would be the best way to retain that.

Later I discovered that as scriptwriting is unionised in America it also meant that I was really, really cheap. (The next writers to be brought onto the project cost more than ten times what I was paid.)

So I spent eighteen months working on the script, and had it taken away and returned to me several times (this is common). And then I worked alongside the director, who came from theatre and liked to work alongside writers. So unusually by the time shooting commenced, I ended up on set every day, rewriting as we went along. And it was a good experience, so much so that I’ve gone on to adapt other works, not all my own, and in fact worked with that same director on another project and count her as one of my closest friends.

But the ONLY reason all this happened is because a very nice, very successful  writer director friend of mine gave me a list of writer-on-set rules to follow beforehand. And these stopped me making so many mistakes that I would otherwise have made, that I thought I’d share them with you.

One: A film set, like Camelot, is a place of distinct hierarchies, not all of them visible to the naked eye. The first thing to understand is that, while in TV the writer may be king, in film you are basically the bottom rung of the ladder. You are about as important as the catering truck.  Actually, who am I kidding? You are a lot less important than the catering truck.

There is very little glamour in being a writer on a set. You may be regarded with suspicion by producers and studio executives. You will probably not have a car, or a trailer, and may not appear on the call sheet. You will, if you are lucky, get to work at a fold up table, instead of some nearby steps. At that table will be the drivers and personal assistants. The upside to this is they are the ones who know what’s actually going on.

If you are really lucky – or very demanding - you will get a director’s chair with your name on it. If you do not steal that chair at the end of the shoot there is something wrong with you (mine lives in my hallway).

Two: nobody wants your opinion. Words, you can argue about. Performance, appearance - no. That’s the director’s job. And other people – wardrobe, dialogue coach, make up – are now the experts on your characters. Sometimes the urge to express your opinion will be so great that you will have to stab yourself in the thigh with a pin. Take your own pins. You may run out.

Three: Understand that everyone wants something from the director, all the time. The most useful thing you can do as a writer is sit and wait for them to come to you when they want a scene tweaking, or some new dialogue. Someone recently described a director’s job to me as being a piece of damp bread in a pond full of birds. Do not be that duck.

(Emilia Clark and director Thea Sharrock on the last day of filming, Paris)

Four: Everyone on a film set has had less sleep than you. I am a working mum of three and was living basically two hours’ drive from anywhere and got up at 4.45am every morning to make it onto set by 7. I once mentioned to Janet McTeer how tired I was. Oh I know, she replied. I just got off the plane from New York. She’d had two hours’ sleep. She promptly hit every choreographed mark and delivered every line like an Oscar winner. And looked fabulous while doing it. And I never talked about being tired again.

Five:  Everyone on a film set is obsessed with food. During a three month shoot the actors, who exist on rice cakes, flavoured water and fear, will shrink. Everyone else will put on a stone. On any given day you will be asked fewer questions about structure and character arcs than you will about whether you had the sponge pudding at lunchtime.

Six:  A film in production is a juggernaut. There are hundreds of people all relying on it staying on track. This means you may be asked to write at any time of the day or night. I have delivered pages in the laybys of motorways (thank goodness for mobile hotspots), on racecourses, in my bed in the small hours.  You cannot wait for the muse. She is in Make-Up.

Seven. Do not speak to the actors. Especially if they tell you that they feel it would work so much better if their character was more active, had more lines, was a little more sympathetic. Nod, smile and refer them straight back to the director. Afterwards, while promoting the movie, you will of course talk endlessly about how much you loved working with them. (I’m joking. I did. Plus they always smell really good?)

Eight: If you want to be popular, do your job with as little ego as possible. If you want to be really popular, order ten boxes of Krispy Kremes to be delivered on set on a Friday afternoon. I once worked alongside Danny De Vito who did just this and I have never met a more adored human (to be fair, he would be adored without the doughnuts.).

Nine - Like Vegas, what happens on a film set, stays on a film set. I refer you back to the assistants and drivers, who know everything. Yes, even that.

Ten. At the end of all this, if you haven’t disgraced yourself on the previous counts, you may be invited to take part in the promotional tour, where, as with childbirth, you will be expected to forget everything grisly that happened on the film set and just focus on your gorgeous, Technicolor baby.

It will, of course, have been the greatest experience of your working life. The characters are just how you imagined them. You are delighted with the result. If you see a writer deviating even 5 per cent from this speech you will know that it was creative Armageddon.

Understand that promoting the movie will involve being interviewed beside actors twenty years younger and infinitely better looking than you. Beside them you will look like the Pillsbury Doughboy. This – and regretting all the sponge pudding - is as much your job as talking about the writing.

But the film is out! Hooray! You made it! My advice now is to stay off social media and immediately bury yourself in your next project before anyone can give you their opinion on why you were wrong to leave their favourite bit out. Also: know that every film is now accompanied by a social media controversy. Sometimes, for fun, I like to go back through recent releases and work out what each one was (producers of It Ends With Us, my thoughts are with you).

I’m joking of course. Mostly. But it is, as most writers who have made the crossover will tell you, the most fun you can have in your working life. For those of us who spend years working on our own in darkened rooms, the chance to share the creative process, to joke and drink coffee and be part of a huge and talented team is intoxicating.  I will never forget the first day I walked onto a set and saw a man who had previously existed only in my head striding across a street in front of me. I thought I was going to explode with excitement. I’ve been lucky enough to work with people whose creative vision was similar enough to mine that I felt good about the process.

Ultimately, being part of the adaptation changed the way I write books. It sold me a lot more books, and it’s given me the chance to feel like I’m still learning in what has become a parallel career. Most importantly, it’s made me a lot of new friends. And I’ve eaten some excellent puddings.