Screenwriter: Jack Thorne

Jack Thorne.

Jack Thorne is a screenwriter, known most notably for This is England and Skins, but also stage plays such as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Let The Right One In. [1]

His work tends to be dark or particularly stylistic. You can see a similarity between a lot of his works, in the way characters relationships are very realistic. He seems to know his characters like they are his friends and family, and write them in a way that makes them particularly relatable and believable to the viewer.

In Skins, all of the characters have a friendship that is unique to them. None of them will share the same kind of connection. This can also be said for This is England. From what I've seen in This is England '86, this sense of unique friendships continues. Every character is different to the last, and they seem to be known in so much detail that you could guess things about them that aren't even shown. He represents real people and real situations, albeit in a slightly more dramatised way, but not so much that the viewer couldn't liken every character to at least 1 person in their day-to-day life. This is something I think is particularly hard to find in TV. Characters seem to be idolised versions of us as viewers. Teen dramas are based around glossy rich kids with adult problems, but Thorne has acknowledged that teens are teens, and that problems are viewed and dealt with in a different way at a younger age. But he also knows how to write older characters too, displayed in This is England.

Thorne began as a stage writer (much like Chris Chibnall) and has said for an article in The Guardian- "My first 20 plays are all dire." [2] This shows that he went through the 'trial and error' to get to where he is now. This perseverance he had lead him much further than when he started out. He said he had to learn to write about himself but not so critically, which is perhaps why he knows his characters so well. He also spends most of his time writing- 14 hours a day, 7 days a week to be exact [3], showing that his determination with writing is beyond all others and has been since he began.

how it affected my work

Jack Thorne has shown what a difference knowing your characters can make. If you don't know who you are writing about, then your viewer won't know your characters either, and this is where their attention will begin to lack, they will lose touch with the story because they won't know the person who's story is being told. If you don't know or can guess someone's background story then you won't have interest in their future.

He shows that perseverance is important and it's good to be critical of yourself, but not too critical. Instill emotion behind the words you write, make them personal to you, which will make it personal to the viewer as well.

Bibliography

[1]Harry Potter and the Cursed Child London. (2017). Jack Thorne | Creative Team | Harry Potter and the Cursed Child London. [online] Available at: https://www.harrypottertheplay.com/uk/creative/jack-thorne/ [Accessed 30 Nov. 2017].

[2]Thorne, J. (2017). Jack Thorne: my first 20 plays are all dire. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/dec/02/jack-thorne-playwright-on-writing [Accessed 30 Nov. 2017].

[3]Bbc.co.uk. (2017). BBC - Jack Thorne - Writers Room. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/writers-lab/be-inspired/jack-thorne [Accessed 30 Nov. 2017].