JACK THORNE

The celebrated scriptwriter tells you how to do it.

Jack Thorne is one of the most in-demand screenwriters across stage, TV and film, having penned the likes of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, The Virtues and His Dark Materials. Now, with two new films – Radioactive and The Secret Garden – hitting cinemas, the award-winning scribe shares his writing secrets with Total Film.

Jack Thorne is a writer whose name you see everywhere. He exploded into the public consciousness with Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, the Tony Award-winning two-part Wizarding World stageplay that launched in 2016 and is still going strong. Prior to that, Thorne had written Skins, This Is England and The Fades on the small screen, movie How I Live Now and a number of plays. Since, he’s tapped out scripts for movies Wonder and The Aeronauts, and TV fantasy epic His Dark Materials. He’s also writing Damien Chazelle’s Netflix series The Eddy, and Millie Bobby Brown’s Sherlock’s-sister adventure, Enola Holmes.

Thorne is extremely self-deprecating when it comes to his current workload. “I just got very, very lucky recently with stuff,” he tells Total Film. “And it won’t ever happen again. I’m just trying to enjoy it while it lasts, you know?” He has two films hitting cinemas imminently – Marie Curie biopic Radioactive and classic kids’ story adaptation The Secret Garden – but claims he’s “not really” that busy. “Lots of things suddenly happened at once. I mean, I wrote Radioactive eight years ago or something. And then it took a long time to come around. Things happen in weird clumps where nothing happens for a long time, and you’re just sat there hoping.”

If you want to know how he does it, and to learn from the best, here Thorne tells Total Film about his process, and how you go about writing a script… “There’s times when it feels like a chore, but I try to sit in front of a computer excited every day.”

ESTABLISHING SHOTS

“I did a degree in politics, so that’s useful for nothing. I was acting quite a lot, which helped, and I got a lot of opportunities to write plays which got put on by students. And making stuff is obviously the best training for anything.

“I did the Royal Court Young Writers Programme and the Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab. I did every free playwriting programme there was. I looked into going to film school, but I didn’t have the money for it.

“One of the best bits of value I got out of doing those schemes is fellow students. The people I learned so much from were the people who were in the same situation as me. There was a particular writer called Laura Wade, who’s a very successful playwright: she was one of the best peers that I ever had. Getting people’s time is the best thing you can get.

“I would say that the most important thing you can do before you do anything, is write. People who go on courses that haven’t written a script before, I think are a bit crazy, really, spending their money doing it. Because you [should] write a script, and then go on a course, and then rewrite your script.”

BACKGROUND READING

“Both the William Goldman books [Adventures In The Screen Trade, Which Lie Did I Tell?/] are just amazing. And also, his script books, Four

BACKGROUND READING

“Both the William Goldman books [Adventures In The Screen Trade, Which Lie Did I Tell?] are just amazing. And also, his script books, Four Screenplays and Five Screenplays, that have essays at the beginning of each one – I love those. I collect TV script books. So I’ve got lots and lots of those, everything from Buffy to Rising Damp to Freaks And Geeks to Dinnerladies. That’s really useful, looking at those, and looking at screenplays: Tarantino, Nicolas Roeg, Scorsese, Christopher Hampton. And On Film-making by Alexander Mackendrick. I love that book.

“I read everything I could get hold of… how the industry works, and how different people play different games with scripts.

“I was just reading Craig Mazin’s Chernobyl scripts. He put them online, and they’re really, really worth a read. You get a huge amount from watching it on screen, but there’s a particular way he writes stage direction that’s rather beautiful. The great writers, the way they set out their scripts, are always fascinating.”

DRAFT DODGING

“I’m very much [in favour of] writing and writing and writing and writing – and then destroying. And then writing and writing and writing. I write a lot of stuff. Overwriting, I think, is a good thing to do.

“The number of drafts completely varies. I did 46 drafts of Episode 1 of His Dark Materials. That was a lot. I generally don’t do that much. And there has been stuff where I’ve written two drafsf drafts, and it’s been right.

“I always have to have two things on the go. I’ve always done that since when no one cared what I was writing. When you’re writing something, and you go, ‘This is terrible,’ there’s a real joy in being able to swap to another script, and to go, ‘Phew, I can still do it.’ When I was doing Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, I was also working on a TV show called National Treasure. National Treasure was about historic sex offences. Harry Potter was about Harry Potter. It was very useful to be able to change swap between the two, and it actually helped both, I think, a lot.”

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

“I think Final Draft [screenwriting programme] is really useful, because it helps you a lot with what the script should look like. It’s a good investment, Final Draft, but it’s a frustrating software. It’s not perfect. But I find it hard to write in another way now.

“I write a lot in my notebook at the same time. The mornings when my wife is taking my son to school instead of me – we take it in turns – I try to stay in bed and write in bed in my notebook, because it keeps me away from my computer and all the distractions of the computer and everything else. So you’ve got a fresh head on, and you’re doing fresh work, on a fresh page, without any previous writing to distract you. I find that very helpful.

“And Freedom – the internet program that cuts off your internet. I try to spend at least six or seven hours a day on Freedom, without the internet on.”

ADAPT OR TRY

“You just try to know the books as well as you possibly can [when writing an adaptation]. And always have them close to the first draft, and then, before you show it to anyone, do another draft that’s just about you. And then look at it again. Look at the book again. Do another draft. And then it’s ready to hand in.

“There’s bits of both I like, about writing originally and then writing an adaptation. With The Secret Garden,

I knew I had a door in as soon as I had a stray dog. I knew the period I wanted to go for. “The thing that most attracted me about the story was the fact that Mary was so unlikeable and so wonderfully difficult and spiky. And by the end of it, hopefully people will see a character that’s transformed. I just thought it was such a bold and brilliant piece of writing in the book.

“And then it was like, ‘OK, but I’ve got this girl, and I need something that gives her an opportunity to show a different spirit within her.’ And then it was like, ‘OK, what about a stray dog?’ And because there were so many stray dogs, post-war, it was like, ‘OK!’ Then it all went from there. It’s looking for that little way in. “And then with Radioactive, my main thing was… the graphic novel is so mad, the way she juxtaposes stuff. It was going, ‘How do I just try to get Lauren Redniss’ vision for the world inside the screenplay?’ Things changed through the filming and everything else. But that was the aim. She did this great juxtaposition of the history of radioactivity alongside the history of Marie Curie. And I thought that was beautiful. So I was just trying to tell it as close to what Lauren Redniss had written as

I could.

“You only do an adaptation because you’re in love with the book. You want to capture the author’s spirit.”

AGENT OF CHANGE

“You can do lots without an agent. I’ve got three agents, and I love them all. They’re brilliant. But some of the best advice I ever got was from the writer Dennis Kelly.

He most famously wrote Utopia and Matilda [The Musical].

Right at the beginning, when I first got an agent, he said, ‘Now don’t expect them to get you anything for the first 18 months.’

“The idea that an agent exists to get you work is slightly crazy. An agent sits beside you and helps you, but you’re the one getting the work. You’re getting work through making stuff.

“And you won’t get an agent before you’re getting into the situation where you’ve got some other contacts in the industry. I think too much emphasis is put on getting an agent. They’re brilliant, and they’re really, really helpful.

The people I’m with are amazing. But it’s my job to get the work, and it’s their job to tell me what work I should take.”

PITCH PERFECT IMPERFECT

“I still pitch. Pitching is horrible. It often feels like a massive waste of time. I went through one just before Christmas for a project which was a book that I was really passionate about. I didn’t get it. I already knew how I wanted to write the film. I spent all this time preparing the pitch, and writing the film would have taken probably [less time].

“So I’ve got this film living in my head that I didn’t get to write. You’ve just got to be sanguine about it and think, ‘I probably learned something from the process of thinking about that film that will help me on other projects.’

And that was with people I knew very well, that I was pitching that with. “[When pitching], just tell the story of the film. It depends on who you’re doing it to. I have written entire scripts for myself, where I literally was just reading it out, because the people I was talking to were so scary that

I couldn’t think of doing it any other way. I’ll have four or five pages of notes in my book that contain the really important things I want to say. And I try to tell it in my own crazy, nervous, babbling way – and rely on the fact that that’s the best way to show your passion for the story.”

SENSE OF AN ENDING

“I try to avoid outlines as much as possible.

[Screenwriter, playwright and author] Ronald Harwood said, ‘I want to be excited by what the ending is.’ And I think I agree with that. But you’ve always got a sense of what the ending should be. Do you know what I mean? There’s a real joy in just going and seeing.

“I always write [the first draft] really, really hopeful that it’s going to be the one. And then the savage disappointment of my own mediocrity slaps me in the face [laughs].

And I think that’s the arrogant thing. It’s that hunger.

When you watch a film like Parasite, and you go, ‘That’s bewildering how that’s structured. That’s bewildering and it’s beautiful. I haven’t got the slightest hope of being that good.’

“And then you sit down in front of your computer, and you go, ‘But maybe this time, I can be that good.’ And you write it. And you go, ‘Oh, no, sorry, I’m not as good as him.’ It’s that hunger to be special that keeps you going as a screenwriter.”

RADIOACTIVE OPENS 20 MARCH. THE SECRET GARDEN OPENS 10 APRIL.

‘I always write the first draft hopeful that it’s going to be the one. But then the the one. And then the savage disappointment of my own mediocrity slaps me in the face.’