Today's post - more news on my Doctor Who script.

I've been tweaking for a while, and I'm basically writing a celebrity historical - yaaaaa - featuring the Renaissance bookhunter Poggius, one of my favourite people in the world, time-travelling to the Library of Alexandria.

I've been advancing my writing by asking "What Would X Do", and it's very successful. What would Robert Holmes do? Give the extras some personality and witty dialogue! What would Terry Nation do? "I noticed you have some minor characters still living...?" I don't always take their suggestions, but it's sometimes helpful.

What the new series would do is pick a celeb to play Poggius - so this is where you come in, dear readers. Nominate me a British male thesp who hasn't been in the show for at least five years to take the role. He has to be mature, possibly crusty, but enthusiastic. I'm tossing up John Hurt and Charles Dance, both of whom have so-far survived casting. Get nominating!

I worry, with writing a tale all about missing novels, I'm packing it too full of my own neuroses - but then, you can't write in a vacuum, every portrait is ultimately painted of the artist, not the sitter, and the quickest way to create art others can care about is starting with something I care about.

Additionally, I came up with new theory of writing based on the LNW bargaining principle. To be a strong bargainer, you need to decide ahead of time:

• What you would LIKE the outcome to be (or you think you would like...)
  
• What you actually NEED the outcome to be (i.e. what you'd actually like)
  
• what your WALK away point is
  

Nice idea. And then I thought, to establish a strong character every single story the author should be aware of what the LNW is. Strong drama is created when:

• its in conflict with others
• the character thinks they know what their LNW is, but actually doesn't.
• the character ignores their LNW or is pushed past it
  

e.t.c. this all came to me in a flash of blinding, Terry-Nation-related flash of genius, and I don't think I'm ever going to have a problem with plot writing ever again. The Blake's 7 crew all have different LWN, and this is a major feature of the story, and leads to all that juicy character development and arguing. So, the Doctor:

• like to battle injustice
• he needs companionship
• he's got a pretty good walk away policy - no interfering with fixed points in the timeline, "no second chances", no guns, never cruel, never cowardly.

The Doctor is in his comfort zone, most of the time. You'll note that everything madly goes to pot when his needs aren't met, and he doesn't pay attention to his walk away point - Waters of Mars, I am looking at you. And I now want to give Avon a massive hug, and rescue him, because his LNW has been so thoroughly ignored for 40 episodes or so. My analysis is:

• L: to be independant, rich, and untouchable. Well, that's not happening...
  
• N: What he actually wants is very hard to assess, as his motivations are inscrutable even to him. But whether it's some sort of emotional fufilment (friends? true love?), thrill seeking and derring do, or to simply be Blake, it really isn't happening.
• W: Avon's self-stated walk away point is any point at which he is involved in something stupid and dangerous. Well now...
  

But at least, unlike some people, he has a walk away point...

I am a genius. This theory is the best ever. Now if only I could work out what the Rani wants...