Aaron Price: Thoughts from the Writing Desk

This month, writer Aaron Price shares some thoughts on the creative process, and his work on Skerratt Media's upcoming animated series The Trimmings...

Hi, readers! I’m Aaron and I’m a freelance writer. I’m also friends with Skerratt Media Captain, Alex. Last year, I had a great time co-writing some of the episodes for CITV’s Sooty Show with Alex. So when he asked me to write some episodes for Skerratt Media’s latest project, I couldn’t refuse!

The opening shot from one of Aaron's episodes

For the past three months, I have been busy thinking up ideas and drafting scripts for The Trimmings. If you haven’t seen Alex’s previous blogs, The Trimmings is a ‘lost’ children’s animation from the late 1950s. The animation revolves around three friends (a bottle, mug and a wooden spoon!) going on bizarre adventures! And dedicated TV fans are on the hunt to find these missing episodes, (all fictitious of course!)

Let me tell you how my writing normally works. It’s similar to school revision. I take my laptop and a drink up to my desk in the early evening, ready to make a start on it. I then decide to have a quick look on Facebook for two minutes. It’s then 2am and I realise I still haven’t done what I was meant to start seven hours ago! But this didn’t happen on this project, I was really excited for it and when I had one idea, I couldn’t wait to finish it so I could move on to the next one!

When I said to Alex that I was interested, he sent me the completed video of the first episode and the script to the second episode which was in development and I loved both of them and felt that I understood the characters well enough to make a start right away. I suggested some episode ideas to him which we both liked and I went off and drafted my first script (all before 2am!) and that’s how it’s worked for the rest of the episodes I wrote. Making my work a total of 3 x 5 minute episodes! Each episode has had a few drafts with suggestions added in by myself and Alex. Alex asked me to make the stories as bizarre as possible, and I think it’s worked! (A cheese shop in space, meeting a welsh octopus and Bottle as a princess says it all!)

So look out for Skerratt Media’s first ever animation series hitting the web very soon. Don’t forget to check out our website www.thetrimmings.co.uk and follow us on Twitter for the latest updates from Cardboard Land!