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Recovering from a grand day at Salute 2010 helping Messrs Graeme and Karl from Crooked Dice, and fellow plucky assistants, run participation tables for the Doctor Who Miniatures Game. Both scenarios went down a storm, and we were delighted when the DWMG won the Best Participation Game award at the show.

For younger gamers we were running Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Daleks, featuring Cybermen, Daleks, Preachers and Torchwood, inspired by the 10th Doctor episodes Army of Ghosts and Doomsday, and using Jelly Babies for luck points. For the matured gamer there was Classic Who with A Rig Too Far, pitting the 3rd Doctor, Jo Grant, UNIT and their Boffins against the Master and his Sea Devil allies, inspired of course by The Sea Devils, and most of them had some Jelly Babies too.

It was my first experience of Salute and it was a good one. Although the setting itself was very spit and sawdust compared to other events I’ve attended at ExCel, it was by far the most friendly and fun. Hours of preparation had been put in by the exhibitors to bring their games to life. The hall was filled with stunning demonstration and participation tables, covering thousands of years of history, alternate worlds, realms of fantasy and far flung sci-fi.

Just want to thank the Crooked Dice team, Graeme, Karl, Ross, Morgan, Tom, Paul, Hayden, Vicky and Matt H, our 10th Doctor impersonator; everyone who stopped by to play or watch; and the South London Warlords for a great day.

I’ve a childish love of Doctor Who and I don’t see that as a bad thing. I’ve grown up with the series on television and was saddened when the show ended in 1989, arguably when it was starting to turn around with episodes such as Ghost Light and The Curse of Fenric.

When Russell T Davies resurrected the show I was delighted. He orchestrated one of the most incredible comebacks in television history and I’m grateful for what he, the actors and crew have achieved through their hard work.

I’m also glad that they stopped when they did. Towards the end of the fourth season some of the stories didn’t sit well with me, they begun to feel self indulgent, swan songs that went on for far too long.

Change can be a good thing. I’m excited that the show runner mantle has been taken up by Steven Moffat, the writer behind some of my favourite episodes, The Girl in the Fireplace and Blink, and that Matt Smith and Karen Gillan will be crewing the Tardis.

On the Guardian website there is a great interview, Steven Moffat: The man with a monster of a job, that reassures me the show is in safe hands.

Moffat says he doesn’t have an agenda for how his Doctor Who will differ from Davies’ but “these things happen as a matter of instinct” and his instinct led him towards a more “storybook quality”. “For me, Doctor Who literally is a fairy tale. It’s not really science fiction. It’s not set in space, it’s set under your bed. It’s at its best when it’s related to you, no matter what planet it’s set on.”

Safe hands that will push the show’s unique concept – a character that can go anywhere, to anytime. A concept that lets it stride across genres, thrilling us in different ways, while never hanging around too long to become trapped or bogged down in any one.

As Moffat says, it’s a storybook romp. Here there be monsters…

I’ve been reading Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, after several Insomnia creators recommended it on the forums, and it got me thinking about what inspired me to write and when.

Certainly books such as Day of the Triffids and Dune, films such as Alien and The Shining, and shows such as Buffy and Doctor Who, have all had an influence, but the desire to tell stories I think runs much deeper in all of us.

Alongside exposure to these different mediums, as kids we all play make believe games. Create and enact our own stories to understand the world and our place within it. Most of these games hinge around one simple question, ‘what if I…’

After the playground the next step taken is in the classroom, learning to tell stories with either words or pictures, and sometimes both. Luckily, at school, my writing was very much encouraged by my teachers. One story that stands out from my early scribbles in Junior school was about two Civil War Royalists fleeing a battlefield, who hid out in a barn haunted by a poltergeist. It was awful, but I was still exploring ‘what if…’ questions.

As we get older books, films, television, etc, take on this important role, letting us explore a variety of ‘what if…’ and more complex questions, expanding it beyond the self, and enabling us to explore our emotions, beliefs and values.

Roleplaying games, such as Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu, enabled me to continue the story and myth making activities of childhood into my teens and beyond. It is a bit like improvisation in the theatre, but within parameters setup by and played out in the imagination of the participants. It sated my desire to not only experience ‘what if…’ stories vicariously, like at the cinema, but also to create and express them myself.

Then I stopped. Real life took over and the ‘what if…’ questions ceased to be ideas to be explored and became instead decisions needing to be made. I still consumed books, films and shows but didn’t create my own stories, apart from the very occasional roleplaying session for old time’s sake.

Something was missing and I realised it was something I very much enjoyed.

Over the last few years, I’ve returned to creating stories, hopefully richer in ideas and material for having made a few decisions, both good and bad in the intervening years. Not that I now profess to know the answers to the big ‘what if…’ questions, but hopefully I’ve at least gained a greater perspective with which to entertain and engage others, while exploring those questions anew.

Have been somewhat sidetracked from working on my feature script by Big Finish’s writing opportunity. Who would not want the chance to develop a 25 minute audio adventure for Doctor Who, and the 5th Doctor and Nyssa at that? Well, if twitter is any yardstick, nearly every Who fan and writer is working up an idea.

Peter Davison was my Doctor. I have strong childhood memories of Kinda – well, the snake at least; Enlightenment – sailing ships racing through space; and Resurrection of the Daleks – recorded off the telebox on Betamax tape, which I almost wore out.

So over the last week I’ve been jotting down any ideas and watching old Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton episodes for inspiration and insight into their characters. Today I settled on a rough storyline, which developed from some of the ideas – a coin toss, an observatory and schrödinger’s cat. Most of the bare bones are there, so – fingers crossed – I’ll have something I’m happy to submit before the deadline passes.

Joined in #scriptchat on twitter for the first time. Character development and how it relates to plotting was the topic up for discussion, sparked by @filmutopia’s blogpost on the subject – Character Development and Plotting.

Twitter is an interesting and lively forum for #scriptchat, with several streams of discussion running at once. Although a little chaotic at times to follow, it certainly has its merits – a source of writing tips, book recommendations and links to further resources and discussions. If I’m free next Sunday at 8pm will definitely join the debate again.