RANK BADYIN

Who, you ask? Well, Rank Badyin was a famous comic strip character in Glasgow's Evening Times about a hundred years ago. He's so famous the city put up a statue to him across from the Halt Bar in Woodlands Road.

You can tell I'm bored. But I never thought I’d be so bored that I’d find myself writing about Ian Rankin.

I’m sure Ian’s a nice enough guy, but boy, he’s milked his one good idea dry over the years. In the last couple of days he's popped up in the rags linked to everything - from slagging off Shir Sean during New York’s Tartan Week to writing song lyrics for St Jude’s Infirmary or librettos for Craig Armstrong and tossing off a comic book.

When it comes to writing for comic books, Ian’s proved himself a total numptie. According to him "It is much more like a screenwriter's skill than a novelist's skill. You have to use very few words, and a lot of the writing is just instructions to the artist."

Gee, thanks for the advice, Ian, but I think screenwriting’s just a wee bit more complicated than that. You might be able to get away with duff padding in Rebus – such as –

‘Papers are going to have a field day with this,’ someone was muttering. There were a dozen figures shuffling around in the covered walkway between two of the high-rise blocks. The place smelled faintly of urine, human or otherwise. Plenty of dogs in the vicinity, one or two even wearing collars. They would come sniffing at the entrance to the walkway, until chased off by one of the uniforms. Crime-scene tape now blocked both ends of the passage. Kids on bikes were craning their necks for a look. Police photographers were gathering evidence, vying for space with the forensic team. They were dressed in white overalls, heads covered. An anonymous grey van was parked alongside the police cars on the muddy play area outside. Its driver had complained to Rebus that some kids had demanded money from him to keep an eye on it. ‘Bloody sharks.’

Muddy play area outside? Not inside? You just can’t tell with these lower orders, can you? Next thing you know they’ll be storing black coals in their grubby grey baths in their dingy cooncil lavvies.

Get real, Ian. You might have made a pile with Rebus, but this is one foot in front of the other writing, with just the right amount of adjectives but an overcooked use of the present participle. Screenwriting, where every single word counts, isn’t about using ‘very few words’. It’s about using the best few words, something novelists could learn a lot from.

As for scripts being ‘just instructions to the artists’ – well, it just goes to show what Ian knows about scripts – or actors. In the real world struggling screenwriters slog to get past the barricades of readers and development people until they reach the guy who signs the cheque. This happens before the script gets anywhere near the ‘artist’ who, if they’re not dyslexic – and most actors are - usually only read their own lines and ignore the other stuff.

Here we go again – the painter who wants to be a filmmaker and the novelist who fancies themselves as a screenwriter. Funny the way screenwriters don’t want to be anything but better screenwriters. My advice? The next time the Scotsman comes looking for a quote, Ian, don’t talk about stuff you don’t know about. In fact, try using fewer words.