The Feedback Exchange

Excellent idea run by Lucy V on her Write Here, Right Now blog with a peer to peer reading service. Following on from my last post this is exactly the sort of thing I need. Once 'Play 2', as it's currently called, is a full first draft maybe will seek some advice. Should also give me the opportunity to read some other non-professional scripts and flex my critical muscle. See more info here.

Wanted: Honest criticism for crisis of confidence.

Today is NOT going well. It’s my Day Off, as people keep calling it. But it isn’t like holiday because I still sit at a desk all day long in front of a computer and procrastinate. Part of my procrastination has involved checking out other people’s blogs (discovered Scriptuality and The Jobbing Scriptwriter – both by actual real writers who get paid. Imagine that) and the conclusion I have come to is that my blog is a lot of irrelevant and self-important toss. Dammit.

I have written six pages today so far. Six! And one of those was my shopping list. I don’t know how people do this full time. I’m off to the supermarket now, so at least one of those six pages will prove to be useful.

I think I need some writerly encouragement. Another scriptwriter who can point me in the wrong direction. Next week am meeting up with some people I took my first St Martins writing course with and hopefully that should spur me on. It’s just so embarrassing offering up a piece of writing that I have no idea about up for criticism. When I write prose and re-read it I can tell if it’s my best work. With scripts I know the characters so well, the intonation I intend and the subtext behind their words that it’s hard to discern whether that comes through to a reader. Help!

BBC Continuing Drama Q & A

On Thursday 4th March I attended an event organised by the BBC writersroom in which representatives from their continuing dramas (Eastenders, Holby City, Casualty and Doctors) spoke about what they do. Or, as I like to call it: Pick Me, Simon Harper. The room was full of eager and, I’ll admit, somewhat mental wannbe writers.

On the panel, among others, were John Yorke (Controller of Drama Production), Ceri Meyrick who works with new writers, writer (and now producer) for Holby City Justin Young. I first met Justin during my placement at Holby City, and was lucky enough to sit in on an all day storylining meeting with him.

Many aspects of what they spoke about are covered on the writersroom website, and some of their tips I had already spoken to people about during my placement on Holby. However no matter how many times I have heard similar ideas (“be passionate” being the most common thread) I just love to listen to writers talk about writing. Here are some titbits I picked up - new gems and old pearls of wisdom:

General writing tips
-“Write that half hour like it’s the most important in your life.” John Yorke
-Don’t write a script that you hope will get you a job; write something that you’re passionate about. They receive lots of “competent but boring” writing.
-Make sure you love the show that you’re writing for.
-Too much exposition gives away bad writing. However most bad scripts are boring and just not memorable. Boredom is the worst thing for a script.
-The first ten pages give away if a script has potential, and all scripts submitted will be read this far.
-Send in the script you’re most proud of, regardless of what you think is most likely to get commissioned.
-Don’t take editorial notes personally.
-Screenwriting is less about the dialogue – storytelling should be in the stage directions as dialogue is about sub-text.
-Familiarise yourself with scripts, reading for TV, radio and theatre.
-They look for i) An individual voice, ii) The ability to create characters that resonate, iii) An understanding of structure.

BBC info
-Continuing drama is where writers learn their craft; it is likened to an emergency department, where you see and experience every eventuality and learn fast.
-Accept that continuing drama is a machine where you write collaboratively, but it is possible to retain your own voice.
-Scripts are only accepted from agents to specific shows. If you don’t have an agent submit scripts to the writersroom.
-Don’t submit a sample episode of an existsing show, send original work and remember that length (providing it’s over half an hour) doesn’t matter.
-Avoid gimmicks with your scripts, those sent in massive boxes or with money and gifts attached are viewed with suspicion and inconvenience people.
-The writersroom received around 10,000 scripts last year (eek!) and an estimated 5% of these were passed on.
-The Writer’s Academy receives around 500 applications for 8 places (double eek!). You can apply as many years in a row as you like.
-For Writer’s Academy submissions looking at the application form is left until the very end of the process, allowing the scripts to speak for themselves.
-Applications for the Writer’s Academy open from mid-April – you require at least one professional drama commission to apply, but don’t need an agent.
-Writer’s Academy is three months, with much of that time spent in a classroom, with visiting lecturers (past ones being Jimmy McGovern and Russell T Davies. Room for any more eeks?!) and one on one tutorials. A writer’s first episode of Doctors is developed in the classroom.
-They don’t get a massive percentage of applicants from screenwriting courses.
-Writer’s spend around 2 – 5 weeks on their first draft of an Eastenders episode, depending on where their commission falls on the production cycle.
-Don’t re-submit a script once you’ve received feedback unless the edited version is specifically asked for. Submit something new.
-On Doctors you get assigned your own script editor and you are then in their ‘stable’, whereas the others it can be a different editor each time.
-All BBC continuing drama focuses around A, B and C story strands.
-Each show has a lead writer and a core team of writers who are involved in the decision making for storys.
-Doctors works a little differently to the other three shows. Writers pitch story ideas as the show is designed to be something that new writers can bring their ideas to.
-Include directions, but not camera directions.
-Shadow scheme: if your script is successful they will give you a story document for an episode that has already run and do a test.

Five Days

Reports of the death of BBC drama have been greatly exaggerated. So things have been a bit slow recently – there’s a recession, for crying out loud. And you haven’t been able to open a paper over the last couple of months without reading another royal slagging off of beeb drama. However my faith has been restored with this month’s Five Days, written by Gwyneth Hughes. Over the course of one week five episodes charted the suicide of a mysterious woman in a burka. However first the audience is introduced to the idea it wasn’t suicide. Then we find out it wasn’t a woman, but a teenage boy in disguise.

With each episode there were new twists and coincidences, and every face holding a potential clue. Young boys on bikes in the first few scenes later hold video evidence that proves someone pushed the victim, and one of these later turns out to be the son of an investigating policeman.

Despite this drama being incredibly gripping, well crafted and with an excellent cast (Suranne Jones as a plucky-yet-lovable detective Laurie and Anne Reid as her mother Jen, in the early stages of dementia) some people are still not giving it a chance. Jeremy Clay for the Leicester Mercury claims that “to fill five hours of telly Hughes has knitted up the narrative thread into great clumps so she can spend five hours unravelling it all again.” This seems somewhat harsh; of course there are coincidences to pull the story together, and moments such as a white foster father having knowledge of which blood groups are most prevalent in the Asian community do seem contrived, but these blips are brief and overall the effect is tightly woven. As well as a thriling story of murder Hughes still managed to get the audience equally interested in a few budding romances, with some beautiful moments between Laurie’s mother Jen (Reid) and her new partner. There were also some genuinely funny moments among the tragedy – Laurie suggesting that she heard of how “some reporter wangled his way into Bagdad wearing a burka” to which her colleague replied dryly “Yeah, I’m not sure that’s a good tactic for wangling your way into Leeds.”

I look forward to Hughes’ next set of Five Days, and if I could ever write a drama like that I’d be pretty happy with myself.

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It is 10.47am on my first official day as a freelance script writer and editor. Now, that sentence glorifies the whole thing a little when basically, I just have a day off work and I'm fiddling around on my lap-top.

I've been at my desk (read: the kitchen table) for almost two hours now and so far, so good. At university I got the hang (after 3 years) of motivation to work and my peak working patterns so I was feeling pretty confident about working from home. Now this is just a matter of taking baby steps; I'm not going to write the next BBC drama hit, but a short play would do the job nicely. I can always hate it, throw it away, and start again.

Married, Single, Other

This week I watched ITV’s new thirty-something drama Married, Single, Other. The script, Peter Souter’s debut, is cute, funny and quirky – sometimes a bit too much of all three at once. The writer is guilty of overkill, and the witty lines can come at the expense of real emotion. The one-liners (“All you need is a model girlfriend and you win a set of steak knives from Cliches R Us” quips Abbey to cheesy womaniser Clint) are too dense and leave little space in between for the realistic dialogue and developing relationships. One particular scene that could have benefited from a strong editor’s hand was an elderly lady dying while being treated by Eddie, an ambulance driver. There is a short debate about trying to resuscitate the patient at which point Eddie’s colleague Flo says “we have to try” and Eddie’s response “No. No we don’t” could have closed the scene beautifully. He then added more explanation about covering her chest with bruises and “bringing her back to some kind of half life” which wasn’t necessary and spoiled the poignancy of the woman’s death. Sometimes it’s what the characters don’t say that means more.

Part-timer

I have made a big decision: from 1st March I am officially a part-timer. Things at work were getting a little ridiculous – after a minimum of a 55 hour week there’s no way I’m capable of putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard. Hello, 21st Century). And not only were no words getting written but I was brutally, desperately miserable. The kind of miserable where you can’t function, and staring into space blankly for half an hour seems like time well spent. So I have handed my notice in and going back to an advertising company I previously worked at for 4 days a week.

This was all spurred on by a job interview I had with Carnival Films for a runner’s job. I interviewed at Carnival just after leaving university for a post-production assistant role (pipped at the post by someone with two years experience, apparently) and contacted them again more recently looking for some script reading, so they called me in for the interview. Part way through Nicki Gunning (the production executive) mentioned it would be a massive pay cut from my current role. “Not a problem” I assured them “it’s only to be expected for this sort of role” and I had agreed with myself I would take a cut down to £18k. When they announced they were offering a salary of £15,000 pa for the job I hope I hid my surprise. The sums told me that once I’d paid my London rent and bought a monthly travel card I would have £36 per week left for gas, electricity, water, council tax, food and clothing. Not even tightening my belt would help – I’d have to sell the bloody thing. Or eat it. I was even more surprised later in the day when I received an email saying unfortunately I had lost out by a whisker yet again.

So, to summarise: an English degree from Oxford, 3 years advertising experience, a work placement at the BBC and I can’t even get a job earning a living wage in anything even related to television. This was low. I rang Nicki, apologetic for inconveniencing her but desperate to know what it is that I was missing – do I have body odour or an odd tic that my nearest and dearest have neglected to mention for 26 years? Do all the other applicants have doctorates in creative writing and an extensive list of fringe theatre credits to their names? Or maybe the casting couch is still in existence and when people say “come in and take a seat” they actually mean “come in, take your clothes off and orally pleasure me until I offer you the job”?? I had to know, and actually she was lovely about the whole thing. She explained all their applicants were strong, but most were younger and not experienced in the workplace. It seems that what people learn as a runner I will already have experienced: I know how to work, how to communicate in difficult situations, to sell ideas to clients or production executives, to solve problems and to work in a support role for a team. She suggested I get some more script experience and I think could serve as a useful contact in the future. But that all made me think – if an entry level job offers a salary of £15k, but most companies can’t even afford to offer me that right now, then I could earn more by working 4 days a week and offering myself up for free on the fifth.