BBC Radio 4: Opening Lines

A new opportunity below, as per the BBC Writersroom site, on their opportunites page:

The BBC Radio Drama Readings Unit welcomes unsolicited submissions from writers new to radio for their annual series, Opening Lines which is broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

As well as broadcasting the three strongest stories in the summer of 2012 they will be publishing transcripts of the shortlisted stories on a new Opening Lines webpage.

The next window for sending in material is October 17th – December 2nd, 2011. Stories submitted outside this time-frame will be returned unread. Your story will be read and responded to within three months of the submission deadline.

Content and format:

They are looking for original short stories which work being read out loud i.e. with a strong emphasis on narrative and avoiding too much dialogue, character description and digression. Pay particular attention to how the story opens and closes. They’ll be looking to see whether the beginning of a story successfully links to how it ends.

The Readings Unit are interested in seeing stories which cover a broad range of subject-matter but material which explores particularly dark, harrowing themes is not best suited to Opening Lines.

The BBC has a rigorous taste and decency policy and cannot accept stories of a sexist or racist nature, or those which use the stronger swear words. The time allotted for each story is around 14 minutes, which means stories must be between 1,900 and 2,000 words in length.

Submissions must be typed and double-spaced on A4 paper and it is important to put your name and address on the script itself. Please do not send a recording of the text.


Submission details:

When submitting your work, please include a SAE and a brief covering letter giving your name, e-mail address (if applicable), the story’s title, word count and details of writing track record. We regret that we can only accept one submission per writer and if we intend to broadcast your story we shall contact you.

Stories that fall outside these guidelines will be returned unread.

Please send us a copy of your story, not your original work.

If you would like to submit work to the London office please send it to:

BBC Radio Drama Readings Unit
Room 807, South East Wing
Bush House
Aldwych
London
WC2B 4PH

Deadline: December 2nd 2011

Holby City applications - how not to do it

With reference to the job description please use this section to fully demonstrate the extent to which your skills, abilities and experience meet the specific requirements of the role.

I would be well-suited to the trainee script editor role on Holby City due to a combination of my academic achievements, workplace experience, and attitude towards the challenges of the role. I have always enjoyed working with scripts, from a background of A-level theatre studies and a degree in English. In my spare time I still regularly read plays, attend the theatre two or three times a month and have an interest in how plays are written and their development from page to stage or screen. This hobby has now developed into a part-time freelance role; I work as a reader, researcher and consultant for both television production companies and freelance TV writers. This work has provided a broad base of knowledge, ranging from script reports and editorial suggestions to research for a biopic, and has enabled me to develop my analytical skills at a high level. I made the decision to freelance part-time following a work placement on Holby City in 2009, when I used annual leave from my job at a media agency to trial working for a continuing drama. During my time at Holby City I was pro-active in offering help not just to the research team where I was based but also to editors, storyliners and script secretary. I feel this gave me not just a fantastic insight into the way the show is run, but also to gain experience that I have since built on in my freelance role through editing scripts and producing reports.

I would also bring other relevant skills to the role from my job as a media Account Manager. I regularly work with clients on media strategies, which involves presenting research and ideas to them in a relevant and interesting way. This précising of information would come in useful when acting as an intermediary between writers and producers, working out ways of balancing the writer’s intentions with the long-term character development and story arcs. Working as part of a team is also integral to my job, and communication is key to keeping track of large workloads. This is a skill that would allow me to work simultaneously on different stories, as I currently manage up to fifteen clients at any one time. The way I currently adapt to different client styles would also enable me to modify the way I work with producers, and to work fluidly within the Holby team structure. I have experience working under pressure for demanding clients, so would be able to cope with the tight programme deadlines. I also deal with large budgets and can calmly negotiate rates with media owners, which I believe will allow me to present each side of a story debate articulately and rationally.

However these skills are more than a sum of their parts. I not only have a relevant education, script experience and workplace acumen but I am clearly driven, determined and enthusiastic. I used half my annual holiday allowance to complete a work placement, negotiated a way of making my account manager role into a part-time position and have made strong television writing contacts over the last eighteen months. Though I only have a brief insight into continuing drama script work I have spent the last year working to ensure this is the right decision. There is no better place to get involved in drama script editing than at the BBC, because regardless of cuts or feedback in some press the output and the quality of talent speaks for itself. In particular Holby City should be lauded for its dedication to being both entertaining and thought-provoking, continuing to raise pertinent questions about NHS funding and medical ethics. Holby also constantly revaluates the roles within its development, with moves such as the appointment of a writer-producer making the move toward a more writer led show. The role of trainee script editor is one that would allow me to utilise my talents, but to learn quickly from a strong, experienced team. I would love to work on any BBC drama, but since my work placement Holby has a little place both in my heart and on my TV viewing schedule.

Application saturation

That's right - the HR department at the BBC can rest easy for a while: I think I've done my fill of application forms. Over this weekend I aimed to fill in forms for all three jobs and my will has slowly whittled away to just one. The job that appeals to me the most is the Holby City trainee script editor. In fact, it's pretty much ideal. I haven't seen a trainee role come up on Holby before, and in this case they've asked for only minimal script report/ editing experience. However this is balanced out by the fact you have to have worked on one of their continuing dramas before in order to even fill out the application form - I've blagged it by using my work placement to fulfil that requirement.

The level of experience required for a trainee role is frustrating enough, but the main application question asks you to answer in reference to the job description. This wouldn't usually be an issue as it's a winning application formula: respond to each point on the job description giving an example of how you fulfil the criteria. However the job descriptions for BBC roles are about 3 and a half A4 pages long. There's so much information there it's hard to see the wood for the trees. I finally whittled the categories down to: creative ability, communication skills, admin and organisational skills and a deep love for the BBC and for the show. I sweep the board on all fronts, and am finally happy with my application form. However there's always the nagging and depressing knowldge at the back of my mind that it won't lead anywhere. The BBC are in the difficult position of making hundreds of redundancies and having to try and re-absorb those made redundant into a different part of the business. Made redundant from the research team? Here's a job as a trainee script editor! I understand they have to be fair to current employees, but a system like that only feels fair if you're one of the people benefitting from it. I love the BBC and want more than anything to work for them right now, but don't think I'll be filling in any more application forms for a while - it's just too depressing.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

Just when I thought BBC jobs were internal applicants only three relevant ones appear on their jobs website:

Script researcher, Holby City
Trainee script editor, Holby City
Assistant script editor, Holby City

However the BBC are really being firm on their request for experience; I've had to use some elastic truths. But luckily I have been freelancing for almost a year (though only one day a week!) so am able to tick the box almost guilt free. It is frustrating when you think about getting that first bit of experience. The advice used to be to get work experience, but my placement at Holby City counts for nothing nowadays. It's really beyond me how anyone gets a break. I just have to cross all my fingers and toes - by now they should have seen my name crop up on applications a few times so they might start to get the message. The job of choice from the above would be the trainee script editor on Holby - pretty much an ideal way in. Hopefully the fact that I've applied to all three won't harm my chances.

I'm not feeling particularly positive - a year of rejections will do that to a girl - but as ol' George Michael advises: have faith.

Late night tales

I feel like I'm back at uni. After weeks of festering inactivity on the writing front I'm getting involved with the BBC In the Red rapid response short script competition.

I worked on my script, which is about military cuts, for much of yesterday but there's still plenty to do on it. Came home from work and cracked on with the script pretty much straight away. It's now twenty to one and I've got the old style Essay Crisis feeling of 'oh god, this is twaddle but getting something on the page is the main thing.'

I'm off to bed now, with time for one last quick edit tomorrow lunch and off it goes. I'm not 100% happy with quite a few scenes, but I suppose that's the point of a rapid response piece. The brief was to take a few risks and write outside your comfort zone, which I definitely feel I have.

Single Father (BBC)

Episode one of Single Father was lovely. Written by Mick Ford, who has been writing for television on and off since the Play for Today 1980s. His recent credits include Wiliam and Mary, Ashes to Ashes and Inspector George Gently.

It's the story of a family designed to pull the heartstrings. The first episode set the happy family scene. A cast of David Tennant, Suranne Jones and Laura Fraser are all eminently appealing. Even the kids (and I normally can't stand a child actor!) are decent. The script is understated, playing on long silences and lingering looks. It allows the deep gutteral howling pain to slip through the gaps in the dialogue.

I'm not sure that Ford needed to play with the narrative linearity; once I saw Rita die I waited somewhat impatiently through the flashback. Though it set the scene of the family appropriately it didn't propel the story in any way. Though perhaps made more poignant by the knowledge that it wouldn't last.

It's not quite as gritty as Recovery*, the drama Tennant did back in 2007 with Sarah Parrish which told of a happily married father of two who is left brain damaged after an accident, and his subsequent struggle to recover. Single Father was a bit more emotionally driven rather than issue-led.

Overall I loved it, though in subsequent episodes the script will have to work hard to differentiate itself from plenty of shows before this that tackle the same issue of being a widowed father with young children.

And it looks like there's more drama where this came from at the BBC this autumn and winter.

*Written by Tony Marchant (Holding On, The Mark of Cain, The Knight's Tale from The Canterbury Tales BBC adaptations).

Royal Wedding & Worried About the Boy

BBC Two is currently running its 80s season, consisting of several documentaries and two wonderful dramas. Royal Wedding (by Abi Morgan – Birdsong, Brick Lane and Life Isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee) and Worried About the Boy (Tony Basgalloop – Hotel Babylon, Teachers, Being Human) are two very different programmes, but both enjoyable in their own way. Morgan’s drama follows a family living in a Welsh village, against the back-drop of Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981. It seems strange and somewhat patronising to call it a ‘lovely little piece’, but it really was. The eighty minute show was heart-warming and tragic in equal measures. Morgan managed to tackle the political and the historical in an entirely personal way. She also captured the 80s feeling without parodying it too much or making a focal point at the detriment of other detail. The time period and the royal wedding seemed almost incidental, and the lives of the characters took centre stage.

Worried About the Boy was, for me, less about the personal and more about the drama. George O Dowd ripped through the screen in a blaze of drugs, face-paint and sex. The camera work and costumes stood out for me more than the script which, at times, seemed both rushing to get biographical detail in but simultaneously giving the viewer little to engage with. Boy George also made for a not terribly sympathetic character – though the eccentric outfits and make-up more than made up for it.

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.

Throwing myself into cyber space

I’m not really the blogging type. I’m a technophobe with a fear of my personal information being out in the ether. I tut and shake my head sagely when a teenager’s party gets ruined by inviting everyone on their myspace network, or some fool’s house gets broken into after they announce holidays on their facebook status. However people always say if you want to succeed you have to put yourself out there. This is me, putting myself out there.

There seems to be so many pathways into being a writer that I’ve spent ages paralysed over which one to take. Every writer I read interviews with suggests a different route. Some worked their way up from tea-boy, where others find their first script pounced upon. I tried the Foot-in-the-Door technique by applying to be a script editor’s PA on a well-known British soap, only to receive an email doubting my desire to be a team assistant. “Oh, no” I protested “being a PA is my dream!” So it was back to the drawing board. Now it’s been only six months since I really started trying in earnest. Before that I knew what I wanted to do, but just….waited. Was I waiting to be discovered? Hoping that some BBC top-dog would hear through the grapevine that an Oxford English graduate (quelle surprise) wanted to be a writer?! I was the embodiment of the exchange “I’m writing a novel” “Yeah, me neither.”

I want to be a scriptwriter and my aim at the moment is to get some experience. I took a night course at Central Saint Martins to get used to writing on a regular basis again, to deal with showing people my work and hearing them criticise it -at the moment my skin is a little too thin! I took Creative Writing – Fact of Fiction – Beginners, taught by the novelist Elise Valmorbida. In January I’m due to start Screenwriting for Beginners with Josh Golding. After plenty of rejection letters I have managed to secure myself a work placement at the BBC, in the scriptwriting department of Holby City. This starts on Monday, and I’m incredibly excited but have no idea what to expect.