Sadly, even at its peak, it wasn’t actually very useful.

My super power was that I could destroy computers -

- but only at the point that I really, really needed them.

Over a decade or so it became glaringly apparent that computers become less stable in direct proportion to how much I really needed them.

If there ever came a point when I was late with a script, when I had spent all night rewriting a draft, when I had laboured and polished it and it was absolutely the last moment to submit before the Script Editor sent round an enforcer to drag the script from my hands – it was then that, far too often for it to be down to chance, my computer would freeze, and crash, and corrupt a few documents, and occasionally even have a little silicon melt down, often at the EXACT MOMENT I pressed SEND on the final version of the script.

You’ll be thrilled to find out that I still seem to have this super power. In the middle of the final day of submissions for the contest, as entries were flying in thick and fast, and many emails needed to be sent, and many, many people needed contacting, my old (but well trusted) PC decided it had a “corrupted Registry” and that it basically needed a long lie down.

I moved to my laptop – and the touchpad chose that moment to stop working completely.

I got through it, but I do apologise if I have seemed slow in my response.

It’s taken me a couple of days to buy a new PC, get all my data off my old machines, and install them on my new (rather fantastic) double screen setup.

Which, laboriously, brings me to my point.

It’s a small point, but I believe it whole heartedly at the moment:

If you are thinking of buying Final Draft, or Movie Magic Screenwriter, but you keep putting it off because you can limp along with Word, or some other text editor – I strongly recommend you bite the bullet and just do it.

It’s your dream job, you’re going to spend hours, months, years in front of that computer.

So invest in yourself.

Remove as many barriers to getting the words on the page as possible.

The difference made by a fast new computer, or fast, dedicated script writing software, is just astonishing.

THE DOORS ARE CLOSED!

So the contest has closed for 2013 and the fun bit is here – reading all those entries, and being taken into hundreds and hundreds of fantastically different worlds.

Looking through the list of entries I can see some absolutely wonderful titles, titles that promise great things. There are a lot of entries from familiar names, and a massive amount of new names too. Basically I can’t wait to get going. It’s going to be a great, fascinating summer of reading.

I’ll be in touch in the early Autumn with the quarter finalists – the contest dates are posted on the website.

All very exciting!

YOU WANT MORE NEWS

You might know that I run a separate newsletter with Philip Shelley (aka “The Two Phils” newsletter). It tends to have slightly more industry news than this Screenwriting Goldmine newsletter.

If you haven’t tried it yet why not give it a go? You can sign up here (for free).

If it turns out you don’t like what you’re reading there is an unsubscribe link in every email. (But you may not need it – I know I’m tempting fate with this, but we haven’t had a single unsubscribe from the Two Phils Newsletter since we started it back in January. Not one.)

We actually had a great turnout at our Two Phils workshop last weekend, including one writer who flew in from as far away as Budapest to take part – and the weekend creativity sessions were particularly interesting. Philip Shelley and I always say that we can’t believe the sheer number of comissionable ideas that come up in these sessions, and this last weekend was no different, with brilliant ideas ranging from global disaster movies in Tasmania to small, domestic TV comedies.

Our special guest also Esther Springer gave a fascinating and very funny session on with various stories and insights gleaned as a BBC script editor for the last decade or more.

Our next workshop happens July 13-14, with Bradley Quirk as the special guest. He is a Pathé Creative Executive who has worked on ‘Long Walk To Freedom’ and ‘Philomena’.

The seminar is in its usual venue not far from Kings Cross in London. To book a place visit the Two Phils website.

SCRIPT ANALYSIS AND FEEDBACK NOW AVAILABLE

Si Spencer and his amazing feedback has been a real hit with competition contestants this year. I’ve read SO many brilliant emails back to him after people have received his notes – it’s clear he has a real knack of getting to the heart of the story and reaching the parts that other analysts leave untouched.

(Mind you, with his massive writing CV I’m not surprised he’s good at all this.)

I’m therefore extremely pleased to announce I’ve managed to persuade him to stay on and keep offering reading and feedback through the Screenwriting Goldmine website. He’s offering two pages of feedback for an extremely reasonable rate.

You can find Si at his brand new page.

Entries close completely next Thursday 9th May at 1.00pm London time.

As well as the prizes of cash, general screenwriting software abundance, the many commemorative items, and the complete and eternal glory that blazes out for the winner, each of the finalist scripts will be read by:

• Paul Ashton (Development Producer, BBC Writersroom)
• Adrian Banyard, (Development Producer, STV)
• Matthew Bates (Literary Agent, Sayle Screen, London)
• Elliot Grove (Founder and Head of the Raindance Film Festival)
• Johann Knobel (Producer, Company Pictures)
• Kirstie MacDonald (Script Executive, World Productions)
• Steve Matthews (Producer, Octagon Films)
• Julie Press (Literary Agent, Macfarlane Chard Associates, London)
• Fraser Robinson (VP, Scripted ITV Studios Global Entertainment)
• Ben Stoll, Script Development, C4)
• Julia Tyrrell (Literary Agent, Julia Tyrrell Management, London).

Six days left to finish that script. Six days to kickstart your writing career. You can do it!

Go here to enter your (second/third..) script.

Darkness on the Edge of Town – Update

If you contributed to “Darkness on The Edge of Town”, the crowd-funded movie project (or even if you have just been watching with interest) then you should know that the crowd funding phase finishes on Monday.

I want to pass this bulletin on from Patrick Ryan, the supercharged writer-director of this project. (Remember, the script was a finalist in the 2012 Screenwriting Goldmine contest, but Patrick has turned down interest from production companies because he is determined to direct his own script.)

So here’s Patrick’s message:

We wrap this thing up on Monday, and we keep what we’ve made thus far. The main question I’m sure many are asking is, if we fail to reach the target, is the film still going ahead? The answer is an emphatic YES.

We’ve been adapting as the weeks have gone by, we’ve had unexpected offers of help from many different sides, and please rest assured that we will be down there in County Kerry in August shooting this movie, where every euro of this fundraiser will be put into making it the best it can possibly be.

However, obviously, the more we raise, the easier it is to make the film. We’ve been looking at other methods to make up our €20,000, but it’d mean the world for us to be successful in this campaign. I would ask that over this weekend, could you share this page, spread the word as much as you can, twist the arm of that rich uncle, to just make a last push for the remaining few days.

Thank you to all of you. You’ve made this film possible for us, and we can’t express our gratitude for the belief and opportunity that entails. We’re delighted to have you all as a part of its creation.

We’re looking forward to getting down to making it, and organising all the various rewards for your kindness.

If you have any questions, comments or anything at all, please get in touch with us at lagoonpictures@gmail.com or visit our page.

Regards,

Patrick and Tommy

Patrick now has something in development with Steve Matthews of Octagon Films on the back of the introduction made in last year’s Screenwriting Goldmine contest, but I know getting ‘Darkness’ shot is his dream project, and it’s a script that should get made.

INDIEFLIX

Colette Smith of Indieflix contacted me this week about her project Indieflix.

It looks interesting, so I’m just going to hand over to her to talk about it:

For far too long, filmmakers have been forced to either sell out or starve. Thousands of brilliant, creative minds submit their works to festivals, hoping to find meaningful distribution yet fewer than 1% actually do. We’re here to level the playing field.

Founded by filmmakers, IndieFlix is part champion, part curator; our mission is to democratize distribution and provide significant revenue for filmmakers.

We’re basically a community of independent filmmakers and fans. Through its membership-based streaming service, IndieFlix helps filmmakers translate artistic vision into commercial success, and gives film lovers access to high quality independent films not otherwise available. IndieFlix’s mission is to champion filmmakers, rethink traditional approaches to distribution, and celebrate the artistry and impact of independent film.

IndieFlix has thousands of films, but right now we’re focusing on getting the word out about two special films, one in honor of Earth Day and one in honor of Mother’s Day:

Living On One

“Four university students spent our summer living on one dollar a day in Guatemala, cultivating the earth and living in extreme poverty alongside their neighbors in a rural village. They tell the stories of their own experiences, and those of their Guatemalan neighbors and friends in this powerful documentary. Their goal is to inspire us to confront global poverty and provide specific opportunities for people everywhere to fight poverty.”

Finding Kind

“Filmmakers Lauren Parsekian and Molly Thompson, who met while in school at Pepperdine University, set out in a cross country journey of discovery and education.

Interviewing women and girls along the way about their lives and experiences, Parsekian and Thompson find, among all of the unique personal stories, some universal truths about growing up as girls.

Finding Kind is a document of that journey, and of the filmmakers’ quest to take these experiences and find a common ground of kindness and mutual respect. In addition to all of the individual girls and women who share their personal experiences about girl on girl bullying with the filmmakers, Parsekian and Thompson include interviews with respected experts and authors in the fields of psychology, education, and the interrelationships of women and girls.

The Indieflix model sounds very worthwhile, and like it could well open some doors. Take a look here.

I was going to write an extended paean of praise for Iron Man 3 this week.

I’m partial to this kind of thing. I’m a Marvel comics fan from the 1970′s. I loved the last Avengers movie. I think Robert Downey Jr and Ben Kingsley are great actors.

Then I went and saw the movie.

I don’t like giving bad reviews, so I won’t dissect the thing in too much detail. But I will say that throwing an unconnected string of ‘cool’ story events on screen isn’t enough.

Not nearly enough.

Robert Downey and Ben Kingsley are both absolutely brilliant – but the rest?

I think this movie is almost exactly what’s wrong with most of Hollywood.

It’s muddled, noisy, destructive. It’s full of pointless explosions and unearned, unfelt emotion. It’s stuffed with hollow spectacle.

Worst of all, it’s just boring.

And I’m sure it will make many millions of dollars for its producers – which tends to makes me sad.

But then I’ve recently been spoiled by “The Place Beyond The Pines”.

Written by Derek Cianfrance and Ben Coccio, directed by Derek Cianfrance, starring Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes and Bradley Cooper, “Pines” is a small scale story, which is defiantly anti-conventional in structure.

You sit there and you think: “Who exactly is the protagonist?” “Did that thing really just happen to Ryan Gosling?”"How is this working so well when it breaks so many of the ‘rules’?”

From the moment it starts, as you watch Ryan Gosling get dressed in his trailer, and follow the back of his head through a fairground to his job as a motorbike stunt rider, it makes you up and pay attention.

How can watching one man walk through a crowd be so effective?

That’s just typical of the film. It is just SO good – and the usual tools of analysis are strangely ineffective.

Overall it’s beautiful, moving, complex, truthful, and artful – a much needed reminder of how good Hollywood used to be, and how good it still can be when it wants.

Please see it. Don’t read any reviews before you go, as some of them are giving away one or two crucial plot twists. Just go and see it.

SCREENWRITING WORKSHOPS

Quick reminder – we still have a couple of seats left for our script workshop in London, May 11-12.

Two days of writing and career tricks and techniques, and our special guest is BBC Script Editor Esther Springer (“The Fades”, “Lark Rise to Candleford”, “Survivors”).

Please note, the early booking ticket discount runs out tomorrow, at which point the price will go up from £197 to £229.

More details here.

If you manage to climb this particular (rickety, treacherous, windy) ladder you will find yourself getting an exceptional training on the mechanics of making a TV show and the politics of the industry.

I’ve listed the job titles in a list below. As you move down a row you get closer to the centre of power in a show, and closer to having that complete power yourself.

The industry is highly mobile, highly fluid, and there’s not a lot of snobbery. (There IS a lot of politics, but that is different.)

It’s completely recognised that someone who is a receptionist one week can be a PA next, a researcher within a year, a script editor within two, and an executive producer within five.

So here’s the ladder. Bear in mind a lot of it is applicable if you want to work in movies too:

Receptionist

Possibly the easiest way in. And a very honourable first move. But don’t stay too long. Get settled in for a couple of months, then start to make your move. Be ‘accidentally’ seen reading scripts. Ask for script reading work. Generally make it be known you Have Ambition.

PA or Runner

Two different jobs, each with roughly the same potential to make the next step. Try to make sure you are being PA to someone in a script related job. As a Runner you will be responsible for anything from photo-copying to showing visitors in from the car park to scraping the mud off actors. The chances to make contacts and impress are colossal.

Researcher or Script Reader

One up the power ladder from PA/Runner. Researchers check facts for the show, or find material for the writers. Script Readers are the first line of defence against the constant deluge of unsolicited scripts. In either job you’re closer to the real script process, closer to the people who work with writers directly. Either of these two jobs is equally likely to launch you to the next rung.

Script Editor

This is like the first officer rank on the ladder.

You work one to one with writers, making sure their script is the best it can be for your show.

Years ago your loyalty would have been to the writer, to make sure their script was the best possible version of itself.

These days your loyalty seems to be mostly to the producer and the show, with your job being to make sure the script serves the show as best it possibly can. (Die Hards and Old Schoolers will have fought this subtle and rather unpalatable industry shift as hard as they can – if you find a script editor with the older mentality they are like diamond studded gold. They will be your best ally, they will fight your corner tooth and nail, and you should do all you can to hang on to them. )

Working as a script editor for a few years is a great way of acquiring the contacts and writing training you need to become a working writer. I did it myself, I can recommend it strongly.

Now, people tend to do three things from this point: Continue as an editor. Step off the corporate train to become a writer. Or go up one more rung of power and money to become a:

Producer

Now you have full responsibility for the show. You hire and fire directors, art departments, location managers, etc. You try as much as you can – given your now drastically-limited time – to engage with the writers and the script editors in the process of deciding the artistic direction of the show.

You also hire the writers.

When it comes to hiring writers you either go with writers you know, or who are recommended to you.

It’s entirely possible you will not know enough suitable writers who are free, who are right for the show, and who you haven’t pissed off in some way.

Plus you will have a constantly itching conviction that a truly great writer, who will deliver you that perfect BAFTA winning script, is lying undiscovered just round the next corner.

So you look around.

You ask your friends who is hot among the up and coming writers. (And you know that they probably won’t tell you the whole truth, as they want to keep the best writers for themselves. )

You will ask agents for the hottest writers on their books. (But you will always know that agents are just trying to sell you their writers, so you will take their recommendations with a pinch of salt).

And you will ask your script editor. You will trust your script editor’s taste because you hired them personally. And you will know that your script editor is desperate to impress you with the quality of the writers they can summon, because as an editor they live or die by the quality of the scripts that they shepherd.

So when your script editor suggests a writer you will look at that writer very long and hard indeed.

Executive Producer

You sit above the Producer. You hire and fire producers. You are responsible for several shows. You give notes on all of them, as much as you can. You recommend writers, directors, all sorts of people. And your recommendations really do have serious weight. (And if these days you tend to micro manage when you really shouldn’t, when you should really keep yourself slightly removed in a strategic veto position so there’s someone on the show with a clear set of editorial eyes, well, hell, that’s just the way it’s going these days.)

In summary, there are three job titles with 99% of the clout to hire writers:

• The Executive Producer
• The Producer
• The Script Editor

I think it’s reasonable to say that in the UK you won’t get hired as a writer very much without personally impressing one of these three people.

And that’s why I think inviting Esther Springer, to our May Workshop in London is a good idea.

Esther has been working as BBC script editor for over ten years now, and has script edited on a wide variety of shows, from ‘The Fades’ to ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’, from ‘Pollyanna’ to ‘Survivors’.

She knows all about working with writers, and she knows the BBC commissioning system like the back of her hand. She is constantly looking for new writers, and she has the experience and authority to change a writer’s career over night.

Let’s be honest, Esther would be a great contact to make for any writer, whether established or completely new. And the people who come along to the next Two Phils workshop on the 12th May in central London will get to meet her face to face, chat to her, and ask her the questions they need answering…

More details here.

I hope you find it useful.

1. Mental Space

When you’ve finished your first draft put it away in a drawer. Don’t look at it. Don’t look at it. Not once. The aim is to get your imagination out of it back to a neutral place so that you can have a fresh set of eyes.

2. Patience

Wait one month. If you want to give your friends your script to read (and I don’t actually think this is necessarily a good thing – unless your friends are professional script editors or other produced writers) then this is the time. But I strongly suggest that you give it to at least three friends around this point. This will give you the ability to look for consensus in the notes, and not be thrown off track by one particularly opinionated person.

3. Seriously, Patience!

Wait another two weeks. So you have waited six weeks in all. Use the time to start working on your next project.

4. The Fresh Read

Make sure you’ve got an hour in which you won’t be interrupted. The ability to go right through the script in one go at this point is vital, so do try to find the single block of time.

Get the script out of the drawer.

Sit in a comfortable chair, make sure you can’t be disturbed, and read it through, armed with a red pen. Slash across the page, or star in the margin, every time you see something you don’t like – but don’t stop to think about it. You’re trying to recreate the experience of a fresh read. If you’ve managed not to look at the script for the six weeks, you will be amazed at what you will find.

When you’ve done that, go back through, and fill out each of the notes with a bit more detail so you don’t forget what you were thinking.

5. Detailed, Mechanical Work

You don’t have to do this in one block of time.

Go through the script scene by scene. Work out, for each scene, the essential action that happened in that scene. Write this action down in one short sentence.

‘Jim seals the deal on the car – with a sawn off shotgun.’

‘Rose proposes to Leon.’

‘A knock at the window which means the vampire is back causes terror among the kids.’

‘Ronnie realises once and for all that Greta will never love him.’

6. New Beat Sheet

Assemble each of these sentences into a list – this is a new beat sheet, an accurate account of what is actually happening in your script. (Accurate compared to what you THOUGHT was happening before you did this work!)

7. Assess This New Beat Sheet

Compare your new beat sheet to your original beat sheet.

The beat sheet which you prepared before you wrote the first draft. (You did do that, didn’t you?!)

See how it is similar – and where you have changed things.

Then compare it to your ideal story structure. (I personally use the story structure in my Screenwriting Goldmine book, but you may have your own model of what you were trying to do.)

You’re looking to see whether there are big structural flaws.

Are the act breaks in the right place? Or have things drifted in a bad way, leaving you with, say, a massively long Act 1 and a teeny tiny Act 2? If they are way out of proportion then you’re in trouble.

Is the inciting incident in the right place? It should be somewhere in Act 1, and the more primal an inciting incident it is (like death, birth, cuckoldry) the closer to the start of the story it can be. If it’s later than the end of Act 1 then you’re in trouble.

Are most of the beats linked causally? Does one thing happen, which causes another thing to happen, which causes another thing to happen? Can the events only happen in one order because they are proceeding along a slowly tightening ratchet of a narrative? That’s good. But if your beat sheet is full of random floating events that could be moved around in order without anyone noticing then you’re in trouble.

8. Get Your Notes Together

Look at any notes that have come back from your friends. If the same note or comment comes back independently from three or more people who haven’t consulted each other then it’s well worth thinking about. The other notes that don’t pop up so reliably, well, that’s up to you. Some will be clearly wrong. Others may well clarify a worry you had yourself.

Look at your own notes you have made for yourself so far, and compile a big list of Things That Need To Change.

9. Get to Work

Start changing your story, incorporating your new thoughts – but work on the beat sheet, NOT the script. Move that beat sheet to draft 2 and get the revised story good and solid before you go back to your script.

10. How Do You Know When To Write Your Second Draft Script?

When you can read through the new beat sheet without getting bored, when you get to the end and you genuinely feel excited in your stomach, that’s when the draft 2 of the story is ready, and that’s when you can go back to the script.

11. Write the Second Draft

Start your actual second draft script. Working from your revised beat sheet, re-using material from the Draft 1 script as much as is possible, being careful to cut all the fluff and flab that cropped up as you were writing draft 1, create a second draft script.

12. Print It!

Get to the end, print it, wait a couple of days, and read it. Then do one last polish in an hour or so, and print it again.

13. Rejoice!

You’ve now got a completed second draft, which should be immeasurably stronger than your first. Celebrate that fact.

This is the method I use to go to second draft. It is born from nearly 20 years of being a professional writer and script editor.

Every script I’ve had that has been produced, from Trial and Retribution, to the Sarah Jane Adventures, to the early Grange Hill episodes, through to my last BBC Radio play Mad Girl, went through this process. (Minus the time delay in Step 1, which is impossible when you are working on a show in production.)

I often carried out this process at every single draft.

Why would I do all this work? Because it’s a system that really works. Why not try it once for yourself?

And if you want to know about the method I use to write my FIRST draft, you should have a look at my Screenwriting Goldmine package. It’s a step by step system for writing a first draft that steers you every step of the way. You can find more about it here. (And look out for the big dog!)

It could have been dry, and hard to engage with. In fact it was fascinating, entertaining, complex, and very moving.

They are working out how to tour it over the summer, and we were talking about the response to it yesterday.

She reported that there had been a massive mix of comments, and suggestions, and was wondering which direction she should take the play as a rewrite.

I gave her my standard advice that there are only three occasions you should listen to a comment:

- When it resonates deeply with something you already secretly know to be true

- When it comes from the people holding the keys to the budget (and these comments can always be debated).

- When it comes, independently, and more or less identically, from three or more people. Everyone has their own view on your work, but when there is a consensus like that then it may be worth thinking about.

One comment in particular really made me angry. Apparently a couple of people had argued, vociferously, that my friend had to work out what “market” she wanted the play to appeal to most, and rework it accordingly.

Don’t know where to start with this one. So much to say, so little that would be nice.

So I’ll simply quote from a book called “The War of Art”, by Steven Pressfield.

If you’re the type of writer who spends a lot of time researching the current market, I reckon you should have a good think about this little extract:

I learned this from Robert McKee. A hack, he says, is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for. The hack condescends to his audience. He thinks he’s superior to them.

The truth is, he’s scared to death of them or, more accurately, scared of being authentic in front of them, scared of writing what he really feels or believes, what he himself thinks is interesting. He’s afraid it won’t sell. So he tries to anticipate what the market (a telling word) wants, then gives it to them.

In other words, the hack writes hierarchically. He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others. He does not ask himself, What do I myself want to write? What do I think is important? Instead he asks, What’s hot, what can I make a deal for?

The hack is like the politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He’s a demagogue. He panders.

It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you’ve sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from.

I was starving as a screenwriter when the idea for The Legend of Bagger Vance came to me. It came as a book, not a movie. I met with my agent to give him the bad news. We both knew that first novels take forever and sell for nothing.

Worse, a novel about golf, even if we could find a publisher, is a straight shot to the remainder bin.

But the Muse had me. I had to do it. To my amazement, the book succeeded critically and commercially better than anything I’d ever done, and others since have been lucky too.

Why? My best guess is this: I trusted what I wanted, not what I thought would work. I did what I myself thought was interesting, and left its reception to the gods.
(‘The War of Art’ – Steven Pressfield)

There. I feel better now. (And see? Robert McKee isn’t so bad after all.)

What’s more, I don’t know a single producer in the UK who wouldn’t say the same thing.

Write what you feel you have to write. It will feel more true, it will have more life – and it will have more chance of attracting attention in the end

That, I believe, is what’s known as a true Win/Win.

Screenwriting Goldmine Contest

If you’ve had trouble uploading a script on the website and I haven’t already contacted you could you drop me a line – looks like we hit some glitch last night where the site didn’t pass you onto the payment processor as it should have done.

It seems to be PayPal that’s causing the delay. The upload process is freezing at that point. Is it down to that massive international cyber attack that’s going on?

Who knows. But from a few emails I’ve had it seems as though this has been going on all day with no sign of it going away soon.

I’m therefore extending the deadline on the Standard Entry Rate to 1.00 pm London time on Monday.

Go here to enter.

And if you have tried to enter a script, hit the button and nothing happened then please let me know and I’ll get you sorted out.

CROWDSOURCING – RAINDANCE AND PATRICK RYAN

I’m a very big fan of the crowdsourcing thing – even though it remains to be seen how it will pan out, and whether it really will be the opening up of funding for a lot of people, or whether successful movie/TV projects will tend to be those with pre-existing audiences.

So there are two projects I want to bring to your attention this week.

The first is DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN. This script came second in the Screenwriting Goldmine contest last year, and I think is an incredible piece of writing – even more so as apparently it’s the first feature script that writer Patrick Ryan completed.

What’s more Patrick has been showing very steely resolve over this. I personally set him up with an interested producer contact of mine, and he has actually received several other offers on this script but he turned them all down because he is determined to direct this himself.

That kind of commitment demands respect.

Take a look at the video and if it is something that you feel you can support, then please do so – either with a small donation, or even just by passing the link on.

The other project is a Raindance project: LOVE. HONOUR. OBEY.

It’s a team effort by the Raindance Film Festival’s production arm, Raindance Raw Talent, and multi-award winning Dutch production company Mulholland Pictures. The movie is an independent thriller titled Love.Honour.Obey., to premiere at the Raindance Film Festival in London in September 2013.

Mulholland Pictures won 4 awards at the Berlin Film Festival with their film Left Luggage. Some of their other credits include Enigma starring Kate Winslet, (directed by Michael Apted), Fogbound with Luke Perry and The Discovery of Heaven with Stephen Fry.

Love.Honour.Obey. is all about a woman called Alison, who, with her husband Tom, is late one night assaulted and bound by an intruder in their home. It’s a dark kidnapping story to begin with, but it starts getting very interesting when it turns out that the intruder has a mysterious vision for the married couple.

This project is a real concrete example of why I think anyone who wants to make their own movie should look long and hard at crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter. To raise the money for this feature without having to rely on studios, professional film financiers or the government, Raindance decided to use an alternative form of film financing which incorporates traditional elements such as pre-sales alongside some serious crowd funding.

Using the Indiegogo website, in just over 2 weeks the campaign raised 102% its goal and is still going strong, ranking among the top 3 film campaigns on the site! They can still use donations and word of mouth, so don’t hold back!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ADAM THURSBY AND KATHERINE MITCHELL

Both veterans of our Two Phils course, both have achieved success this week.

Adam’s script JUNCTION 26 has been shortlisted for the Cordelia Prize in the US Blue Cat Screenplay competition. Well done, and Phil Shelley and I have our fingers crossed for him for the results next Friday.

Katherine Mitchell has a broadcast of her radio piece. Recorded at the Bath Festival, it’s called THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MAN IN THE WORLD, and you can listen to it on BBC Radio 4 this Sunday 31 Mar at 19:45.

If you want to come on the Two Phils screenwriting course you might like to know the next one is on Sat/Sun May 11/12 in central London. Our special Sunday guest this time is experienced BBC script editor Esther Springer. Esther has been a script editor for many years, and her passion for new writing is extraordinary.

What’s more, she understands the commissioning process like no-one else.

The last weekend workshop we ran sold out, and this one is heading to the same place, so don’t delay booking. It would make a nice Easter present to the writer you love.

You.

More details, and book your place.

TRANCE BY JOE AHEARNE

Like a lot of other people here in the UK I’m going to see the new Joe Ahearne movie TRANCE tonight. I was lucky enough to work with Joe as script editor on a draft or two of the original version, way back in 2000 when Joe wrote and directed the first outing of this story for World Productions, and was extremely pleased for Joe when I heard that Danny Boyle had picked it up and would be directing a new version of it.

Joe Ahearne on the set of Boom Town

(Long time SF viewers may remember that back in 1998 Joe also wrote and directed the excellent vampire series ULTRAVIOLET, and in 2005 he directed DALEK, one of the best episodes of the rebooted DOCTOR WHO.)

It’s been one of those weeks when the same message has reached me from a hundred different places.

In the pub we got talking about how people such as Stephen King and Lynda La Plante write SO many books and scripts.

A long and interesting conversation ensued about what they must do differently to the rest of us. Key among the conclusions was that they probably don’t waste much time sitting round in pubs talking about writing.

Then there was a wise old acquaintance who pointed out that the only real thing that counts, in the end, is a great script. And asked me, pointedly, how many great scripts had I finished this year? (Clue – I haven’t actually finished ONE script so far this year.)

Then a Goldminer referred me to that wonderful book ‘The War of Art’.

I really like this book. It goes deep into the psychology of procrastination.

Problem is, I have the feeling that reading it is in itself a highly disguised act of procrastination.

And finally, an hour spent watching that great TV show “Gogglebox”

(TV definitely WILL eat itself – now they’re putting a camera in a TV to film the families as they watch the TV. Annoyingly watchable.)

Last night’s viewing was key. A couple on screen, sprawled in front of their TV, watching a show about a high achiever. One of the couple turns to the other, says, open mouthed, ‘How do they find time to DO all that?’

I smirked. Couple sprawled in front of TV, ask how people who don’t watch TV get stuff done. Duh.

Me, sprawled out on my sofa watching other people watch other people on TV.

Do your scripts never get finished? Are you not so far along your writing career as you think you ought to be.

Here’s the message:

Stop wasting time.

Do this quick test. As a writer, I imagine you might spend a fair bit of time alone with your computer.

It’s lonely writing a script. And the internet has all that mass of human activity, just a click away.

Irresistible.

Think about a site you visit a lot. Facebook? BBC News? Flickr? Stock market prices? Whatever. Guess how much time you spent on it in the last week.

Try to be realistic.

Then check your internet history and add up the truth.

I found that, with just the odd “quick” flick over to Facebook to check what was going on, when I added all those quick visits up, I was sometimes wasting an hour and a half PER DAY on a site that gives me nothing back, helps me get nowhere, gets me no closer to writing a great script.

That’s over a working day a week, gone poof.

Great.

Do you have the same issue?

You want to be a writer? Here’s my simple patented algorithm:

A. Finish your script.

B. Start another script.

C. Go to A.

That’s how you learn to write. That’s how you build your portfolio. That’s how you get good enough to attract attention.

That’s how you get to work as a writer.

Oh, and if you’ve been planning to enter the Goldmine competition – get round to it.

So far this year we’ve had less than 100 entries.

The odds of getting into the top five and getting script meetings with some of the most influential script execs in the UK are currently therefore INCREDIBLY high.

And even if we follow the same pattern as we did last year – well, by the time we closed last year we still had less than 500 entries.

Work out the odds on that, and compare it to any of the bigger, more well-known contests that regularly get thousands of entries.

The Page Awards gets thousands of entries. God knows how many entries Amazon and Disney get.

The BlueCat competition has thousands of entries.

The Channel 4 competition – thousands of entries.

I would go so far as to say that with our odds in place, and the INCREDIBLE judging panel who will be reading those finalists, this small, friendly, personally run Screenwriting Goldmine competition might well represent the best screenwriting opportunity in the world right now. It certainly represents an incredible back door into an elevated place.

The contest is here: http://awards.screenwritinggoldmine.com

Don’t miss out on it because you can’t get round to finishing your
script.

(Get full details here.)

…but I also had a couple of emails – complaints really I guess – that said, more or less:

‘Why would I buy your book? I am never going to have to pitch any scripts. I’m going to do all my selling scripts via the internet, facebook and whatever.’

That’s a good question. I guess.

But if that’s what you’re thinking, then I have a question back for you.

Are you really prepared to spend the considerable labour to complete a great script, to spend months, possibly years of your life getting it to a point at which it roars like a V8 engine – and then not try your best to sell it??

I think that’s like assembling a top of the line Mercedes and fitting an old Ford engine under the bonnet.

You may get hired with just written pitches, and emails and so on, (of course you may, anything is possible) but it is SO much more effective if you can just simply TELL people what your story is
about when they ask you!

Hiding behind the internet will only get you so far. It’s real world face to face interaction that gets you hired.

But there’s another reason that this book can help…

Thinking of your script in the condensed form that you need to pitch it helps you dramatically…

… because you will be forced to consider the mechanics of the STORY.

And that can only make your STORY stronger.

I know that for some people this may be a challenging offer… the word ‘pitching’ can bring fear out in the minds of the strongest.

In some regards that’s down to the modern notion of the Pitchfest – where you have to get up in a public arena and tell your story to a blank faced panel in front of hundreds of people.

You’ll be relieved to find out that these things are more show-biz than really how deals are made. The vast majority of the time scripts get picked up behind closed doors, after pitches that are more like conversations than anything else.

This book tells you how to approach those conversations, and how to structure what you say so that you have the best chance of selling your story.

Look. If you have anxiety about pitching your story then it’s often easier to bury your head and pretend it never needs to happen.

But pitching is part of this game, and if you carry on as a writer you can bet your life that at some point someone powerful is going to turn to you and say – ‘so what are you working on at the moment?’

And THAT is the precise moment you will wish you had got your pitching down pat.

My book might be challenging, but it’s simple, it’s real world stuff and it WORKS.

Get more details – and take advantage of the 40% introductory discount – by clicking here.

Pure Cinema

I want to refer you to a short film that someone showed me on Facebook this week.

Dating back to 1988 apparently, it’s an extract from a feature called ‘The Bear’ by Jean-Jacques Annaud.

There is no dialogue, and just three animals, yet it has incredible pace, and tension, and tells a perfect short story.

I think it feels like pure cinema.

The lack of dialogue, and the lack of human players, does make two things stand out very sharply.

Firstly, I’ve always thought that a good way to approach dialogue is to try to write your story without it, then, when the characters can’t get what they want any other way, allow them to talk. ‘The Bear’ definitely proves that as far as I’m concerned.

Secondly, what’s also fascinating is how the story is told in the cuts between the shots.

By which I mean that so much of the intention of the players in the story is inferred by the audience by the order of the shots as they play out

Pick any part of the film, and imagine changing the order of the shots – and imagine how that would change the meaning of what you see.

This ability to cut between shots, and direct your audience’s attention very clearly by doing so, is a major part of building up meaning in your script. And is a major contributor to the idea that there are three versions of any script:

- The script you write.
- The script you shoot.
- The script after the final edit.

Major changes can take place at any of those three stages.

Every time I watch a film editor at work on one of my own projects it leaps out at me how much story telling they have to do in their own right – and how it is possible to COMPLETELY change the meaning of a scene as you edit the shots together.

(Just for the record, telling story in the cut is something you can’t do when you are writing for the stage. Cuts just don’t work very well on stage. I found this out the hard way when I started writing for the theatre a few years back!)

If you want to go into this business about telling story with sequential images some more, I can recommend you track down a short book by David Mamet, called “On Directing”. He really explores this way of thinking, and it’s incredibly illuminating about what you need to put on screen, and what you can – and should – leave out.

He has a constant drive to get as much meaning out on screen with the mimimum effort, and his examples are terrific. (One exercise that stayed with me was just how much information you could convey by the simple act of getting an actor to stand up at the right moment!)

It’s quite hard to get hold of, and I think Amazon have a few copies left, but apparently it’s contained in the collected volume “A Whore’s Profession: Notes and Essays”. It’s well worth a look.

One script I read for the Screenwriting Goldmine competition last year was ‘Winter’, by a writer called Steve Turnbull.

It was a terrific piece of writing, and it made it through to the semi-finals.

Fed up with waiting for the gatekeepers to let him in, Steve decided to make his own way.

He retitled the script ‘The Lazarus Machine’, started a company called Monstrous Productions, and launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise £85K to fund an eight part web series.

‘The Lazarus Machine’ is a dark steampunk story told in eight episodes, set in an Edwardian Manchester on the verge of war.

Talia Winter is an impoverished Russian emigree trying to fend for herself and her dying father, a brilliant scientist. But Talia’s family harbours dark secrets and her father has his own agenda – one that takes priority over Talia’s happiness and the needs of the British military effort. When Talia falls in love with a young army officer, she must make an impossible choice between her father and the man she loves.

Since Steve believes that ‘If you think small, your brain shrinks’ he thought big instead – and signed up Timothy West (Timothy West!) to play the lead, with Sophie Aldred (Ace from classic Dr Who – companion to Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor) in the pivotal role of Mary Treacher. And there’s original music from the likes of Unwoman and Sunday Driver.

I absolutely love this attitude of Steve’s and I would love to see more of these projects succeeding. The Lazarus Machine is currently live
on Kickstarter and they’re fast running out of time to reach their target, so even your smallest donation would make a big difference.

There’s no risk as you don’t have to cough up your donation unless the entire project gets funded – and there are some great rewards!

Find out more – and be amazed by the concept art for the show – here.

Apparently the models for the special effects are going to be made from 3D printers – which I still find pretty amazing!

Here’s a quick video about how they’re going to create the special effects:

‘Last Tango in Halifax’ by Sally Wainwright

(You remember – when I held up the opening 10 minutes of ‘The Sopranos’ as absolutely wonderful screenwriting, and asked for other examples that had touched other people.)

I received some great replies, and the shows that had more than one vote were: ‘Clocking Off’, ‘Shameless’, and ‘Last Tango In Halifax’ from the UK, and ‘Boardwalk Empire’, ‘Hell On Wheels’, ‘Drop Dead Diva’, and ‘The Wire’ from the USA.

However, in this (completely unscientific) poll, there were some pretty clear winners.

The following US TV shows received noticeably more mentions than any others – and they’re all names that are pretty familiar:

‘Lost’, ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Game Of Thrones’.

But the most mentioned? By quite a long head?

Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The Newsroom’

It’s an interesting choice. Dramatically it’s very simple compared to the multi-layered Sopranos opening, and I wonder how much of its popularity among readers of this newsletter is down to A: The terrible precision with which that state of the Nation speech is organised and delivered, and B: Just how utterly relevant that message feels at the moment.

But the opening is undeniably powerful, and there are at least two narrative hooks (the woman in the audience and the fate of the lead character) and after viewing it I simply had to know: ‘What Happens Next?’

When you’re opening your new show, can you ask for any more than that?

It does show you don’t always need fancy tricks…

JUST RUN, OK?

I was reading a news piece about how an Oscar nomination added to a movie’s box office take, when a thought occurred to me – have I ever mentioned Box Office Mojo to you before?

If you don’t already know it, it’s a great site to browse when you want to get an idea how a film did at the box office. There are quite a few surprises in there.

But all those multi-millions make particularly interesting reading when the just-released British movie ‘Run for Your Wife’ took just £747 on its opening weekend.

Were you one of the few people who saw ‘Run For Your Wife’? If so then do comment below and let me know why it did so staggeringly badly.

MAILBAG

I’ve been thinking about putting together a new book full of the most common questions I’ve been asked over the years, along with my answers.

In the process I’ve been reading a lot of old emails. Here are just a few commonly asked questions. I thought they may be of interest:

I’ve come across a consultancy that says they can guarantee I’ll write a blockbuster if I pay them for their services. Should I be tempted?

They have no idea what will be a hit – no-one does. Don’t be tempted, be very wary.

Should I hire a consultant or another writer to write the screenplay from my idea?

Before you do that you should try to overcome the hurdle that is causing your problem. YOU are definitely the best person to write the screenplay yourself. It’s your story, you love it, you have the passion and the dedication to push onwards through the hard times precisely because it is an idea that you fell in love with.

If you handed over your script to another writer you would have to be prepared to see your original concept utterly changed as that writer went through the very necessary process of taking emotional ownership of the material so they can write it properly.

Basically I’d always strongly recommend you try to do it yourself.

When you work with a producer on a script they will point out things they don’t feel are right, and ask you to make changes. How can you listen to this and not get defensive about it? Are they always right?

The whole game is about surviving those requests for rewrites – ‘notes’ – from whoever is going to be marketing your work. TV is pretty bad – you can spend months on the rewrite process doing this – publishing novels is not so bad, and theatre not very bad at all.

Above all, don’t take it personally. 100 different readers would make 100 different requests for rewrites, so no, they are not always right, far from it – in fact most of the time I don’t agree with what they are asking me to do.

The problem is they are the people who will get your work out there, so you are inevitably locked into a process of compromise with them, and most of the time you will end up doing some of what they want.

One of the key points is to ask if you can have your notes sent over in written format and to then meet a few days later to discuss them. This means you will have had time to let off steam in private, work out which points you will fight to retain and which you can concede, and come up with possible solutions. You can then
discuss the script in a cool, calm and collected way.

Theoretically.

Would you advise that I show my story to people, especially to those who like to read novels so I can get an opinion on what I should consider or not?

You have to be careful with that. People are very good at giving opinions, even if they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

You do have to get your stuff out there in the end, but you certainly have to take everything that comes back with a pinch of salt, or you can end up being totally derailed.

I used to belong to several writers’ groups, and, to be honest, the experience of showing my stuff around was great because I developed a thick skin, but most of the comments I got back weren’t terribly helpful in the long run.

Not because the people involved weren’t very bright, or very concerned, (they absolutely were, and I’m still very grateful for the time they took!) but there is a world of difference between the comments of a trained editor and the comments of a group of your friends who write as a hobby.

I do think that if, independently, three different readers pick up on the same point, then it’s probably worth looking at this.

But I actually think it’s much more important you believe in your own work, and keep stepping away, then analysing it yourself, rewriting, and pushing on through till you’ve completed a handful of screenplays.

It’s your ear that counts. That’s all you have in the end so you may as well start working on it.

Brian Eno started as synth player for Roxy Music in the 70s, then worked with David Bowie on his three Berlin albums, and helped popularise the American band Devo and the punk-influenced “No Wave” genre.

He produced and performed on three albums by Talking Heads, and produced seven albums for U2, including The Joshua Tree.

He has collaborated with David Bowie and David Byrne many times since the 1980s, but has also worked on records by James, Laurie Anderson, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Paul Simon, Grace Jones and Slowdive, among others.

He’s also created and collaborated on many visual art installations, worked in avant-garde music (creating and steering the whole ‘Ambient Music’ movement), and film (among other projects he scored “The Lovely Bones”, directed by Peter Jackson.)

Critic Jason Ankeny at Allmusic argues that Eno “forever altered the ways in which music is approached, composed, performed, and perceived, and everything from punk to techno to new age bears his unmistakable influence.”

He was also hired to create a memorable, inspiring, universal 3 1/4 second piece of music to work as the startup melody for Windows 95.

(Which he wrote using a Mac!).

I know he’s not a screenwriter, but, given a forty year CV like that, I’d say this short interview in which Brian talks about his approach to creativity is well worth five minutes of your time.

CONTEST NEWS

I’m delighted to announce a whole new set of prizes for this year’s script competition. Final Draft have come on board again as a contest sponsor, and they will be kindly giving each of the five finalists a free copy of the Final Draft screenwriting package.

As you may remember we’ve already got some fantastic prizes, including meetings with some top industry execs, but this donation makes the whole thing even MORE more attractive – Final Draft is THE industry standard for screenplay submissions.

Why not enter a script (or two!) this weekend?

More details on the competition here.

THE SPEC SCRIPT MARKET

Here’s a fantastic article on the rise, fall, (and rise again?) of the Spec Script market.

Essential reading for anyone who has heard the stories of the legendary payouts to screenwriters in the 1990s – and wonders where they went – and whether they’re ever coming back.

Apparently, they might be…

(Thanks Brian MacEvilly for pointing this one out)

NEW WRITING JOBS PAGE

I’ve added a new page to the main site.

It’s a round up of some of the screenwriting jobs I could find on the internet. It should update itself constantly, on a daily basis at least, so it’s well worth keeping an eye on to see what pops up.

You can find it here. I hope it’s useful.

(For the technically curious it’s basically an aggregation of various RSS feeds. If you yourself follow any relevant job sites yourself then do let me know and I’ll see if I can add them in. I’d especially like to add details of jobs outside North America.)

I cobbled it together myself, and it still feels a little unsteady on its feet – do let me know if it doesn’t work for you!)

WORTHWHILE MA IN SCREENWRITING?

I’m normally wary of recommending you spend a year of your life and a LOT of money on an MA with rather nebulous benefits, but Paul Ashton, Development Producer at BBC Writersroom (and on the illustrious judging panel for our competition), emailed me yesterday to let me know there is a new MA in Dramatic Writing Central/Saint Martins Drama Centre.

The course is hot off the presses, is just about to be validated and the first year’s intake should kick off in October 2013.

It’s a 2 year MA so you can earn as you learn – and apparently it’s been designed by a team of industry pros (not academics) with a stack of experience between them.

Paul says:

“I’m no expert on MA courses, but I’ve never seen one that spans theatre/film/tv/radio/online the way this one does. And the facilities at the new Central Saint Martins building in Kings Cross are state of the art.

They’re also collaborating with other production courses in the College, so if you (or anyone you know) want your work performed by the next John Simm/Tom Hardy/Anne-Marie Duff/Helen McRory or directed by the next Mike Leigh/Stephen Frears/Joe Wright/Adrian Noble then I reckon this could be the one to do… ”

Now. For me, what really separates this one out of the herd is this key sentence from the Content Page:

“The course has been designed by a team of industry advisors, and students will experience on-going teaching, mentoring and guidance from professional practitioners working at the forefront of the industry from across all media.”

I think the fact you’re getting taught by practitioners rather than academics could make a critical difference. (Of course, who precisely is involved will be key.)

The final teaching panel is still to be announced. but if you want to do an MA, this could be worth keeping your eye on.

Find out more here.

SURPRISE YOUR READER

Speaking of BBC Writersroom, here is a great blog from Sally Stott, one of their readers.

She talks about the lamentable way many writers describe their female characters. It’s an amusing, and thought-provoking, read.

Sally’s opinions are not to be dismissed lightly: last time I asked Paul Ashton he told me the readers in the Writersroom get through 10,000 plus script submissions a year, so they really do have a very good idea of what’s going on out there:

One statistic that leaped out at me was the fact that 2/3 of their submissions are by men.

That matches almost exactly the ratio I noticed in the submissions for the Screenwriting Goldmine contest last year.

So… are you women writers really going to let men take all the seats at the table? Or are you going to get writing..?

Matthew Hurst wrote to me a while back thanking me for the opportunity to join the forum, and how it had led to him being hired for a screenwriting job.

I asked him to write up the experience, and now that the script is settled and the show is in pre-production he has done just that:

Over to Matthew:

Pretty often there are posts on the Goldmine forum – one of my best established aids to procrastination – with opportunities for writers. Some of them are great opportunities for the right person, some don’t really understand what they’re on about, and a few seem to think writing a screenplay is roughly the same thing as typing one out.

A couple of months ago, responding to one of those posts got me my first solo, produced, paid TV writing gig. This is obviously great news as my online dawdling is now justified forever.

So this is what happened.

First, this is the original forum post.

I admit that initially I was skeptical enough to do a bit of due diligence, mainly by googling the company. It turned out to be film.ua, one of the biggest in the Ukraine. Everything checked out,and more importantly, my gut feeling was that it was okay. No red flags.

The project was a 50-minute biopic of Archimedes, the fourth in a series about visionary thinkers using lots of CGI animations, and Sasha, the film.ua producer, read a couple of my specs plus a rather ancient corporate script I’d written about another inventor. She liked them enough to ask me to pitch a treatment for the Archimedes programme, the only givens being a CGI flashback structure held together with a VO from the future, and she gave me a link to an edit-in-progress of one of a couple of other programmes in the series. Sasha ran the treatment past various producery types over the weekend of my birthday and came back with the go-ahead. That was about a week after my initial response to her posting.

In parallel with that, we’d been talking about money. I don’t have an agent, and nobody seemed to have any idea about the going rate for the Ukraine. In the end I used the WGGB rate card for indies – not masses but a perfectly decent fee and a buyout (and they agreed disconcertingly quickly). It would probably give an agent a fit of the vapours but I’m happy with it.

So I got the commission as simply and quickly as that.

We agreed I’d deliver a first draft about two and a half weeks later, and I budgeted out my time and pages. I’m as a creative time-fritterer as anyone when I’m speccing, but ever since I joined the local paper at 18 I’ve written to external deadlines so it was no big shock.

The great thing about Archimedes as a subject is there’s just the right amount known about him – IE almost nothing, so I had a fairly free hand, as long as it incorporated the VO and the CGI. I also had to get my head round the maths, which meant more research, and finding a maths professor to check I’d got my sums right.

Amazingly, I had. Over the next couple of months, I did three more drafts (so three lots of notes, a bunch of emails, and a Skype conversation). The CGI element turned out to be fairly simple, so work focused on the VO and the overall story arc. The final script turned out with a far simpler narration strand, and with Archimedes becoming steadily less nerdlike and more heroic.

So as I type, the script is in pre-production, and I’m not sure when it’s going out. But it seemed a pretty straightforward process and most importantly that credit is helping my search for an agent.

And also, I’ve established (I think) a good relationship with a thriving broadcaster. Which has to be good.

I think that’s terrific. I’ve no idea what the fee was, but that’s completely unimportant. Matthew has made genuine contacts, he has steered a single script into production, his CV looks immeasurably stronger – and I hope film.ua have more jobs for him in the future.

And all through hanging around in our forum!

If you’re not making contacts in our – free – forum yet, well, maybe you should be?

(And sorry to all the “serious” scientists, but while I was googling for a picture of Archimedes I found this great article wherein an engineering dept at MIT recreated the death ray rumoured to have been invented by Archimedes:)

Photo credit: David Wallace, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering

Guest speaker announced for our May seminar

I’m delighted to announce our Sunday afternoon guest for our next London seminar on 11/12th May is Esther Springer.

Esther is a very experienced and highly respected BBC script editor. Recent BBC credits include “The Fades” (Jack Thorne), “Survivors” (Adrian Hodges), “Eastenders – E20″ and “Lark Rise To Candleford”. Previous credits include “Born & Bred” (BBC), “My Family And Other Animals” (BBC), “Dead Gorgeous”, “Too Good To Be True” and “Pollyanna” (all Carlton\ITV).

Esther will talk about the BBC commissioning process from the perspective of someone who has been through it many, many, MANY times, and no doubt she’s going to have a great deal to say about how you get yourself into the system as a new writer.

She’ll also answer all your questions, in the usual frank, fearless and slightly off-the-record manner we encourage from our guests..!

More information about the seminar, and booking, here.

Within these questions are lots of more complicated worries. You know the sort of thing: how do you lay out slighty tricksy things, like cutting between both sides of a phone conversation, or how you do voice overs, or what happens on the page when two characters speak at once?

If your screenplays tend to look like the image above, you might want to have a quick look through this great sample screenplay that actually explains a lot of these layout questions.

Even though I don’t agree with absolutely everything there, I defy anyone to come up with the absolute, definite guide – there is no such thing.

If you’re not sure how to lay your script out on the page, then follow this template and you won’t go too far wrong at all.

Of course, the easiest way of all of getting your script into an industry standard layout is to use one of the screenwriting packages out there – they do most or all of the formatting for you and will save you oceans of time.

Final Draft, Movie Magic Screenwriter are my two favourites among the paid packages, and (though I’ve never used it) I hear very good things about the free package CeltX.

If you’re not already using one of these packages, and you feel your life is better spent working on story than formatting, I can strongly recommend that you look into them.

(Oh, and the picture above is Cologne Cathedral, drawn in musical notation…)

TV QUESTION FOR YOU

In the screenwriting workshops I run with Philip Shelley, we have a session in which I spend half an hour talking in detail about the opening 12 minutes of the pilot episode of “The Sopranos”.

I think that opening is a master class in how to hook an audience, how to get multiple stories up and running, (and incidentally how to handle the rather thorny problem of how to get an audience to engage with a murderous sociopath lead character).

These first 12 minutes introduce plot, character, and the deep themes of the show with an almost brutal efficiency.

They’re also extremely entertaining. Every time we show the sequence there is an audible sigh from the audience when I stop the disk at the 12 minute mark. Clearly many of those viewing are already totally gripped and hooked.

That opening is 14 years old now, so I’d like to find a more up to date example to compare and contrast.

My problem is that I can’t remember seeing a series opening that betters that level of craft.

Have you got any suggestions for openings of TV series that you think do a great job of setting the world of the show up?

I’m looking for tips on series drama that open so well that you were instantly hooked.

They can be drama from any country, but it would help if it were on DVD, so I and others could see them.

I’d be really interested in seeing your suggestions. If I get enough I’ll post them for discussion on a later blog.

2ND SCREENWRITING GOLDMINE CONTEST

So, we’re up and running, with entries coming in at a steady rate already, which is terrific!

Do have a look at the new contest site.

And, of course, getting the contest a lot of attention is absolutely crucial if the thing is going to work, so please, please do link to the site, tweet it, Facebook and Linked In it – generally pass the word on to anyone you think may be interested.

My last radio play, Mad Girl, was nominated for an award by the Medical Journalists Association of Great Britain for the way it handled its central theme of mental health. (Beating off major medical shows like Casualty, Holby City, and assorted medical storylines featured in the soaps all year long.)

The awards happened this Tuesday evening at the Wellcome Gallery in central London, and in the end Mad Girl (and Falling, by Bethan Roberts) came runners up to a worthy winner, an episode of Getting On (written and acted by Vicki Pepperdine, Jo Brand and Joanna Scanlan).

I’m absolutely thrilled to be nominated, and it was a great evening all round. What made it even more special was that Mitch Hadley, one of the original subjects of the drama, came along with us to share the celebration.

I’ve always thought that, if the play was any good at all it was because it felt realistic. And I think the entire reason it felt realistic was down to the honesty and openness with which Mitch, and another interviewee Morgan Rivers, talked about their many years dealing with their mental illnesses.

As you can tell if you’ve heard the play, what they said had a deep effect on me, and I’m glad that their stories have been heard in this way.

Have a look at Morgan’s blog. It’s remarkable. She’s a gifted writer, with an incredible subject matter.

And here’s a clip from the winning episode of Getting On – it’s very funny:

Now that’s what I CALL a contest!

I can’t promise you hot dogs, but excitement is definitely brewing about the 2013 Screenwriting Goldmine Screenplay Contest – I’ve had three people write to me this week to ask where they can submit their script.

I’ve had to write back and say they can’t as we’re not up and running yet, but it won’t be long – the doors will FLY open on Thursday 31st January.

I also wanted to mention that Johann Knobel has signed up to the judging panel.

Johann is a producer at Company Pictures, who are one of THE major production companies in the UK. Check out their rather astonishing awards list.

South African born, Johann moved to the UK about ten years ago, and quickly made a name for himself as a tough, practical, highly capable individual. Over the years he’s produced all sorts of shows, most recently The Shadow Line and Secret State.

I’ve worked for him and I’d say he’s firm, but fair(!), and a simply outstanding judge of story. I’m genuinely thrilled he’s on board with this competition – it’s a MAJOR coup for any writer to get their work read by Company Pictures.

So, to remind you, the Judging Panel so far is:

• Paul Ashton, Development Producer, BBC Writers Room
• Adrian Banyard, Development Producer, STV
• Matthew Bates, Literary Agent, Sayle Screen
• Elliot Grove, Founder and Head Guy, Raindance Film Festival
• Johann Knobel, Producer, Company Pictures
• Kirstie MacDonald, Script Editor, World Productions
• Steve Matthews, Producer, Octagon Films
• Julie Press, Literary Agent, MacFarlane and Chard
• Fraser Robinson, VP, Scripted ITV Studios Global Entertainment
• Ben Stoll, Head of Development, C4 Drama
• Julia Tyrrell, Literary Agent, Julia Tyrell Management

And maybe just one or two more, if I can twist their arms.

I’ll let you know.

TALENTED TEENAGE FILM MAKERS?

If you know a 16-19 year old who wants to get into film, this BFI scheme has got to be worth looking at:

BRITISH COMPANIES ACCEPTING UNSOLICITED SCRIPTS

This is a very useful list from Hayley McKenzie and her blog Script Angel. (Useful? If it lives up to the promise it’s sheer gold!)

But…. before you blast off an email to each of these companies, please improve your chances immeasurably by two simple steps:

1. Research the company, starting with IMDB.com Find out what they have done, what sorts of drama they make, so you don’t send an intergalactic action adventure story to a company that only makes low budget kitchen sink drama.

2. Find out who works there, find out who you want to read your script, and send the script to them personally. (You’re looking for people who are called things like Head of Development, Development Producer, Development Executive.) Once again, IMDB.com is a good place to start.

Doing those two simple things will make it SO much more likely you’ll get taken seriously.

MAD GIRL

I had some nice news earlier this week – my play “Mad Girl” has been nominated for an award from the Medical Journalists Association of Great Britain.

The category is ‘Handling a Medical Theme in Broadcast Drama’ and the three finalists are:

Falling, by Bethan Roberts, BBC Radio 4

Getting On, (episode 1 from series 3) written and acted by Vicki Pepperdine, Jo Brand and Joanna Scanlan, on BBC 4 (TV)

Mad Girl, by me(!), on BBC Radio 4.

The Award Ceremony is at the Wellcome Medicine Now Galleries in London on Tuesday night. Should be a good evening!

You might remember the agonies I went through writing this one – I detailed them all in a more or less daily diary on my blog: what I did, why I did it – and exactly where I went wrong!

If you want to read about a grown man in the depths of writing pain, the story starts here

WORKSHOP PLACES

We’ve still one or two places left on our January workshop – it’s next weekend in Central London, so if you’ve been sitting on the fence, now is the time to book.

Get more information and grab one of those last screenwriting workshop seats.

STRUCTURING YOUR THOUGHTS

One of the biggest challenges I find as a writer is keeping track of all my fragments of ideas.

I’ve worked out various systems over the year, and have settled on a mix of Excel and MindMeister.com as a great solution.

Scrivener

Another great solution that a lot of pro writers use on a daily basis is a tool called Scrivener.

As it says on the website, Scrivener lets you “Outline and structure your ideas, take notes, view research alongside your

writing and compose the constituent pieces of your text in isolation or in context. Scrivener won’t tell you how to write – it just makes all the tools you have scattered around your desk available in one application.”

I’ve been talking to the people over there, and they’ve very kindly agreed to give Goldminers a 20% discount on downloads of Scrivener.

If you’re interested, you should go to www.getscrivener.com, select either the Mac or Windows regular licence type, and then type GOLDMINE into the coupon code field. The discount code will be available throughout 2013.

Keep It Together

I also had an email from a man called Keith Turner, about an interesting new iPad app which promises a wonderfully intuitive solution to this info structuring problem.

The app isn’t up and running yet, as Keith is looking for crowd sourced development funding. I want to pass this on as I think it looks like a really interesting project:

Here’s his press release:

Keith Turner had a problem.

The Los Angeles based Art Director and 3D Artist was working on his latest project “Apocalypse Later, Surf Now”, a music-driven,
special effects heavy video montage of surfers riding waves while the world is destroyed around them. He needed to learn a lot of effects, match-moving, and compositing techniques in a short time, so he amassed a great deal of information on how to do them.

The problems arose trying to keep track of all the information. “I would have all this information about one effect, but it was
scattered in all these different places; my desktop, email, bookmarks, the cloud, stickies. And if it was bookmarked, sometimes
the link would be dead.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d encountered this problem, just the most recent.

That’s when he got the idea for Keep It Together, an app that allows you to organize information in a more natural, intuitive
manner.

The app opens to a 3d rendering of 20 temples on a mountain top. Each temple represents a room that you enter to do your work in.

“We all move in a 3d environment and are surrounded by rooms and walls our entire lives, so that seemed like the natural choice for the navigation of an app that’s supposed to help you organize things intuitively”, explains Turner.

Once inside a room, you are presented with 25 walls, each one a kind of hybrid between a computer desktop and a bulletin board.
These walls allow you to attach anything to anything else by literally sticking them to each other, as if you were operating in
the analog world.

After talking to many developers, Keith assembled a team and then launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the majority of development costs.

You can see the campaign and a fuller explanation of what the app does here.

SUBSCRIBE TO THESE POSTS

If you’d like this sort of newsletter coming direct to your mail box instead of having to trudge over here on a weekly basis, then please use the form in the right hand column of this blog to sign up.

And then there’s the fact that Skyfall didn’t really feature in the Oscar nominations.

James Bond’s finest moment? Daniel Craig PERFECT as Bond? A story which you could actually understand for once? The highest grossing movie in the history of UK cinema – and no major category nominations? Really?

CONTEST FINALIST INTERVIEW

Anyway, I’ve just posted a terrific interview with Brian MacEvilly up on the contest site. Brian is a writer after my own heart – he’s lived a lot of different lives, he picked a primal topic (battle between a man and a woman in the wintery Colorado mountains) – and then he wrote the heck out of it!

He thoroughly deserved his place in the Finals.

Find out about his life, what he has to say about the deeper ideas behind the script, and something of his writing process, at:

http://awards.screenwritinggoldmine.com/2012-finalist-interview-brian-macevilly

CONTEST NEWS

As far as the new contest goes, it’s getting very exciting.

The 2013 Judging Panel so far is:

• Paul Ashton, Development Producer, BBC Writers Room
• Adrian Banyard, Development Producer, STV
• Matthew Bates, Literary Agent, Sayle Screen
• Elliot Grove, Founder and Head Guy, Raindance Film Festival
• Kirstie MacDonald, Script Editor, World Productions
• Steve Matthews, Producer, Octagon Films
• Julie Press, Literary Agent, MacFarlane and Chard
• Fraser Robinson, VP, Scripted ITV Studios Global Entertainment
• Ben Stoll, Head of Development, C4 Drama
• Julia Tyrrell, Literary Agent, Julia Tyrell Management

And I’m still hoping to add a couple more names!

I’m in two minds about the current website – should I spend a week polishing it up? Or is it fine and should I concentrate on delivering the contest? Hummm…. It’s at http://awards.screenwritinggoldmine.com by the way.

And if anyone has any desire to sponsor a prize, that’s always welcome – just drop me a line on info@screenwritinggoldmine.com

I’m looking at the last day of January to launch, but I’ll keep you posted.

RAINDANCE SPECIAL OFFER

Elliot Grove has kindly offered Goldminers ten free places to the Raindance 99 Minute Film School on Tuesday January 15th 6:30 – 8:30 in London.

Take a look at the event at:

http://www.raindance.org/course/99-minute-film-school/

If you want to take this lightning quick tour behind the projector to see how the film industry really works you’d normally have to pay the RRP of £15.00

But the first ten to mail me at info@screenwritinggoldmine.com with the answer to this question get a free place:

“What is the address of the venue in which I run the screenwriting seminars with Philip Shelley?”

(Clue, the answer is somewhere on our BRAND NEW WEBSITE:

http://thetwophils.co.uk

BRAND NEW WEBSITE

So yes, we have a BRAND NEW WEBSITE!

Please do tell me what you think of it:

http://thetwophils.co.uk

It’s about time Philip Shelley and I got organised and had our own dedicated training site! Please pass it on to whoever you think may be interested.

YVONNE GRACE

I just wanted to recommend another resource for those of you on Facebook – the Script Advice Writers Room.

It’s run by Yvonne Grace, a seasoned BBC producer, and her incredible energy, passion, and dedication (in true, old school BBC style) means new links, new resources, and a very nice community of like minds on a daily basis.

Join here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/237330119115/

I spent New Years Eve with some friends people watching TV ghost stories from the early 1970s. It was a great experience. They had a big screen, a DVD projector, and an archive of eerie films to pick from. We had a good time!

Some things became very apparent.

OLD, PERSISTENT SPIRITS

There have been obvious changes in acting styles, general pace of editing, the level of error that is acceptable, camera angles, and so on.

But the change I noticed most of all was in the writing. I started to wonder whether, if you submitted most of those scripts today, you would stand any chance of getting them commissioned. What’s seen as acceptable screenwriting has clearly changed dramatically in the last 40 years.

For one thing, I’m afraid I really did think that these scripts were more intellectually ambitious than 90% of the current commissioning.

OLD FASHIONED VIRTUES

They had a serious serious goal beyond telling a simple story. They entwined metaphor, political polemic. They weren’t afraid of long, intense speeches, or non conventional story structures. The cast sizes, sets and locations were often incredibly far more restricted than on even very cheap dramas today, and there was frequently a very heightened, clearly ‘dramatic’ tone in place.

What’s more, despite them all being nearly 40 years old, they all managed to get away from any sense of familiarity at least a few times.

(Not always for the best – hands up if you’ve ever seen the final climactic moment of a supposedly terrifying ghost story played out through an intense fifteen minute monologue with the camera pointing more or less up the actress’ nose. Interesting, but not *entirely* what you want!)

But in each of these stories I was constantly thinking to myself – oh, I haven’t seen THAT before, I haven’t seen THAT before.

In fact, thinking about it, in general these dramas weren’t so wedded to the idea of straight naturalism. (Crazy to say that for ghost stories, but you know what I mean.) They were slightly more free floating – and much closer to stage plays than the drama we watch now.

Very interesting to watch.

DID FORMULA KILL DRAMA?

This sort of thing isn’t really commissioned any longer. Could that be one of the big reasons that viewing figures have dropped so dramatically over the past decade? Sometimes I do wonder.

There’s a whole slice of the audience out there who would love to see this style of thoughtful, wide ranging, mature sort of drama reworked for 2013, but who just never get the chance.

The long slow drift to the big continuing, high volume soap/drama hybrids has done a lot of damage over the last 15 years.

And for those who can point to the occasional failed experiment, I don’t think it’s a matter of commissioning a handful of plays, seeing they get no audience, and saying, ‘See?! These things never get an audience!”

DID THE AUDIENCE LOSE FAITH?

I think a whole chunk of our society has lost the habit of watching TV. (Some might say ‘Good’ of course. But I’m not like that. I like big audiences!)

It would take a serious, long term commitment to bringing them back. They’ve basically lost all trust that they will find TV drama interesting.

And they’re right. Going back to that style of writing isn’t going to happen on screen any time soon. It really isn’t.

OR DID WE ALL JUST MOVE ON?

And actually I don’t think that’s a particularly bad thing. The craft has developed.

In many ways things have got so much better.

In fact there is some tremendous TV out there right now that simply could never have been made back then. (See below for details!)

Instead of living in the past, I recommend creating the future. The ghost metaphor is good. Don’t let yourself be haunted and dragged down by what has gone before. Don’t get seduced by nostalgia or by the idea that there used to be a ‘golden age’.

Be aware of the past, study it all the time – but know your job is to write the new stuff.

REQUIRED VIEWING – GHOST STORIES

If you’re interested in seeing some of these classic ghost stories, there’s a lot of stuff on Youtube,

Here’s an example:

Or you could go to the BFI site (http://www.bfi.org.uk) and search for “Ghost stories – classic adaptations from the BBC”

REQUIRED VIEWING – DRAMA SINCE 1970

If you want a list of essential viewing since the 1970s, including some of the fabulous stuff that could never ever have been made in the past, you could start here with these two blog posts by Philip Shelley:

Essential British TV
http://www.script-consultant.co.uk/2012/10/25/british-tv-drama/

Essential World TV/Movies
http://www.script-consultant.co.uk/2012/11/23/fore/

‘How do I stop a producer/director ripping off my ideas?’

‘Will registering my script with the WGA (the US Copyright Office,the British Library, my solicitor/accountant/church minister/granny) stop my wonderful story from being stolen by Christopher Nolan and turned into the next official Box Office Smash without me getting a crumb of recognition?’

This question comes up all the time.

Here are some reasons why you don’t need to ask it.

1. It Doesn’t Happen!

In the last 17 years I’ve never known it happen. Not once. In my experience, the slightest sniff of something dubious about the ownership of an idea will put a production company off instantly. They have enough ideas. What they don’t have enough of is good writers, or great scripts. And they really don’t need legal battles down the line.

But I’m not alone in this.

At our last screenwriting seminar in London, a member of the audience asked the question of our special guest, a highly experienced literary agent, whose job is to represent the interests of his writers.

He said the same thing. That he had never known an idea being stolen like that. Not once.

2. Say it Does Happen, What Are You Actually Going to do About It?

If you register your script with someone, and you send it into NBC/Universal, or Fox, or the BBC, and they read it and say

‘Hey, this is just brilliant! But, hold on. You know the original writer? The original mind who came up with this simple but wonderful idea that we couldn’t think of ourselves and that none of our writers could think of either? We don’t want them around, do we? We’d rather give it to one of our own writers who couldn’t think of this idea, without even talking to the original guy to see if they could write it first? And why would we spend a couple of thousand on an option when our multi multi million budget will sure need all the thousands we can find?’

Say that happens. What are you actually going to do about it?

Even with the help of the WGA, are you, a private individual with presumably limited funds, seriously going to take on one of these entertainment behemoths?

Are you really going to find the legal fees up front? Dedicate years of your life and a sea of negative emotions to what will be a bitter, hard fought battle with some deadly legal professionals?

Good luck to you if you do. And I don’t imagine you’ll get much writing done either for the next five years.

Much better to pat yourself on the back for having ideas that people want.

And come up with another three great ideas by the weekend.

3. Ideas Are in the Aether!

They really are. If you’re thinking about something, then a lot of other people are too.

And sometimes you learn this the hard way…

Over the last few months, (in the hours between 3 and 4 in the morning when I’ve not been thinking about the contest, writing feedbacks, or my script doctoring job), I have been working on three ideas for TV shows.

I’ve poured a lot of time and emotional investment and research time into all three.

My First ‘Stolen’ Idea

This was an action adventure show all about a British Indiana Jones character, who sets off for Atlantis on a mission to bring back Atlantean technology in order to help England win the First World War. This is an idea that was optioned by ITV 18 months ago, then let go when one of their audience research groups decided it was too risky an idea without a hit series of novels behind it.

I took the show back, and have been writing it anyway, because I loved the idea so much.

In the last week I have heard strong (if sketchy) rumours that people who have already made a massively successful kids show are inches away from a greenlight on their new show – all about a group of children who head off to discover Atlantis.

This isn’t SO close, but it does kill my idea on British TV for the next ten years or more.

My Second ‘Stolen’ Idea

The second is about a bunch of police officers forming an unofficial vigilante unit within the police force to get the natural justice that they feel is denied them by the current legal system.

A couple of weeks ago I read that the very successful writer Tony Jordan and his company Red Planet have a greenlight on their new police show – a show all about an unofficial vigilante unit within the police force. A group of officers who want the natural justice that… blah blah.

I mentioned this to Philip Shelley, who runs the Channel 4 Script contest – and he said that he had just read a script that had been submitted to the contest with exactly the same idea behind it.

So that was at least three of us having the same idea in the same year.

My Third ‘Stolen’ Idea

I actually can’t tell you about the third, as I’ll get into trouble with the guy who leaked the information.

But, basically, last Friday I sent this idea into a TV company.

On Monday morning I got a message back that they loved the idea.

In fact they loved it so much they are already in early development on it, with another set of writers.

Marvellous.

So there you go. They are very early in the development process with it, so I’m not giving up, but even so!

Clear, objective (heart-breaking!) proof that different people can have the same idea at the same time.

And a real lesson in getting your ideas out the door quickly!

Be Smart – Don’t Ask The Question

Like over-elaborate stage directions, misplaced apostrophes (misplaced apostrophe’s), scripts in any font other than Courier 12, or a character list at the start of the script, asking ‘Will you steal my idea’ is a sign that you are a beginner.

Some beginners strike it lucky. They’re blessed with natural taste, astonishing story instinct, and a writing style that could cut carbonised steel.

Most beginners produce scripts that are slightly less effective – and script execs know that.

You don’t want to be seen as a beginner. Don’t ask that question.

(If you feel you may have apostrophe issues, then this link: http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html will help.)

SCREENWRITING WORKSHOPS – LONDON – JANUARY AND MARCH

If you’re looking for some inspiration in the post Christmas blues, then you should think about coming on one of our screenwriting workshops. Two days of joy, guaranteed.

http://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/screenwriting-courses

HOW TO WRITE A SCREENPLAY

If you’re looking for a step by step guide to writing a screenplay, a method that forms the heart of every script I make, that is applicable to any genre I can think about, and that is wonderfully affordable, then have a look here:

http://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/how-to-write-a-screenplay

Plus you get the chance to ask questions of other working writers to see how they deal with things. Priceless!

I thought one of the questions asked this morning was interesting:

“OK, so you know [when you are given] the note that says “Make Jim less X” and you’re thinking… Jim’s not X. He’s never been X. I’ve never known a character be less X than Jim. How do you deal with it?”

THEY DON’T SEE IT LIKE YOU DO

The writer was asking about the gap that seems to crop up all the time between what you, the writer, thinks is on the page, and what the reader sees there. They can be wildly different.

My approach, and a consensus that emerged in the forum is that it can be helpful to make the person who is giving the note show you the precise line(s), or section, or action in the script that is causing them to think this.

If they can’t do that, then, miraculously, the note often disappears and you’re saved a whole mass of directionless rewriting.

If they CAN do it, then look carefully at what they show you, and try to see it from their point of view. I often find that whole, sweeping notes like this can be generated by one or two lines of dialogue that can be very easily flipped, or altered very simply, and that sorts everything out.

WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?

There are a couple of reasons for that. Characters tend to change, and evolve, and sometimes you can lose grip on your character for a moment, and an earlier version of the character can surface for a moment or two.

Or sometimes you’re so in love with a specific line, or moment, that you crowbar it in regardless of whether it really belongs.

Or sometimes your thought is right, but you haven’t written it very well. Happens to the best of us.

Conclusion? An apparently big, nasty, major rewrite-y note might not be nearly so bad as you think!

Second conclusion – writing is a lonely business. It’s great to talk things through with other people. A good place to do that on this site is here.

MAD GIRL

Last year I wrote a play for Radio 4 play. You may remember that I blogged about while I was writing was finally broadcast yesterday.

If you want to hear it (and, you’re in the UK) you can listen to it here until the 20th November.

It was based on extensive interviews with two mental health service users almost two years ago now. One of them, Morgan, has a blog.

Do have a look. It’s a remarkable read.

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS?

Philip Shelley and I are running two more Screenwriting Courses in January and March. The usual mixture of lecture, workshop, lively discussion, and all attendees get to meet either Tanya Tillet, literary agent at Knight Hall, or Ben Stoll (Head of Drama Development at C4) and Matthew Bouch, (Independent producer of “Big Fat Wedding”, “Being Human” and “The Sarah Jane Adventures” amongst others).

Find out more here

Tickets are selling steadily but there are still places available on both. Why not ask for a place for Christmas?

Written on Tin Pan Alley by Jerome & Schwartz in 1905, and revived by De Dannan in the early 1980s, we saw one man perform it on single bass guitar and vocals, in the darkened corner of a pub at 1.30 am as the crowd was thinning out and the craic was winding down.

And now I simply cannot get it out of my brain.

If you’re interested, here’s a De Dannan version, sung by the wonderful Maura O’Connell:

For a slightly more complex take on the Irish diaspora, you could also try “Thousands are Sailing”. The lyrics, apparently an uncredited collaboration by Phil Chevron and Shane Macgowan, are simply excellent.

MAD GIRL

This last Thursday and Friday I went along to BBC Broadcasting House in London to sit in on the recording of MAD GIRL, my new Radio 4 play.

You may remember me blogging in detail about the ups and downs of writing this script last year.

The play is about Rose, a fifteen year old girl with early onset psychosis, who goes on a lost weekend in Nottingham.

It’s based on first hand interviews with a couple of people who are long time sufferers of mental problems – and we were lucky enough to have one of the original interviewees come along to the studio.

She talked freely and honestly about her experiences to the actors, and spent a lot of time with the production team making sure that the voices heard by the lead character were plausible, in both sound and content. That means the end result is extremely authentic.

It’s being edited next week, which should take another two days, and it’s pencilled in for transmission on November 13th on Radio 4, so do look out for it.

RADIO WRITING WORLDWIDE

The BBC put out well over 200 original radio plays a year, plus serials and adaptations, and if you’re at the start of your career and having trouble opening doors, making a splash with a radio play is a great way to get your writing out to an audience, and attract the attention of agents and bigger industry players.

But someone told me yesterday that the UK is the only place in the world to have a radio drama industry. I was surprised – is that true? If you’re not in the UK, is there a market for radio drama where you are?

20 MILLION EUROS WORTH OF FUNDING?

One thing I learned while I was in Ireland that might interest you, wherever you are, that Broadcasting Authority of Ireland is in charge of the Irish government’s Broadcasting Fund.

Since 2006 they have given nearly 20million euros to independent producers for TV, Radio and Film that meet the requirement of the scheme.

They have provided funds to programmes and films such as Hunger (Film Four), Aifric and Kings (TG4), School Run (TV3) and Garage (RTÉ).

As a writer it’s apparently the case that you do NOT have to be Irish – or even writing about Ireland – to get attention.

What DOES matter is that you are working with a producer who has the support of an Irish Free-to-air broadcaster.

What’s more, I was told that the UK’s broadcasters qualify, as they are available on free satellite broadcast.

I hear that the BAI has just released another massive tranche of funding, which is currently actively looking for projects. If you’re hooked up with a producer in any way – or you are thinking of producing your own project – that has to be interesting news.

More information here.

SCREENWRITING INTERVIEWS

More screenwriters explain what they do and how they do it.

GOLDMINE COURSES

We have now inked in two more ‘Authoritative Guide To Writing & Selling A Great Screenplay’ courses in London, in January and March
next year.

The guest of honour on our January course is literary agent Tanya Tillett. Back for the second time, (because she was so good the first), Tanya is a literary agent at the Knight Hall agency.

Knight Hall are a top London agency, with a great list that includes people like Simon Beaufoy, Simon Nye, and it should be of interest to you that, as a comparatively new agent, Tanya is still building her list.

Tanya also represents several newer screenwriters – one of whom came through the 2011 Channel 4 screenwriting course (Evan Placey) – plus new-ish writer Dominic Mitchell who, on the basis of very little screenwriting experience (but a fantastic script) has been commissioned to write his own BBC3 series based on his script IN THE FLESH, an original and brilliant take on the zombie genre.

So Tanya is an agent who has first-hand experience of new screenwriters making a real mark and, as she proved the first time she spoke on one of our courses, is a real inspiration and fount of wisdom for writers trying to break into the industry.

Click here for more information.