SCRIPT ADVICE NEWSLETTER -13

WHAT THE SCRIPT FACTORY SAYS ABOUT SCRIPT ADVICE:

“We can heartily recommend Yvonne’s workshops – she unravels television like no one else!

www.scriptfactory.co.uk

Find out if I can help you with your current project@http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk offering writers mentoring, training and script editing services in order to develop their work and talent.  Please pass on this link to your fellow writers.

Or you can join SCRIPT ADVICE WRITERS ROOM @ http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=237330119115&ref=mf

SAWR is all about writing and writers. Here you can share your thoughts about writing, the creative process, the highs and lows of it all. You can also access this group for information about writing workshops that I am currently running, also script editing and mentoring services that I offer. My expertise lies in Television drama but any writer is welcome to share their experiences and their aspirations here.

Or to see my newsletter online, access my

Blog here: http://scriptadvice.wordpress.com/

AND INTRODUCING MY NEW BLOG; GEORGE, THE BLOGGING WRITER. Read all about her rocky journey towards television writing enlightenment here – http://yvonblog.wordpress.com/

 * HELLO

* WRITING COMPETITIONS

*WHAT YVONNE DID NEXT…

HELLO

As a natural curly haired sort, this rainy Summer has rendered me an unhappy cross between Merida (the fiesty red head from Pixar’s ‘Brave’) and Catherine Tate’s Nan.  However, the lack of sunshine made it easier to ward off the pervading damp depression that threatened Script Advice Towers, to read and report on your scripts, write my blogs,  facebook and twitter postings, and with my free hand, try to prevent my four and a half year old from breaking up the house while the rain drips off the roof and his pre-school shuts it’s doors for Summer.   He goes to Big School in September – I feel my writing wings will be finally unfurled with the space and time his admission to Grown Up World will afford me. Part of me can’t wait (this creative chrysallis has been stuck to the same old branch for a long time) but the other part, the scared mother part, is dreading it. Onwards dear reader to more interesting matters….

WRITING COMPETITIONS

There’s a lot out there.   Not all of it good.   Not all worth entering, but a fair amount, possibly enough to keep you all busy throughout the year, is definitely worth getting in shape for.

The key element I think to look for when you are considering entering a particualr competiton, is the list of judges/evaluators they are using. Check out their CV’s before you whap off your baby to be pulled apart and analysed by them!   Reading and reporting is a minefield of subjective opinion and personal taste coupled with vastly varying amounts of professional experience and acumen.

In my case, I think I have earned the right to read your work because I have been around a fair bit, read a ton and developed, analysed, discussed, argued, planned, produced and delivered for transmission a big fat wad of television drama hours – so all that talk and all that actual hands on script editing and drama producing experience is what you are getting when you hire me to read for you.

Do a bit of research before you commit your work to a competition.   The people setting themselves up to read and assess your ability must in my view, at the very least, be passionate and empathetic about storytelling and writers respectively.   You can glean if this is the case by the tone of their website and the calibre of people reading/assessing  for them.   Check out endorsements and if at all possible, chase up a few personal recommendations too.

Here are some of my favourite sites that offer script competitions and literary based prizes and incentives:

SCREENPLAY FESTIVAL:

From the US but don’t let that put you off – this is an accessible and user-friendly site and as far as I can tell, a good script competition to enter http://screenplayfestival.com/

INTERNATIONAL SCREEN WRITERS ASSOCIATION:

US again, but a very useful site and a mine of information – they regularly run competitions and workshops which you can access online http://www.networkisa.org/

BLUECAT SCREENPLAY:

No, I am not totally obsessed with America (although my husband is one of them!) but this site is a corker and regularly runs webinars and competitions worth noting. Here they’ve extended their repetoire to include good old Blighty http://bit.ly/QGcvfY

BAFTA ROCLIFFE NEW WRITIING FORUM:

This is a great site and worth keeping bookmarked because of the regular screen writing opportunities and general good writer related info. http://www.bafta.org/about/supporting-talent/rocliffe/

CIRCALIT:

Great website for writers wanting support and information and they reguarly run new writing opportunities and have interesting people talking about writing http://www.circalit.com/screenplay/competitions/list

EUROSCRIPT:

http://www.euroscript.co.uk/competition.html The competition currently running is sadly closed to submissions now, but worth keeping an eye on this website and the man who runs it Charles Harris.   Always a good source of opportunity and training for writers.

THE LONDON SCREENWRITERS FESTIVAL:

http://www.londonscreenwritersfestival.com/a festival worth attending (not least because yours turely will be speaking there!) but also because the peeps that run this marvellous festival also hold interesting writing competitions like the recent 50 Kisses Screenwriting Competition – keep this link bookmarked, you may have missed the deadline for this competition, but I think there’ll be more to come!

BBC WRITERS ROOM:

a steady, quality website offering consistently good advice and competitions worth entering http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/opportunities/

SCREENWRITERS GOLDMINE:

The competition that Phil Gladwin has been running has now closed for new entries, but worth checking out this website for future competitions and for screenwriting tips and info http://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/

WHAT YVONNE DID NEXT 

Those lovely folk at The London Screenwriting Festival have asked me to talk at their upcoming BREAKFAST CLUB at The Pheonix Arts Club London on September 3rd.   It’s an early start. 8.15am – 12.30. I will be giving a talk entitled: TELEVISION – HOW TO GET IN AND STAY IN, designed to help you navigate some of the writery minefields that scatter across the television drama landscape.

I aim to be direct, informed, practical and entertaining.  I aim to give you something to take away to think about further and hopefully to focus your mind (if you need it) on honing your skill base to get you across the threshold and on to a television drama.  I can not, obviously, promise doors will open – but this talk will hopefully give you some enthusiasm for writing for television and some pointers as to how to enjoy and thrive as a writer once there.

Here is the all important link: http://www.londonbreakfastclub.com/upcoming-breakfasts/september-2012-yvonne-grace/

And later on in September 26th  – 28th is the LONDON SCREENWRITERS FESTIVAL.   I have been asked to speak there too.   Details not confirmed but suffice to say, the website is updated regularly so when I confirm the who the why and the what, it will appear here: http://www.londonscreenwritersfestival.com/

I hope to see some familiar faces there and to meet new writers (and future clients naturally!)  If I have read a script for you or if you have used one of my services from my website and we have spoken over the phone, then please come up and say hello – I love to put faces to names and voices!

Many of you will either know of, or be a member of SCRIPT ADVICE WRITERS ROOM on FACEBOOK, but if you haven’t yet joined, please do, it is a vibrant lively community of writers, trainers, learners, moaners, growers and doers and I would love to see you there!

Here is the link again – so get clicking! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=237330119115&ref=mf  I hope I can help you with your writing; be it a television script, short or full length film or screen play, treatment or outline, novel or radio play, I read and script edit them all and can definitely help improve yours.   Drop me an email@ Yvonne.grace@scriptadvice.co.uk and let’s get working!

BYE FOR NOW AND HAPPY WRITING. copyright Yvonne Grace and Script Advice August 2012

FIVE BASIC, ESSENTIAL SCRIPT WRITING DO’S AND DON’TS

Marketting Bods beavering away in the back rooms of Consumer Cathedrals like Waitrose and Sainsburys use the words Basic and Essential to draw the wider slice of the human consumer-pyramid towards products that are vital to the average kitchen cupboard.  It’s no different in the world of writing – here then a list of my FIVE BASIC, ESSENTIAL things to get right and to avoid getting wrong in your script writing, for budget-savvy writers (this advice is free!) who also want to avoid slipping below the Good Writing radar.

1/ SCENE DESCRIPTION – GEOGRAPHY and CONTENT: DESCRIBE WHAT YOU WANT US TO SEE – NO MORE NO LESS

Two things to remember here: don’t under describe your scene but also don’t over describe. Both mistakes on the page cause confusion and irritation in a reader. No-one likes to have to trawl through pages of description to get to the vital information of the scene. But the flip side of that is a tough place to be as well. There is nothing more tedious than having to work out for yourself where characters are at the top of a scene, or what they are doing – what it is, in fact, that we are looking at. So my rule of thumb is this; imagine and visualise for yourself before you put finger tip to keypad or ballpoint to paper where your characters are and what image you want us to see at the top of the scene. It sounds an obvious thing to say, but writing for the small or big screen means you have to use your visual imagination as much as you do your verbal skills to get your story across. Tell the story in pictures as well as words. So what is it you want us to know? Tell us succinctly but with a touch of description to keep the top of the scene alive. Set the scene – literally – paint it in words but chose yours carefully and remember – we need to get a move on here – this is not a novel – so place your characters and prepare for them to move the story on.

2/ CUT TO THE CHASE – KEEP UP THE STORY MOMENTUM – HAVE CONFIDENCE IN YOUR STORY

I know it’s a tough one – but never allow yourself as a writer, to procrastinate. Your characters can, if you demand it, in order to further a plot point or build some tension in the narrative, but you the writer need to ensure you ‘get a wiggle on’ throughout the writing of your script. You are in control of not only the imagery and dialogue, but also the pace and mood of the story. It’s a truism that many writers lack faith in their storylines and worry that if they truely do push the script on they will run out of story before they complete their all important third act. My advice is always to allow the story to build the momentum it will naturally and if the writing begins to stall and the story to wane then more invention is required from you. Do not apply the brakes, thus holding back the plot incrementally scene by scene, do push your foot on the accelorator and give the storyline and your script some welly instead!

3/ CONSTRUCT A SHAPELY SCENE – INTRO/DEVELOP/END

Here’s another cliche but a true one (like most cliches in fact). Each scene must have a beginning, a middle and an end. So many writers forget this basic essential fact when bringing their story together in script form. Introduce your scene, develop it’s particuar theme and end it on a definite, clear note. This might be on a visual image, or an expression, or on a parting word; but do end your scene. Do not leave it and your characters hanging.  It’s sometimes easier to write the meat of the scene and harder to give it a good opening and ending, but it is essential to get this right in order to keep your overall control of your story intact. Ask yourself some basic questions when beginning to write a scene: ‘what is this scene about? What is the job of this particular scene?’ What must I put in and what can I leave out?’ ‘How do I need to leave this scene in order to push the story along?’ Be tough, be exacting and be clear with both yourself as the writer and with your scenes.

4/ VISUALISE, VISUALISE, VISUALISE

I can not stress enough how important it is for the writer to visualise, to imagine, to literally paint with words both your characters and the world they populate. Television, film, are visual mediums and the vitality and impact of your story on the small or large screen is dependant on your skill as both wordsmiths and visual storytellers. A lot of writing pitfalls can be avoided if your visual imagination is strong. Try literally, to ‘see’ the scenes as you write them and in so doing, create an atmosphere or a feeling using a simple but effective description of a room, or lighting, weather, a colour, an item of furniture, a picture. Couple a strong visual imagination with a skill in writing real, grounded, credible dialogue and your script is virtually writing itself!

5/ ONLY CONNECT – MENTAL EDITING

This is a tough one but if you can do this, my guess is that you may have dallied a while in pitfall number 1 and grazed a knee in pitfall 2 but I think you will have skipped lightly over 3 and 4 with little effort. Again, I make the same point but as you are in the business of writing in a visual medium, it is essential that you try and visualise how each separate component of your story, (in scenes) will cut together, and once positioned, how it will look, how the story will hang together and what the overall style and tone of your script will be.  Doing this will ensure you do not fall into another trap (perhaps on a sub-headed list of essential do’s and don’ts!) of allowing yourself too many jumpcuts within the narrative. Where a character literally seems to leap from one set/location to another as if they have jumped time between scenes. When cut together, unless these jumpcuts are explained in the visualisation of the scene, the script will both read and look disjointed. Try and keep in your head as you write, the pace, the tone and the style of your narrative.  The placing of your scenes along your narrative through line is very important. Scenes do not necessarily have to follow a linear pattern of storytelling and chosing to abutt one scene in particular with another can add atmsophere and story intrigue which you may not have actually scripted intentionally. Play with the narrative in your mental edit and in so doing, you will be controlling the pace of your story and where you want your audience to relax and where you want to up the pace.

That’s my TOP FIVE BASIC, ESSENTIAL SCRIPT DO’s AND DONT’s – I hope you find them useful – any feedback is always useful and look out for future DOs and DON’T lists from me@ http://www.SCRIPT ADVICE.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

script advice newsletter – Spring

SCRIPT ADVICE – NEWSLETTER 08

·        Spring is here!

·        Story telling for Telly

·        Short Courses from SCRIPT ADVICE and other interesting stuff

WHAT THE SCRIPT FACTORY SAYS ABOUT SCRIPT ADVICE:

“We can heartily recommend Yvonne’s workshops – she unravels television like no one else! www.scriptfactory.co.uk

 

Find out if I can help you with your current project@ http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk offering writers mentoring, training and script editing services in order to develop their work and talent. Please pass on this link to your fellow writers.

Or you can join SCRIPT ADVICE WRITERS ROOM@ http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=237330119115&ref=mf

SAWR is all about writing and writers. Here you can share your thoughts about writing; the creative process, the highs and lows of it all. You can also access this group for information about writing workshops that I am currently running, also script editing and mentoring services that I offer. My expertise lies in Television drama but any writer is welcome to share their experiences and their aspirations here.

Or to see my newsletter online, access my Blog@http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk

SPRING IS HERE!

At long last I can see grass where formerly there was mud and the Magnolia is about to burst forth with such a gorgeousness of budding flowers that, typing this and looking out of the office window at the unfurling creaminess of each folded petal, I feel the urge to go all Robert Frost and wax lyrical about sap rising and the strangely lyrical sound of a wood pecker hammering the heck out of the oaks in the nearby wood.  It’s been a long winter but at long last the air smells like the soil is beginning to do it’s job and get stuff growing again, and in this vein of re-birth and new growth – on with SCRIPT ADVICE NEWSLETTER for SPRING!

STORY-TELLING FOR TELLY

If you have ever sat across the table in a restaurant, pub or bar, and listened to a long, boring, interminable, flat, dry, tale told in painstaking detail by a relative, friend or just someone whose chair leg is intertwined with yours, and found that you can not escape this hell because either a/ you are linked to this person by bloodline and gene pool or b/ you can not get past without taking their shin bone marrow with you, then you will no doubt agree with me, that telling a good story is a skill not everyone possesses.

And amazingly, the truth is, that this is even the case amongst writers.  The skill of telling an engaging, teasing, compelling narrative within the pages of a script and in scene form, with a beginning, middle and end which delivers a connective cohesion from the first scene to the last, is very much what the business of television story telling is all about and a particular craft that all writers wishing to get on in television, to pay their bills by writing and to ultimately get commissioned, should definitely get their heads around. Being creative and having a good idea is no longer enough. Being able to creative characters and write good dialogue is also a must, but having the confidence and skill to handle a layered narrative which rattles along and produces the pre-requisite peaks and troughs of an accurately timed television episode is where the real job lies.

Where can you learn this rigorous, exacting skill? Writing for series and soaps, that’s where. I firmly believe that once you have earned your stripes on programmes like EASTENDERS and HOLBY CITY you will be able to tackle absolutely any writing challenge you may meet in the future.

This is not to say (and I must stress this) that our series and soaps much loved by television audiences, are mere training grounds for writers, but they are, by nature of their format and disciplines, excellent arenas within which you can hone and develop your story-telling skills and where you will learn how to structure, pace and deliver a compelling episodic story which will be enjoyed by millions.

Soap-land is where great writers grow up.

Lisa Campbell from Industry Bible, Broadcast Magazine on the value of Soaps –  with which I heartily concur:

It may be going too far to suggest that without EastEnders there would be no King’s Speech, but director Tom Hooper is just one example of the scores of people who have worked on the BBC’s continuing dramas and honed their skills.

And it’s not just directors, writers, producers and commissioners; we can add Kate Winslet, Aaron Johnson and Orlando Bloom to the list.

So it is no doubt with some relief that the BBC greeted the largely positive findings in this week’s National Audit Office (NAO) report into the costs of producing continuing drama.

It showed that the cost per hour has tumbled by 20% over the past eight years at the same time as audience approval has increased – testament to the dedication of BBC in-house teams and the many freelancers who ensure that the continual squeeze in budgets hasn’t led to a continual decline in standards.

The Trust-commissioned report concluded that costs were tightly controlled, but – and it’s a big but – said it is impossible to tell whether the shows represent value for money. This was exactly our reaction when we saw the figures, which are published for the first time.

Without any context or comparisons, they are pretty meaningless. A 2010-11 budget of £29.8m for EastEnders – 3.5p per viewer – sounds like a bargain, but without any benchmark, without any figures from other broadcasters, how can we tell? I can’t see ITV rushing to provide the numbers for Corrie any time soon.

While the report made some sensible recommendations, the Trust has rightly rebutted one: that the series should have some ‘audience-related performance objectives’. This is exactly why bean-counters’ scrutiny of output sets creatives’ hackles rising.

While it is right to expect channels and genres to have key objectives, trying to apply them to individual programmes risks hampering creativity and reducing it to nothing more than a box-ticking exercise. Bafta award-winning series need creative freedom to flourish, and as we’re constantly hearing, there’s quite enough red tape at the BBC already.

The NAO acknowledges that purely financial and quantitative measures only tell part of the story. It fails to mention, for example, the series’ role in our national culture, in refl ecting contemporary issues or in fostering talent. Series such as Holby, Casualty and Doctors are as relentless as they are rewarding, but those who have served their apprenticeship always acknowledge that without it, they wouldn’t be where they are today.

It was a similar story with The Bill, hence the strength of reaction among the drama community after its demise. Its loss places even more responsibility on the BBC and, as continuing drama boss John Yorke asserts, without such series, there wouldn’t be enough jobs in the UK drama industry to sustain it, nor enough trained people to man it.

So to put a value on that? Priceless.

OTHER INTERESTING STUFF

SCRIPT ADVICE COURSES:

Announcing 2 new courses designed by yours truly and hosted by those lovely people at the NFTS.

National Film and Television School: www.nfts.co.uk

Storyline Plot & Development

31 May 2011 to 03 June 2011

This is a four day course exploring the business of creating, plotting, shaping and developing  storylines and ideas for long-running dramas.

SUMMER SOAPS HOW TO WRITE FOR SERIES TELEVISION

I am so looking forward to running this one, it will be intensive, collaborative and challenging and there will be great guest speakers to give you the chance to put your questions to professional writer/developers currently working in the industry.

The dates are July 4^th – 8^th and then a three week gap for writing. Followed by another two days for script editing.

Check out all the details of both courses on the NFTS website. And if you have any questions, email me at Yvonne.grace@scriptadvice.co.uk.

Hope to see you at one or both!

LONDON SCREEN WRITERS FESTIVAL: http://www.londonscreenwritersfestival.com/blog/2011/04/send-in-the-clowns/

This is an informative and all round jolly nice blog from Hayley McKenzie, Script Editor and Script Consultant – what she says here about the need for writers to get their head’s around comedy writing is very true – read and take heed! (Also, if you can, I would check out the London Screen Writers Festival – an excellent place to network and get inspiration!)

I chaired this forum a few years back for the Script Factory and would recommend a visit – they are generally great all round drama types and are always appreciative of the courses I have run for them check it out:

THE SCRIPT FACTORY: http://www.scriptfactory.co.uk/go/Training/Article_963.ht

The Script Factory TV Forum

…is a two-day training and networking event devoted to writing for the small screen (or even the plasma HD-ready widescreen…). While Film and Theatre traditionally require the audience to come to you, television reaches them right where they sit. If you are serious about a career writing drama – and want to actually make some money doing it – then spend two days with us finding out how to get your work into living rooms across the land.

Through a combination of training and guest speakers TV Forum aims to inspire participants to consider how their talents, ideas and aspirations may be suited to the wide range of TV drama opportunities, from soap writing to original single dramas or innovative sitcoms. Over two days, we aim to give screenwriters an essential overview of the current TV landscape coupled with the language, resources and industry knowledge required to further explore how to forge their own TV writing career.

BBC DRAMA WRITERS ACADEMY: Applications for the 2011 BBC Drama Writers Academy will be open on 11th April 2011.  Check out their website for more details http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/writing/writers_academy.shtml

Script Advice meets IN DEVELOPMENT: I will be Guest Speaking at their first Development Meet in London April 12^th at the BFI Benugo Bar, where I will be most likely drinking a glass of something lovely while passing on some of my knowledge and experience of SCRIPT EDITING AND PRODUCING for Series Television. Details below in an email from Sarah:

Dear Development Friends!

Let’s celebrate Spring! April’s In Development drinks gathering is taking place on Tuesday 12th April, at The Benugo Bar, BFI Southbank, from 7.30 p.m.
Our featured guests this month are Yvonne Grace and Philip Shelley, coming along to chat with us about combining work as a script editor and producer in TV and moving between these roles. Both have an impressive list of TV credits on numerous hit shows which you can check out on their profiles.
If you’d like to come along and chat to them informally over a drink, gain some insight from their experience and share some of your own, then please RSVP to this email.
We’ll be in the bar until closing and look forward to seeing you soon!
Sarah and Hannah
In Development
www.indevelopmentuk.blogspot.com

BBC – About the BBC: The real value of Continuing Drama

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc

In the BBC official blog, John Yorke writes about the benefits of getting your head around series storytelling

Here’s useful source of info for all budding writers of any genre:

http://essentialwriters.com/

Here is a link to Laurence Timms SAWR member blog NOONE CARES ABOUT YOUR BLOG LAURENCE – I think this link is really useful – thanks L!

http://laurencetimms.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/where-to-find-tv-jobs/

WRITERS GUILD OF GREAT BRITAIN

And a last mention to the WGGB because they do such a lot of work behind the scenes for professional writers

http://www.writersguild.org.uk/

I hope I can help you with your writing; be it a television script, short (or full length) film or screen play, treatment or outline, novel or radio play, I read and script edit them all and can definitely help improve yours.  Drop me an email@ Yvonne.grace@scriptadvice.co.uk and let’s get working!

BYE FOR NOW AND HAPPY WRITING.

Copyright Yvonne Grace Script Advice March 2011

SCRIPT ADVICE NEWSLETTER – 7

Contents:

• Happy New Year!
• The Ups and Downs of Social Networking
• A Day In The Life Of George, Jobbing Writer – Me and My Shadow
• A Bit Of Extra

Find out if I can help you with your current project@ http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk offering writers mentoring, training and script editing services in order to develop their work and talent. Please pass on this link to your fellow writers.

Or you can join SCRIPT ADVICE WRITERS ROOM@ http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=237330119115&ref=mf

SAWR is all about writing and writers. Here you can share your thoughts about writing; the creative process, the highs and lows of it all. You can also access this group for information about writing workshops that I am currently running, also script editing and mentoring services that I offer. My expertise lies in Television drama but any writer is welcome to share their experiences and their aspirations here.

Or to see my newsletter online, access my Blog@http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I can’t believe it but it’s happening again. We (the Family; aka Big Mike, Little Michael and me) are moving. I seem always to be on the move. My son will no doubt grow up thinking that his parents were from Roving Romany stock. Or perhaps Michael growing up, will be inextricably drawn to the life of a travelling circus and take to the high wire instead of getting a highly paid, regular, creative as well as stimulating job doing good works and making him rich and successful at the same time…. When I, in 15 years time am perched on the edge of my zimmer, neck craning upwards to the apex of the Big Top, watching my son in spangely tights do a loop the loop on a trapeze, I will know that it was our fault for moving so much during his formative years….Anyway, we are on the move. To a bigger house with more space which we will no doubt proceed to fill with more stuff; not, I hasten to add, stuff that might be pretty, or useful, or interesting or essential; no, it will be of the toy variety: the big lawn mower, the tool box, the robot with the revolving head, the scooter, the construction site, the BLOW UP Buzz Lightyear…sometimes, as I pack away the dressing up box for another day or when I have stood, yet again, on the back of a metal dumper truck in my bare feet carrying the laundry basket, every cell in my body screams for a big, wide, clear, empty cell of a room and just an armchair in the centre, a pile of books on the floor and just an arm’s reach away, a HUGE glass of Sauvignon. Bliss. Something to aim for in 15 years time…Right. The local charity shops are just about to get hit by a Bonanza of Boy Toys….

THE OF UPS AND DOWNS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING

I have never been much of ‘a joiner’. I don’t do groups, clubs, organisations. I am like my dad; opinionated, fairly confident of my own thoughts and feelings on most issues and happy for others to voice theirs, as vociferously as they like – I don’t, however, want, by dint of being in the same group or organisation, to have to listen to the liturgy of others from their own particular soap box – it’s just not what I want to do with my spare time. Yes, I am a bit grumpy and no, I am not anti-social. I would say I was gregarious – but with a penchant for island living.

So when the whole issue of Social Networking reared it’s rather unwelcome head a few years back when I was setting up Script Advice, I was dubious about joining in on the cyber chat and signing up for Facebook and the like. To this day, I have to say with a certain amount of head hanging, I have still not dipped my toe in the water of Twitter and remain a tweet virgin. I am utterly confused by the sound biteyness of Twitter and by the inanity of it to boot. But then, no-one has ever followed me anywhere, let alone by way of a cyber highway, so what would I know about it?

So, after a rocky and not very cheery start, I am officially glad that I joined Facebook. Script Advice now has a writers room (amazingly called SCRIPT ADVICE WRITERS ROOM) where like minded odds and sods, bods and mods, can post what is currently concerning them about their writing, or they can share some information about a link they found really useful or let fellow SAWR people know of something they have done, or are about to do that either needs support, or just needs an airing. I like that. It’s friendly. It’s connective and it makes me feel, as someone who set up Script Advice to help writers write better scripts, that in some small way, via SAWR http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=237330119115&ref=mf

and the http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk website, that good work is being done.  It’s important to me for the writers I help to feel they have a professional out there, watching their back. For a fee, granted, but I suppose 21 years experience of crafting, grafting, and rafting drama for television does carry some fiscal weight?

So, it is settled then, being a member of Facebook and getting the word spread around the net about Script Advice and the work I do and the courses I run, is a good thing. Also, another good thing; via FB I have discovered there are several very hard working, experienced script developers/editors/mentors all beavering away on behalf of their clients and also connecting to my group page and so we are joining hands, across cyber space, in the name of better writing and writer support. Ahhhhh. No. I have to stop the rising orchestral strings before the fluffy clouds and the turtle doves obscure the real view. Facebook is a political and tricky minefield for a girl with a mission to navigate.  You have to create a balance between being over friendly and over familiar with handling the business side of what you are doing and strike the correct tone with everything you write and everything you share. It’s like being a journalist in microcosm and that’s not a bad writer-skill to master these days! I also found it un-nerving in the first few weeks of my drawing up the cyber chair, clearing my throat and announcing ‘hello, my name is Yvonne and I like writing and writers’; I kept dreaming about people I did not personally know, but whose profiles I had begun to follow because they were either interesting, or just down right funny. These dreams were better than the recurring one I have about flooding toilets (not nice) but still I found them a bit unsettling. But the intrusion dreams have stopped now that I have admitted to the castaway side of my personality, that I am in fact a Facebooker and proud of it.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF GEORGE, JOBBING WRITER: ME AND MY SHADOW

INT: ELECTRICIANS’STORE CUPBOARD STUDIO 8 – 10am

I think I’ve got away with it. Amongst the normal confusion of ‘the producer’s run’, I don’t think I’ve been missed. But the smell of 20 year old dust is getting up my nose and what I thought was a seat, I’ve just discovered is a ton of old porn mags that I’m sitting on. This is not a good start to the week for a professional, reliable, deadline-beater writer like me. Just checking the coast is clear and then I best go and face the music. Be a grownup, stoic, broad-shouldered. Right, here goes…

INT: STUDIO 8 BEHIND THE COSY CAFÉ SET – 10.10am

Well, I’ve got narrow, immature, unstable shoulders obviously. Now, entirely hidden by the false back wall of the café set, I spy the mangy sofa the props department use for the café’s resident moggy Jumbo, to nap on, and make a bee-line. I realise Letty Leadbetter, aka ‘the music’ is really getting to me. She is pretty, petite, clever and confident – what a nightmare combo. I do not like the music and I not want to face it any time soon.

INT: STUDION 8 ON THE MANGY SOFA – CAFÉ SET 10.12am

A bit of explanation is in order: The Producer’s Run sounds like a dodgy game show from the 70’s but is in fact a fairly crucial, if tedious, part of the WESTENDERS production schedule. Each week, on the first day of filming, the cast, crew and writer plus script editor of that week’s particular block of episodes, meet in Studio 8 and literally run through the shooting scripts of that block. We walk, between sets, as the camera crew and Director stagger through for the Producer’s benefit, their shooting intentions for each set. Each script in the shooting schedule, has been taken apart and the scenes lumped together according to their location. So all the café scenes, for example, are shot together – making no story sense what so ever, but it saves a lot of shooting time, and as Scary Producer never tires of saying ‘time is money’. Because the shooting schedule is not in story order, it is a confusing time for actors and crew but also makes my head, as the writer of a couple of the episodes, twist around on my neck. And what is making this particular Producer’s Run even more tricky, is the incessant twittering (with mouth, not mobile) of Letty Leadbetter, new recruit on the fledgling ‘writer shadowing scheme’ and currently the script chick I am meant to be taking under my writer’s wing.

INT: STUDIO 8 JANETTE’S SITTING ROOM – 10.20am

I heard them coming my way, and my jeggings were covered in cat hair, so had to beat a hasty retreat. Janette’s sitting room is a shrine to bad taste. Janette is a blousy, sad, ‘tart with a heart’ and the prop department have gone to town on the set dressing in here. Staring at Janette’s vast collection of china bowls, I begin to feel a heel for doing a runner when I should’ve been able to stand by Letty and answer her endless questions. In between the two episodes I wrote, there are two more and without the storyline document keeping the storyline and the scripts in check, now, faced with a incoherent series of cafes and pubs and sitting rooms, I found I couldn’t reliably answer Letty’s clear, confident, query about where we are up to in the Jock and Janette storyline. I should’ve turned the beam of Letty’s questioning on to Hope, WESTENDERS nicest Script Editor, but she was tackling the knotty problem of the fact that an episode (not mine) dictates that Jock and Janette have a front loader washing machine, and not, as is plainly the truth looking at it now, a top loader. Scary Producer was listening in, smiling, (she loves Letty Leadbetter and I am sure she is grooming her for a swift usurp of my regular writing slot)and my mind went completely blank and I said something about needing a wee and shot off set. Nicely done. For a 12 year old.

INT: STUDIO 8 JANETTE’S SITTING ROOM – BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE – 10.30am

‘Yes’. (I can hear myself saying this with complete confidence). ‘I am a bit ahead of the game Helen’ (Scary Producer’s real name) ‘well, you know me, always so well prepared!’ Phew. Apparently, although I seem to have lost my shooting schedule so wouldn’t know anyway, the next set to visit on the Producer’s Run was Janette’s Sitting Room so here I am, trying not to look like I was crouching in a hiding sort of way, and more like I was sitting in a neat sort of way, waiting for everyone to catch up. Letty gave me a delighted smile when she saw me, making me feel even worse for avoiding her. I smile back, she’s inexperienced, she only wants to learn, and from me, so that’s a compliment surely? What’s she saying now? Oh the bloody cheek. Letty has just suggested a line change – in my script – the nerve of the girl – and Scary Producer likes it! What? What the buggery bollocks is a ramekin? Everyone is nodding and even Hope, my mate, the calm in my storm, is saying ramekin is funny and bowl, (as I have written it) is not – well, I am not laughing. Oh SHUT UP Letty you annoying tit – who calls their child Letty anyway? Mr and Mrs Lettuce? I try and smile, I swallow the bile rising and ask Letty for a pen (she has several) and we all change the line. Letty 1. Me 0.

Check out more George Adventures from past Newsletters by accessing my blog@Blog@http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk

A Bit Of Extra

SUMMER SOAPS – HOW TO WRITE FOR SERIES TELEVISION

Announcing a new course designed by yours truly and hosted by those lovely people at the NFTS.

National Film and Television School: www.nfts.co.uk

I am so looking forward to running this one, it will be intensive, collaborative and challenging and there will be great guest speakers to give you the chance to put your questions to professional writer/developers currently working in the industry. 

The dates are July 4^th – 8^th and then a three week gap for writing. Followed by another two days for script editing.  Check it all out in detail on the NFTS website. And if you have any questions, email me at Yvonne.grace@scriptadvice.co.uk.

Hope to see you there!

http://www.writersandartists.co.uk/short-story-competition-2011

Here’s an interesting competition to enter if you have a script almost ready to brave the world – competitions are a great way of honing your craft and getting used to producing work to deadline – give this a bash!

http://www.scriptchat.blogspot.com/

This is a friendly place to be if you are in to social networking and when you feel the need to share your solo writing status. This website is for those who want to chat and meet like-minded writers to have a vent, have your say, have a gripe, or share some knowledge – it’s all good stuff and worth checking out.

www.euroscript.co.uk

This site is another useful one to have winking at you from your tool bar. There’s some interesting opportunities this month in the shape of script writing competitions and its always good to have a deadline in your diary…

http://www.beaplaywright.com/

I am not usually a fan of online courses, but this one seems to be a cut above the rest. Have a look at their website and if you are conjuring up a story that seems to fit on stage or if you want to try your hand at the craft of writing plays, then this could be a good place to start.

http://industrialscripts.co.uk/

London-based script consultancy founded by some of the UK’s leading script analysts, delivering feedback services and training to filmmakers.

I am plainly advertising the opposition I realise, but these guys have a very impressive pedigree and are worth checking out for info on screen writing in general as well as their regular newsletter.

http://jasonarnopp.blogspot.com

Many writers blog these days, but I particularly think fellow Facebooker and Script Advice workshop attender Jason Arnopp has an angle and an open, positive attitude to the whole business of writing and making it happen as a career option. His latest blog is about getting an agent and the pros and cons of how to do it, and what it means when you have landed one. Worth a read if this is the next step you are thinking about.

http://metaphorinmymonster.blogspot.com

And herewith, another SAWR member Sarah Olley takes us through the minefield that we like to call script development. A very useful and entertaining read.

Filmmaking Course with Industry Experts at Raindance for £39 instead of £119

www.groupon.co.uk

This link helpfully posted on FB by SAWR member Liz Holliday – it looks like an amazing deal.

I hope I can help you with your writing; be it a television script, short (or full length) film or screen play, treatment or outline, novel or radio play, I read and script edit them all and can definitely help improve yours.  Drop me an email@ Yvonne.grace@scriptadvice.co.uk and let’s get working!

BYE FOR NOW AND HAPPY WRITING.

Copyright Yvonne Grace Script Advice January 2011

SCRIPT ADVICE Newsletter – 6

Contents:

• Morning!
• I’ve Got An Idea For A Script….
• A Day In The Life Of George, Jobbing Writer – ‘Networking’
• A Bit Of Extra

Find out if I can help you with your current project@ http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk offering writers mentoring, training and script editing services in order to develop their work and talent. Please pass on this link to your fellow writers.

Or you can join SCRIPT ADVICE WRITERS ROOM@ http://www.facebook.com/group

SAWR is all about writing and writers. Here you can share your thoughts about writing; the creative process, the highs and lows of it all. You can also access this group for information about writing workshops that I am currently running, also script editing and mentoring services that I offer. My expertise lies in Television drama but any writer is welcome to share their experiences and their aspirations here.

Or to see my newsletter online, access my Blog@http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk

 

MORNING!

I used to be a morning person. Happy to embrace the day, full of optimistic energy. Then again, I used to be a late-night let’s party till dawn person and during a particularly fecund period in my life, I also achieved the happy condition of being both at the same time. But then you get a bit older, parts of your body start to creak and other bits grow creases where there weren’t any previously and suddenly, your body tells you that drinking the same amount of alcoholic units as your BMI and staying up talking rubbish till 2am is no longer an option. Not unless you actually enjoy embracing the toilet bowl like an old friend and the dubious experience of greeting your 3 year old at 6am still drunk from the night before. No I don’t do that any more (honest) and am now a fully paid up member of the ‘I hate mornings’ club and hold a supplement subscription to the ‘going to bed before 10pm’ group.  I now hate mornings because mine start so eye-wateringly early. Having a 3 year old puts paid to the once entirely un-appreciated joy of a morning lie in. He gets up with stuff to talk about (cars, trucks, dragons and knights) and lots of jobs to do (playing with cars and trucks and dressing up as a knight. I have to be the dragon, (which at such an un-godly hour and without any special makeup or lighting, I manage to do very well indeed) and all of this before those techy types at Cbeebies have turned their transmission switch to the ‘ON’ position.  Between the hours of 6 and 8am I take the view that mummies over the age of 35 should be seen and not heard. Children under the age of 5 however, are seen and heard all too much. I try and hide in the kitchen, attempting to look busy when in fact all I manage to do is un-stick my eyelashes and unload the dish- washer. Michael finds me lurking there, hogging the kettle, trying to keep my eye bags from hitting the lino and jabs me in the bum with his sonic screwdriver:

 

Michael:  Mummy?

Me:  Yes Michael?

Michael:  Are these my eyebrows?’

Me: Yes, and they are blonde and sandy. What colour are mummy’s eyebrows?

Michael: (close scrutiny) Grey.

 

I hate mornings.

 

I’VE GOT AN IDEA FOR A SCRIPT…..

I hear this a lot in my line of work. It often makes my heart sink a bit when the enthusee says something like ‘I was on the bus the other day and over heard a conversation between two women – very funny – it would make a great script’. Yes, there is no doubt that wigging in to other people’s conversations is a great way of ‘tuning in’ your ear; to getting used to listening to the rhythms of natural speech, and to learning how to control the ebb and flow of realistic, colloquial conversation. The Demon of Bad Dialogue lurks in the wings of many a professionally turned out script and not every writer finds it easy to write credible dialogue. The tone and style of writers such as Russell T Davies, Paul Abbot, Kay Mellor and Jonathon Harvey, to name just 3 writers capable of packing a strong, pithy dialogue punch is formed in my view, by their obvious love of language and the way people actually speak.

 

It is often the context in which the writer sets the dialogue spoken by a particular character, that really makes the scene sing. Often, it is the subtext of the scene that underpins the strength and appeal of the dialogue spoken and if a writer does not pay attention to the interplay between text and subtext within the scene, even lyrical and interesting dialogue can fall flat.

 

So an idea can start with language, but must actually contain a story to tell. This may sound obvious, but honestly, it is all too often that I find myself labouring through a script that actually does not contain enough plot, or enough things happening. So many scripts are created enthusiastically by writers who believe they have something to say, but who, in actual fact, have merely the kernel of an idea that started with something they overheard or an article they read or a event that occurred.

 

At the risk again of stating the obvious, stories have to have a beginning, a middle and an end and somewhere during and between these stages, there has to be a qualitative, clear, engaging journey taken and a progression shown throughout the narrative, via the characters and what they actual say and do. An idea becomes a script when text, subtext, character, dialogue and plot all come together. Now the writer can explore and describe visually and emotionally, the message, the moral, the theory behind their story. Now the writer is free to teach us something we might not have known, or show us lives that are not our own, but with which we can empathise. Now, with a strong narrative through line, like beads hanging on a string, the scenes within the script push the story on inch-by-inch and the characters in those scenes grow and develop and we, the audience are taken along for the ride.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF GEORGE, JOBBING WRITER

NETWORKING

7am – INT – MY FLAT – BEDROOM

Wake up to a feeling of foreboding and dread. Can’t think why. Do a bit of head rocking to see if I have a hangover. No. Check the pillow next to me, yep, empty. So, no over indulgence and no naughty one night stands. Why the creeping flush of anxiety under my PJs? Can’t be the menopause. I couldn’t be that unlucky surely. Better get up.  Cleaning my teeth sometimes aids mental clarity – must be something to do with those red and blue stripes.

 

7.30am – INT -  MY FLAT – BATHROOM

Fiercely brushing, then suddenly, like being hit in the head with a Space Hopper, I remember. Today is the first of a 4 day writer/agent/producer of telly drama jamboree called WriteUp! The organisers are friends of Scary Producer at Westenders and she has sort of almost-definitely-without-trying-to-hide-it forced the writer team to attend.  WriteUp! It’s going to be hell and I hate it already, even the thought of that bloody irritating exclamation mark is making my cuticles curl. I spit toothpaste into the sink and in the mirror; my reflection gurns back at me. I look like Westender’s heavyweight griever Poppy Lemon; crumpled in grief at her toy-boy’s funeral, face collapsing inwards like a punctured vacuum flask.

 

10.00am – INT – THE ONEDIEN LINE SUITE – THE PLACE – LONDON

Am trying to look interested in the WriteUp! display board while up on the little stage, Viv Cholmondley (WriteUp! Festival Director) stoically chairs an earnest and humourless debate about the importance of comedy in dramatic writing. I stare blankly at a group photo of Viv and her WriteUp! Associates grinning inanely, perched on the steps of their new premises off the Goldhawk Road, and wonder why it is that these writery type events seem to happen in venues that actively drain the creative juice out of any one remotely creative or juicy.  Speaking of which, Jaz Verge, the enfant terrible of new writers, whom at 17 is the youngest writer to have a play staged at the Royal Court, is currently deeply embedded in his own ego and is struggling to breathe whilst managing to continue to wax on about how, in his latest play ‘Torture in Tooting’ he likes to insert ‘moments of intense joy’ into scenes ‘unashamedly graphic’ in their ‘diabolical depressiveness’. God, I would like to punch him in his pretentious tattoo.

 

11.00am – INT – THE ONEDIEN LINE SUITE – THE PLACE – LONDON

Coffee Break. Viv, it turns out, is not a bad sort. She was very patient in her explanation of how to say her surname (not, apparently phonetically, you actually pronounce it Chumley – which beggars the response WHY THE FECK DON’T YOU WRITE IT LIKE THAT THEN?) and asked me if I had enjoyed the earlier ‘locking of horns’ and wasn’t Jaz marvellous? I think I managed to nod before Miles Cuban, gripping Viv like she was a muffin and he was carb-starved, dragged her away for a conflab with his celebrated new client Jaz. I have seen Miles suck the marrowbone out of a chicken’s windpipe, so I know how ruthless and thorough that man is. Jaz, I have no doubt, will go far and he doesn’t need me to swell the numbers currently circulating in his orbit. I cross the acrid blue shag pile in search of like-minded types.

 

11.15am – INT – THE ONEDIEN LINE SUITE – THE PLACE – LONDON

Now this is more like it. Holly (Westenders Nicest Script Editor), Colin Clipboard (Westenders archivist) Dylan and Su (both writers) and me are gathered in the ante-chamber having a metaphorical group hug before we have to go back into the Blue Room and get Networking. Dylan and I are discussing the merits of the series our suite is named after. We both agree that it is fab and shabby in perfect proportion. I also rather worryingly find Peter Gilmore, the leading man, a bit on the buff side. Su thinks sideboards are a massive turn off and we get confused for a bit because Holly thinks we are talking about furniture and says she’s always loved her mum’s welsh dresser. We put her straight over Peter Gilmore’s mutton chop face-do and then Scary Producer swoops down on us. She’s not happy. Neither is Di Featherstonehaugh (WriteUp! Co-Director) who is apparently, trying to get bums back on seats in the Blue Room to begin the next forum, ‘Traversing The Emotional Landscape of Contemporary Drama’.  We do as we are told and disband.

 

6pm – THE BATTERED BADGER PUB – SOHO

Thank God that’s over. I am now pebble dashed by pretention, masquerading as good intention. Di Featherstonehaugh (not pronounced phonetically either, but as Fanshaw – these WriteUp! girls are taking the piss surely?) dragged us by the hand and we traversed the hills and dales, clinks and grykes of dramatic writing in modern Britain. Then, alarmingly, we were split up into ‘discussion groups’ and forced to collate our thoughts on ‘Characterisation and Its Role in Long Running Series’. I could have killed Dylan, because he shot his hand up and said my name when Viv asked us to nominate a group spokesperson. I don’t think The Onedien Line Suite appreciated my garbled, convoluted, rambling summary of our collective findings and now, half way down a bottle of Sauvignon, feet swelling up like warm bread in the heat of the pub, all I can recall of the most agonising 15 minutes of my life is a visual image of me, stammering and gulping, over-lit by strip lighting, my top clashing horribly with the lilac Venitian blinds, trying to avoid saying the phrase Emotional Landscape.

9.30pm – THE BATTERED BADGER PUB – SOHO

The Battered Badger smells of sweat, cork and corduroy. The talk is bouncy, fun, irreverent and loud. Shelly Croon, Dylan’s agent is half way down a second bottle of Fitou with Miles Cuban (we wonder if she will survive such a close encounter and I drunkenly vow to keep an eye on her windpipe for her, which she (naturally) does not understand.) Su is engrossed in a heated debate a table away, with some writing regulars from our rival soap Rossaman Street about how to keep writing for a series 40 odd years old, still fresh.  Over by the now defunct cigarette machine, a nugget of established playwrights share anecdotes with a flank of fledgling telly writers and arranged up the stairway, Radio writers discuss the rigours of writing for a non-visual medium.  Everywhere there is talk, argument, a sharing of experience, a swapping of knowledge and a lot of laughter. Di (of the improbable surname) starts the singing and at the end of it all, I think everyone agrees that this year’s WriteUp! Jamboree has got off to a flying start.

 

 

 

 

A BIT OF EXTRA

If you are a student, or have been during 2010 this is the competition for you:

National Student Film Association Announces Free Screenwriting Competition

Today the National Student Film Association (NSFA) invites all student film-makers to submit their short film scripts to the National Student Screenwriting Competition. The competition is run in partnership with the BFI and boasts a host of professional judges including BAFTA winner Asitha Ameresekere, the organisers of the London Screenwriters’ Festival, and board members of Euroscript and Women in Film and Television. The competition is aimed at UK students of all kinds who are looking for a career in film but have not yet had the chance to present their work to industry professionals. Not only does the competition offer fantastic prizes such as a mentoring meeting at BAFTA as well as BFI and IMAX vouchers, but students will also have the opportunity to get their scripts read by two members of the high calibre jury.

The competition is hosted online at Circalit, an online platform for aspiring writers, where all the entries will be visible to the public, and talent scouts will be paying close attention to the winning writers. Raoul Tawadey, CEO of Circalit, commented, “The NSFA are doing student film makers a great service by connecting young artists with industry professionals. Starting a career in film can be a difficult process and the gap between writing your first screenplay and seeing your work produced can be very daunting. I hope this competition and the work that the NSFA are doing will give students the opportunity to kick start a career in the film industry.”

Screenplay submissions can be up to five pages long and of any genre. The deadline is the 7th November 2010.

For more information please visit, www.studentfilm.org.uk

Contact: Franzi Florack  franzi.florack@studentfilm.org.uk

SCRIPT ADVICE AT THE NATIONAL FILM AND TELEVISION SCHOOL

 

4 DAY WORKSHOP – PLOT AND DEVELOPMENT:

November 8 – 11^th for those interested in HOW TO STORYLINE FOR LONG RUNNING DRAMA and HOW TO WRITE A TREATMENT FOR TELEVISION. Check out the link below

http://www.nftsfilm-v.ac.uk/index.php?module=Shortcourse&action=Schedule

Or go direct to their website http://www.nftsfilm-tv.ac.uk and browse through their NFTS Shortcourses pages.

BBC WRITERS ROOM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/

This website is always a very useful font of info for writers. Their Opportunities web page is full of competitions and initiatives for writers new to the game and also those with a little more experience. I particularly like the look of this one, but there are many more opportunities listed so check out their website:

 

Little Brother’s Big Opportunity

BAFTA award winning television and film production company Little Brother Productions is offering a talented new writer £1,000.00 to develop an original television drama idea of theirs through to treatment stage.
Little Brother’s Big Opportunity is an endeavour to discover further new writing talent, and to develop with them compelling, original drama for television.

To be eligible, writers must have had one piece of their work professionally produced or, at the very least, have had a professional reading of their work.

Writers who have contributed episodes to UK television series or serials (e.g. a long running soap) are eligible to apply, but writers who have already had an original single, series or serial broadcast on UK television are not eligible to enter. No prior writing experience for television is required.
To apply, writers must submit their writing CV and the piece of their work of which they are most proud, that best demonstrates their talent, (this could be a stage play, a radio play or a screenplay) to:

Little Brother’s Big Opportunity
Little Brother Productions
155x Northcote Road
London, SW11 6QB
Deadline: December 31st 2010.

I hope I can help you with your writing; be it a television script, short (or full length) film or screen play, treatment or outline, novel or radio play, I read and script edit them all and can definitely help improve yours.  Drop me an email@ Yvonne.grace@scriptadvice.co.uk and let’s get working!

BYE FOR NOW AND HAPPY WRITING.

Copyright Yvonne Grace Script Advice November 2010

SCRIPT ADVICE Newsletter – 5

Contents:

• Hello
• Breathless
• A Day In The Life Of George Jobbing Writer
• Interesting Stuff

Find out if I can help you with your current project @ http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk/ offering writers mentoring, training and script editing services in order to develop their work and talent please pass on this link to your fellow writers.

Or you can join SCRIPT ADVICE WRITERS ROOM @

http://www.facebook.com/group

SAWR is all about writing and writers. Here you can share your thoughts about writing; the creative process, the highs and lows of it all. You can also access this group for information about writing workshops that I am currently running, also script editing and mentoring services that I offer. My expertise lies in Television drama but any writer is welcome to share their experiences and their aspirations here.

Or access my Blog @ http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk/

HELLO

Pushing my son’s toy lawn mower up the garden at a run this morning, in pajamas and wellies I realised three things; 1/ It was only 7am and I was already in the garden playing dragons and dinasours, 2/ I shouldn’t be doing this without wearing a bra, 3/It was warm. Summer is finally here.  Not my favourite season; I was born in a snow storm on Christmas Eve so it won’t come as a surprise to know I dislike being hot, would rather wrap up than disrobe and am never seen outside in the Summer between 9am and 4pm without my sun factor 50. But the garden loves it and with the bees buzzing and the poppies nodding, I feel the urge to get creative and push on with my own script writing, as well of course, reading and script editing your work!

BREATHLESS

Which started me thinking about something I am forced to do on a daily basis. This is something is not necessarily an easy thing to achieve, but it is absolutely necessary and something that I do almost unconsciously in order to keep those plates spinning – I prioritise, organise and multi-task. This does not make me Super Woman. It just makes me, and every one out there who knows what I’m talking about, Able To Cope. It’s as if without any obvious surgery, I now have more arms than a Hindu Godess. It is almost Pavlovian; I log on to my Inbox and while my messages download, I put a washing machine load on cycle D. I am stuck on a dialogue sequence in my script, I ponder the problem whilst I give the bath a good going over. I set the microwave to defrost and finish reading the last scene in a script from a writer client whilst my son’s tea-time chop slowly rotates.

I juggle not only the physical activities in our life: script reading, housework, script writing, cooking, Script Advice admin, household bills but words too; my husband and I are usually having a 2 tiered conversation, the top tier between ourselves underscored by the lower tier nearer to the ground, coming from our son Michael.

It seems to me that from when the rabbit ears on our son’s alarm clock click upwards and the rabbit opens his plastic eyes at 6.30am, and Michael is finally allowed to get up and stop hitting the adjoining wall between our rooms repeatedly with his toy hammer, my feet don’t touch the ground until 9pm when the rabbit and Michael are asleep again and my husband Mike and I are literally pasted across the sofa, trying to talk without drooling from fatigue.

In between those hours I run Script Advice and write myself, attempt to run a household and look after the two Michaels in my life, my husband and my son. It would be great if there were more hours in the day, or less things to do, or more money so I could pay someone to do some of this stuff for me, but if I could afford it, would I ever be able to delegate? No I would not. Because all this comes from someone who gets an inordinate amount of pleasure from knowing that her washing line boasts a full load flapping in the breeze, that she has written a couple of engaging, slick pages of her script, that she managed to disguise a healthy portion of spinach in a meal for her son who will never know it’s there and that according to the feedback I get from my script reading and script editing work, I seem to be giving writers the help they need – so Script Advice goes from strength to strength.  I am a multi-tasker, who is not complaining. Just. Catching. My. Breath…..

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF GEORGE JOBBING WRITER

DEPRESSION

10.00am – SE London – My Bedroom – Under the Duvet

I think I am depressed. I might just be lacking in a vital vitamin, or need to do a cardio workout or have 8 solid hours of sleep. Or, it might be hormonal; if I had the energy I’d look up what the definition of depression actually is. It probably says something about not having the energy to do stuff, it might even mention the need to make lists of things you might be suffering from, it might say something like ‘’a sure sign of depression is indicated when the sufferer does not know what afflicts them and puts it down to hormones’ – God knows – I just wish I hadn’t agreed to go out with Westenders star Phlox Lane ‘for a few drinks’ last night.

10.15am – SE London – My Bedroom – Sticking My Head Out of The Window

Now that feels a little better – perhaps depression is alleviated by fresh air, pity about the pigeons though.  I was so chuffed she had asked me (well, Phlox didn’t actually, she’d Blackberried Hope, Westenders Nice Script Editor and Hope asked me because we were slogging away on my episode 3,957 at the time and she probably thought it churlish not to include me).  I was very excited and positive that it would be a fabulous, glammy sort of evening where us girls tripped across town, linking arms and giggling as the street lights lit our charmed way along Regent Street and into the trendy bars of Soho…but it wasn’t quite like that. I am too optimistic.   It’s a hard and sad fact but I think optimism makes you depressed.

10.30am – SE London – My Bathroom – Under Water My Head in The Sink

Good. This feels even better than the window, SE London pigeons are very protective of their window ledge and I was getting dive-bombed. Total immersion of head in cold water is good for

surprisingly sharp stabbing pains that have begun in earnest in what I think scientists call the frontal lobe. Depression is a seriously painful condition.  Right, time to breath or I think I’ll faint.

10.31am – SE London – My Bathroom – Curled On the Floor

So, Hope and I think we’ve pretty much sorted the problem we were having on episode 3,957. Basically, between episode 3,956 and 3,959 there is a tricky hiatus in the A story which explores the awful marriage of Connie Blaine and her brutish husband Sid. In episode 3, 956 Sid locks Connie in the cupboard under the stairs and episode 3,957 was supposed to be a tight, highly dramatic two-hander, focusing entirely on the characters of Connie and Sid which will explore, as Scary Producer commanded, ‘every nuance of their emotional landscape’.  I was terrified but optimistic (see, there I go again) that I would do a fabulous job and get massive brownie points and tons more commissions from Westenders as a result.

10.45am – SE London – Breakfast Niche/Office – Head on the Kitchen Counter

However, non of us, not even Scary Producer, had reckoned on the fragile ego and raging insecurities of Gordon Bland, the actor playing Sid.  When the rehearsal scripts were distributed to the cast, Gordon apparently blazed a trail to the Producers Office and in a spooky parody of his storyline, shut himself in her beech wood armoire and refused to come out. Apparently it took half a bottle of Bacardi to get him to even open the door, and The Production Office had to taxi his partner to the Scary Producer’s office from Gatwick Airport Terminal 2 where he was about to Trolley Dolly a flight to The Balearics before Gordon finally calmed down.

11.00am – SE London – Eating Toast at the Breakfast Niche

Gordon Bland basically didn’t have it in him.  A lot of soap actors will tell you, if you are more than 5 minutes in their company, that they love their character, but isn’t it about time they had a really meaty storyline to get their teeth into? And why couldn’t we writers come up with something especially for them that would showcase their talents?  Gordon was no different in this respect. Unfortunately for him, the Script team had delivered and he quickly realised what he thought he wanted was not what he really wanted after all. Nightmare all round.  So now me and my long-suffering script editor Hope have a storyline with Connie locked in the cupboard under the stairs by her nasty husband Sid who is now, not available to play out the rest of the storyline.  Fortunately, as often happens in Soapland, when a door closes, a window opens somewhere else and this time, the window was in the shape of Joan Brown, the actress who plays Janice, uber confident mother of Connie. Joan had been let go from the production schedule because of an in-growing toenail operation but apparently, her toes were twinkling again and she was keen ‘to get back in the saddle’.  So, we plunge into the unknown and give Sid a massive heart attack, just at the point in the script where he turns the key in the lock and shuts his wife in darkness.  Janice, played by Joan Brown, then gets her turn in the spotlight and plays a storming two-hander episode with her on screen daughter Connie. Gordon Bland never really lives down the shame.

11.30am – SE London – My Bedroom – Under the Duvet

I think it was because I was so relieved to be free of rewrite horror, that I got a bit over excited about drinks with Phlox.  Hope and I dived into the wardrobe department and the assistant turned a blind eye while Hope kicked off the trainers and took a pair of Louboutins off the shelf and I half inched a nude coloured bespangled number from Phlox’s rail to wear for the night.  Phlox takes us to The Ocean Bar. Very SATC. Phlox is wearing an absolutely tiny Victoria Beckham dress and with me in beige sparkle and Hope in sky scraper shoes, I think we are in for a really good night.  3 bottles of wine and several Tequilla slammers later, Phlox is looking less like a pretty young actress on the brink of her career and more like a 40 year old Amy Winehouse after a session with 60 year old Pete Dougherty. I regret cramming my size 12 bod into this 10 dress because it made me make a stupid decision earlier on in the evening, when Hope suggested food and I said no. Now the mirrored floor is confusing me and I don’t know whether I am looking at myself upside down, or if I am in actual fact on my back looking up at myself on the mirrored ceiling. It’s all too much and I know for a fact that I literally go green, before I manage to run outside and manage to stop being sick just long enough to get my head over the edge of a convenient skip. Not very Sex, more Sick And The City.

12 Noon – SE London – My Bed – About to Go Asleep

I am optimistic by nature, so it stands to reason I will often be depressed – unless of course predicting depression like this, makes me a pessimistic person, in which case, I am feeling happier already. Perhaps I just have a hangover?

Think I’ll have forty winks and live to write another day…..

INTERESTING STUFF

BBC Writers Room

It’s a tough one if you haven’t got representation and you are struggling to get your writer’s voice heard out there in media land. The BBC’s dedicated team of readers are poised to read your work and give you feedback.  Their website is pretty informative too and well worth book marking on your toolbar…http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom

Follow the link below, on the BBC Writers Room website to Writing For Continuing Drama, and you will find plenty of juicy insights into this world from the King Of Soap John Yorke and other notable drama series writers like Jimmy McGovern. I particularly like John’s comment below regarding writing for long running series; truer few lines have rarely been said in my opinion….

http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/insight/writing_for_continuing_drama

‘It’s like being in an Emergency Department. You come across every possible problem and you learn how to fix it. And those tricks will stay with you for the rest of your career.’

Writing Competition

There is not long to the deadline on this one, but worth a go at if you are ’well on’ with a script that you are proud of – the guys at Red Planet are a discerning lot and this is a great competition to get involved in.

http://www.redplanetpictures.co.uk

This year’s competition is for an original 60 minute television script, either a single play or a pilot for a new series. You are initially required to submit the first ten pages along with a short synopsis.  The full script should be available on request, you may be required to submit this within a month of the final closing date.  As before, the winner will receive £5000, a script commission and the option of representation if required. Red Planet and Kudos will also mentor finalists for the Prize. The competition is open to anyone within the UK. The RED PLANET PRIZE will close to new entrants at midnight on 31st July.

Workshop From Script Advice – At The National Film and Television Studio

I have been chatting with those lovely people at the NFTS and in November I will be running a 4 day workshop covering 2 disciplines related to writing that you may be interested in. HOW TO WRITE A TELEVISION DRAMA TREATMENT and HOW TO STORYLINE FOR LONG RUNNING DRAMA. Just to whet your whistles, check out their website and see what’s occurring www.nfts.co.ukhttp

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I hope I can help you with your writing; be it television script, short (or full length) film, treatment, outline or full work, radio play or novel manuscript – I read and script edit them all and can definitely help you improve yours.  Drop me an email @ Yvonne.grace@scriptadvice.co.uk and let’s get working!

BYE FOR NOW AND HAPPY WRITING.

Copyright Yvonne Grace Script Advice June 2010

SCRIPT ADVICE NEWSLETTER 4

Contents:

• Hello
• Mother or Media Mogul?
• A Day In The Life Of…
• Interesting Stuff
• Forthcoming Workshops with Script Advice
  

Find out if I can help you with your current project @ www.scriptadvice.co.uk and please pass on the link to your fellow writers. Or you can join SAWR (script advice writers room) at http://www.facebook.com/group or my Blog @http://scriptadvice.wordpress.com/

GOING STRONG IN GORDON ROAD

Hello again. We, (Big Mike, Little Michael and Me) are still here.

I had to fill in a form recently which said ‘Give previous address if you have lived at your current address for less than 3 years’. I realised that I have rarely stayed anywhere longer than 3 years, which I found mildly shocking.  More of an eye-opener however, was the length of the list I ultimately produced by laboriously recalling all the houses I have lived in and places I have moved to and from, since leaving home in 1982. In total I have lived in 21 houses and have been slowly orbiting the country around the M1/M62 corridor between The North and The South for the greater part of 28 years. Like my friend Vania once wisely commented I am ‘an ocean liner not willing to dock’.

So I am pleased to say I am still in Gordon Road but the 3 year milestone approaches and who knows, I may have to haul anchor again….

I am glad to say that at last Spring has finally decided to get out of bed, moisturise and face her impatient public. The countryside around our little village is becoming greener by the minute and there are snowdrops tentatively waving from the hedgerows. Even the snow-bogged, mud splattered, rain-drenched, sodden, mildewed mess that is currently our garden has started to look less like a flattened cow pat and more like a cow pat in the process of rapidly drying out. Hurrah! The lid has come off the Early Learning Centre Water and Sand Table (a must have for all 2 year olds) and the toddler lawn mower is finally able to phtt phtt without a splutt splutt.

MOTHER OR MEDIA MOGUL?

Broadcast magazine are doing a survey at the moment.  If you are female, work in the media and have ever asked yourself the question ‘can I have a family and a career in telly?’ click this link and have your say www.broadcastnow.co.uk Or if you are currently trying to break in to the industry and also have an idea you might want to be a mum at some stage too, then read on….

Ann Diamond on Five live recently said that she wished when she was a teenager someone had told her to consider when thinking about a career, the fact that she may want to have children also and to decide whether that was going to be sooner or later. Nicely said Ann, but I can not help thinking that if our career advisor had done just that to me and my girlfriends between the ages of 16 and 19 we would most definitely not have been listening (being far too distracted by the problems of finding a pair of truly fabulous fitting jeans, getting away with hitch –hiking to Eric’s in Liverpool without our dads finding out and how to get good grades but still do as little work as possible).

I used to love script editing and producing television programmes and I still sometimes miss the structure, the camaraderie, the deadlines and the buzz of working on the front line. But it was difficult trying to find that elusive thing social commentators call ‘a life/work balance’. I was working too much, not spending time with my friends and missing out on family occasions. But making drama is an all encompassing thing to do, it is both fun and incredibly stressful. While you are in thick of it, the production crew, the script team, the cast et al became a sort of family and for me at least, piling down to the local bar after a heavy script session or a day’s filming was all the down time I needed from the pressures of work.  For a while anyway…and then I woke up one morning, realised I was over 40 and my sub-conscious voice that had been whispering ‘don’t you want a family of your own one day?’ had started to shout.

So now I love writing from home and working with writers via my website and running my workshops and giving my 2 year old growing up time with his mum. This has been my choice and I have had to make a ton of compromises along the way. Having tried to write with my son attempting to hog the keyboard saying ‘I want to tap and colour mummy’ (thank you Fisher Price online colouring!) I now pack all my writing and thinking time into the days I can afford to have my son in nursery. I still want to work but I want to be a mum too and between those two things there lies an ocean of compromise.

The question so often trotted out on television programmes and magazines with a female demographic is ‘Can Women Have It All?’ The inference here is that we ought, according to some unwritten rule, to be able to do just that; have our babies and a marvellous career too.

My son was born in my 46^th year. This, according to the NHS made me as old as the Peat Bog Woman but he turned out healthy and happy in spite of my Neolithic status. So I for one am happy to concede that I can not have it all and am very lucky that I had the career had and still managed to get the opportunity to be a mum before my bits turned back to peat bog.

DAY IN THE LIFE OF GEORGE JOBBING WRITER

DEVELOPMENT HELL

10.00am – My flat – SE London – breakfast niche/office

My flat is compact. It has to multi-task in order to accommodate my needs as Single Girl About Town and up and coming writer of Very Famous Soap. My mate Martin says my flat has ‘the look of a lost kitten’ by which he means it is small, unloved, could be cute but badly needs a stiff brushing. I don’t have time to do any brushing. Or anything remotely domesticated. Am in Development Hell and it’s getting hotter by the minute.

It all started exactly 20 minutes ago when I was not in Development Hell, but happily working on the storyline of episode 2,345 and catching toast as it popped out of the toaster at the same time (there are distinct advantages to having your office in the breakfast niche). The A story (or the main story to the uninitiated) involves Penny Asher (blonde be-wigged owner of the King Vic and Madame of a string of lap dancing clubs) and the return of her prodigal son-gone-to-the-bad Ryan. Penny’s initial joy at having Ryan in her life again turns to horror when she learns that her son and Mr Orange the ruthless and scheming businessman who has been trying to undermine her lap dancing empire are one and the same. This story is a mare to write because it all depends on the audience believing that Penny could entrepreneur anything, not least a lap dancing empire (the woman is about 103) and there’s lots of figures and percentages to get into the dialogue about the club takeover which makes any scene as dull as cardboard.  Anyway, I was happy compared to what I am now because then the phone rang.

It was Hope (the nicest Script Editor) from Westenders and she had something Top Secret to tell me.  She said that Scary Producer and Sauvignon Deane’s agent Sooki  were ‘in crisis talks’ about the actress coming out of the soap because she wanted ‘fresh challenges’.  I thought the real reason Sauvignon wanted to leave was common knowledge – she had lost her septum to cocaine abuse and had to have it reconstructed. Hope told me not to be cynical and could I just focus on the job in hand? Apparently we (Hope and me) had agreed to come up with a drama vehicle for Sauvignon that would: a/please the Network by keeping her on the channel and fulfil the terms of her current contract b/please Sooki the agent who represents 80% of the cast of Westenders and could cause us major problems if we didn’t treat her right c/ please Sauvignon.

My heart sank. We were caught in a no-win situation. Whatever pleased Scary Producer was guaranteed to piss off Sooki and as I pointed out to Hope, no-one has ever managed to please Sauvignon. Hope optimistically pointed out that Sauvignon was probably smiling all the time, but you couldn’t tell because of the Botox.

Hope said she was coming round to work up some ideas with me. I have exactly an hour to conjure out of thin air a pre-watershed, family orientated idea that 3 of the biggest and most unstable egos in the business will like at the same time. But first I’d better check the bathroom for bio alerts just in case…..

11 o clock – My Flat – Living Room

We have retired to the Living Room. The Office cum Breakfast Niche scenario did not work with 2 of us and our laptops and our angst. We decided to Abandon Niche when Hope’s elbow flicked the switch on the kettle and she nearly got an impromtu face peel from boiling hot steam.

Once spread across the Axminster I pitched my baby – ‘Star Gazer’; my Who Dunnit Zodiac Idea. Thought it was a winner. New, quirky, family-based (to appeal to the widest demographic) and sexy without having any sex in it. Sauvignon Deane will play Scorpio the feisty young sleuth who learned the tricks of her trade at her daddy’s knee, the hard-bitten old cynic Leo. Along with the gorgeous but misguided help of Aquarius and the super efficiency of the office administrator Virgo, Scorpio solves each week, a series of seemingly unsolvable crimes using her skills at reading the astrology charts and the skies at night through her designer telescope. Hope did listen but then dismissed it. I found that tough. She said it had ‘holes’ and anyway she knew that Sooki was totally anti-‘crystal ball stuff’ because her psychic had predicted she would have the upper hand in the acrimonious split with her husband only to have his decree nisi delivered to her hand at the office the same day she had decided to divorce him.

We stared at each other for a bit then I started Google-ing like mad and Hope began cutting my magazines to bits. She made a collage. There was a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins in an idyllic garden scene, a landfill site, girls in bikinis on a beach, boys on motorbikes and a sweet picture of a puppy wearing a Cath Kitson apron. She said she was trying to capture the zeitgeist – I gave up Google-ing and helped her try to capture it.

6pm – My Flat – Bedroom

Hope has just gone back to base. Westenders called her in, some script crisis that I am really glad is not mine. The collage of ideas took 4 hours, 20 back copies of Heat magazine and a lot of PVA glue to finish. If we were entering some alternative art competition we might be in with a chance but how this is going to get a drama vehicle off the ground in time for when the glue on Sauvignon’s septum has set is beyond me. As well as my Zodiac idea, Hope came up with ‘Self-made Splash’ a comedy drama series about a synchronised swimming team and their bid to win the Nationals. We both got quite excited about it until I remembered how we had to change a recent storyline where Sauvignon rescues Poppy the pub pug, from the canal, to a non water rescue (we opted for a wheelie bin) because Sauvignon has a phobia about water. So for the moment at least, all we have is a very textured and rather eclectic mix of magazine cuttings and I think I have scissor blister.

Hope is confident we will get ‘a flow of conversation going’ with ‘the key 3’ using this collage as a ‘spring board’ – I reckon it’s more likely a case of back to the drawing board…..hey ho, development hell continues tomorrow when I am going to Hope’s house for a ‘brainstorm’. At least there’s room to swing a cat there. Swing a Cat? Title for a sitcom starring Sauvignon Deane as hard-working single mum of 3 struggling to run a Cattery in the Cotswolds?

Think I need to lie down.

INTERESTING STUFF

I recently came across these interesting souls on the net (which wasn’t hard, as they are just about everywhere!) http://www.bluecatscreenplay.com They are based in LA and do a smart, sassy job of supporting and promoting new and interesting writers and their work. I have pasted below an excerpt from their recent newsletter; an interview Blue Cat did with the programme director of a new initiative promoting writing in the community. I think Script Frenzy is a great idea and a concrete way of getting just about anyone to write something to a deadline.

Interview with Script Frenzy Program Director Jennifer Arzt

Script Frenzy Begins April 1

“Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants take on the challenge of writing 100 pages of scripted material in the month of April. As part of a donation-funded nonprofit, Script Frenzy charges no fee to participate; there are also no valuable prizes awarded or ‘best’ scripts singled out. Every writer who completes the goal of 100 pages is victorious and awe-inspiring and will receive a handsome Script Frenzy Winner’s Certificate and web icon proclaiming this fact.”

–(ScriptFrenzy.org)

Every year, thousands of writers take part in Script Frenzy. The goal: write 100 pages of scripted material during the month of April. Late last week, Script Frenzy’s Program Director, Jennifer Arzt, was kind enough to share some time with BlueCat. Inspiring thousands of writers to produce material under a strict deadline, Script Frenzy continues to grow year after year.

BlueCat: Where did the idea for Script Frenzy come from?

Jennifer Arzt: From running NaNoWriMo, we’d seen that all it takes to transform a book-lover into a book writer is a deadline and a supportive community. We’d also seen that the process of writing a book can completely change people’s perceptions of themselves.  Once you discover that you can write a passable novel draft in 30 days, you start to wonder what other things you’re capable of. It opens doors that lead to some really interesting places.  

We knew that scriptwriting could also work as a similarly great springboard to creative exploration, and the length of a standard script made it an ideal fit for a month’s labors. Unfortunately, we found that people who loved movies or plays shied away from penning scripts because they mistakenly believed it took months to learn the formatting rules (or hundreds of dollars to buy expensive software).

We thought that running a sort of anti-contest writing contest along the lines of NaNoWriMo but focused on movies and plays could help everyday people just dive into the creative process. When we asked NaNoWriMo participants what other kinds of things they would like to write, happily movies and plays were at the top of the list. And thus was Script Frenzy born!

BC: What was the first Script Frenzy like?

JA: It was great! At that point, NaNoWriMo had about 50,000 participants and we had achieved a reasonable degree of stability. It was nice to get in over our heads again by doing something for the very first time. We learned a ton! The first Frenzy had a 20,000-word goal, took place in June, and only allowed screenplays and stage plays.

It turns out that scriptwriters become somewhat violent when you ask them to count words rather than pages, so the following year we changed the goal to 100 pages and everyone was a lot happier. June also turned out to be a tough month because it was the cusp of summer, students were on vacation, and the writerly mojo was low. We also got a lot of emails from folks who wanted to write long TV shows and graphic novels scripts who felt left out of the Frenzy. So we broadened the event’s reach in 2008 to include all kinds of scripts. We haven’t looked back since.
BC: What kind of feedback do you receive from Script Frenzy participants, in terms of what their participation accomplished for their writing?

JA: A couple things seem to come up time and again. I’d say the two biggest comments are about the motivating deadline and the habit of writing daily. The deadline is set by us, an external force. We start on April 1, no matter what. There is no wiggle room given and no excuses taken. Either you’re in or you’re out. I think that the finite quality of an externally set deadline and the rush (or pure fear) of missing it works as an incredible motivator for so many people.

The ticking clock of a timed writing event also gets folks writing everyday. (The easiest way to write 100 pages in 30 days is to consistently write 3.3 pages a day.) We hear so many stories from our participants about how easy it is to say no to invitations because they are taking part in Script Frenzy and need to write. I think it gives legitimacy to writing.

The habit of writing every day gets formed in April and continues through the rest of the year.

SCRIPT ADVICE WORKSHOPS LATER IN THE YEAR….

www.nfts.co.uk

If you want to be a professional, successful writer, is it better to develop your talent by sheer dogged application and will power; writing better scripts because you write so many, or would you get better results, if you went back to college and did a course? The answer of course, is purely subjective. What ever you think fits you best. And let’s be honest here, there are a lot of mediocre courses out there for writers and not all media colleges live up to  their glossy prospectus.

The National Film and Television School however does. And they also run short courses open to any member of the public who wants to learn something about the crafts involved in film and television production.

I am happy to say they have let me in!

In November I will be running a 4 day course entitled PLOT AND DEVELOPMENT which is split into 2 workshops each covering 2 days.

The first 2 day workshop is called HOW TO WRITE A TELEVISION DRAMA TREATMENT and the second workshop is HOW TO STORYLINE FOR LONG RUNNING DRAMAS. I know that some of you may have already been to one or perhaps both of these, as I also run workshops for The Script Factory and these two workshops were in their programme in the recent past. If you would like to see the sort of work I do, then please come to one or both of these workshops and click on the NFTS website for more details.

Well, that’s about it for this newsletter but do check out my website and my facebook group (links at the top of the page) and Thanks For Reading.

BYE FOR NOW AND HAPPY WRITING!

Yvonne

Copyright Yvonne Grace Script Advice MARCH 2010

THE SECOND DRAFT EDIT

Welcome to the second instalment in the life of George, my fictitious enthusiastic writer, trying to make her way in the tricky world of television.

A Day In The Life Of George – Jobbing Writer

4.45pm – my flat SE London – Watching Deal or No Deal

Noel Edmunds knows how to milk his moment – he calls it ‘a crucial point in the game’ – we are ‘at 8 box’ and the middle-aged woman on screen is hyperventilating. She’s biting her bottom lip really, really hard. She strokes her lucky gonk, as the music swells beneath an unflattering close-up of ‘Jakki’ (why do game show contestants spell their names funny?) gurning away on National Television. Will number 22 box reveal £250,000 or 1p? Well, will it? I am on the edge of my seat now, don’t care if it’s tacky and television at its lowest common denominator – will Jakki be Deal Or No Deal’s second quarter of a millionaire?  The phone starts to ring – am caught in a vice-like grip of indecision – if I answer it I’ll miss out on watching Jakki either plummet into a penniless hell or instantaneously and without any effort, get very rich. If I don’t answer it I am giving in to the insidious toxin that is daytime television and something that all freelancers worth their salt know, should be avoided at all costs.  Also, I may miss out on a fab telly job or it could just be my mum – again. Noel’s saying some guff about Jakki being a brave contestant and how she’s given the Banker a run for his money – get on with it Noel! I grab the phone as Noel breaks the seal on box 22.

5.15pm – same place

It wasn’t my mum – it was Hope from Westenders – she’s the nicest Script Editor out of the lot but today sounded panicked and a bit pissed off. She tells me a complicated tale of why her script schedule has gone pear-shaped – I manage to catch something about Patty Faulkner (who plays Jessie in the soap) double booking a stint on a cruise-liner, a sorry tale about the main frame crashing and her producer’s smear test as the reasons for this upheaval. The upshot is that I have to come to Westenders Production Office first thing tomorrow for an emergency Script Edit on my second draft.

No Problem! I pipe enthusiastically while trying to swallow the huge lump that is currently crawling up my throat. The truth being (which I naturally don’t tell Hope) is that I haven’t written a word yet – having (I thought) 2 whole weeks to get it done.

Putting the phone down I catch a glimpse of Alan Tichmarsh on a garish sofa gushing away to a celebrity chef – bugger – Deal or No Deal has finished and now I’m wallowing in deadline hell and can’t even take solace in a complete stranger’s fate to boot.

2.00am – my flat – bedroom SE London

I am in bed but not asleep. I am drowning in a sea of paper, whole pages ripped and torn, ink stains from a handful of biros leaking into the pillow case (don’t know why, I like to write with a pen before I laptop my stuff) but at least it’s done; my second draft – in approximately 7 hours (allowing breaks for weeing and weeping) – not bad for a first timer and I am rather proud of the cliff-hanger I have come up with, whereby Stella (Laundromat assistant to the cruise-liner bound Jessie) and her secret lover Davey (on-screen husband of Jessie) get down to it during the spin cycle of his white wash. Done. Thank God. In my bedroom mirror a red-eyed alien stares back at me – whoever said television was a glamorous job was not a writer and did not work in television.

9.30am – Westenders Production Office – Hope’s Desk

I have a murky-looking coffee in a Styrofoam cup, I have blood-shot eyes, my mouth is totally without moisture and the coffee is sticking my tongue to the roof of my mouth. My script is no longer in one piece but approximately 5,000. Hope is ‘re-arranging’ my scenes – she says it’s not the dialogue that’s the problem – it’s the structure. She says it’s not the characterisation that’s at fault – it’s what the characters are saying (doesn’t that mean the dialogue’s no good?) Apparently not asserts Hope, it’s merely a matter of context – scene context – which is why she’s just ripped apart the best part of my third act, ruining in my view, the build up to the sex on the washing machine dénouement. But Hope is no longer listening to me. A Script Editor on a 4 x a week soap under pressure is a terrible sight to see and Hope is under more than most. I got here at 8.30am as requested and she has spent the last hour speed reading my episode so she can tear it apart to try and make sense of the pre-planned storyline centring almost entirely on Jessie and her brave fight to combat breast cancer, before Patty Faulkner who plays her, took herself off to sing ‘Memories’ around the Canaries. I really want to cry but Hope has just started so I do the decent thing and give her the floor.

1.30pm – Westenders – The Canteen

Well. Am I glad that’s over. The episode is now to length, it has characters in it that are available to play the scenes, it has 2 ad breaks and instead of a sexy dramatic cliff hanger, it has a comedy one, featuring Beckam, the laundromat’s Great Dane and his fatal attraction to the Pekinese from the pic ‘n mix next door.  But at least Hope is happy. Or I hope she is – the last I saw of her before I crawled to this over-lit, over-heated canteen for a bowl of something cheap but nourishing (I settled for just cheap) was her scurrying figure clutching my annotated second draft, with Jane H the scary PA trying to grab it out of her hands bleating about not having enough time to do a shooting schedule…I reckon if I get a wiggle on I’ll get back in time to catch Noel’s recap of yesterday’s episode of Deal Or No Deal and find out if Jakki got lucky or not….

Thanks for reading and WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT INSTALMENT OF GEORGE THE JOBBING WRITER, SOON TO APPEAR ON THIS BLOG!

hello from script advice

Welcome to my Script Advice Blog.

This blog is all about writing and stuff I hope that interests writers and will be useful for you to tap into when you want to take a few minutes out of struggling with your latest script!

I set up  www.scriptadvice.co.uk because as well as producing and script editing drama, I also write myself and I can sympathise with the problems writers face.

Most writers do not have an approachable, professional, experienced source to call upon if they are struggling with a script, overwhelmed by an impending deadline or in need of a fresh in put of energy and ideas. www.scriptadvice.co.uk is here to give you the writer professional help in a personal, constructive and enjoyable way.

On my website, you will find script editing services, treatment writing, my  script report service and various ways in which I can help you with advice and give you my professional opinion on your work in progress.  Services

I also offer workshops in various disciplines associated with writing for television and writing in general. Workshops

I have a long(ish!) and varied background in television drama production, both from a Script Editor point of view and that of a Drama Producer.  I have also worked on some of the key long-running dramas that still command big audiences today; notably EASTENDERS, CORONATION STREET and HOLBY CITY.   In my experience, working within the ‘factory’ atmosphere of these big shows can be incredibly exciting and there is usually a productive, positive environment in which you are expected to perform at a high level of proficiency and efficiency.  If you have to learn anything about your particular craft, be it Script Editing, Storylining, or writing for a long-running show, you must fill in any gaps fast!  So when I am asked how I got into television and what is the best way for a writer to break into it, I usually turn their attention to the long-running dramas and the opportunities these programmes offer a willing, eager writer. However, there are pitfalls to joining such a fast-moving, deadline-crunching, storyline eating machine that are most of the quality series currently on our screens; and below I have outlined just a few of the more salient points to keep in mind when thinking about working on a long-runner/series/soap.

I also want to take this opportunity to introduce you to George – the ever-positive jobbing writer who has bags of energy but lacks experience – in creating her, I hope to illustrate how to avoid the worst and enjoy the best moments in working on a soap.

WRITING FOR A LONG RUNNER

Many of the leading showrunners today who started writing Soaps and series television see Soap writing as an invaluable experience. So how do you get on to a Soap? What is a story conference really like? Here I hope, I take the mystery out of writing for Soap.

Very few programmes ever reach the Olympian ratings-heights of our much-loved, much-discussed Soaps. Having spent a large proportion of my career as a script editor and producer making them, I can honestly say that apart from a memorable shopping frenzy in Marlylebone High Street back when I had an empty new flat to fill and a concrete credit rating, I have rarely enjoyed myself more.

However, Soapland can be an unforgiving place and an inadequately prepared, wet-behind-the-ears writer can come a proper cropper if he or she is not careful.  Which brings me to George. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to her.  She is an optimistic, enthusiastic would-be writer of Soaps. The experience of her first story conference appears below. It may whet your appetite for your own experience or put you off entirely. I include it here in the hope that it’s the former.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF GEORGE – JOBBING WRITER

10.00pm – my flat SE London – night before first Story Conference on Westenders.

Well, sleep is out of the question.  Had loads of good intentions.  Only allowed myself to watch telly till 9.30pm so as to factor in a wind-down half-hour before I got into bed. Even pressed the mute button when the adverts were on to avoid over stimulation.  Hot milk (which really is horrible) and ear plugs in case the tramps living in the bin shed decide to rearrange their furniture again in the middle of the night.

No, I really can’t sleep so just to be really, really prepared, I’ll go over again the list of my story suggestions.  I am so glad I invested in black, sleek notebooks for the occasion – makes just the right impression and that I decided to ditch my gonk pen in favour of a no-nonsense Pental.  The joy is in the detail someone once said and I couldn’t agree more.

It’s important to bring a balance of story ideas to the table and I want to be as punchy and topical as possible. Westenders is an issue-based Soap and I really think impotency is a grade A issue and just right for the show’s heart-throb to get his teeth into.  And I think the producers and script team will like my ironic twist – a torrid love affair between the oldest characters on the show – neatly portraying rampant geriatric sex in stark contrast to the lack of rampant in the trousers of the show’s biggest sex symbol.

Check I have the Story Conference Document they sent me with all the characters, family groupings and storylines up to the present. Very important. Decide to put it in the bathroom so I will see it when I’m cleaning my teeth first thing. Right. Lights out. Night Night.

8.30am – Bedroom. SE London

Cannot believe it. Alarm went off an hour and a half ago – I know I turned it off because I wake up upside down on my futon with the alarm buried in my armpit. Fly out of the flat and managed not only to catch the train to Elstree but also bag a seat. The inside of my mouth feels like a woolly jumper. Should’ve cleaned my teeth at least – it is then I realise I have left the Story Document in the bathroom.

9.30am – Elstree – Production Offices of Westenders

Am bowel-churningly late. I fall in the door of a room with a massive table around which sit what appear to be hundreds of serious looking people (but is more like 12).  A young man with a lot of lip jewellery is in full flow. There’s a fair bit of note-taking going on and an air of a Pitch In Progress. I know I have ruined his timing by his white-hot look of undisguised venom.

I am no longer in control of my facial muscles. I think my expression says sorry but am sure it looks more like cystitis. The woman in designer specs at the end of the table represents my whole future in telly right now. She is the Producer and liked my spec script The Vagina Dialogues.  I smile at her in what I hope is a mature, woman-to-woman way. She doesn’t respond to my stammered apology. It’s hardly English anyway. I seem to have a lot of saliva in my mouth and I keep swallowing like a bullfrog.

I take the remaining seat and die another death when the leather makes a farting noise as I almost fall into it.  My bag, I discover, contains my purse, half a browning apple and my pink gonk pen. I borrow a Bic from the woman next to me and snatch at a pile of A4 like a drowning person.

2.30pm – Story Conference – Mid Pitch

I am aware of an insistent voice, high-pitched, breathy, going on and on.  My internal sensible voice is saying ‘some-one ought to tell that woman to shut up’.  Horrified, I realise the irritating, scratchy monotone belongs to me.  I finish pitching my impotency storyline damply, in a whimpering rush. The Producer, flagged on either side by the Series Script Editor and the Story Editor forms a rocky Easter Island profile.

The Producer tells me something that seemingly everyone else around the table knew.  Rod Kant, the show’s buff star, has recently had corrective surgery and any storyline focussing on penile dysfunction would be seen as insensitive and grossly inappropriate.  As an added body blow, the Story Editor (who, by the way is horribly young and self-assured) informs me that the show’s demographic would not consider 70-year olds having sex a good thing. I attempt to salvage my dignity by telling the assemblage a far too personal story about my grandma and her robust sexual drive thus achieving instead, full frontal, unequivocal Death By Story Conference.

10.00pm – My Flat, night after first Story Conference on Westenders

All in all, things could have gone better. I am not totally down-hearted. I came up with at least five great story ideas on the train coming back and the Nice Script Editor that got me my meet with The Producer told me to keep in touch. Tomorrow is another day and I shall fire off my best story idea to the office asap – a clever twisting tale that ties in two normally opposing themes – murder and true love in a soapy package just right for Buff Star and no mention of his genital problems.  Happy Days!

George is not entirely fictional; everything that happened in her day has happened! So how could she have been better prepared?

TIPS ON HOW TO WRITE WELL FOR A LONG RUNNER

* Watch a lot of television

It may sound obvious to say this but I would recommend you watch a lot of television before honing in on a Soap-writing career.  Most people engaged in the all-consuming task of making Soaps are usually pretty much addicted to the whole process of storytelling and cannot get enough of television drama across all genres.

It’s a highly competitive business, generating storylines, and a producer worth their salt is aware of the storylines being covered by their rivals and are obsessed with the task of generating better storylines to appeal to more people. They will love you to bits if you can aid them in this process.

*  Have strong opinions about the characters

It’s hard to be a shrinking violet in Soapland. As a writer, you will be expected to have strong opinions about the characters who populate this world and, as a result, you will have to prove you can create stories for them. Be prepared to fight your corner (preferably without shedding blood or resorting to name-calling) and nurture your favourite characters like you would your real-life friendships – it’s always more fun spending time with people you like – and in the workplace. This makes for better results and a more enjoyable experience all round.

* Look ahead as much as possible

Generating story and scripts that fill a year of television drama output is no easy feat. The producer and the script team need all the help they can get from writers who not only understand the size of the task in hand, but can clearly help solve some of the problems inherent therein.

The show will need both short- and long-term storylines to keep the audience happy and the character groupings productive. I have found that writers do not come to the story table with long-term storylines as easily as they do the shorter variety. If possible, don’t fall into this trap. If you can get used to seeing the bigger picture and generate material that arcs across a body of episodes and not just one or two, you will be making a vital contribution to the story bank and providing the script team with a firm foundation on which to build a strong through-line of stories across a healthy number of episodes – thus lightening their burden. If you can take the attention, they will all fall in love with you.

* Have strong ideas

As everyone knows in Soapland, stories are like oxygen to the production process. It is vital, therefore, that you make sure the stories with which you arm yourself at your first Story Conference are not just one-note wonders. They could be anecdotes that sounded good in the pub but in fact fall apart horribly when pitched to a room of fellow writers and a story-savvy script team. Many ideas turn out to be turkey twizlers when spoken out loud.

Your story will need a clear shape and, in the telling, you should explore the characters involved and reveal something interesting about them to your audience. If you can’t succinctly summarise your story to yourself in the privacy of your bathroom at home, spare your own blushes – the story needs clarification and talking it up in front of your fellow writers will only highlight its flaws.

*  Familiarise yourself with the script team

Forearmed is forewarned. Do your homework. Find out, before you enter Soapland, the names of the key players and especially those on the script team who will be able – should you make it a pleasant experience for them to work with you – to make your life positively marvellous on the show. Conversely, the opposite can also apply.

*  Find out as much as you can about the production process

Not all Soaps are run on the same lines. Show interest and ask questions (when appropriate) about the process of production without being in the way or a burden.  If you understand something of the pressures your script editor, for example, may be under to deliver your script to deadline, it’ll go a long way to creating a harmonious partnership and that editor will want to work with you again.

*  Be positive and helpful to work with

Script editors are your friends as are the storyliners. These fabulously creative people are here to help your labours run more easily and smoothly. Use them, don’t fight them, they speak on behalf of the producer and so keeping them on side and not fighting every script point because you feel protective about your work will get you a regular slot on the writing team. Being open-minded to script changes, collaborative in your approach to your writing task and even though it may smart, saying yes and doing the rewrites without having a mini breakdown about the time frame they have given you will ensure you are invited back again.

*  Embrace the fast turnaround and keep at it

Like pretty much everything in life, Soap writing becomes easier with practice.

Be organised. You are about to enter a story factory with very fast script turnaround and an ever-hungry camera team wanting to shoot on time with an ever-demanding producer wanting great scripts on time and on budget and an ever-urgent cast wanting their scripts on time and an ever-ready director wanting your script changes to be on time and to make the script better to boot.

Everything is about timing on a Soap.  There is never enough time but you have to work within the deadlines you are given. Don’t panic. The structure and rigours of Soap writing are put in place to help you generate an amazing number of drama hours in very little time.

*  Be collaborative

Show respect and listen to the opinions and ideas of your fellow writers. You will have to top and tail their scripts and having your colleagues on side and encouraging them, especially at Script Conference, will make your life easier when you pitch a storyline you think is a winner and it receives the thumbs down.

*  A word about rejection …

Take the rejection of your storyline as you would the acceptance of it. Both reactions are from the same Soap family and one will more than likely follow the other in rapid succession.

… and last but not least,

Keep your interest fresh and true in the show by taking time out to watch it. When you feel jaded, write a radio play and come back to the show refreshed.

Remember, good Soaps need good writers. If that means you, get out there, get in touch, give it a go and HAPPY WRITING!

Well that’s all for now. Visit my website www.scriptadvice.co.uk if you want any help with your current project and should you want to share your views about this blog, or anything else connected to writing or drama in general, why not join my writers’ group on facebook? http://www.facebook.com/group

Look forward to meeting you there and hopefully working with you in the future.