Merry Christmas from BBC Writersroom - Script Room dates 2015

Seasons greetings from all at the BBC Writersroom!

Script Room Dates for 2015

(Read Kate's follow-up blog in response to your comments)

So the team and I have been thinking ...

During 2014 we ran ten different Opportunities where writers could submit their work.  In total we received an extraordinary 10,000 scripts, which meant a phenomenal number of reading hours, blood sweat and tears on your part and joy and disappointment on our part - not necessarily in equal measure! We have come across some fantastic writers who we had no knowledge of before, and are now involved with us in different ways.

This was the first time we split the year into genre based Script Room windows, which in the main worked.  But when we looked at the way we broke it down we questioned whether it was the best approach.  So we have decided to fine tune the system and simplify further.  In the spring we will have a Comedy window, and in the autumn a Drama one.  This means that whatever platform your Comedy script has been written for - TV, Radio, CBBC or Film, you can submit your script to the first window, which will go live on March 9th 2015 and close on April 2nd 2015. The same will apply for the autumn Drama window - whether TV, film, radio, stage or online we look forward to seeing your work.  This gives us more time and greater focus on each submission window.

To accompany each Script Room we will have a huge and diverse range of resources on our website; scripts, advice, interviews with key talent, writers, commissioners and producers, to help you focus your idea.  This will be accompanied by the relaunch of our website mid-January, including a restructure of the content to make our resources much easier to find.  For the first time the website will also work properly on mobile phones and tablets – more about that to follow.

A few thoughts

Remember “Don't think about the first draft think about the first read".  One leading writer said that when she submits a script she calls it a first draft but in effect it's her 11th!  So get writing, and to help you get started here are a few more thoughts from me.

The big question is what makes a Drama or Comedy sing and stand out amongst the crowd?  Why after years of reading scripts, finding and nurturing great writers, does one matter and another not?  Why did Sally Wainwright’s ‘Happy Valley’ grab me by the scruff of the neck and keep me pinned to my seat for six weeks?  Why did Mary from the hairdressers tell me that Happy Valley was f***ing brilliant and she could hardly bear to watch? Actually it's because we inhabit the world with those characters.  The pain and complex human emotions in that community were enduring.

The drama was located in a real place, a Hebden Bridge that Sally knows.  The people belonged to that place and that place belonged to them.  The Wire, Rev, In the Flesh – all were rooted in a specific cultural world, and when you do that you create a universal truth.  Unfortunately we too often encounter abstract places 'up North' or somewhere in ‘the Midlands’, and that lack of detail is reflected in the characters who are not owned and not drawn with visceral detail and muscular familiarity.  It’s essential to have such an in depth knowledge of your characters that if you strip them bare you know what made them.  In a recent Desert Island Discs interview Judy Murray was talking about her son Andy and the events that took place in their home town of Dunblane.  For most of us that was an unimaginable tragedy, but put yourself in that primary school, in that community and then think about the legacy of that act and how that propels you forward.  The pain has not diminished but changed, and the reaction to it from each individual will be different and distinct.

What makes us is our past, the environment and people that affect your life.  When I watched Murdered by My Boyfriend, based on the true story of Ashley Jones, it had a powerful impact on me because I've been the victim of violent domestic abuse but survived.  That experience changed me and my view on the world.  Each and every one of your characters does not just appear on the pages of your script, they have history, they have family, stories that have impacted on them and made them.  They belong to a community.

If I walk out of my door in Camden I can describe my neighbours in minute detail.  The woman who walks down the road in Edwardian costume every single day, our Mary Poppins, or Mad Martha as the kids call her with the heavily rouged cheeks at odds with the world around, living in a past that only she knows.  The young guy barefoot in PJs and dressing gown, smiling.  Why?  I have still to find out.  What happened to the trolley woman, with bags and books longing for a bath, just wanting to be clean?  Everyone with a big story, behind every locked door ... I know one writer who says to me “Is there anyone normal who lives near you?”  And the answer is "yes we all are", but some of us can be undone by one event.  What we see is not and should not be what we get.

I know that when you submit your script it has meant time and effort and commitment but I just wish more of you were more rigorous about what appears on the page, because if you want to make your work have an impact then it has to matter and be about something.  Your stories come from your characters’ actions.  Show don't tell.  One of the common problems we see is that a script is a series of linear events happening to your characters as they meet up with others.  There might be plot, but not a story on an emotional level, no real complexity, no crossing the line.  Each one of us has a line that when crossed will trigger a response that is out of the ordinary, dangerous, illogical, or forensically appropriate to a time and a place because of 'x'.

Two quotes for you.  Frank Cotterell Boyce said “Have we lost the ability to wonder.  And by that I mean both in awe and also have the capacity to wonder round an idea, not look for the obvious answer”.  Kay Mellor talked about being open hearted because “if you open your heart to your character then your audience might too”.

I love writers, but I especially love the ones who have that passion for their work that you can see and hear in their script!

So Happy Christmas and New Year … and Get Writing!