screenwriting

You don’t have to get a tattoo honouring your favourite production company if you want to get into TV… but it might help.

An audience member at RTS Cymru Wales’s event “How to write a TV drama” revealed that he wrote his master’s dissertation on the Bad Wolf theme in Doctor Who. It was his “absolute dream” to work for the production company, also called Bad Wolf, that makes the show, he declared. And to prove it, he said he had a tattoo on his left arm showing the Tardis graffitied with “Bad Wolf”.

The cuts in unscripted TV and the cost of living crisis, said Holdsworth, the creator of upcoming Channel 4 drama Dance School, had hit the largely freelance workforce in the industry hard. “If you have to keep a roof over people’s heads… it doesn’t feel stable to be working in television at the moment. I don’t blame anyone who’s looked elsewhere,” she said.

The scheme will be comprised of workshops, expert-led sessions and networking opportunities across an eight-week period. From June 2024, the soon-to-be script writers will learn each stage of writing for screen, covering all bases.

This will be the second “Write Across” scheme the BBC has initiated after the successful “Write Across Liverpool” last year.  

“I absolutely hate rejection. I cry… I love these projects. I really hate it when producers act like it doesn’t matter and say: ‘We just roll again tomorrow, Helen.’ Of course, you roll again tomorrow, but today I want to sob.”

Screenwriter Helen Black was discussing the biggest downside of her job at an RTS Futures event in September, which examined what it takes to make a living out of screenwriting.

She continued: “You end up working on a lot of projects that are never going to be in production and that’s heartbreaking.”

Did you always want to be a writer?

I wanted to be a director when, aged seven, I saw the behind-the-scenes Lord of the Rings documentaries. It was fascinating to see Peter Jackson running around and I thought, “That’s what I want to do.”

Life gets in the way and you’re pulled in other directions but, at Cambridge University, where I was studying history, there was a talk by the film screenwriter Jay Basu. I went away buzzing from that talk and, since then, everything I’ve done has been working towards being a screenwriter.

“Never write with a filter – thinking about what ‘they’ want you to write.”

“Love the one you are with.”

“Don’t be a wanker.”

These were some of the good-humoured but sound pieces of advice on offer from established writers at the inaugural one-day RTS Story Conference, which was packed with informative sessions featuring some of the biggest names in UK television.

The programme will support six screenwriters from Black, Asian and other racial and ethnic backgrounds by employing them in a Netflix or Sky writers’ room for their first television credit.

Fellows will also receive a bursary and an industry mentor while attending monthly development events and workshops.

K Ali said: “I am thrilled to be working alongside Netflix and Sky to launch our new Screenwriting Fellowship.