Good enough isn’t good enough
There was quite a lot of tweeting about this topic and the session today (which I missed).
Festival-ed out?
It is now 48 hours since I returned from the Screenwriters’ Festival (and just over two weeks since the Frankfurt Bookfair, and less than a week before the World Conference of Screenwriters. I have not blogged recently because I have been overdoing the networking.
If you don’t want them to beat you join them
Networking is a bit of a black art and one that many writers shy away from. But, for a writer, developing and maintaining the right contacts can mean the difference between a hobby and a career. I asked scriptwriter and marketing consultant Caroline Ferguson what she thought her session with Scriptwriter and networking ace Janice Day would be offering: she replied:
'Many writers would rather rip out their own teeth than introduce themselves to complete strangers. Self promotion simply isn’t part of the character set of the typical writer.
Spin, doctor, spin: why we all need PR
‘Starving in a garret may be traditional for writers but these days it’s no good unless you’re broadcasting it on the web’ according to PR and Marketing guru K D Adamson. We have managed to get her to come to the Screenwriters’ Festival in Cheltenham at the end of the month to explain why any ambitious writer needs to establish three key things: their positioning, motivation and objective.
Sounds miles from anything in Sid Field or McKee et al.
The event of the year is a couple of weeks away
The season of party conferences is over for the public but for screenwriters and those who work with them it is about to start. For months there has been unprecedented bad news from broadcasters and from the traditional sources of finance for film.
Where have all the writers gone?
I am not doing a blog today because there is a far more important article in Screen International by Phil Parker for anyone who works with scripts. Whether you are a writer, script editor, producer, director or agent, please read this and get to the **Screenwriters’ Festival in Cheltenham where there will be a major debate over the four days dealing with this situation. Be there where the real action is going to be. It could be your future.
Why writers feel aggrieved
There may be many reasons, some better than others. The Writers Guild has a session this week at BAFTA on the crisis in TV drama that will no doubt air some of these issues.
I am dealing today with a situation in which a writer has worked on a script with the production company for some months and it has got better and better.
Story - not script-writing is the key, Cheltenham the place
The longer I am in the biz the more I believe that storytelling not scriptwriting is the key. Writers should simply (ha!) try to tell stories; the format - prose, script, long or short - is very secondary to the story to be told.
But for scriptwriters, there is so much emphasis put on structure by so many of the people selling courses and books that writers are forced into a painting-by-numbers and artificial way of writing that will usually result in bad writing.
This distorts the learning about writing.
Copyright and wrong
A producer called today because he has been trying to track down an author of a book long out of print but not out of copyright. Google and other search engines came up with nothing.
The BBC – one stop shopping?
This week in TwelvePoint we have Kate Harwood’s interview: I think that despite the slap on the wrist (that is all I think it was) from James Murdoch (SKY) the BBC seems to be in rude health.
You think writing is hard? Try selling it after it is published
There is a great cartoon showing a journalist standing in front of the Editor’s desk and he says to the editor: ‘You think my writing is hard to understand? You should try writing it!’
I spent the afternoon with an author and her publishers working out a marketing strategy to promote her recently published book (Janice Day, GETTING IT OFF MY CHEST, Old Street Publishers).
BBC – drama not crisis
I spent some time this Bank Holiday proof-reading Kate Harwood’s fascinating and information-packed interview for TwelvePoint (forthcoming weeks). She not only talks about her current view of status drama in British television but also about how the BBC drama department relates to BBC films, its attitude towards single dramas, the lowering of drama budgets, what Ben Stephenson’s role is, how writers can best approach the BBC with series ideas and how writers get onto series teams.
Genre and the recession: is this the way forward?
It is always interesting to see if the world stopped while you went on holiday. Pleasingly it seemed to go on working (though some producers were not finalizing contracts as fast as desirable). The WGGB blog has the interesting story from Nick George, media partner, PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, who said:
'The recession has sent hoards of consumers to the cinema and therefore large scale, expensive films, such as Harry Potter, remain in production and eagerly awaited.
Why you need to go to this screenwriting festival
I was looking through the list of speakers signed up for the October Screenwriting Festival in Cheltenham. Did I want to meet the majority of these people? You bet. How much time would it take for me to get round to see them in their offices or at BAFTA? It would probably take more than 4 days to set up the appointments working full time. Yet they will all be at the Cheltenham and accessible over 4 days.
Some of them I do want to listen to what they have to say in their talks; some I just want to meet so I can follow up later.
