Archives: Writing

I’m writing this at an almost respectable 7am, but considering I’ve been awake all night it doesn’t feel like the start of a new day.

Why have I been awake all night, I hear you ask? Or is that the voices in my head? They crept in about two hours ago and are pretty insistent on staying there. But I digress.

I have a weird and wonderful brain that kicks into gear at random moments, which is fantastic for creative and lateral thinking, but not so good when it steps up to overdrive just as I settle down for some well-earned kip.

And so it was last night, when my head hit the pillow mere minutes after hitting on the most amazing concept for a HUGE new project. The real beauty of it, though, is that it’s not a ‘new’ project. Rather, in a flash of awkwardly-timed, knock-out inspiration I found a way of tying together no fewer than FOUR existing projects into one symbiotic whole.

For those of you familiar with transmedia storytelling, hold your groans. I haven’t just wedged a bundle of ideas together into one unconscionably complicated and sprawling hole. I have – you may be surprised to know – actually thought it through.

Some of the ideas were already concrete in my head, other were more shapeless and still others were small moments of “wouldn’t it be great if I could…”. But they all shared a common theme that I just hadn’t identified before, a theme which will – hopefully – over the coming few months, be explored through a wide range of stories and across a variety of different media; not least, I suspect, this blog.

This is going to be a HUGELY ambitious project, but one I passionately believe in. I’m going to need a lot of help and support along the way, but that’s what you, dear reader, are there for. Together we can not just explore, inform and entertain, but hopefully expand and engross as well.

Here’s to 2011 and a new world of excitement. Won’t you come and join me for the ride?

PS – regardless of project-related bloggage, there’s going to be a lot more content on the blog in the weeks and months to come, so stay tuned (or come back more often than you have been…)

Wow.

That was an event. And a half. And probably another half again.

Three days of early starts, 1.5 hour commutes and running around like a loony with a camera in his hand. It was truly a remarkable festival – the constant feedback I was getting talking to delegates and speakers both on- and off-camera was overwhelmingly positive. Even the negative things being said were all fairly minor niggles, and all delivered with a sense of wanting to improve the festival for next year, not to criticise what happened this year.

The festival staff were truly phenomenal, from the top of the tree with Chris Jones and David Chamberlain’s constant calm under immense stresses right down the tree to the runners and volunteers who never seemed to stop but never complained about it, either. I’d love to name them all, but in truth I’ll forget someone and really offend them

I also really connected with a few of the delegates and volunteers and sincerely hope that we’ll enjoy ongoing and fruitful friendships and relationships.

I’m now sat on the sofa at home lazing around watching flicks and digitising the 8 hours of behind-the-scenes footage while trying to digest all the tidbits of information I picked up from talking to people throughout the weekend.

If I’m having trouble making my brain work today, I can’t imagine what the delegates who were actually IN all of the sessions are feeling like today.

I’ll hopefully be back in the next couple of days (in the breaks between cutting together the 3 days of material I’ve captured) to give you my impressions of the lessons that emerged throughout the weekend.

Until then, it’s time to kick back, chill out and try to fend off this empty feeling inside with no rush to Regent’s College to be met with the same smiling, warm and friendly faces I’ve been seeing for the past three days.

It’s been…. emotional.

Over the past 6 days I’ve given a (very brief) Lowdown of what to expect from the London Screenwriters Festival: how to pick your schedule, what to focus on and how to make the most of it.

The easiest way for me to summarise it is just to link to all of those blog posts:

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6

But that’s a bit of a cheat’s summary.

Day 7: Final Checks, Please

In truth, if you’ve not prepared yourself for the festival by now (starting at 10am tomorrow (Friday) with a sit-down natter with Tim Bevan), you’re not going to get as much out of it as you’d hope to.

There’s still time, though! You can still sit down and run through the schedule; you can still work out your goals for the festival itself; you can still brush up on my networking tips and find out how to connect with the right people in the right way.

What you can most usefully do as a delegate of the festival, which will also help ensure the demand is there for a repeat event next year, is to blog, Facebook and Twitter about the whole thing while you’re there.

There are myriad people with myriad reasons who cannot come along and I know they’ll be watching with eagle eyes for tips, tricks and tools that emerge from the festival. If you’re on Twitter, use the festival’s hashtag #londonswf to spread the word in a format that people can easily follow. (And, as a bonus side-effect, you may even pick up some new followers in the process).

If you blog, be sure to give us your opinions in a quick run-down when you’re finished.

And talking of finished, I promised one last networking tip in yesterday’s blog: Follow Up. If you meet someone exciting, interesting or just plain useful, make sure you grab their card from them and as soon as you get home (Monday morning), drop them a line. It’s just a memory-jogger and a “pleased to meet you”, but that single point on contact could stand you head-and-shoulders above the other delegates who make the same connections but either wait a week to touch base or fail to make contact at all.

Most importantly of all, be sure to feedback to LSWF after the fact. Only by telling them what was great (and what wasn’t) can you be sure to get more of what you want next year. And, in the cold, hard world of arts cuts and huge losses, if you want to see the fest again next year, your testimonials are going to be a MAJOR selling point for them when they’re looking for sponsors, supporters and speakers for next year’s event.

Go in peace, leave in pieces and enjoy every moment – after all, it’s about you.

Over the last 7 days leading up to the London Screenwriters’ Festival at Regents College, I’ll be preparing a special (text-only, sadly) Lowdown looking at how you can get the most from your weekend and the biggest bang for your buck.

You can read earlier tips in the countdown: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

Day 6: Networking Part II: The Nitty-Gritty

You’re primed and ready to make your assault on the first room of the day – networking over breakfast with people you don’t know, or walking into a room full of strange faces (in the unknown sense, not as in all the LSWF delegates are alien-freaks). How do you do this thing?

1. The Pitch – just like pitching your work, you need to have a snappy, concise and clear pitch of who you are. What do you do (writer/director/producer/multi-hyphenate), where do you do it (Wales/Scotland/London/Plymouth/Newcastle, home/production company/office/after the day job) and what stage are you at in your career/with your current project(s)?
2. The Return – allow the other person to pitch themselves back at you. Even better, prompt them into their own pitch with a good opening question. Try to avoid “Who are you?” unless you’ve spent 5 minutes with them without finding out their name. Try something like “Do you write, too?” or a question about the Festival.
3. Your Script – if you’re networking as a writer with producers know your story inside-out. Not only do you need to be able to sum it up nice and quickly in an oral pitch, you also increasingly need to show producers and collaborators that you’ve thought – seriously – about who the audience is and how it will reach them. And don’t say, “It’s for everyone”. NOTHING IS FOR EVERYONE. And neither is your script for “18-35 year-old males” – get precise.
4. The Back-and-Forth – once you both know where you’re coming from, it’s time to dig deeper to find how you may be able to help each other. To put it in disgusting American networking terminology, be a “giver” not a “taker” – that is to say, always be focusing on what you can do for them and not the other way around. That’s where Karma kicks in.
5. The Denouement – Once you’ve communicated all you can, clearly, concisely and with a little humour if you dare, it’s time to move on. Swap cards (you should have already, but just double check), tell them you’d like to chat further, but you’re trying to take advantage of this opportunity to move around the room and make as many contacts as possible. If you intend to, tell them you’ll be in touch after the festival (more on this in tomorrow’s blog: After The Fest).
6. The Advance – look up, look around and pick your next target for your mini-charm (not smarm) offensive. Or, if you’re in a workshop, take your seat quietly and politely for the start of the session.

Networking, to the uninitiated, is a scary prospect. To the experienced networker, it’s still a fairly daunting prospect. The one HUGE advantage you have just by being a delegate of the LSWF is that you can guarantee that 90% of the people at the event want to meet you. Perhaps not because they have heard of you, or because they know your work, but simply because the whole event is geared around making people better writers and connecting people who may work together in the future.

Every time you walk into a room – be it a specific networking event, a workshop, seminar or even the canteen at lunchtime – pick a face you don’t recognise and just go and introduce yourself. If nothing else, you’ll notice how much easier this gets as the weekend progresses. Better than that, once you’ve done it the first time and realised people are genuinely happy to meet other people and make contacts and that they don’t look at you like a weird alien, you’ll get a significant confidence boost.

Networking is all about establishing relationships and who knows where that may lead? I’ve met some of my best partners and collaborators at random events just by saying “Hello” – every new workshop is a chance to forge future successes.

Tomorrow, in the 7th and final part of this Countdown Lowdown, I’ll be going over all of the tips so far and offering a quick wrap-up and a series cool-down exercises for the aftermath of the 3-day weekend.

Over the last 7 days leading up to the London Screenwriters’ Festival at Regents College, I’ll be preparing a special (text-only, sadly) Lowdown looking at how you can get the most from your weekend and the biggest bang for your buck.

You can read earlier tips in the countdown: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4.

Day 5: Networking Part I: The Comfort Zone

In preparation for a full run down of how to network efficiently  and effectively at the LSWF, today’s post is more of a networking primer, a few DOs and DON’Ts for the dreaded “meeting new people” thing:

• DO push yourself out of your comfort zone – talking to other people, new people, can be daunting and scary, but that’s exactly how you want it to be. If you’re nervous then you know you’re pushing yourself outside your comfort zone and when you do that amazing things happen.
• DON’T hang with the people you know – all of your Twitter buddies may be there, but try not to make a bee-line for them; they are your safety net, not your reason for being there. That’s not to say you should ignore your Twitter buddies, but don’t let them be your sole companions at the networking sessions either.
• DO wear your happy face – head high, shoulders back, confident posture and a positive outlook will get you a long way in the crucial “first impressions” stakes. Learn to fake it if you want to make it.
• DON’T waffle on for hours – treat each networking event like speed-dating; you want to get as much useful information across to the other person in as short a time as possible, but you also need to LISTEN to what they are saying back. Once you’ve hit all your markers, move on.
• DO be a brazen hussy – networking is a game and you want to get around as many people as possible and make connections. If you’ve been standing talking to the same person for more than 5-10 minutes and you’re not discussing very important things, excuse yourself and move on to the next person.
• DON’T be offended if it happens to you, too – your conversational partner has the same aim as you: getting around the room. Moving on is not a sign of rudeness (unless one doesn’t excuse oneself), but simply a sign that you’ve exchanged your key info and can have a longer discussion at a more convenient time.
• DO pay attention to other people’s body language – if you’re scouting for openings to go and talk to someone, look at their feet. If they’re turned away from the person they’re talking to it means they’re not fully engaged and you’ve got the perfect “in” to – politely – sidle into the conversation and introduce yourself.
• DON’T be blind to your own body language – always strive to appear engaged with what the other person is saying. They may be the biggest bore on earth, but one day they may bring you that perfect idea for a script, or offer you proper paid work – a first meeting is not a time to burn bridges.

Tomorrow’s Lowdown will cover the intricacies of networking once you’re in the room – how do you “mingle”, how should you present yourself and how to make the most of the first 30 seconds when you meet someone and you’re both forming your crucial first impressions?

Over the last 7 days leading up to the London Screenwriters’ Festival at Regents College, I’ll be preparing a special (text-only, sadly) Lowdown looking at how you can get the most from your weekend and the biggest bang for your buck.

You can read earlier tips in the countdown: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3.

Day 4: Take Note(s)

I’m going to make a wild assumption that people going along to the London Screenwriters’ Festival are going to be, well, writers. Which means that we’re all interested in using the written – and then spoken – word to express ourselves.

Note-taking, however, is very, very far away from what we do day-to-day. It’s not about meticulously crafted sentences and structures – it’s about remembering what we feel we most want/need to remember.

The biggest difficulty with note-taking is that it’s very much like revision at school: everyone has their own system that works for them. I can’t, therefore, tell you how to take the best notes for you, but I can tell you what works for me and what other people often find useful with notes.

Here are 6 key points to consider:

1. Don’t attempt to transcribe the session – that way madness lies. Your hand (or your fingers if you’re being posh and taking a laptop in) can’t keep up with the speed at which we all speak. So unless you’re a stenographer or journalist trained in short-hand, you’re not going to be able to write down everything that’s said.
2. Take down the key headings – from the powerpoint, if there is one, or as they emerge from the mouth of the speaker. Most speakers use topic headings on slides or note cards to jog their memory of what they’re trying to cover; the same principal can work for you.
3. Consider your own personal shorthand – my dad used to take notes in meetings using his own form of shorthand that eliminates vowels. That was in the 70’s and is now more commonly known as “text-speak” (or txt-spk, I suppose). The point is, it worked for him, you may find something that works for you.
4. Don’t let your note-taking distract from the business of the session – You don’t want to miss key points because you were furiously scribbling what was said immediately beforehand. Keep your notes as brief as you feel you can make them.
5. Allow time to typing up – brief notes are all well and good, but you’ll need to allow yourself time to write them up at some point. This is how I make my notes, by making brief points on my notepad, then after the session going over them and typing them up. I find it helps me remember things better.
6. Or, you could skip notes altogether in the session – allowing you to focus completely on the speaker(s), then write down the key points you remember immediately afterwards. This doesn’t work for me, because I get distracted by consciously “trying” to remember the key points I don’t want to forget and miss other elements of the presentation, but I know plenty of people for whom it works perfectly.

If this all feels slightly too scholastic for you, by all means avoid taking notes completely. If you think you’ll take away what you need to know without writing it all down then that’s the best way to do it – as I said above notes are entirely personal.

The last things I’ll say on notes, though, is that you should see them as a career investment; you’re paying close to £300 for this weekend’s experiences, so however much of a chore taking and typing up notes may appear, it’s always worth considering what you would pay someone for notes like those with the insights you’re going to get from the weekend.

For me, I’d certainly pay more than £300 for the wealth of knowledge I’m likely to accumulate over the course of the LSWF.

Come back tomorrow, Day 5, with just 3 days to go before the festival starts, when we’ll be looking at Networking – that dreaded “meeting new people” thing.

Over the last 7 days leading up to the London Screenwriters Festival at Regents College, I’ll be preparing a special (text-only, sadly) Lowdown looking at how you can get the most from your weekend and the biggest bang for your buck.

You can read Day 1 here and Day 2 here.

Day 3: Making the Most of Your Schedule

After yesterday’s blog about how to pick apart the schedule and select your sessions (another interesting note on which Monica Solom has blogged once again), it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of how you make the most of the workshops you’ve chosen.

Here’s a quick, 5-point Lowdown on getting what you need:

1. Pause before the start to work out what 3-5 nuggets of info or tips you’d like to come out with at the end of the session and write them out on a blank page in your note book.
2. Make notes through the talk. If you’re not a great – or natural – note-taker, don’t worry, I’ll have more on making notes in tomorrow’s Lowdown.
3. Listen carefully. You’re looking not only for your 3 key nuggets, but also the extra bits of info that you wouldn’t have thought of or hadn’t realised were important until they came out of the speaker’s mouth. But you’re also listening to make sure that when it comes to Number 4 you’re not going over old material.
4. Ask questions. If you find yourself without key notes written by your important pieces of info you’re after, ask. Don’t EVER be shy to ask a question in a panel or a talk. All of the sessions will have time for a Q&A and, if it helps you achieve your goals for the festival that we talked about yesterday, there’s no such thing as a stupid question. However stupid you may feel asking it, you’ll feel even more stupid if you don’t and you walk away without at least broaching the subject.
5. Talk about it. When you’re filing out, when you’re heading across to the next session, when you’re grabbing a cup of coffee or a bite of lunch; talk about it with anyone and everyone. Nothing seals information in your brain better than forcing your brain to process it so you can sum it up to someone who wasn’t there (maybe you’re “workshop buddy” who’s been taking in a competing session. Equally, discussing it with someone who was also in the session can help you see things from another angle that you may have missed.

There is an untold wealth of information to be discovered, mined and absorbed at the festival. Even once you’ve narrowed your choice of workshops and sessions right down, you still need to be aware of what you want to glean from each individual element on your personal schedule.

With 5 minutes of forethought and an hour of concentration, you will emerge from each and every block a wiser person and, hopefully, a better writer.

Tomorrow on the Countdown Lowdown, we’ll take a brief gander at note-taking: an investment in learning.

Over the last 7 days leading up to the London Screenwriters Festival at Regents College, I’ll be preparing a special (text-only, sadly) LOWDOWN looking at how you can get the most from your weekend and the biggest bang for your buck.

Read Day 1 here.

Day 2 – Get Organised, Part II: Setting Your Schedule

After yesterday’s first post you should now be primed and ready with notebooks, pens and business cards on the way.

Today and tomorrow, making the most of the weekend, it’s time to sit down and really study the timetable for the festival and decide what you want to tackle.

This is only a blog of limited space (I know you don’t want to sit and listen to be drone on), so there’s no way I can systematically go through the whole weekend workshop by workshop, but here’s my top tips for choosing the right sessions for you.

1. Think carefully about your short- and medium-term goals. What you should be aiming for from this year’s inaugural festival is to kick-start your journey to the next step of your career – whether you’re a newbie, an old-hand or somewhere in the middle.
2. Print out the schedule from the LSWF website (which you can find here) and put big black marker lines through the workshops that hold no interest for you at all. That narrows things down a bit (but probably not a lot!).
3. Pick two or three workshops on each day that fit with what you want to achieve/improve RIGHT NOW. Whether it’s getting that first draft down, to selling it, to getting representation or looking into self-producing, select the sessions that will help you get there as soon as the festival finishes.
4. Be REALLY honest with yourself. If you haven’t finished a working, saleable/shootable draft of your screenplay yet, is it really worth that workshop on getting an agent, or would you be better off sitting in on the re-writing workshop instead?
5. Pick at least one networking event each day that you will commit to. Networking is the major bonus of actually being at the event (as opposed to watching the sessions back on the ‘net afterwards), so make the most of it. More on networking later in the build up, but don’t avoid it because you’re nervous!
6. Pick at least one workshop every day that’s not something you’d normally attend. Whether it’s about a topic you don’t normally deal with or about a media you don’t normally write for, go and see something different.
7. Pick one workshop a day that just looks interesting and/or fun – something that you actively really want to see. Maybe it’s Tim Bevan, John August or some of the other big names at the fest whose work you admire, or a session with people you know and follow in the wider world. Make it your treat.
8. Lastly, but not least, pick yourself a schedule that’s going to feel rewarding. You’ve got to find a balance between information and entertainment, between over-loading your brain with info and getting enough useful information to push yourself forward.

All the delegates of at LSWF have to face the fact that you can’t be at all of the events you’ll want to be at, but if you spend enough time studying the schedule you will at least be able to maximise the information you take in that will help you take that leap to the next level.

Another great tip I’ve heard is from an article over on TwelvePoint from Monica Solom (thanks for the tip!). She suggests buddying up with other writers to split workshops between you. Then arranging time to get together and swap notes after the fact, so you gain from more than you were able to see yourself. The LSWF social network for delegates is a really useful place to find a buddy if this idea appeals to you.

Tomorrow, Day 3 of the Countdown Lowdown will look at making the most of your workshops.

Over the next 7 days as things ramp up towards the London Screenwriters Festival at the phenomenal Regents College, I’ll be preparing a special (text-only, sadly) LOWDOWN looking at how you can get the most from your weekend and the biggest bang for your buck.

Day 1 – Get Organised

With 7 days still to go, you’ve still got time to get your business cards designed, printed and sent out to you. Granted, it’ll be speedy-shipping, which will cost you a little more, but you really can’t underestimate how important having good – or any – business cards can be.

There’s loads of great, cheap websites to get your cards produced and you don’t need anything flashy or glossy. Try places like Vistaprint or BestPrinting, both of which allow you to design your own cards online and upload your own image.

A quick tip for card design: leave space on the back side for people to make notes about you and your projects. When you’re meeting the hundreds of other delegates at the festival, you’ll find some of them stick in your mind and others, well, wont. But if you keep track of people and their projects you stand a better chance of enhancing your networking after the fact.

Whether you use a standard template (not the best idea, but better than nothing) or create your own, business cards are essential to your LSWF experience. The last thing you want is to be in a situation where people are asking for your details and you have to scribble them on the back of a fag packet (after emptying out all of your smokes) or a page hastily ripped out of your notepad. Not a great impression.

And talking of notebooks – buy two. Just looking at the lineup, you know that whatever you’re going to be taking in you’ll going to be taking copious notes on everything you see (or at least you should be!).

With you notebook, buy yourself a PACK of pens. You’ll be wanting AT LEAST three, if not more, because you don’t want to be scuppered by empty pens.

That’s today’s mission in preparation for the festival, then: get online and order your business cards if you haven’t already, and pop down to your local stationary store and kit yourself out for copious note-taking. It’s for your own good!

Day 2 tomorrow will look at how to choose your sessions and workshops.

Apologies for the delayed return to the return to blogging – I’m not sure why I chose to re-start blogging just before going into production on yet another short film – I should plan these things better.

The film in question, Love Like Hers, went remarkably well despite a hectic schedule and 3 lost hours on the first morning thanks to the good old Yorkshire weather.  The writer/director, Danny Lacey, has already detailed the ins and outs of a crazy 3 days on both his blog and his live show, which you can watch back on demand on his LiveStream channel, so I won’t go into it too much. For those of you who want a taste of what we went through, here’s a short behind the scenes vid from Danny’s YouTube Channel:

My role was essentially as an on-set coordinator, since I’d come on board too late to really be able to take a lot of the “real” production stuff from Danny. Although, frankly, I ended up with more than enough on my plate as it was. It definitely would have been an impossible mission had it not been for the extraordinary Bethan Davis, who started as a Production Assistant, but ended up as a Production Co-Ordinator/Production Manager and was outstanding, as was Danny’s girlfriend, Jacqui, who shouldered a huge amount of stress on Danny’s behalf.

If there was one mistake we made it was in not having enough time for me to take financial control of the picture, meaning all spending decisions had to come from Danny himself. That will doubtless be rectified in future projects together.

What I’ve learned over the last few weeks, though, is that I’m actually not only a big fan of, but also well suited to being a producer. I like the coordination, I enjoy the on-set challenges, but most of all I like to be able to help other writer/directors achieve their vision.

This became abundantly clear to me yesterday after spending over 2 hours in a script meeting with a first-time writer/director who’s got a great little story mapped out.

Louisa is unique in many ways, not simply because she has made a powerful and fascinating documentary exploring her physical and emotional recovery from an horrific accident. She also knows exactly where she stands in terms of skills, abilities and desires.

The script she sent to me has, at its heart, a really strong emotional pull and a really quirky, captivating idea behind it, but it it – by her own admission – in very rough form. Yesterday afternoon she stopped in to my place and we talked through the whole thing from start to finish and really started to delve deeply into the characters, where they were coming from and why they made the decisions they did.  I’m totally confident that when she sends her second draft over it’ll be a vast improvement.

For those of you who want to know why I find Louisa such an exciting person to want to work with, check out her doc, The Highest Low:

And while I’m here, if there’s anyone out there with a script they want to turn or see turned into a finished product, I’m all for taking a look.