 Paul Ashton runs the team who act as the first line of defence for the BBC as they endure the constant seige of scripts from hopeful screenwriters. In their search for new talent they receive, consider, and respond to around 10,000 screenplays every year. Can there be many people in the world with such a wide experience of the pitfalls committed by new screenwriters? And Sally Brockway asks him all the questions you would ever want answering about that. If you've ever sent a script off anywhere, this 40 minutes+ downloadable interview is simply unmissable. |
 This is Samia Smith, who has played Maria O'Connor in Coronation Street for nine years now - and who is just one of the newer faces in the show's tradition! 'The Street' is a legend in British Television. With over 7,000 episodes broadcast it's less now less than two years from being able to celebrate its 50th year on screen. At the moment it runs at five half hour episodes a week - and regularly slugs it out with Eastenders to be seen as THE top soap in terms of awards, audience figures, and general national esteem. Can you imagine thinking of enough stories to write 52 long movies a year? Me neither. But Stuart Blackburn can. He heads the story department, and in this completely exclusive interview Stuart tells Sally Brockway how they come up with the stories that drive the behemoth that is 'Corrie' to the top of the charts. It's fair to say you WILL learn a trade secret or two. |
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 Boy Meets Girl is a new four part drama that charts the progress of Veronica and Danny after an accident which causes them to swap minds. We have an exclusive interview with the writer, David Allison, in which he talks about his route into writing, his specific writing process, the startling reality behind the tag of New Writer that the press have given him, and the inside track on how to make networking A. Less fearful and B. More productive.
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 Eastenders is one of the three most popular television dramas in the UK. In this special, extended length, audio interview, Richard Lazarus talks about his journey from own label baked beans to being a core writer on this four times a week slice of urban naturalism. (Er... that's a technical term for "kitchen sink drama" - the sort of thing that we Brits do so well.) He gives the inside story on how the whole writing process works. Serial dramas like this, with their 200 + episodes a year and their constant hunger for new writers, often act as the gateway to the industry, so if you have any ambition to work as a screenwriter you could do worse than to put aside an hour and listen to this in depth analysis of how he does what he does.
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 It's plain
Ben Miller is a very talented man. Possibly most famous for being one half of the
Armstrong and Miller comedy duo, playing the producer in the Tony Jordan series
Moving Wallpaper, and playing Richard
Lester in Primeval, he also studied
for a PhD in solid state physics at Camrbidge University, and has appeared in a
clutch of movies including The Parole Officer, Johnny English, and Razzle
Dazzle. Now he's written the screenplay for his new movie HUGE, assembled the funding,
and got together a pretty starry cast to make it. (Mission Impossible's Thandie Newton in a comic part, anyone?)
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 It's a cliche that there are three staple genres for TV shows
- Cops, Docs, and Lawyers. Master one of these genres and you'll rarely be out of work. This is an interview about writing for the Docs. Simon Harper is responsible for finding new screenwriters for the top rated BBC1 medical show Holby. In this interview with Sally Brockway he discusses how to start writing for the show - and even indicates how you might get him to read your script. A rare opportunity indeed.
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This is the second of two reports by John Fox on the 360 Degrees Writers Festival in Northern Ireland in January 2009. It deals in detail with a presentation by Kate Rowlands, Head of the BBC Writers Room - perhaps THE most important gateway into the industry for new writers in the UK.
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If you're switched on to the idea that the internet could be the future of drama you will be very interested in this report from a BBC Writer’s Room roadshow in Northern Ireland in January. It delves into the ideas and the implementation of a smash hit internet drama called Sofia's Diary. If you ever thought that writing for the internet was not 'real' screenwriting, the breadth of canvas and the toys you have at your disposal with this kind of show may just change your mind!
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 "A bunch of impossibly glam teens getting into impossiblyglamorous problems?" "Footballers' Wives" for sixth formers? "The harder they party the more empty they seem"? Maybe. What's indisputable is that 'Skins' actively scouts teenagers for its writing team, aims itself fairly and squarely at a teenager market - and tookthe best drama prize at the esteemed Rose d'Or awards in Switzerland lastMay. It all started off as a short storyscribbled down by a teenager called Jamie Brittain... (Downloadable audio interview)
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 This is a great downloadable interview with Vanessa Haynes, who at the time of interview was the Head of Development at Baby Cow. If you don't know of Baby Cow this is one of THE great UK comedy production companies. The company is owned by Steve Coogan (who is probably best known for creating and playing a character called Alan Partridge), and over the last decade has produced shows including Gavin & Stacey, The Mighty Boosh, Ideal, Human Remains, Nighty Night, Saxondale, Marion and Geoff - and many many more. In this interview Vanessa talks to Sally Brockway of Screenwriting Goldmine about the best way to get her attention as a writer!
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 Toby Whithouse is a massively experienced TV writer. Recently he's worked on Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Hotel Babylon, devised his own show No Angels, and created the current instant cult supernatural show called Being Human. In this audio interview he talks about screenwriting in general, his career to date, devising Being Human, and describes what it was like bringing back a classic character to the Doctor Who series.
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Ever had a dream like this? You send in a few pages of your script to your favorite TV show. Within hours you get a call- they like it. No, they LOVE it! Within hours they fly you out there. Put you in a hotel. Hire you to start work on the show. You get to work on two series, hang out on set all the time, get to work with David Milch (Deadwood and NYPD Blue) on a daily basis - and suddenly the people who matter are queuing up to read your movie script. This interview is with Bryan McDonald. That screenwriting 'dream' was his reality. Listen as he tells you how he did it...
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Screenwriting 
