Blogs for writers

By the end of last night's Websites For Writers event at the Guild, it was clear that we'd got the title wrong. It should have been called Blogs For Writers.

Tom Smith

"The web," said Tom Smith, the opening speaker, "is not a publication - it's a conversation." And, while websites tend to be static and one-sided, he argued, blogs are the perfect medium for online interaction.

Blogs - journal-style websites where entries are dated and appear in reverse chronological order - also have the advantage of being free and very easy to set up and manage. As Tom demonstrated, using Blogger, you can be up and running in less than a minute and don't need any technical knowledge or previous experience.

Taking us through the key components of a blog, Tom highlighted the blogroll which is where you list links to other sites you think are interesting. "Links," he explained, "are a real currency in blogging, so it's good to link to other people and, hopefully, get links back in return." He also showed how tagging posts with categories can help people navigate your blog and build up a picture of its content, and how you can use RSS feeds to manage reading other people's blogs.

Encouraging everyone at the event to start a blog, Tom pointed out how good they are for increasing communication. He even offered to build a site that would bring together all the Guild members' blogs into a single location.

Danny Stack

Proving Tom Smith's pudding, as it were, was the next speaker, Danny Stack. "Two years ago," he said, "I knew nothing about blogging. But when I discovered the huge range of American screenwriting blogs I decided to create my own, with a UK focus." At that time, apart from James Henry very few writers were blogging in the UK.

Drawing on his experience as a script reader and screenwriter, Danny's blog includes advice to writers and reflections on his own experiences. It has become well known in the writing community and, as Danny explained, has brought him into contact with a wide range of other writers and people in the industry. "You don't have to be confessional or too specific about projects you're working on," he said. "The key thing is to be genuine, honest and regular with your posting."

Sophie Nicholls

The final speaker, Sophie Nicholls, began by pointing out that blogging can even be good for your love life - it was how she met the person she currently lives with (a certain Tom Smith). Sophie runs a blog and wiki called Lots Of Big Ideas, featuring stories by refugees and asylum seekers.

The fact that people can be published online and get their voices heard has been incredibly valuable, she said and, while some have been reluctant to post on the blog, putting stories on the wiki has allowed others to add comments.

Wiki's are normally used for collaborative writing, and, though that's not really the case on Lots Of Big Ideas, the site shows how blogs can work well with other online tools.

Q&A

Reconvening after a glass of wine the writers in attendance fired questions at the panel. Most seemed surprised and excited about how easy it was to begin blogging, although some worried about whether they could find them time. Tom Smith back-tracked slightly on his earlier contempt for traditional personal websites (he'd characterised them as being full of pictures of cats) and said that blogs can work very well in conjunction with a more static site.

How, though, do you get people to visit your blog?

Tom Smith pointed out that search engines like Google are well-disposed to blogs because of their format and the fact that they tend to have regular new content. More importantly, though, was to write something good. Do that, he said, and people will find it.

In a response to a question about getting work via your blog, Danny Stack said that he regularly got contacted about different projects and, while most of them were unpaid, he had picked up lots of useful connections.

Other hints and tips:

• Find a 'friendly geek' who can help you tweak the code on your blog to make it look just the way you want it
• Use search engines to get help with technical queries
• Try not to repeat what other bloggers post about
• Always attribute and content or links you get from another blog
• You can point a blog at a different domain name
• It's easy to add pictures to a blog, or video (especially via YouTube)
• You can link a blog to a commercial site like eBay to give more information about a product
• For self-publishing, try using Lulu.com, and blogging to promote the book
• You can put adverts on your blog using AdSense from Google
  
• Tom Smith's reading list: The Cluetrain manifesto

And remember, anyone at the event, or any other Guild member who has a blog or sets one up over the next few weeks, should email Tom Smith so that he can create the central site.

Mackie to take up ITV role next month

ITV director of drama Nick Elliott will step down from his role next month in a move that will see the broadcaster’s controller of drama Laura Mackie take up the post.

Elliott was initially scheduled to retire at the end of 2007, but an ITV spokeswoman said an earlier departure date would make it more “straightforward” for producers looking to pitch ideas to the drama team.

More from Matthew Hemley in The Stage.

Libretto writing

In The Times, Sarah Urwin Jones investigates what it takes to write a good libretto.

The path to a good libretto is piled with literary bodies who thought that they “could” and then rapidly discovered that they really shouldn’t have. Even W. H. Auden, who peaked with The Rake’s Progress for Stravinsky, couldn’t flog his wordy Christmas Oratorio.

So where did it all go wrong? Some blame it on loquacious Wagner, while Meredith Oakes, librettist for Thomas Adès on The Tempest (a rare contemporary success story), blames it on a 20th-century obsession with “a Beckettian sense of futility”. Everyone else blames Sophie’s Choice , the well-meaning but dramatically disastrous 2002 Royal Opera House adaptation of William Styron’s Auschwitz novel.

“What was Nicholas Maw thinking of, writing his own libretto?” asks Philip Hensher, novelist and librettist of Adès’s first opera, Powder Her Face . “And how could the opera house let him? All we seem to get now is tiresome intervention from opera houses who want more input than they deserve.”

Roy Williams interview

In The Guardian, Maddy Costa speaks to playwright (and Guild member) Roy Williams.

Williams' latest play takes him back to the past, to 1950s London, when race riots broke out between white teddy boys and the growing population of Caribbeans. It's an adaptation of Colin MacInnes' novel Absolute Beginners, one of the most vibrant depictions of teen life ever written. Williams first came across the story in the derided 1986 movie starring Patsy Kensit and David Bowie; though he admired its style ("the way they filmed Soho, it's obvious they spent shitloads of money on it"), he soon discovered it wasn't a patch on the original book. Set in 1958 and narrated by an 18-year-old photographer who is already feeling disillusioned by teen culture, MacInnes' story captures London in all its seedy glory, not to mention the tensions between teens and adults, old and new Britain, blacks and whites, that still exist today.

Absolute Beginners opens at the Lyric Hammersmith, London, on 26 April.

How to be a greetings card writer

In The Independent, Emma Jayne Jones looks at how to get work as a greetings card writer.

The market is mainly served by a lot of smaller publishers - over 800. Source the ones who are looking for freelance writers. Visiting trade fairs is a good way to do this, or subscribe to the industry magazine Progressive Greetings.

Most publishers buy work outright and you will be expected to sign over copyright, losing ownership of the piece.

The amount and style of payment varies with agreements being per line, per verse or for a group of ideas. Verses are usually paid from 50p a line to £25 a verse, whereas punch lines need special skill and can earn up to £150 per idea.

Websites for writers

Hope to see many of you at the Websites For Writers event at the Guild tonight. We've got about 50 people booked, so there should be lots of interesting discussion in addition to the main speakers.

For those of you unable to make it, I'll be posting a write-up on the Guild website at some stage tomorrow.

Multi-tasking for writers

On The Guardian Books Blog, Niall Griffiths explains how the advice of Saul Bellow has helped him move forward with his novel.

...Saul Bellow once advised a friend to work on two projects at the same time; he found that switching from one project to the other constantly refreshed him, inviting new perspectives, new enthusiasms, new solutions. To avoid similar gestalt blindness, Jackson Pollock used to have a number of paintings on the go. When he returned to unfinished work he'd go through what he called his "getting acquainted" period - he wanted to see the statement rather than the composition.

Simm attacks Mars scheduling

Last week, the final ever instalment of Life of Mars was broadcast. It's a measure of [actor, John] Simm's importance to television drama that, at 36, he feels emboldened to speak exactly as he finds about the episode's scheduling opposite Champions League football on ITV.

"The mind boggles," he says. "It's one of the best hours of TV I've ever done. They've just p***ed a surefire ratings winner right up against the wall."

The grumbles of a leading actor are rarely edifying, but we should make an exception for Simm. After the first series of Life on Mars was delivered on time and on budget, BBC Drama tightened the purse-strings for the second.

More from Jasper Rees in The Telegraph.

Vonnegut's eight rules of writing

Following the recent death of American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, many bloggers have been rediscovering his "Eight rules of writing fiction".

I particularly like number 8:

Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Entwistle appointed acting Controller of BBC Four

Head of TV Current Affairs, George Entwistle, has been announced acting Controller of BBC Four for six months, from the beginning of May.

Current Controller, Janice Hadlow has requested a sabbatical in order to focus on writing her book on George III. She will also spend some time consulting on the wider BBC Vision strategy.

More from the BBC Press Office.

BBC Writing Academy

Further to yesterday's post, the BBC are now accepting applications for their Writing Academy.

Applicants must have already had at least one film, television or radio drama script produced, or one theatre piece performed professionally, or will be graduates of Skillset-approved screenwriting courses.

The deadline for applications is 14 May.

The inner life of the super-villains

James Franco as New Goblin in Spider-Man 3, screenplay by Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi and
Alvin Sargent, story by Ivan Raimi, from the Marvel comic book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko

In The LA Times, Sheigh Crabtree reports on how the team behind the forthcoming Spider-Man 3 film, have tried to ensure that the audience will care about the villains as well as the hero.

"[Producer] Avi Arad said to me in one of our first meetings: 'In Marvel, there are no bad guys,' " [Topher] Grace [who plays Venom] explains. "I took it to mean that unlike other comic book companies, where someone falls into a vat of acid, then wants to rule the world, we can understand the source of their anger. Blurring that line can be a dangerous thing, but when it's done right it can also be a lot more rewarding for the audience."

Spider-Man 3 is released in the US and the UK on 4 May.

Update: thanks to Dan Owen (see comments) for a correction to the caption.

Kureishi accuses BBC of censorship

The author Hanif Kureishi accused the BBC of censorship last night, after it dropped a radio broadcast of his short story describing the work of a cameraman who films the executions of western captives in Iraq.

Radio 4 cancelled a reading of Weddings and Beheadings, one of five nominations for the National Short Story prize due to be broadcast this week, after concluding the timing "would not be right" following unconfirmed reports that kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston had been killed by a jihadist group.

More from Owen Gibson in The Guardian.

Adapt or die

In The Independent, Dunta Kean explains why having their book adapted for the screen can be such a painful experience for novelists.

Authors-turned-screenwriters are in for a shock. It can seem like everyone including the tea boy has more input into the adaptation. Harder still, for the author precious about their work, is the slash and burn aspect of adaptation. Screenplays are a third of the size of novels, and adapting books means wielding the axe: out go timescales, characters and sub-plots. What films want is not the novel, but according to Deborah Moggach, "the short story in the book".

The full-length version of the article is in the new issue of Mslexia.

Inside the Writers' Academy

In Media Guardian (free registration required), Gareth Maclean talks to Abi Brown about being on the BBC Writers' Academy course and writing her first episode of EastEnders.

"It undoubtedly kills your social life, and I couldn't have done it without the love of a good man, but I learnt so much and have gone from nought to EastEnders in a remarkably short time," says Brown, the amazement evident in her voice.

Indeed, Bown, 41, only started writing seriously some seven years ago, and her background was in theatre. She had also written some short stories but nothing to match authorship of an episode of a soap which, despite the continuing parlous state it apparently finds itself in (at least according to the tabloids), still pulls in hefty audiences.

"They're filming it at the moment," she says, "and it's amazing watching actors saying your lines. Like nothing else, in fact."

Taxi for Mr Merchant

If you're near a radio tomorrow morning, you can listen to Taxi For Mr Merchant on Radio 4 at 11.30am. If you miss it, try the online Listen Again service.

With its haunting music and credits depicting an endless journey across the Brooklyn Bridge, Taxi was never the most conventional of TV sitcoms. But it brought together a collection of writers and performers who went on to be extremely influential in the worlds of film, TV and even opera. And yet, for all its influence, it's never really been afforded the reputation it deserves.

Stephen Merchant tells the story of show. As well as great writing, it assembled a stellar cast, and discovered Danny De Vito, Christopher Lloyd and Andy Kauffman, in addition to showcasing the terrific acting skills of Judd Hirsh.

Featuring original interviews with former cast members, director James Burrows and sitcom writer Rob Long, and a plethora of clips, Taxi For Mr Merchant is an insight into the history of the American sitcom.

The Mark Of Cain

Gerard Kearns in The Mark Of Cain, written by Tony Marchant, directed by Marc Munden (Photo: Nick Wall)

Few TV dramas in recent years have been as controversial as The Mark Of Cain by Tony Marchant, finally screened last night after being postponed so as not to harm the prospects of the British naval personnel held in Iran until last week.

Critics, such as Gerard O'Donovan in The Telegraph, were mostly full of praise.

It confronted viewers – in parts graphically – with difficult but valid questions about how our troops, and their commanding officers, might behave in the pressure-cooker environment of insurgent-ridden Iraq. It did so with a sympathy and humanity that leapt off the screen in Matthew McNulty and Gerard Kearns’s performances as the two young squaddies at the centre of the storm. It explored the pack loyalty that the Army instils for the sake of discipline and control but which renders fine ideals like individual “moral courage” (ie the right to disobey a bad order, or report wrongdoing) redundant in practice. In such situations going against the group is always perceived as betrayal.

Sam Wollaston in The Guardian agreed.

It is brilliant drama, bleakly beautiful, and horrifying. It perfectly captures the banality of war, the boredom, the bullying, and then the blind terror and confusion of battle. There are fantastic performances wherever you look, but especially from Gerard Kearns (of Shameless) as Mark, the young lad with a poster of Avril Lavigne on his wall at home, suddenly thrown into a very different world, a world with blood on the walls, and excrement. Mark ends up dead in the bath with a bag on his head, a gruesome nod to the Iraqi captives whose abuse he played a part in.

Both critics, however, shared some of the reservations expressed by Ian Johns in The Times about the drama-documentary mix.

...the opening caption — “This film is based on extensive research but is a dramatic work of fiction” — kept gnawing at me. Of the events before us, what had been taken from definite events and what from rumour or suspicion? Marchant had clearly been inspired by documented cases, even prefiguring a six-month court martial covering similar abuse charges that delayed the film’s original transmission last year. So why didn’t he come up with a straight drama-documentary that would have clarified the division between fact and dramatic licence?

Patric Verrone profile

In The New York Times, Michael Cieply profiles Writers Guild of America West President, Patric Verrone, ahead of the crucial TV contract negotiations.

As his wedding neared, some 19 years ago, Patric Verrone, now president of the Writers Guild of America West, joined his bride-to-be in a ritual common to show business types. The couple formed a company, one with a clever name: Calloo Callay.

“It’s what you say when you slay the Jabberwock, which is what we were attempting to do in Hollywood,” said Mr. Verrone, referring to Lewis Carroll’s verse about a mythical monster.

Mr. Verrone will come face to face with the beast in its corporate form this July, as his union and its East Coast counterpart begin what are expected to be exceedingly difficult negotiations with the conglomerates that own the networks and studios. Whether the entertainment business continues to operate as usual over the next year will depend in no small part on how he handles the encounter.

Arts Council must be a partner, not a parent

On The Guardian's Theatre blog, Lyn Gardner, who has been doing a great job in highlighting problems of arts funding, reports from the latest Devoted and Disgruntled meeting of theatre practitioners.

At Shunt's Devoted and Disgruntled meeting last night, it was clear that artists are prepared to back the Arts Council - but only if there is a genuine change in the relationship between the bureaucrats and the artistic community. Artists must know who is making the decisions and on what basis. The Arts Council must also stop trying to dictate the work it wants made and let artists decide for themselves. Instead of the current relationship, which often seems like that of weary parent and fractious toddler, there must be a relationship of equals. Remember: art would continue if there was no Arts Council; an Arts Council cannot exist without artists.

ManBooker International 2007 - nominations

The nominations have been announced for the ManBooker International Prize for Fiction. They are: Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, John Banville, Peter Carey, Don DeLillo, Carlos Fuentes, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Harry Mulisch, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Amos Oz, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie and Michel Tournier.

The inaugural Prize, in 2005, was won by Albanian novelist Ismail Kadaré.

The competition, worth £60,000 to the winner, is open to all living writers whose work is available in English, and is won on the basis of a body of work rather than a single book. Many of the nominees for the 2007 Prize, were also on the list for 2005 although neither Milan Kundera nor John Updike, notable names in the first selection, have been chosen this year.

The winner will be announced at a ceremony in June.

Late payment - writers' rights

On the Guild's website, Andy Walsh offers some practical advice to help you get paid on time.

Matthews appointed ACE theatre strategy director

Former Theatrical Management Association president Barbara Matthews has been appointed as the new director of theatre strategy at Arts Council England.

The move follows the restructuring of ACE’s national office at the end of last year, in which a number of key staff, including director of theatre Nicola Thorold, took voluntary redundancy.

More from Alistair Smith in The Stage.

Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

The American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, author of books including Slaughterhouse Five, has died at the age of 84. There are obituaries on BBC News, in The LA Times and by Dinitia Smith in The New York Times.

Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.

Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?

He also shared with Twain a profound pessimism. “Mark Twain,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote in his 1991 book, “Fates Worse Than Death: An Autobiographical Collage,” “finally stopped laughing at his own agony and that of those around him. He denounced life on this planet as a crock. He died.”

Danny Cohen is new Controller of BBC Three

The BBC have announced that Danny Cohen will be the new Controller of BBC Three. Cohen, the current head of E4, will replace Julian Bellamy who has returned to Channel 4.

Have I Got News For You? to launch video podcast

Have I Got News For You? is to launch a video podcast as part of a six-series deal with the BBC.

The three-year deal with HIGNFY producer Hat Trick, announced today, will take the BBC1 panel game up to its 38th series and 19th year. The 33rd season begins this Friday with regular team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton.

HIGNFY's podcast will feature specially produced material not seen on either BBC1 or BBC2, which broadcasts a weekly repeat of the show with 10 additional minutes.

"Have I Got News For You, as a topical comedy show, is ripe for spin-off viral programming," said Hat Trick's recently appointed head of interactive, Jonathan Davenport.

More from John Plunkett in Media Guardian (free registration required).

BAFTA TV Awards nominations

The nominations have been announced for the 2007 BAFTA TV Awards. The winners will be announced at the ceremony at the London Palladium on 20 May 2007.

Armstrong and Bain's guide to comedy

With the new series of their sitcom Peep Show about to start on Channel 4, in The Guardian, Guild members Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain offer their guide to writing comedy.

Devise An Innovative Shooting Style That Makes Filming Incredibly Difficult And Alienates The Majority Of Your Potential Audience

"We like the point of view filming style and internal monologues in Peep Show but very occasionally we wonder what it would be like if we shot the whole thing normally. Perhaps it would have more mainstream appeal and be considered less of a cult. The style makes the show appear edgy even when we're writing quite traditional comedy. We could probably write a scene in which a vicar was coming round for tea and a character was struggling to get his trousers on but still retain a sense of reality to the situation because of the camerawork! Certainly, we did a scene in series three where Mark's boss turns up at the flat and sees him sitting on the toilet."

Sir Michael Lyons is new BBC Chair

Sir Michael Lyons has been appointed as the new Chair of the BBC Trust (the Governors as were). For BBC News, Ian Youngs looks at what his role entails.

...his new job does not require practical TV and radio skills. The BBC Trust is intended to be an arms-length regulator.

It will set the corporation's general strategy, approving major changes, keeping an eye on the budget and calling executives to account to make sure they deliver quality and value.

The Martian Child goes straight

The Martian Child, by David Gerrold, has been turned into a film (screenplay by Seth Bass & Jonathan Tolins - but why is the hero no longer gay?

The Martian Child trailer

Sunshine - script (and backstories) by Alex Garland

Sunshine trailer


Sunshine, written by Alex Garland and directed by Danny Boyle, is released in the UK tomorrow. On the film's (slightly confusing) website they've posted Garland's backstories for each of the characters. There will also be a novel with the same title, but it has not yet been published. Garland, who had huge success at the age of 24 with his first novel, The Beach, has sounded diffident about writing in the past.

I often find writing a kind of irritating way to spend my one shot at life. I never felt short of things to write about. It was more to do with the will to write. I'd read stuff I'd written and think, "Who cares? I don't. Why should anyone else?"'

But he has always insisted that he does not suffer from writers' block.

Garland was very irritated, however, about reports in the media about him having suffered from writer's block. "I have never said to anyone that I had writer's block. I have never had writer's block." At the time he was working round the clock on the screenplay for 28 Days Later. "I don't understand it. People wanted me to have writer's block."

Michael Dibdin 1947-2007

Michael Dibdin, author of the Aurelio Zen detective novels, died last week at the age of 60. Crime fiction blog The Rap Sheet, pays tribute.

I had the opportunity to talk with Michael Dibdin only once, shortly after the publication in 1997 of The Vintage Book of Classic Crime, a rather curious literary sampler he’d edited. He was by then living in rainy Seattle, after meeting (at a 1993 writers’ conference in Spain) and then marrying local mystery author Kathrine Beck (aka K.K. Beck). I found Dibdin to be a bit gruff at first, delivering clipped responses that he evidently believed would be quite sufficient for an interviewer with no more than passing interest in crime fiction. After we’d spent a good while talking about his work and the genre at a coffee shop in Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square district, though, he realized that I was no general assignment reporter, but instead had a longtime interest in the very variety of story to which he had devoted himself. We then carried on for another hour or so, exchanging the names of favorite recent books and talking about some of the acknowledged giants and lesser-known stars of this genre, many of whose work figured into his Vintage collection.

Website event - still time to book

There are still a few places left for the Websites For Writers event - 19th April 2007, 7.00-9.30pm at The Writers' Guild Centre, King's Cross.

We'll be aiming to cover a wide range of topics with something for everyone, whether internet novice or expert. It will also be a great chance to share experiences with other writers about what works best online.

Entry price includes a free glass of wine. Places are limited so tickets must be booked in advance. To book please send a cheque for £5 (£7.50 for non-Guild members) payable to WGGB. Please send the cheque to 'Website event', WGGB, 15 Britannia Street, London WC1X 9JN.

An arts funding parable

In the week that the first Olympics-driven cut to cultural grants was announced, here is a revealing little parable from the world of arts funding. Seven weeks ago Sebastian Barker, editor of the London Magazine, was summoned to Arts Council England's literature department. His magazine, which has benefited from public subsidy for decades, is currently underwritten to the tune of £30,000. Mr Barker was told that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, funding would cease from April 2008, and that he was out of a job.

More from DJ Taylor in The Guardian.

Overhaul for BBC America

The BBC's US cable channel BBC America is dropping classic shows including Benny Hill in favour of modern hits like Hollyoaks and Torchwood.

The channel, which is available in 54 million US homes, is planning a "complete transformation".

More from BBC News.

Jonah Nolan interview

In The LA Times, Jay A. Fernandez speaks to screenwriter Jonah Nolan.

As news of Jonah Nolan's hiring to draft a screenplay for the potential Steven Spielberg-directed science fiction epic "Interstellar" rippled through cyberspace last week, Nolan admitted to a little starry-eyed wonder.

"I have a better understanding of what those NASA astronauts feel like as they're about to get blasted off into outer space [when I was] waiting to go pitch ideas to Lynda Obst and Steven Spielberg," Nolan says of his meeting in January. "I'm not even sure if I remember what I told them, but they must have liked something. It was a pretty intense experience."

Indeed they did. Now, as soon as the Oscar-nominated screenwriter helps director-brother Chris finalize prep for the "Batman Begins" sequel "The Dark Knight," for which Nolan penned the screenplay, his next job will entail adapting the mind-bending treatment written by Obst and physicist Dr. Kip S. Thorne into a narrative screenplay for the potential Paramount Pictures tent pole.

Authors' websites

In The Times, Tom Cox looks at how book writers such Jasper Fforde as are using websites to interact with their readers.

The web pages are a kind of after-sales service for readers who only see a new Fforde book ever year,” Fforde says. “I also see it as an extension of the books — allowing readers to dive back into that world for a little longer.” He says the website is an important part of “a reader-writer contract that I hope will induce people to keep reading me year after year”.

Grants For The Arts cuts

Lyn Gardner on The Guardian Theatre Blog has news of a big cut in the Arts Council's Grants For The Arts funding. Even though many writers had bad experiences trying to negotiate the bureaucracy of this scheme, it's one of the few that is open individuals as well as organisations.

Two weeks ago it was announced that £675million of lottery funding would be diverted from the arts in order to pay for the Olympics, but nobody realised quite how quickly and painfully the cuts would start to bite. Now we do, and it hurts a great deal. As of Sunday April 1st the Arts Council's Grants for the Arts scheme will suffer a whopping 35% cut. This means that during the funding year 2007/2008 only £54m will be awarded, down from £83m in the current financial year.

The Arts Council has made no formal announcement of this devastating cut which will hit large and small and across all art forms. It says that the website will be changed next week to explain stricter criteria for Grants for the Arts applications including a cap on funding and new rules that mean all projects must start and finish in the year in which money is awarded. But the decision was obviously made in some haste because as late as last week some Arts Council officers were still unaware that the cuts were taking place. It comes, says the Arts Council, because of the knock on effect of Olympic funding but also because sales of lottery tickets have been steadily falling, a decline in income speeded by the diversion of money into special Olympic scratch-cards and other games. Those who warned when lottery funding of the arts began that the arts should not be dazzled by the apparent cash bonanza but realise that the history of lotteries in other countries suggested that sales do decline, have been proved right in their predictions.

Ali Smith's novel approach

As Brian Logan reports in The Guardian, novelist Ali Smith has taken an unusual approach to giving away rights to one of her books.

You've written a Booker and Orange Prize-shortlisted novel, which also won the Scottish Book of the Year award. Directors and agents are hammering at your door for the stage rights. This, surely, is your chance at the big time. So what do you do? Well, it's obvious, isn't it? You snub the professionals, and give the rights to a bunch of Lewisham schoolkids.

"I couldn't think of anything more exciting to do with it," says Ali Smith, of her 2001 novel, Hotel World. "Now I know it'll be really amazing, and I can't wait to see it."

Harry Potter's illustrators

Writers know what it's like to be ignored so spare a thought for Jason Cockcroft and Mary GrandPre. Their latest work was previewed around the world this week and will, later in the year be bought by millions.

They are the illustrators of, respectively, the English and American editions of the final instalment of JK Rowling's Harry Potter series. The launch of the cover artwork was splashed across the media, but hardly anyone mentioned their names.

Old news

On the Artful Writer blog, Craig Mazin says that screenwriting is a young person's game.

Talent trumps everything, but here’s a short list of attributes that tend to help: humility, drive, energy, ambition, work-for-reasonable-pay, low expectations, hunger, fearlessness, no kids, no wife, no mortgage, no life, no need for self-examination, no depression, no bad hip, no doctor’s appointments, no self-respect, no pride, no arrogance, no reminiscing, no condescension, no sense of entitlement, no better days to compare the present to and no victimhood to get in the way of the work.

Not all of those things are what you’d call “good for you” (no life is a bad thing, but hey, if you’re working staff on a sitcom, it’s pretty much s.o.p.). Still, they’re things that tend to help one achieve success in a demanding business, and they’re also things that tend to be associated with life in one’s 20’s and 30’s.

Less so in one’s 40’s and beyond.

Penguin's wiki novel.

Q: Can you write a novel by wiki?

A: Yes, but it might not be any good.

In The Times, Alice Fordham assesses Penguin's wiki novel and looks at other attempts at online collaboration by writers.

Scott Pack, the former Waterstone’s executive who runs The Friday Project, an internet publishing company, now bringing out its first novel, says: “My honest feeling is that that it is very unlikely to have any value as a book. Not in a snobby way — but I think it’s unlikely that people will want to read it.”

It is hard to disagree. Even an enthusiastic Penguin editor writes: “I find I can read in about ten-minute stints, which I reckon is pretty good considering what it's like.”

Why Corrie beats Enders

On The Guardian TV blog, Ian Winwood argues that Corontation Street is way ahead of EastEnders, and that the BBC soap's writers are to blame.

...the EastEnders writing team have no understanding of the characters they've created. They don't like them, they don't trust them and (most of all) they don't credit them with any intelligence at all.

Abbott calls for more TV films

Award-winning writer Paul Abbott has continued his pressure on broadcasters, with a demand they commission more single films on television.

The outspoken creator of Channel 4’s hit series Shameless, which follows the lives of the dysfunctional Gallagher family on a sink estate in Manchester and has won popular and critical acclaim, said that the reluctance to make screenplays was a problem for the UK.

He warned: “If someone has a brilliant idea for a 90-minute film, they go to the UK Film Council, get funding and release it as a cinema-release film, instead of as TV film. The BBC rarely pays for TV films anymore.”

More from Liz Thomas in The Stage.

An Evening with David Nobbs

David Nobbs, the Guild’s President, will speak at the Writers’ Guild Centre in King’s Cross on Thursday 26th April .

David is the creator of the successful 1970s sitcom The Rise and Fall Of Regianld Perrin (adapted from his own Reginald Perrin novels). But there is far more to David’s career than Reggie Perrin. There’s his acclaimed series, A Bit Of A Do, which gained audiences of fourteen million for Yorkshire Television. There’s his work for many top comedians, including Frankie Howerd, Les Dawson and The Two Ronnies.

And above all there are his novels, sixteen of them, all of them humorous in tone, leading Jonathan Coe to state ‘David Nobbs is probably our finest post-war comic novelist.’ They include the four Perrin novels, the four Henry Pratt novels, and two of his own great favourites, Going Gently and his latest, Cupid's Dart, which started life as a 1981 TV play and was published on Valentine’s Day, 2007.

Tickets for this event will be £5 for Guild members and £7.50 for non-members and includes a free glass of wine .

To book , please send a cheque payable to the Writers' Guild, to ' An evening with David Nobbs', Writers' Guild of Great Britain, 15-17 Britannia Street, London, WC1X 9JN.

Bartlett switches to ITV

ITV Productions has hired BBC producer Kate Bartlett to run its merged London drama department. Ms Bartlett will join ITV Productions in the next couple of months as controller of drama in London.

She is taking over the merged drama departments formerly run by Michele Buck and Andy Harries, who are both leaving the broadcaster to join the independent production sector. The ITV Productions director, John Whiston, decided to merge the two departments after Ms Buck and Mr Harries announced that they were leaving.

More from Jason Deans in Media Guardian.

Writing spec scripts in the US

If you've ever dreamed of writing for an American TV series you'll probably know that, unlike in the UK where producers usually want to see originated work, the calling card is a spec script of an existing show. In Written By, some experts offer advice.

Marcy Ross [senior vice president of Current Programming, FOX]: It's always great to see that someone understands the nuts and bolts of scriptwriting and can have even a pedestrian understanding of a show's characters. That's the first layer. Then the second layer is when I'm sitting down to read 50 scripts, what are you going to tell me that's new about the character or gives me a heightened sense of reality or situation?

Jane Espenson [writer-producer, currently with an overall deal at NBC Universal]: A spec has to be two different things. It has to read as if it could be produced, and it has to be different. So it's an odd little dance.

Jane Espenson also has a blog about writing spec scripts.

Minority report

Publishing is still a white preserve, with new authors from ethnic minority groups struggling to break in, reports Gavin Stamp for BBC News.

Despite the mainstream success of the likes of Andrea Levy and Monica Ali, authors with roots in immigrant communities still represent a small fraction of the industry's annual output.

This has inevitably raised questions about whether the background of key decision-makers in the industry limits the range of books being commissioned.

Samenua Sesher, director of the Decibel diversity awareness programme at the Arts Council England, says the make-up of the industry means it has missed opportunities to appeal to minority audiences through successful recent genres such as chick lit.

"Publishers need to try and cast their net a bit wider and broaden their links," she says.

Shooter - Jonathan Lemkin

Shooter trailer


In The LA Times, Jay A. Fernanadez explains how Jonathan Lemkin's adaptation of Stephen Hunter's novel Point Of Impact (for a film called Shooter, directed by Antoine Fuqua), has succeeded where numerous previous attempts have failed.

Like a precision marksman with only one shot to nail his target, Jonathan Lemkin crawled into this landscape littered with discarded screenplays and hit an unexpected bull's-eye: Lemkin's Page 1 rewrite gained the film a star (Mark Wahlberg), a director and a fast-tracked greenlight off a mere second draft.

"I had a great advantage of being able to look on the map and see where the quicksand was, because they had already gone down there," Lemkin says of his ultimately successful approach to the film, which opens Friday. (His organizational approach to the 528-page book involved 1,200 color-coded notecards spread across an 8-by-24-foot bulletin board behind his desk.)

Manda Levin returns to BBC Drama

Manda Levin is returning to BBC drama production as creative director, replacing Sally Woodward Gentle.

Ms Levin, a former BBC drama producer, is currently head of development at Kudos Pictures, the feature film arm of the independent producer behind Life on Mars, Spooks and Hustle.

The BBC drama production creative director role fell vacant earlier this month, when Ms Woodward Gentle quit the corporation to join independent producer Carnival Films.

More from Jason Deans in Media Guardian (free registration required).

Protect the Human Playwriting Competition

Protect the Human is a new playwriting competition run by iceandfire theatre company and Amnesty International UK, culminating in Amnesty's 'Protect the Human Week' in October 2007.

Protect the Human are looking for compelling and original plays that imaginatively interpret iceandfire's mission statement of: "Telling the real life stories of individuals who have been displaced as a result of conflict."

The closing date for entries is 14 May 2007 . Thanks to BBC Writersroom for the link.

Blue 5 - Royal Exchange Theatre

Do you have new and emerging work to share? Why not apply to be part of BLUE 5 – the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester's three-day festival of emerging work, staged from 26–28 July.

The search is now on for more flourishing and established artists based in the North West to have their new work showcased at the Exchange. Previous showcases have been successful sell-outs and raised the profile of many of the region's most imaginative practitioners in live performance.

The deadline for entries is 8 May 2007. Thanks to BBC Writersroom for the link.

Daily Mail first novel competition

The Daily Mail and Transworld have launched a competition for debut novelists.

Transworld will publish the Daily Mail debut novel of the year in April 2008 and will offer a deal of at least £30,000 to the winning author. This is a chance to get your novel published by a leading publishing house with the imprimatur of the Daily Mail - something many an author would envy.

The closing date for entries is 2 July 2007.

Hollywood and history

Trailer for 300

Controversy over the historical accuracy of the film 300 (screenplay by Zack Snyder & Kurt Johnstad and Michael Gordon, from the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley), released in the UK today, is in a rich Hollywood tradition, reports Greig Watson for the BBC.

The heroic westerner vs tyrannical Persian theme of 300 - based on Frank Miller's graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC - has sparked indignation from some commentators in the US, and brought protests from the Iranian authorities.

And while not every movie provokes an international incident, bending the facts to fit the film is nothing new - as film historian Kevin Brownlow reveals.

"In his 1927 epic Napoleon, director Abel Gance showed his hero at the Club des Cordeliers when the Marseillaise was first sung. He was informed that Napoleon had not been present. 'He is now,' he said."

Trailer for Napoleon

Ofcom permits ITV1 children's cut

As Mark Sweeney reports for Media Guardian (free registration required), communications industries regulator Ofcom has agreed to allow ITV1 to reduce its children's programming this year from an average of eight hours a week to about five hours a week.

The five hours each week are not subject to scheduling restrictions, and ITV1 does not need to run the programmes in its traditional afternoon weekday slot. A proportion of the programmes will run on weekends.

"Having taken into account the opinion of Ofcom, ITV confirms that children's output across 2007 will average around five hours of programming per week across ITV1 hours," said the broadcaster.

The campaign to Save Kids TV continues...

BAC looks likely to be AOK

On The Guardian Theatre blog, Lyn Gardner reports some welcome news about funding for an important venue.

When back in January it was announced that Wandsworth council intended to withdraw annual funding of £100,000 to Battersea Arts Centre and raise the peppercorn rent to a mighty £270,000 per year, it looked as if it might be curtains for the south west London venue which has become one of British theatre's most influential centres for emerging artists.

But after a couple of uncertain months, there are at long last reasons to smile in SW11 with the announcement this afternoon of a deal reached with the council which will see Wandsworth giving BAC annual funding of £85,000 for the next two years and the transference of the Grade 11 listed building to an independent theatre preservation trust on a 999 year lease.

Publishers rush to digitise

Worried about the growth of Google Book Search (previously known as Google Print), publishers are rushing to digitise their books, reports David Derbyshire in The Telegraph.

HarperCollins plans to have digitised its collection of around 25,000 titles - most of them long out of print - by the end of next year.

Many in the industry believe that unless they take pre-emptive action, they could lose out to internet giants.

Google's project to digitise thousands of books has been opposed by the American Authors' Guild, but Google have defended their work.

We regret that this group chose to sue us over a program that will make millions of books more discoverable to the world -- especially since any copyright holder can exclude their books from the program. What’s more, many of Google Print’s chief beneficiaries will be authors whose backlist, out of print and lightly marketed new titles will be suggested to countless readers who wouldn’t have found them otherwise.

As long as copyright is respected then it's hard to see digitisation as anything but a good thing for authors, whoever is doing it. The so-called Long Tail effect of internet retailing has already helped smaller-selling authors and anything that makes it easier to buy books, whether on paper or digitally, must surely be a good thing.

Update: Further reflections on the subject from Victor Keegan.

Interesting things are happening on a variety of fronts that are changing the way books are found, read and talked about, and in almost every case for the good. Even while you are reading this, Google and others are scanning libraries of books - including the Bodleian at Oxford - to make tomes that were hitherto hidden available for all to read; in the case of the millions of out-of-copyright and "orphaned" ones, where ownership is unknown, for free.

Message for young playwrights: don't be so boring

In The Guardian, playwright Anthony Neilson says that too many writers are boring their audience.

Boring an audience is the one true sin in theatre. We've been boring audiences for decades now, and they've responded by slowly withdrawing their patronage. I don't care that the recent production of The Seagull at the Royal Court was sold out. To 95% of the population, the theatre (musicals aside for now) is an irrelevance. Of that 95%, we have managed to lure in maybe 10% at some point in their lives, and we've so swiftly and thoroughly bored them that they've never returned. They're not the ones who broke the contract. They paid their money and expected entertainment; we sent them back into the night feeling bored, bullied and baffled.

The Writers' Co-Op

Thanks to Danny Stack and MovieQuill, for a link to a fascinating story by Michael Fleming for Variety about the creation of a writers' co-op in Hollywood.

And if the idea of a co-op conjurs up images of malnourished idealists struggling to earn enough to pay for their next cup of FairTrade coffee, think again. This co-op is based at Warner Brothers and is the brainchild of John Wells, Nick Kazan and Tom Schulman. The aim is to get a better deal for screenwriters and to bring them closer to the heart of the prodcution.

Over the next four years, the Writers Co-Op will generate at least 18 scripts from writers who will risk their usually high upfront salaries for the reward of receiving first-dollar gross, the right to participate as producers and a guarantee they will not be rewritten without their consultation and approval. The scribes will also have a say in the decision making process from development all the way to post-production....

"This company gives writers an unprecedented role in the development and production of their films," said Schulman. "If this model works, we hope others will emulate it."

Will any UK Writers be willing to try it over here?

British Short Screenplay Competition

The 2007 British Short Screenplay Competition is now accepting entries. The cost is £25 for entries received by 27 April 2007 or £35 for entries received by 22 June 2007.

The winner will have their film produced by Kaos Films, the company behind the competition. They are supported by the National Film and Television School, The Times and a variety of other sponsors.

Although some writers might feel that the entry fee is prohibitive, it is one of the few highly regarded short film script contests and there is a guarantee that the winning film will be made.

Do women writers lack imagination?

In the Independent, Suzi Feay reports on a controversial critique from the Orange Prize panel chair.

Muriel Gray, novelist, television presenter and this year's chair of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (for which male writers are not eligible), accompanied the announcement of the longlist with an accusation that, by and large, the writers this year's panel assessed lacked imagination, and focused too narrowly on their own lives and personal issues.

Women writers don't work hard enough to escape from their own gender and circumstances - in short, says Gray, they're failing to make things up, surely a prerequisite for good, absorbing fiction. She's coined a phrase, rural schoolteacher syndrome, to describe the phenomenon: "the delusory condition that fools the sufferer into believing that an experience, say as ordinary as being a rural school teacher, is so interesting and unique that it's almost compulsory to chronicle it ... thinly disguised as fiction".

Characters over plot

On the Broadcast blog, British director Jon Sen explains what he thinks gives US TV drama the edge over shows from the UK.

I think the real reason why American drama series manage to inspire such devotion is because of what the programme makers do before they start shooting. We've all heard about the huge writing teams and the triple-decker salaries and that's got to make a difference. But more importantly, American writers have always really understood that an audience is loyal to characters not to plot.

Marina Lewycka interview

In The Times, Stefanie Marsh talks to Marina Lewycka about her bestselling debut, A Short History Of Tractors In Ukranian, and the challenge of following it up.

It is notoriously impossible to predict with any real accuracy what will fly off the shelves at bookstores, and the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, for one, had reasons to believe that A Short History of Tractors In Ukrainian, Lewycka’s sensational debut, had all the ingredients of a catastrophic dud. When she sent off her manuscript to Kavanagh’s offices she received a straight rejection — unnecessarily crushing, I thought, for containing the words “we cannot summon sufficient enthusiasm”.

Lewycka suspects that her precious manuscript went straight into the slush pile unread: “I think editors and agents only want to commission books.”

The Times also has more about her new book, Two Caravans, as well as an extract.

He opens the barn door and they wade into the roiling sea of chickens. The chickens squawk and screech and try to flap out of their way, but there is nowhere for them to go. They try to flutter upwards but their wings are too weak for their overgrown bodies and they just scramble desperately on top of each other, kicking up a terrible stinking dust of feathers and faeces. Tomasz feels something live crunch under his foot, and hears a squawk of pain. He must have stepped on one, but really it is impossible not to.

Classic twists

In The Guardian, Jed Mercurio talks to fellow writers about the art of adapting novels for the screen.

[Steven] Bochco was one of the creators of the 1970s TV series The Invisible Man. "We pretty much started from scratch, with the only element remaining intact being the title," he remembers. [Darren] Star adds: "I was attracted by the title Sex and the City. I thought it was very catchy." And this sums it up for me. We writers want the titles of these adaptations, so they will bring in the audience; when we've got their attention, we want to show them how original we can be.

October Road

I've lost count of the number of times I've heard TV commissioners say that they don't want comedy or dramas based around the media. It's not a world the mass audience is interested in or understands, they insist.

Strange then, how many comedies and dramas are based around the media in its various forms: Extras, Alan Partridge and Ugly Betty, for example, have all overcome the perceived shortcoming of their subject matter.

A new American drama, however, looks like it might face a tougher challenge breaking into the mainstream. October Road, written by Josh Applebaum, André Nemec and Scott Rosenberg, is about an author returning to the hometown he exposed in his best-selling novel.

The pilot episode has a prime-time slot on US network ABC but Gina Bellafante in the New York Times is not impressed.

Should you already hold the view that young writers are hideously self-regarding, pillaging the intimate emotional property of their closest friends and relations, then “October Road,” a drama beginning on ABC this evening, will do nothing to change your mind even though it seems intent on trying.

But one group of viewers who, I suspect, will be watching, is writers. We all love seeing our own profession on screen, even if it's only to howl about how inaccurately it's being represented.

There's no news yet as to whether Ocotber Road will come to the UK. But another American media drama, Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, will be shown on Channel 4 some time this year. Like American writer and blogger Ken Levine, you might end up loving to hate it. But I bet you'll watch it.

Muscial could be magic for Brocklehurst

Question: what has been the highest grossing drama of all time - Titanic, Star Wars or Lord Of The Rings?

Answer: None of the above. The biggest box office takings of all have been for Andrew Lloyd Webber's muscial, Phantom Of The Opera (lyrics by Charles Hart, book and additional lyrics by Richard Stigloe, based on the novel by Gaston Leroux) - around $3.2 billion. Muscials really are big business.

So, congratulations to writer Danny Brocklehurst who, it was announced yesterday, has written a show based around the songs of Take That that will be opening in Manchester later this year.

Could it do as well as the ABBA musical Mama Mia, written by Catherine Johnson, which has so far amassed box office takings of around $2 billion?

Take That don't quite have the Swedish group's global appeal and the band have distanced themselves from the production, but with two recent number one singles, a number one album and a sell-out tour, the group's current popularity certainly bodes well for Brocklehurst's musical.

Jonathan Lethem's Promiscuous Materials

American author Jonathan Lethem has come up with a new approach to selling options to his work. In a project he's calling Promiscuous Materials, Lethem is offering the right to adapt any of a selection of his stories for the price of $1. The main condition is that "films be held to the length of half an hour or less, keeping them firmly in the category of 'short'. Similarly, I'd ask that playwrights keep to a 'one-act', or forty-five minute, limit."

The options are non-exclusive but if the adaptors do make money Lethem says he'll be owed nothing.

If someone working from one of these stories does find distribution or other support that brings financial reward, I'm delighted, as I would be for any artist. For me, while I'm happy to make money from partnerships elsewhere, The Promiscuous Stories aren't about that.

He sees it as a literary equivalent to Open Source software.

With his new novel, You Don't Love Me Yet, Lethem has taken an even more innovative approach.

On May 15th I’ll give away a free option on the film rights to my novel You Don’t Love Me Yet to a selected filmmaker. In return for the free option, I’ll ask two things:

1. I’d like the filmmaker to pay (something) for the purchase of the rights if they actually make a film: two percent of the budget, paid when the completed film gets a distribution deal. (I’ll wait until distribution to get paid so a filmmaker without many funds can work without having to spend their own money paying me).

2. The filmmaker and I will make an agreement to release all ancillary rights to the film (and its source material, the novel), five years after the film’s debut. In other words, after a waiting period during which those rights would still be restricted, anyone who cared to could make any number of other kinds of artwork based on the novel’s story and characters, or the film’s: a play, a television series, a comic book, a theme park ride, an opera – or even a sequel film or novel featuring the same characters. For that matter, they can remake the film with another script and new actors. In my agreement with the filmmaker, those ancillary rights will be launched into the public domain.

Whatever you think of the terms that Lethem is seeking, at the very least he is attempting to wrest some control back for the author in the optioning process. As his Promiscuous Materials project shows, his interest is in getting work made and the terms of his option for You Don't Love Me Yet are surely a welcome change from the complete control normally sought by buyers in these circumstances.

Francis Hopkinson to leave Channel 4

Channel 4's senior commissioning editor for drama, Francis Hopkinson, is leaving the broadcaster to join former ITV colleague Andy Harries in the independent sector.

Mr Hopkinson is understood to have handed in his notice and will depart at the end of May, after around two years at Channel 4.

He is said to be planning to join the new independent TV and film production company being set up by Mr Harries, who is leaving his job as ITV Productions controller of drama, comedy and films later this year.

More from Jason Deans on Media Guardian (free registration required).

Grade says no future for children's shows on ITV1

ITV Chairman Michael Grade has told MPs that children's programming has no future on ITV1 reports Chris Tryhorn on Media Guardian (free registration required).

"In terms of the valuable air time on a main network like ITV1, maintaining a loss-leading service for children seems to be unlikely to be sustained in the medium to long term," he said.

Pressed if that meant there would be no children's programming in the main ITV1 schedule in the long term, he replied: "I can't see it, no."

At the moment ITV is still bound to show eight hours of children's programmes a week on ITV1, but so far it has failed to persuade media watchdog Ofcom to reduce that obligation.

Once analogue switch off is completed in 2012, ITV hopes it can move all its children's programmes to CITV, the free-to-air digital channel launched a year ago, which it says is already available in 90% of homes.

BBC scripts online

The BBC have made more comedy and drama scripts available online, including the first ever episode of Life On Mars by Matthew Graham.

David Masson obituary

David Masson, the influential science fiction short story writer whose collections included The Caltraps of Time (1968), died last week at the age of 91. There's an obituary by Christopher Priest in The Guardian.

Masson leapt to prominence in the science-fiction world with his first published story, Traveller's Rest (1965). It is difficult to convey the seminal impact this remarkable story had on the small but influential group of writers, critics and readers who closely followed Michael Moorcock's New Worlds in those days. It depicts an apocalyptic war being fought across a time-dilated landscape, where all human senses are subjected to the distortions of relativity.

Without wanting to get too morbid, it does feel as if a generation of sci-fi writers has now almost entirely passed away. The last six months, for example, has seen the deaths of British sci-fi TV pioneer Nigel Kneale, and celebrated American 'pulp' magazine contributor, Jack Williamson. The influence of their work on popular culture, however, remains as strong as ever.

Josie Rourke joins The Bush

Josie Rourke has been appointed as artistic director of west London’s Bush Theatre, replacing Mike Bradwell, reports Alistair Smith in The Stage.

“The Bush inspires, nurtures and champions playwrights and I am thrilled to have been invited to become its artistic director. I look forward to working with Fiona Clark, the directors and the staff of the theatre to take The Bush into its bold and promising future.”

Russell T Davies interview

It's been a long time since a TV writer was as influential as Russell T Davies. Not only has he overhauled BBC One's Saturday night schedule with the return of Doctor Who, he also seems to have restored the faith of the entire industry in prime-time family drama. In The Telegraph he talks to Richard Johnson.

Doctor Who, which is just about to begin its third series under Davies, first appeared in 1963; it is now the longest-running science fiction television series in the world. With good reason, reckons Davies - it's down to the writing.

'Take The Talons of Weng Chiang, for example. Watch episode one. It's the best dialogue ever written. It's up there with Dennis Potter. By a man called Robert Holmes. When the history of television drama comes to be written, Robert Holmes won't be remembered at all because he only wrote genre stuff. And that, I reckon, is a real tragedy.'

Freema Agyeman and David Tennant prepare for series three of the new-look Doctor Who.

Russell T Davies also has a letter in The Guardian today, defending John Inman's portrayal of Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served? (written by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft).

It seems a bit easy to condemn both John Inman and Mr Humphries for the failings of a bygone age (G2, March 9). As a young, gay viewer, back then, I loved that character, and even watching it now, it strikes me that in a sitcom full of failure and frustration - as the best British sitcoms are - Mr Humphries was the only one with an active, successful sex life. He's the only character in Are You Being Served? who is essentially happy. And that's how I will remember him.

Authors getting poorer

New research reveals that, while superstar authors may be thriving, most novelists are struggling to make a living, reports Cole Moreton in The Independent.

The average author earns about £16,000, a third less than the national average wage, it is revealed. So what? They're doing what they love. But hidden behind that figure released by the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) is a grimmer truth: when you take away the superstars who are earning shedloads, the actual figure for the rest is closer to £4,000.

That's less than it was last time anyone looked, seven years ago, and far less than the distant days when the Net Book Agreement kept prices high. Forget living on baked beans in a garrett; this is barely enough to buy stale bread and a tarpaulin for shelter.

PEN marks International Women's Day

Yesterday the international writers' organisation, PEN, marked International Women's Day by highlighting the cases of women writers who have been silenced, imprisoned or even killed.

Harassment and intimidation of writers in Vietnam has long been of concern to PEN. Among them is Tran Khai Thanh Thuy, an author and essayist who was arrested briefly in September 2006 for articles that she posted on the internet. She was again briefly detained a few weeks later for publishing further essays. She is editor of the dissident magazine To Quoc (Fatherland). In October she was subjected to a “People’s Court” in Hanoi where police gathered 300 people to denounce and humiliate her, and her home had been attacked by mobs calling her a traitor and a prostitute. Police refused to provide protection. She is now living under virtual house arrest.

Joe Eszterhas interview

Legendary screenwriter Joe Eszterhas talks to Susan Dominus in The Telegraph about his new book, The Devil's Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God!.

'I think there are all these phonies out there who don't know what they're talking about giving screenwriters advice,' says Eszterhas, his hands on his knees as he sits on the couch facing the big-screen television where he and his sons like to watch basketball.

'I've learnt a lot over the course of 30 years, and I wanted to encourage screenwriters to really take seriously what they write, not just to sell out and take the money, but to put their hearts and guts behind it to write a book that would be funny and inspirational and tell the truth about what it's really like.'

Abbott blasts commissioners

TV writer Paul Abbott has attacked commissioners for lacking the courage to launch shows with a long run, reports Liz Thomas in The Stage.

“The way the system works at the moment [means that] commissioners give you three or six episodes at first and it is two years before they’ll commit to ten. The commissioners are gutless, because it is expensive to make TV drama and they won’t take the risk. But I think it’s important for us to learn to tell audiences that we have got something good, and if we commissioned 16 episodes straight away then the audience will appreciate that investment, and they’ll feel well looked after.”

Martin Crimp interview

In The Guardian Maddy Costa talks to playwright Martin Crimp about his career so far.

When Crimp talks, he sounds fascinatingly like someone delivering one of his own plays. His intonation rises and falls, bringing drama to every sentence; he weighs words just as his characters do, assessing them for correctness. He describes himself as "text obsessive"; perhaps his voice is so recognisable in his work because he speaks every line aloud himself, checking its shape and rhythm. "That's my own private craziness," he says, "talking to myself."

James Vanderbilt - Zodiac

Zodiac trailer


Zodiac, written by James Vanderbilt, based on the book by Robert Graysmith and directed by David Fincher has been getting rave reviews in America. It opens in the UK next month. For the Writers Guild of America, west, Denis Faye talks to Vanderbilt.

The audience is going to spend 120 minutes or so in the grimy, dark world of Zodiac. You, the writer, spent over a year there. How'd you cope with that?

I honestly think part of being a writer is that you deal in dark shit so you don't bring it out in your real life. I'm a pretty happy-go-lucky guy because I can deal with dark shit and get it out on the page and not have it follow me home.

The other side of it is that it's funny. We talked to a lot of homicide detectives and the surviving victims of the Zodiac, and there's just a lot of humor to it, a lot of dark humor. You watch shows like Homicide, and you see them joking over dead bodies. That's what you sort of need to do to decompress and not think about it. I remember the first time Brad Fischer and I went out to one of the murder sites up at Lake Berryessa. We went there with Robert Graysmith. He showed us around. We went back to the hotel and got blind drunk. It was ridiculous. We're in the bar telling strangers about this experience. It's just this horrible stuff, but at the same time, there's something about being able to excise it by putting it out there on the page or putting it out there on the screen.

Edward Albee - The Lady from Dubuque

Twenty-seven years after a short run on Broadway, The Lady from Dubuque by Edward Albee is finally getting it's British premiere. In The Telegraph, Jasper Rees talks to the author and the director, Anthony Page.

Such is Albee's abhorrence of directorial egotism, and protectiveness of his own dialogue, that he nurses an ambition to write a short experimental play in which the actors will speak at the behest of an actual conductor.

"If it's written properly, there will be a proper relationship between what is conducted and how the actors naturally speak the lines."

Channel 4 scales back drama

Channel 4 will fail to fulfil its stated ambition of showing a major new drama every month this year or in 2008.

The broadcaster's commissioning editor for drama, Liza Marshall, has admitted that Channel 4 would not be meeting its target of 12 flagship pieces per year.

But Ms Marshall denied industry rumours that the tally would be cut by as much as half.

"There is likely to be a refocusing and we are going to do less than 12 - but we are certainly going to do more than six," she said.

More from Ben Dowell in Media Guardian (free registration required).

Websites for writers

This event was announced to Guild members in the e-bulletin on Friday, but it's also open to non-members (although for £7.50 rather than £5). I've already been contacted by lots of people requesting topics to be covered (for example, the best website design software, search optimisation and building wikis), so if you have a suggestion please enter a comment to this post.

Websites for writers

19th April 2007, 7.00-9.30pm. The Writers' Guild Centre, King's Cross

If you have a website or are thinking of getting one, this event is for you.

For beginners there will be easy-to-follow advice on creating websites and blogs. Plus, hear from other writers about their experiences: how can you use a website to publicise your work and what are the best ways of attracting people to your site?

For those with web experience there will be advice on how to make the most of your online presence. What are the new tools that could improve your site? Are you following the principles of good web design and usability? How could new technology change the way you work?

Entry price includes a free glass of wine. Places are limited so tickets must be booked in advance. To book please send a cheque for £5 (£7.50 for non-Guild members) payable to WGGB to 'Website event', WGGB, 15 Britannia Street, London WC1X 9JN.

Channel 4 - Coming Up

The Channel 4 Coming Up competition has now been opened to any writer who has not had an original drama broadcast.

Coming Up is the only talent scheme currently in the UK where new film-makers have the opportunity to make an authored drama with a guaranteed network broadcast. Now in its seventh year, IWC and Channel 4 continue their commitment to innovation, experimentation and new voices.

We will make up to eight challenging and individual films from the best emerging talent in the UK. Each film will be for a half-hour Channel 4 slot and we are looking for:

• Bold ideas
• Strong voices
• Originality
• Ambition
• Wit
• Films that push boundaries in a way that wouldn't / couldn't be done in mainstream drama
• Films that are contemporary
• Films that can be shot in 4 days on a limited budget

Blog stats - Feb 2007

Most writing blogs - like most blogs in general - are very coy about their traffic stats, but screenwriter and blogger John August is an exception. In a post about the impact of having one of his articles mentioned on the link-recommendation site, Digg, he has published his February blog stats. You can see why he's not shy: he's had more than 85,000 visits and 130,000 page views.

Still, in the interests of the free exchange of information this blog refuses to be cowed. Here's our monthly stats for February.

The industry standard measure, in fact, is monthly unique users (what Google Analytics calls Absolute Unique Users) - i.e. the number of different people who visit your site. This blog's total for February 2007 was 1,846.

The big Oscar winner: writers

Conventional wisdom holds that "The Departed," by winning four Oscars, including best picture and director, was the big winner Sunday night at the Academy Awards. But for my money, the evening's truly triumphant were the screenwriters.

Going beyond even the terrific choice of using classic (although uncredited) quotes from screenplays for such Oscar-winning films as "Silence of the Lambs" (Ted Tally), "Jerry Maguire" (Cameron Crowe) and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (William Goldman) on the show's promotional billboards, the ceremony was arguably the most screenwriter-friendly in modern history and, hopefully, a sign that their part in this great and glorious distraction is beginning to get its due recognition.

More from Jay A. Fernandez in the LA Times.

Top writers' favourite books

Leading writers from Britain, America and Australia have been asked to list their top ten works of literature, and the results will be published in a book next month.

The top-rated work was Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. His other great epic, War and Peace, came third. Two other Russians also made the top ten. Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous novel Lolita came fourth and the stories of Anton Chekov ninth.

More from Dalya Alberge in The Times.

In my own words

Stephen King, Agatha Christie and Evelyn Waugh have all put fictional authors into their works. Is it escapism or egotism, asks Mark Lawson in The Guardian.

Agatha Christie's fictional stand-in is Ariadne Oliver, a best-selling lady detective writer who Christie's own sleuth Hercule Poirot reads for distraction while working on a case (in 1963's The Clocks, for example) and who frequently joins him as a deputy in detection. With a playfulness that some might find surprising in such a generally plain stylist, Christie sets up fi ctional mirrors. Oliver's recurring character is Sven Hjerson, a Finnish detective whose adventures frequently test Miss Oliver's very limited knowledge of Finland, in what can be presumed to be a reference to Christie's irritations in satisying an audience desperate for more instalments about a fastidious Belgian.

Christie also used Oliver as a sort of authorial version of a newspaper's ombudsman, admitting to her own errors in previous plots through Oliver's anecdotes about her regrettable slips.

ITV lines up a summer of drama

ITV are planning to replace reality show Love Island with a number of dramas this summer, reports Liz Thomas in The Stage.

A spokeswoman told The Stage: “Traditionally in the summer we have not aired very many first run, original dramas, but this year that is the plan. The message is that actually, instead of being the part of the schedule which is traditionally lighter this year, the summer line-up looks more like a spring or even an autumn one.

“It is absolutely a conscious decision to opt for more drama, and also more entertainment, rather than come up with another reality-type show. Drama has always been a strength at ITV and we know that we are defined as a channel by our drama - that is what the audience likes.”

Oscar winners

Just in case you missed it, the winner of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar on Sunday was Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine). Best Adapted Screenplay went to William Monahan (The Departed, based on a screenplay by Siu Fai Mak and Felix Chong).

Little Miss Sunshine Trailer

Philip K. Dick

The fame of the science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who died 25 years ago next week, has grown in the years since his death, thanks largely to films based on his work, but also to changes in the world, or at least to our perception of it, that were prefigured in his writing.

More from Lisa Tuttle in The Times.

Eurpean Screenwriting Manifesto

Earlier this month at the Berlin International Film Festival, The European Screenwriters’ Manifesto was launched with the backing of 21 national writers’ guilds representing around 9,000 writers.

Finalised at the European Conference on Screenwriting last November in Thessaloniki, the Manifesto is a bold declaration of beliefs about the role of screenwriters and calls on others to recognise their contribution.

Read more on the WGGB website.

David Eldridge's first night

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to have a new play (or, in this case, a new version of an Ibsen play) opening at a major London theatre, read playwright David Eldridge blogging about press night for John Gabriel Borkman at The Donmar.

Tuesday night's press night was particularly crazy, and not particularly full of the glitterati as there were so many reviewers and journalists there. The Donmar Warehouse holds approximately 250 audience and on our opening night about 60 of those seats were taken by the press. I had had three or four Jack Daniels to steady my nerves and in a theatre as intimate as this one the critics literally encircle you. As I said Jane Edwardes and Matt Wolf were to my left, to my right and only a couple of yards away were Nicholas de Jongh and John Peter and a couple of yards in front were Michael Billington, Charles Spencer and Susannah Clapp.

Verity Bargate Award 2007

Soho Theatre has launched the 2007 Verity Bargate Award, one of the most prestigious competitions for unproduced plays.

The winner will receive £5000 (in respect of an exclusive option), a residency at Soho Theatre and the chance to have their play produced at Soho Theatre.

The deadline is 6 July 2007.

Radio gaga

In The Guardian, Zoe Williams launches a broadside on Radio 4's Afternoon Play.

It's all very well calling Radio 4 drama inexplicably bad, but someone must be able to explain it. So I am going to make a stab at this. And then later, I am going to stab the person who commissions these plays.

Are good authors always good people?

Why do we so often assume that good authors should be good themselves, asks on The Guardian Books Blog?

It is not only that we expect writers to navigate the choppy waters of moral confusion; we expect them to be good in private. The Bloomsberries slept with everyone with a pulse; now, there is a huge fuss if a writer so much as changes his agent. William Boyd is almost as famous for his happy marriage as he is for his novels. If Zadie Smith decided to make like the Beats, ingesting every substance known to man and getting into bar brawls, there would probably be questions asked in the House.

Publicists for scriptwriters

You didn't realise scriptwriters used Hollywood publicists to help win awards, did you? In the LA Times, J.A. Fernandez explains how it works.

Ronni Chasen has long represented such writers as Robin Swicord ("Memoirs of a Geisha"), Jim Sheridan ("In America") and Julian Fellowes, whom she helpfully steered to an Oscar win for his "Gosford Park" screenplay in 2002. "We tried to create a very focused campaign that illuminated for people the fact that this was such an intricately crafted screenplay on every level," Chasen says. "It was important for people to be able to hear from him how this was created. For me, it's bringing into focus the writer's contribution."

Pinter in Pinter

A date for the diary of all Harold Pinter fans: the man himself will be appearing in The Homecoming on Radio 3 on Sunday March 18. The rest of the casting - Michael Gambon, Sam West and Rupert Graves - isn't too shabby either.

More details from Media Guardian (free registration required).

Amanda Ross

In The Times, Stefanie Marsh meets Amanda Ross, the woman behind Richard and Judy's Book Club.

Irony is a time-honoured literary device, any writer can tell you that. And it’s ironic that publishers – traditionally fussy Oxbridge types with English degrees – are having to suck up to someone who studied drama at Birmingham University and who cheerily admits that “I don’t really know anything about books at all”. When 44-year-old Ross, a powerful TV producer, founded the Richard & Judy Book Club three years ago, publishers barely deigned to look up from their proofs. Daytime TV, they assumed, was the domain of council-house illiterates and Daz adverts. Another nail in the coffin of Britain’s literary culture, they lamented.

But Ross had a hawk’s eye for storytelling.

Of the 100 bestselling titles last year, 21 were by authors discussed on the Richard & Judy Book Club – all chosen personally by Ross. Publishers couldn’t console themselves with the thought that she had dumbed down Britain’s bookshops because in fact she had done the opposite. “I don’t know what a literary book is. As long as it has a good story, who cares?” she has said.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

In Wired magazine Clive Thompson reports on a new novel/game.

I was thrilled when Nintendo began advertising its new title Hotel Dusk: Room 215 not as a game but an "interactive mystery novel." Sure enough, it's pretty much what I'd dreamed of: You hold your DS sideways like a book, and watch as the pages come to life. Specifically, Hotel Dusk tells the noir tale of Kyle Hyde, a 33-year-old cop who shot his turncoat partner, hit the bottle and now works as a washed-up private dick who "finds things that don't want to be found." In the eponymous hotel, Hyde finds clues that seems to lead to his former partner.

More Peter Morgan

It's not every day that a British screenwriter becomes the talk of the town, but after scooping this blog's highly prestigiouswriter of the year accolade, Peter Morgan goes from strength to strength.

After yesterday's appearance in the LA Times (see below), today he's interviewed by Victoria Lindrea on the BBC News website.

Hollywood insiders "love to mock their own", explains Morgan, but he claims that, in reality, Tinseltown is a far cry from the Hollywood of screenwriters' imagination.

"It's far more sober here than one imagines. It's full of people who are very abstemious and workaholic - and it feels like a community of lawyers rather than that Hollywood of drug-taking excess.

"Everybody is very young, very thin and no-one eats puddings."