Watson's Wind Up open for sketch submissions

Watson's Wind Up, a topical sketch show for BBC Radio Scotland, has just started its 15th series. The show is recorded every week in front of a live studio audience and a new series of 13 episodes began on Friday 9th Oct at 6.10pm.

Though the show has a core of established writers who have worked on it for many years it does have an open submission policy, as radio has always been a great way to blood new writing talent.

Full details from BBC Writersroom.

Gaiman's crowd-sourced Twitter story

From Lynn Andriani for Publisher's Weekly:

Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman is writing a new crowd-sourced short story on Twitter. Starting [today] at noon EDT, the author—and well-known Twitter fan (@neilhimself)—will Tweet the first line of a new story, and fans can continue it with their own 140-character contributions. BBC Audiobooks America will then compile the contributions—they expect about 1,000—into a short story that will be recorded by a professional narrator.

Update: More background from BBC Audio Books America (BBCAA) who are organising the whole thing. And @BBCAA on Twitter is where the story tweets should go.

Phil Lord and Chris Miller - Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

Has there ever been a better book (and now film) title than Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs?

In The New York Times, Deborah Schoenemen meets Phil Lord and Chris Miller who wrote and directed the adaptation of the children's book written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett.

Soon after graduating, they scored a development deal with Disney and moved to Los Angeles. They first worked in television writing for shows, including the CBS sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.”

About six years ago, the team pitched Sony, which owned the rights to their favorite children’s book, “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” written and illustrated in 1978 by Judi and Ron Barrett.

“We wanted to do it as a serious action movie,” Mr. Lord said.

“Like Roland Emmerich,” Mr. Miller added, referring to the director of "The Day After Tomorrow" and “Independence Day,” “but silly on purpose.”

Rutger Hauer Filmfactory

On the Writers' Guild website, Anton Damen speaks to the writers who provided the scripts at this year’s Rutger Hauer Filmfactory for young filmmakers.

The Rutger Hauer Filmfactory is not a film school, it's a crash course. The participants are thrown in at the deep end, because it is Hauer’s firm belief that everybody has a film in them; ‘trust your guts, make a movie,’ is his mantra. The international experts are there to ensure that none of the participants accidentally drown in the sometimes immense experience of making a film with limited resources and, even more so, limited time. The five groups this year each consisted of a director, producer, director of photography, editor and an actor. Together, they managed to overcome dramatic deadlines, logistical nightmares and internal conflicts and at the end resurface with two films shot in just one week.

More importantly than the end results, in Hauer's eyes, is that they enjoyed the creative process. In order to get the teams off to a flying start, the Filmfactory commissioned two scripts by young screenwriters: Lili Forestier from France and Dirk Achten from Belgium. They each wrote a special screenplay for a five-minute short based on the pitch ‘my one and only’. Each screenplay formed the basis for the films of two of teams (the remaining fifth team got a poem to sink their teeth into), whilst Rotterdam High School students also got the same screenplays to toy with.

Sergey Brin defends Google Books

In The New York Times, Google co-founder Sergey Brin defends Google Books and the settlement with the Authors Guild and American publishers that is still awaiting approval from the US courts.

If Google Books is successful, others will follow. And they will have an easier path: this agreement creates a books rights registry that will encourage rights holders to come forward and will provide a convenient way for other projects to obtain permissions. While new projects will not immediately have the same rights to orphan works, the agreement will be a beacon of compromise in case of a similar lawsuit, and it will serve as a precedent for orphan works legislation, which Google has always supported and will continue to support.

As the Frankfurt Book Fair gets underway, however, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has added her voice to those opposing the way Google is approaching their book scanning project.

Update (16.10.09): At the Frankfurt Book Fair, Google announced plans for "a new online service for booksellers next year called Google Editions, which will let readers buy books and read them on gadgets ranging from cell phones to possibly e-book devices."

What Guild members are getting up to

JESSE ARMSTRONG and SAM BAIN co-wrote the episode of Peep Show going out on C4 at 10:00pm on Friday 16th October.

SARAH BAGSHAW wrote the episodes of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm and 8:00pm on Thursday 15th October.

RICHARD BURKE wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Thursday 15th October.

ANNA CLEMENTS wrote the episode of Hollyoaks going out on C4 at 6:30pm on Tuesday 13th October.

DEBORAH DAVIS wrote the episode of Dickens Confidential "Dickens and Dizzy" going out on Radio 4 at 2:15pm on Tuesday 13th October.

KEVIN FEGAN'S new stage play, "Fireflies, a love story waiting to happen", is premiered at The Lowry, Salford Quays, from 16 - 31st October. It is a Lowry Production, Directed by Noreen Kershaw, starring Naomi Radcliffe and Paul Simmonds. For info visit www.thelowry.com

EIRENE HOUSTON wrote the episode of EastEnders going out on BBC1 at 8:00pm on Friday 126th October.

JULIE JONES wrote the episode of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 8:30pm on Friday 16th October.

IAN KERSHAW'S new radio series Pick-Ups begins on Radio 4 with the episode Little Grey Cells at 11:00pm on Thursday 15th October.

KAREN LAWS wrote the episode of Casualty "Comfort Zone" going out on BBC1 at 9:25pm on Saturday 10th October.

BILL LYONS wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Tuesday 13th October.

CAROLINE MITCHELL wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Wednesday 14th October.

SUE MOONEY wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Monday 12th October.

ROLAND MOORE'S series Land Girls concludes with the episode "Destinies" going out on
BBC1 at 6:10pm on Sunday 11th October.

HOWARD OVERMAN wrote the episode of Merlin "Lancelot and Guinevere" going out on BBC1 at 6:15pm on Saturday 10th October.

STEWART PERMUTT: Following a sell-out run at The Finborough Theatre last year Stewart Permutt`s play Many Roads to Paradise is being presented at The Jermyn Street Theatre from Ocober 9-Nov 14. Tues-Sat at 7.30. Sundays at 5:00pm.
Directed by Anthony Biggs. Cast: Thelma Ruby, Amanda Boxer, Gillian Hanna, Elizabeth Uter, Jason Wing, Tim Stern. Box Office: 020 7287 2875

`A rare, real and heart-warming find` Time Out.

JULIE PARSONS wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm on Friday 16th October.

PHILIP QIZILBASH wrote next weeks episodes of the BBC Asian Network's daily soap, Silver Street. It is broadcast Monday 12th October to Friday 16th October at 12.15pm, with an omnibus edition on Sunday 18th October at 4.35pm

GILLIAN RICHMOND wrote the episodes of EastEnders going out on BBC1 at 7:30pm on Monday 12th and Tuesday 13th October.

STEPHEN RUSSELL wrote the episodes of Coronation Street going out on ITV1 at 7:30pm and 8:30pm on Monday 12th October.

CATHY STAINCLIFFE'S radio play Legacy is going out on Radio 4 at 2:15pm on Monday 12th October.

TIM STIMPSON wrote the episodes of The Archers going out on Radio 4 at 7:00pm from Sunday 11th till Friday 16th October with each episode being repeated at 2:00pm the day following its original broadcast.

RICHARD STONEMAN wrote the episode of Doc Martin "Driving Mr McLynn" going out on ITV1 at 9:00pm on Sunday 11th October.

TOBY YOUNG co-wrote and co-produced the docu-drama When Boris met Dave that was broadcast on More4 on Wednesday this week. It can also be seen on the Channel 4 website.

***

Herta Müller awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009 has been awarded to the Romanian-born German author Herta Müller who, in the words of the award citation, "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".

In The Guardian, Alison Flood writes:

Although Müller left Romania over 20 years ago, she returns constantly to the themes of oppression, exile and dictatorship in her novels and poems, which also include The Appointment, about a young woman during Ceausescu's regime who works in a clothes factory, and sews notes into the suits of men bound for Italy, saying "marry me". Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger, published in English as The Passport, follows the story of a village miller in a German-speaking Romanian village, who applies for permission to emigrate to West Germany. Müller's latest novel Atemschaukel (Everything I Possess I Carry With Me) was published in August, and follows a 17-year-old boy who is deported to a Ukrainian labour camp. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it "phenomenal, moving and humbling novel, perhaps the most memorable read of the autumn".

Hilary Mantel on winning the Booker

So, what does it feel like to win the Man Booker Prize for contemporary fiction? Hilary Mantel, who won this week with her novel Wolf Hall, told Jasper Rees in The Telegraph.

“It’s a very odd thing because you prepare for failure,” she says, “so two of you go to the Booker dinner – the one who is going to win and the one who is going to lose. And I’m not quite sure if I’ve shaken off my double yet. I’m still living in two realities. It really is a big thing. I would never try to be cool about it. You know it is going to change your career.”

National Poetry Day

It's National Poetry Day, under the auspices of the Forward Arts Foundation.

There are events around the country, and special blog posts by a variety of poets, including Elvis McGonagall

Ugly word.

“Blog”.

Redolent of something nasty in the woodshed.

Yet not as flighty as the flibbertigibbet that is “Twitter”.

Apropos of which, a wee verse: “Frankie Says Leave It To The Birds”

You are not a digital Samuel Pepys
Nor the Oscar Wilde that time forgot
Nay, nay, thrice nay
Ooh missus, no, please, Twitter ye not

Today also saw the announcement of the winner of Forward Prize for Poetry: Don Paterson for his collection Rain.

Playwriting in Russia

An interesting item on The Guardian Theatre Blog by Noah Birksted-Breen on contemporary playwriting in Russia.

In Russia, things happen at two extremes: plays are either staged in their first draft or the playwright hands over the play and then nervously turns up on press night to see what has happened to it. There are famous legends of times when a director has cut up the play – bits are missing or the beginning is now in the middle. The culture of new writing, of knowing how to support a writer from first draft to performance, still doesn't exist in Russia.

Richard Curtis Masterclass

A guest post by Anne Hogben, the Guild's Deputy General Secretary:

Richard Curtis Masterclass at the Haymarket Theatre Monday 5th October 2009

I slipped out of the office on Monday and went to sit at the feet of Guild member Richard Curtis and Emma Freud as they sipped tea on the set of Breakfast at Tiffany's at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and gave a Masterclass to young actors. I scribbled down some notes.

Curtis claims that he started out desperately wanting to be an actor but he was never any good at it. He seemed to have the unfortunate knack of being invisible on stage. Or being visible in the wrong way. Once, when cast as Hermione, he was supposed to be carried offstage by two actors but one of them forgot about him and he ended up being dragged off by his ankles by the remaining actor and his wig fell off. It got the biggest laugh ever and it was that laughter that made him wonder if acting was right for him.

He gave up acting and started sketch writing with Rowan Atkinson. He pointed out that around 95% of comedy writers start on BBC radio sketch shows and that's where he learned his craft. For Curtis, it is still important to insert the set-piece gags within the 30-minute sitcom.

Blackadder

He stressed what a terrible ordeal it was writing for Blackadder. The actors were constantly critical of the scripts. Every day meant endless re-writing. He would have to invent several different lead-ups to the same punch line. It was a very unhappy time but he wouldn't have missed it for anything. He pointed out ruefully that being successful doesn't necessarily mean being happy.

Four Weddings and a Funeral

He took the job of choosing a director very seriously. He wanted a British director with a particular kind of British humour. He studied a lot of classic British comedies and it was Ready When You Are Mr McGill, a television play by Jack Rosenthal and directed by Mike Newell in 1976 that captured that in essence for him. In turn, Mike Newell took on the job of casting very seriously and, in a way, the film was made then because each actor had a very clear idea of who their character was before shooting began.


Asked for advice from some aspiring young writers in the audience, Curtis begged them not to send scripts to him. He stressed that it is much more important to amuse and entertain your own generation and the way to find your own voice is to work with your own contemporaries. Every generation has its own voice.

Asked about his own working methods he explained his own "rule of five". On one day work on the characters, the next day the dialogue, then the jokes, then the plot. (sorry, I can’t recall what the fifth thing was!). Do a different thing every day. This helps to keep things fresh and you focus on just one thing at a time. It is a long process but it will all join up at the end. He confessed he often leaves an encouraging note for himself at the end of each day so that he will find them in the morning with a little tip for how to get started that day. It is important to be nice to yourself because it is such a long process.

Five seems to be his magic number because it is also the number of shots he take at everything. Try doing a line five times and one of them will probably be right. Five different approaches etc.

Make a note when something moves you or makes you laugh and try to find out why.

When he is in the zone he can churn out around 30 pages a day. Later on he does some very rigorous editing. If 1% of it is any good and ends up being used then that is great. He knows he is very lucky that his script editor, Emma Freud, is also his partner and mother of his children and he knows she likes him and likes his work and wants it to be as good as it can be. He is not so sure about the qualification of a lot of other script editors and is wary of them and not sure they always know what they are doing.

He finds video stores very depressing - "a graveyard of a million people's dreams and nothing you actually want to watch." He wants to spend most of his time and energy on his charity work with Comic Relief and do something about eradicating malaria.

Matthew Robinson on The Invention Of Lying

For the Writers Guild of America West, Dylan Callaghan talks to Matthew Robinson about how he came to co-write The Invention Of Lying with Ricky Gervais.

So, to go back in time, a year before your career nadir, you’d written what was essentially a sketch?

Yes, it was an eight-page sketch of two people who had to tell the truth on a date and one of them was a loser. That was all there was to it. And the sketch is unchanged in the movie.

When you ultimately revisited it, was it out of desperation?

Yeah, I returned to my vault of ideas and it was the one I was most excited about. I let it marinate in my head for a few days and came up with a few more scenes, and I came up with the idea that, what if that loser on the date could totally flip it and come back lying?

From that point you were off and running?

Yeah, and the scenes I started thinking up sort of gave me the world. It was literally the easiest thing I’d ever written. It just sort of spilled out.

So after you got a few more scenes and the world you wanted this to take place in, do you then go to an outline?

No, I rarely outline. I just wrote. I just logically tracked each moment to each moment and fluidly went through it organically.

Media for all? The challenge of convergence

A one day conference organised by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom.

Saturday 31 October 2009 School of Pharmacy, 29-39 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AX

Registration and networking from 9 am. Conference 10 am - 5 pm.

The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom presents an international conference on the challenge of achieving a high quality, diverse and democratic media.

Plenaries:

• Media ownership and democracy in the age of convergence
• The media as a public service?
• Protecting and campaigning for high quality, diverse media in a digital age
  

Plus a wide variety of workshops.

Cost: Corporations £150, Not for profit and Trade Union organisations £25, Individuals £20, Concessions: students, unwaged, retired £10. 25% discount for bookings before 15th September

Book online at: www.cpbf.org.uk

By post: CPBF, 23 Orford Road, London E17 9NL 0208 521 5932

Citizens' Coalition for Public Service Broadcasting

The Citizens' Coalition for Public Service Broadcasting (CCPSB), to which the Writers' Guild is affiliated, has submitted its response (pdf) to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s consultation on sustainable independent and impartial news.

The CCPSB is a broad mix of civil society groups, charities, community groups, unions and arts organisations that believe public service broadcasting is a public good. Its launch statement (pdf) says that the Coalition:

"believes that public service broadcasting is a public good, and that plurality in public service broadcasting must be maintained in the digital age. British public service broadcasting is a cultural as well as an economic asset to the UK, and we believe the government must take decisive steps to ensure that we have a regulatory environment that allows this sector to prosper."

Writing in schools and community settings

On the Writers' Guild website, in an article that first appeared in the Guild's magazine UK Writer, Philippa Johnston of literaturetraining looks at the opportunities for writers to work in schools and other educational and community settings.

The article provides an overview of the entire sector, and is packed with links and advice.

There are lots of different ways to be involved. You may find yourself producing a prison soap as part of a Writers in Prisons residency; exploring Greenwich Peninsula with local residents; working with teenagers on a poetry and emotional health schools project; or devising murder mysteries in rural village halls in your role as reader in residence for a crime writing festival.

One word of caution, though. Many writers find such work hugely rewarding, and it will certainly help to pay the bills, but it’s not for everyone. It can mean that you have less time and energy left for your own work and, of course, just because you’re a great writer, you’re not necessarily a natural speaker or an inspiring workshop leader.

Writing East Midlands database

Writing East Midlands is hosting a database of the region's writers on its website.

Writers based in the region can enter their details free of charge.

What Guild members are getting up to

Peep Show by JESSE ARMSTRONG and SAM BAIN continues on Friday on C4 at 10:00pm.

SIMON ASHDOWN wrote the episodes of EastEnders being aired on BBC1 on Thursday at 7.30pm and Friday at 8:00pm.

FI BENSON, as the Lydbrook Scribe, will be performing 'Glass', the first of her new series of original sketches, at the Garden Café & Gallery, Lydbrook, Glos - www.gardencafe.co.uk – on 13th October, as part of the ongoing Coleford Festival of Words' monthly cabarets. Fi will launch her new book 'From Wear To Wye' – a collection of sketches performed during 2009 in and around the Forest of Dean – at the Forest Bookshop, Coleford, Glos, on 15th October. For a link to the book & bookshop, follow http://www.forestbookshop.com/pages/Categories/0946252725.html
On 31st October, around 4.30 pm, storyteller Jess Wilson will perform Fi's new ghost story 'The Water Wheel' in the grounds of the Dean Heritage Museum, Soudley, Glos www.deanheritagemuseum.com

TRACEY BLACK wrote the episode of Doctors: Mr Jelly, being aired on BBC1 on Friday at 1.45pm.

RAY BROOKING wrote the episode of Doctors: Love Knot, being aired on BBC1 on Wednesday at 1.45pm.

PAUL COATES wrote the episodes of Hollyoaks being shown on Channel 4 on Thursday and Friday at 6.30pm.

RICHARD EVERETT'S new play Entertaining Angels is on at the Richmond Theatre.

NAWAL GADALLA wrote the episode of The Archers being aired on BBC Radio 4 on Friday at 7:00pm.

PATRICK HOMES wrote the episode of The Bill: Fall Out going out on ITV1 on Thursday at 9:00pm.

RICHARD STONEMAN wrote the episode of Doc Martin: Perish Together as Fools, going out on ITV1 on Sunday at 9:00pm.

RIK MAYALL'S new series Bedside Tales begins with the episode Mountain Girl on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday at 11.15pm.

JESSE O'MAHONEY wrote the episode of Hollyoaks being shown on Channel 4 on Wednesday at 6.30pm.

EAMON MCDONNELL'S play The Gift is receiving its World Premiere at the Greenwich Playhouse in London SE10 from 13th October to 8th November (Box Office: 020 8858 9256). It is a hauntingly lyrical one act play about relationships and friendship set in the Irish borderlands.

ROLAND MOORE created the BBC1 period drama series Land Girls that continues its repeat run on Sunday 4th October at 6.10pm. He also wrote the episode of Waybuloo that goes out on Friday 9th October on Cbeebies at 11.30am.

Feature Film Beyond The Fire which writer/director MAEVE MURPHY won Best UK Feature for at LIFF is available on DVD from October 12th on Love Films.

JANE PEARSON wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 at 7:00pm.

RHIANNA PRATCHETT wrote for Piranha Bytes new Role-playing game ‘Risen’ released today on PC and X-Box 360.

PAUL ROUNDELL wrote the episode of Emmerdale going out on ITV1 on Wednesday at 7:00pm.

JOE TURNER wrote the episode of Coronation Street being aired on ITV1 on Friday at 8.30pm.

ANDREW S. WALSH was lead writer and director on Piranha Bytes new Role-playing game ‘Risen’ released today on PC and X-Box 360. He also wrote the new adventure ‘Dirk Dagger and the Nuclear Zeppelin’ released today on all Nokia N-Gage phones.

NICK WARBURTON wrote the Afternoon Play: Foundling, being broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Friday at 2.15pm.

PETER WHALLEY wrote the episode of Coronation Street being shown on ITV1 on Friday at 7.30pm.

KARIN YOUNG wrote the episode of Emmerdale being shown on ITV1 on Monday at 7:00pm.

Independent video games

In The LA Times, Ben Fritz meets the founder of Indiecade, a festival dedicated to independently made video games.

All three major console manufacturers, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, now offer downloadable video games, as do a number of services for PCs. That has helped enable several independently produced games that would never find a spot on the shelves of Best Buy -- titles such as Braid, Flower and World of Goo -- to become hits in the last year.

Just as Hollywood studios took notice of movies like "sex, lies, and videotape" in the late '80s, several major video game publishers are picking up indie titles for distribution.

"We're willing to go out on a ledge with these unique experiences because they differentiate us and they are where we find future talent," said Rusty Buchert, a senior producer at Sony Computer Entertainment.

Read any good 'vooks' lately?

In The New York Times, Motoko Rich looks at hybrid books and videos for release on mobile phones and electronic readers.

Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King, is working with a multimedia partner to release four “vooks,” which intersperse videos throughout electronic text that can be read — and viewed — online or on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

And in early September Anthony E. Zuiker, creator of the television series “CSI,” released “Level 26: Dark Origins,” a novel — published on paper, as an e-book and in an audio version — in which readers are invited to log on to a Web site to watch brief videos that flesh out the plot.

Some publishers say this kind of multimedia hybrid is necessary to lure modern readers who crave something different. But reading experts question whether fiddling with the parameters of books ultimately degrades the act of reading.

BBC Writersroom - continuing TV drama series

The BBC Writersroom has added a section on 'Writing for Continuing Drama Series'.

It gives details of the new single system for writer recruitment across all four main continuing TV drama shows: EastEnders, Casualty, Holby City and Doctors.