Macmillan New Writing

Macmillan have launched a New Writing list. It looks like a sort of middle ground between conventional publishing and self-publishing.

Macmillan New Writing is an imprint within the Macmillan group, designed to give an opportunity for new authors to achieve publication. The books are published at the company's expense, no contribution costs will be sought from authors, and royalties on sales will be paid. The books are sold in the market by Macmillan and will be carried in the company's catalogues, but to keep costs to a minimum to allow the maximum number of new writers to get a chance at publication, all arrangements for publication and contracts with authors are standard and there is a minimum of communication between publisher and author.

The Guardian reports that writers will receive 20% of royalties from sales but Macmillan will get all rights to the work.

[literary agent, Natasha] Fairweather described the deal as "shocking". Giles Foden, the author of several novels including The Last King of Scotland (and the Guardian's deputy literary editor), described it as "preying on the unwary", and "publishers trying to pull a fast one over impressionable young authors".

"It seems to be putting more risk on to the shoulders of the writer," [novelist, Hari] Kunzru said. "For writers the important thing is having the publishing control and retaining your rights. I'd publish on the net or think about a writer-led co-operative before going down this road."

Macmillan denies sharp practice. "I have been through over a thousand manuscripts, and, hand on heart, I haven't had a single author who has said it's unfair ... We are doing this with great integrity," Barnard said.

The Art of Screenwriting

A recent seminar in New York, organised by the National Board of Review, brought together six accomplished US screenwriters. The NBR is 95 years-old, has no ties to the industry and celebrates artistic excellence. The seminar took place in a similarly venerable environment, the Harmonie Club, originally a German-Jewish members club, modelled on the British originals at the Strand.

Robert Harling on director Herbert Ross's swift action when the leading actresses in Steel Magnolias threatened to improvise): "Herbert said: 'Ladies, we would treat the text as if it were Chekhov.' When the shoot was finished at four in the morning, I thanked Herbert for his compliment, to which he replied: 'I said to play it as if it were Chekhov, I'm not saying it is.

Richard LaGravenese on [British] reserve: "Editing and writing are very similar processes. There is a scene in Fisher King in which one character really explodes. Director Terry Gilliam was really uncomfortable with the emotions, so he cut half of the scene focusing only on the other character. His English editor also thought the scene was too emotional. Nowadays people are so afraid of emotions. They pull back, thinking everything will be carried by the actors, by looks, but instead it's just empty."

Jay Presson Allen on working with Hitchcock: "He encouraged me to cut whole scenes where people just sit and talk. I learned from him about visual compression. I wrote scene after scene for him, but at some point he would say: 'Why don't we show a fight and then the next shot is a flower with a card that says 'Congratulations'. Learning to go from A to B like that was just bliss."

Women on top in Hollywood - the NY take

The Tribeca Film Festival in New York is unspooling with a whopping 600 films. At least as many parties are unleashed throughout the city. A brunch organized by Dutch cultural attachee Jeanne Wikler celebrated Holland's contribution to the festival.

One of the guests was Terry Lawler, executive director of New York Women in Film & Television, who commented on the New York Times article about the rise of women in Hollywood. Although she was happy to see ink dedicated to the subject, she didn't share the view suggested by the article that the glass ceiling is now a thing of the past and that Hollywood is a model for other industries to copy in terms of female power. Lawler fired off a letter to the New York Times and her mailbox was flooded with emails from the filmmaking community voicing similar concerns.

Diana Evans - a chip off the UEA block

Diana Evans, shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers, is another success story from the University of East Anglia's writing programme. However, in The Independent Russell Celyn Jones, professor of creative writing at Birkbeck College, warns students not to raise their expectations too high.

It might be useful to compare one day the number of graduates from MA creative writing programmes who make a career in writing, with graduates of art, music and drama schools. About 80 per cent of creative writing graduates do not become published authors. Just think if that was the statistic for medical schools.

Women on top in Hollywood

Gail Berman's appointment as the head of Paramount Pictures' creative team means that four of the six major Hollywood studios now have women in the top creative decision-making roles, reports The New York Times.

Though men still figure most prominently in the corporate echelons of the media companies that own the studios, and talent agencies like William Morris and Creative Artists Agency are still male dominated, these women, who over the years have fought and fostered one another as part of a loose sisterhood, have finally buried the notion that Hollywood is a man's world.

E4 coming to Freeview

Channel 4 will make its digital channel E4 free to air on the Freeview platform from next month, reports BBC News.

While the schedules will initially be dominated by the new series of Big Brother, E4, which is aimed at young people, also screens homegrown comedy such as Peep Show and Green Wing.

There are currently five million homes in the UK with Freeview.

Update (19/05/05): The latest news is that E4 will launch on Freeview on 27 May, for the launch of Big Brother 6.

Keating wants more drama on BBC 2

BBC 2 Controller, Roly Keating, has pledged to make more original drama for the channel, reports The Stage.

Pointing to the channel’s past success with shows such as nineties hits Our Friends in the North and This Life, he acknowledged it is missing a similar style of contemporary, original and imaginative drama.

Keating added that he hoped a key legacy of his time as controller would be the development of the channel’s distinctive drama profile with new writers and series but conceded his plans would take time to filter through to screens.

Write Live 2005

Write Live 2005 invites any West Midlands-based playwright to submit a full-length play, written for theatre. The submission will then be considered for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s Attachment Scheme for Playwrights, and there is also the possibility of the writer receiving development from SCRIPT through mentoring and showcasing.

The deadline is 13 May 2005.

BBC Drama Series Writing Academy 2005

The BBC has launched a new initiative to train writers for long-running drama series.

The BBC Drama Series Writing Academy 2005 will take on eight writers for a year of full-time training focusing on Doctors, Casualty, Holby City and EastEnders.

Applicants must have already had at least one film, television or radio drama script produced or one theatre piece performed professionally.

Applications must be received by 9 May, with the course due to start in September 2005.

TV's lost generation

It doesn't seem very long ago that we were all worried about how much television teenagers were watching. Not any more. The problem, for the TV industry at least, is that viewing hours among all young people are declining. While children's TV is protected by regulation, programming for teenagers has been in decline, with most 11-18 year-olds now choosing adult shows as their favourites.

This "lost generation" of TV viewers was the subject of an interesting debate at BAFTA in London on Monday evening, with contributions from a range of industry insiders, as well as from young people themselves.

The bottom line is that, as one audience member put it, while children have grown increasingly sophisticated as TV consumers, the regulations covering content have not kept pace. Programme-makers steer clear of controversy, making it difficult for children's TV to tackle the kind of issues that teenagers are interested in.

The teenagers themselves said that they wanted more comedy and drama aimed at them, but, as producer Richard Langridge pointed out, slots in the schedule are not being made available. He, and several other contributors, argued that BBC 3, which was originally targeted at those 16+ but is now aiming for people aged over-24, had been a missed opportunity.

Elaine Sperber, Head of CBBC Drama, admitted that the teenage audience was being short-changed, and said that the BBC was looking at new ways of delivering content to them.

Could there be a new teen channel? Trouble and Nickelodean have been very successful, and many of the young people in the audience complained about the lack of a homemade equivalent.

The UK can do teen programming. Hollyoaks is a mainstream hit, and As If showed that more experimental approaches can also succeed. What is needed, it was agreed, is commitment from senior management, especially within the BBC, to make slots (6.30 on BBC 2, for example) and money available.

Representatives from Ofcom said that they had already commented on the lack of programming for teenagers. The consensus at BAFTA on Monday night was that a concerted campaign was required to persuade the broadcasters to do something about it.

In defence of short plays

Playwright David Eldridge in The Guardian hits back at Michael Billington for his argument that short plays are damaging theatre.

He [Billington] hints that new dramatists aren't serious, but these forms are created out of the serious endeavour of telling stories in the most truthful, effective and expressive way possible. The drama we are creating is often more experiential and variations upon the single action are almost always the right way of telling these stories. One admired dramatist has said to me that the interval has always seemed mad for a lot of her plays because of their subjective nature - and she won't throw everything she's carefully built up to give the punters a packet of crisps and a gin and tonic. The works of Beckett and Pinter are in our culture now, and for Billington to infer that we ought to hack away at old-fashioned forms that don't express the truth of our stories is pure poppycock. What about Sarah Kane's first play, Blasted - should she have conceived her material as a traditional well-made play?

Litblogs

A guide to litblogs, the new internet phenomenon proving that new media and books do mix, by Joy Press in Village Voice.

Free step-outlines and treatments

Free from Screentalk, step outlines and treatments from feature films including China Town, Star Wars and Terminator.

Theatre writers and directors

The secrets of a successful working relationship between theatre writers and directors will be explored in a Writers' Guild event at RADA in London on 17 May. Full details are on the Writers' Guild website.

Will the government back amateur theatre?

Charles Vance in The Stage asks whether the next government will take up the recommendations of a DCMS select committee report stating that:

“We believe that, as in sport, consideration should be given to the public policy gains that can be demonstrated as a result of participation in drama and a strategic approach to the funding of grassroots, or community theatre should be developed. This should take place as a partnership between the amateur sector, Arts Council England, regional theatres, local government and schools.

“As a first step, proposals for a National Drama Association - with public funding - to bring the amateur sector together should be properly formulated and given serious consideration. A further initiative might be the development of local arts forums, including theatre and amateur theatre, aimed at maximising the use of local arts expertise and facilities for the benefit of the community.”

Reviews or readers?

Steve Stern's latest book, The Angel of Forgetfulness, has received rave reviews, reports Peter Edidin in the New York Times but sales are slow. So what's it like to be loved by critics but ignored by readers?

Mr. Stern said he would love to have a best seller. But having had the good fortune to find his life's work in Memphis many years ago, he doesn't really want to press his luck. "I just want to get away with it," he said. "I just want to get my next book published, and my next."

John Yorke's plans for EastEnders

John Yorke, controller of continuing drama series and head of independent drama, tells Stuart Jefferies in Media Guardian (free registration required) why, having returned to the BBC from Challen 4, he still believes in EastEnders.

For the past three months, Yorke has had EastEnders back on his viewing schedule (he reckons to watch 340 hours of TV a year). What went wrong with it while you were away? "Soaps have to be character-led. It became a bit too plot-led. It was the Brookside syndrome - just pursuing sensationalism. That's very dangerous. Audiences just don't believe you after a while." Why then not kill off EastEnders, just as Brookside was terminated while you were at Channel 4? "You couldn't do that! EastEnders saved the BBC." But that was 20 years ago. "No, it is part of the BBC1's DNA now, it's vital to the channel.

BBC to spend an extra £21m on TV shows

The BBC will spend an extra £61m on programmes, including £21m on television shows, it has announced in its annual statement. The corporation's programme budget will increase to £2.178bn this year, with extra drama and comedy on BBC TV.

It will air fewer repeats, makeover and lifestyle shows in BBC One's peak time.

The full story is on BBC News.

Soaps and illness

Next time you write a medical storyline for a soap, spare a thought for the GPs. As BBC News reports, in a new survey more than nine out of 10 GPs claimed to have seen patients reporting symptoms based on what they had seen on TV or read in newspapers and magazines.

Pam Prentice, joint chief executive of Developing Patient Partnerships, said: "These results may be bad news for GPs right now, but they show soaps' enormous potential for influencing people's health behaviour in a positive way."

Channel 4 comedy writing competition

Channel 4 have announced that they will launch a brand new comedy writing initiative in mid-May.

The new scheme will offer fresh writing talent the chance to win a one-year contract with the channel worth £20,000 and the opportunity to write for a range of Channel 4 comedy and entertainment shows.

Entrants will be required to submit a three minute topical monologue for a quintessential C4 show of their choice and three non-topical sketches of no more than three minutes each in length.

We'll post full details as soon as they are announced.

Update (19/05/05): Details have now been announced.