A working writer on the spectrum, exploring the depths of UK Film & TV.
(This is an updated & expanded version of Honest Advice for new Screenwriters in 2023, in light of more recent developments and my perspective as an agented writer).
This piece is aimed at anyone in the UK who wants to write scripts: maybe you're just starting or coming off a course (BA or MA), or are the intrepid outsider gung-ho-ing it with a copy of Save the Cat. You want to write movies and TV, maybe even get a shot at working on a big franchise like Doctor Who or Eastenders.
I
must first salute your first step into a creative field. It's exciting
and when it comes together on the page, a sublime feeling!
You will also no doubt be aware of everything else happening - the country is dealing with a cost of living crisis, and our entertainment industry has not been spared. The fallout of the (fully justified) SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in America, and an animation strike around the corner; rising costs leading to many in UK film and TV being out of work, with many more having left altogether, and most recently, the cancellation of a slew of shows, including longtime training ground Doctors.
It's undeniably a grim picture right now: nerves are frayed, slots are being cut and with
money low, the dream seems even more out of grasp. For the new
arrival to this field, you may be doubting your decision to try script
writing. Perhaps you've made some headway and now, things have dried up and you fear a career change is not far. Did you waste all that effort?
I've always endeavored for this blog to not just be optimistic, for the sake of new writers navigating an often frustrating business, but practical: to give you resources to find your way. So if you are a nervous student, or a curious enthusiast, here's my recommendations for what you can do. I'll split these into two categories: SCREENWRITER and LIFE.
SCREENWRITER
LIFE
The simple takeaway here is that building a career in the arts is hard. It was already really hard, but the economic plight and years of questionable decision making has compounded that challenge. But, and this is the fuller takeaway, it's not without little rays of hopeful sunshine, twee as that might read. So long as you keep practicing, keep writing and keep on experimenting, you still have a chance, and this industry needs you.
(P.S. If you can, follow The TV Mindset and share #Leftinthedark, to highlight the failure to support freelancers in this industry.)
Every writer, at some point, has gone 'I'd like to try something new' or 'I've always wanted to write X', but where to start?' You can watch/read your favourites, take notes and study them, but what if you need something more specific? Some type of reference or guidelines, even just something to quickly highlight common tropes you can avoid or find new spins on?
Well, writing guides to just about every genre in fiction exist, old and new, and many authored by working veterans, are available. Of course, the sheer volume (and then factoring in sites like Amazon permitting self-published works) can be rather daunting and confusing for a newcomer to disentangle. Well today, I'll give that a shot with an easy list of published works: a mix of personal recommendations and ones I've heard on the grapevine.
This article, for the sake of disclosure, is not sponsored by anyone mentioned - this is just me and me alone.
To be clear, this is not a comprehensive or exhaustive list of genre writing guides, nor is this one about storytelling basics (your Save the Cats etc): I already covered that elsewhere. This is also not a guide to books on entire mediums like film, stage and TV (save one example which I'll explain), career advice (at least, not chiefly) or memoirs by famous writers - this is just for storytelling genres.
There will also be no self-published works (the quality threshold, never mind the sheer number of them, is just too all over the place to be useful or consistent) and I will avoid too many books from within the same series (Teach Yourself and For Dummies do include a number of these guides, if you want an immediate starting point). Last, I will also include, as and when relevant, essay compilations, though this will be geared in the direction of practical writing advice, rather than purely analytical writing.
Crime/Mystery:
Thrillers:
Fantasy/Sci-fi:
Comedy:
Romance:
Children's/Animation:
Hope this little compilation has helped guide you on the right road!
This piece is aimed at anyone in the UK who wants to write scripts: maybe you're just starting or coming off a course (BA or MA), or are the intrepid outsider gung-ho-ing it with a copy of Save the Cat. You want to write movies and TV, maybe even get a shot at working on a big franchise like Doctor Who or Eastenders.
I must first salute your first step into a creative field. It's exciting and when it comes together on the page, a sublime feeling!
You will also no doubt be aware of everything else happening - the country is dealing with a cost of living crisis, and the entertainment industry has not been spared. Between rising costs and the fallout of the (fully justified) SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in America, many in the UK film and TV industry are out of work, and many more have left altogether. It's undeniably a grim picture right now: nerves are frayed and with money low, the dream seems always just out of grasp. For the recent arrival to this field, you may be doubting your decision to try script writing.
However, I've always endeavored for this blog to not just be optimistic, for the sake of new writers navigating an often frustrating business, but practical: to give you resources to find your way. So if you are a nervous student, or a curious enthusiast, here's my recommendations for what you can as your next steps, even in economic turmoil and uncertainty:
The simple takeaway here is that building a career in the arts is hard. It was already really hard, but the economic plight has compounded that challenge. But, and this is the fuller takeaway, it's not without little rays of hopeful sunshine, twee as that might read. So long as you keep practicing, keep writing and keep on experimenting, you can survive this.
It's funny: I spent years, having an awkward relationship with my disability, I wanted to hide it, pretend to be like everyone else. I didn't want to acknowledge who I was and how harmful masking was. Turns out, being more open about it and discussing it has afforded me my in into creative work: my episodes of Pablo, my place on ITV Original Voices last year, and now this.
I worked as one of several disability consultants on I Am, You Are, a non-fiction kids picture book, talking about disability, life and accommodation. It's a conversation starter for families and kids to think a little more about such people and the world around them, and why this topic matters so much. But this is no tragic story: instead, it's a colourful and vibrant book that celebrates in addition to teaching.
Big thank you to the team at Ladybird/Penguin for listening to me, to the author and illustrator for their hard work, and for Laura Henry-Allain for recommending me.
I was reading the Haunt filmmaker diaries a few months back - Scott Beck and Bryan Woods document their lives as working Hollywood screenwriters while also juggling directing their horror film. It came with a draft of the script as a bonus, which was not only a fun read, but prompted some interesting questions about how the duo used formatting to create a particular effect on the reader.
Formatting is one of the biggest battlegrounds when it comes to screenwriting - it's possibly the only thing as loaded and fraught as discussions on whether or not 'act structure' is real. Scripts, so say some, are done on Courier font 12, with a specific spacing, usually in a programme called Final Draft (but some have also preached about John August's Highlander software, and for a time there was Celtx) that then exports it as a PDF.
On the page, the real meat of the formatting debate, everything is broken down into slug lines (scene headings, like INT/EXT, DAY/NIGHT), and tight action lines to describe what's going on. All the character names and their dialogue is centered, and anything more specific is usually put into brackets (whisper, chuckling, screaming etc.). The key to this, the reason why it's done, is for clarity and ease of reading. And under NO circumstances are you allowed to use the following:
So, as both a script reader and working writer, how true is all of this? Does it really matter, in my experience, if you chuck in pictures or extra bits, or even if you play with fonts?
Mostly no, but there are some caveats. The top goal is writing a compelling story that people will want to make - so long as it's eligible, and of quality, then you'd be surprised how many people will let slide some minor errors. The only ones that are non-negotiable are the use of Sluglines and having character names and dialogue be centered. Those are the only true fundamentals necessary for a screenplay's format. Everything else is service of creating the mood and style of your script, anything you can do to get the reader utterly sucked in.
To return to Haunt, the writers there use the formatting itself to sell the creepy, surreal atmosphere of a haunted house gone mad. Word size is increased and decreased to indicate sound and proximity, with the odd use of onomatopoeia to punctuate. Even the scene headings and descriptions will flip to the other side of the page to sell the weirdness factor, and it really works. This is breaking the rules, done correctly: it's a horror script and it makes you uneasy.
But, I did warn of caveats - in my experience, most scripts that include all or even some of the gimmicks listed above turn out to be, well, just that: Lazy and poor quality stories, loaded with random nonsense no doubt trying to make it stand out in the submissions pile. The worst of these is inserting pictures: to me, this is simply an all-out failure of writing. You have the written word at your disposal, why not use it to describe something marvellous or weird and let the reader's imagination do some of the work? Changing colours can also fall into this: it can look ugly and there's often no sense of an actual benefit to doing this.
(And, as a cherry on top, most of the pictures tend of be of abysmally low quality. Blurry, grainy, muddy images shoved willy-nilly about the script. This defeats the entire point of even including them to begin with, meaning you just gambled with the reader's tolerance for no reason.)
Ditto the beefy action lines: if you want to write a lot, my advice is break it into smaller, more dynamic sections. It reads cleaner and it can give an added sense of tempo and attention to what's happening in the scene. The best advice to remedy this is, well, read more screenplays - learn how writers sold something ambitious or hefty, and apply it to your own work.
A lot of this comes down to developing your own voice as a writer, and that takes time. You use shortcuts (like say, grabbing a picture off Google Images) to try and get stuff done quicker, and maybe in the process, create a unique presentation. Maybe you want to showcase more of your creativity with some original art or funky font tinkering? However, if it's not done in actual service of the story, then it's not actually helping you: It's just a distraction. You have to give the reader as few reasons as possible to say no, and yours is maybe the fifth or sixth script they have to read that day - every choice you make has to be considered. Sticking to the 'rules' is simply an easier guarantee, one less possible strike against your work.
My advice, if you're really nervous: stick with traditional formatting and focus on fine tuning your writing. However, if you want something extra in, make sure it is justified and actually adds to the atmosphere and style of what you're making. Reasons like 'it looks cool' are utterly worthless and, as said, will just hasten the reader's finger to the big red X. Keep them on the page, at all costs.
With 65 having done its run in theatres, I figured why not share a recent read of mine - the Haunt: Screenplay & Filmmaker Diaries. Writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (also the minds behind A Quiet Place) made a little slasher called Haunt back in 2019, a twisted take on chintzy haunted houses where a group of teens get stuck in very real danger. Overseen by Eli Roth, Haunt used its low budget and small cast to its advantage, creating a small but distinct little horror.
So in 2022, the duo brought out this book, a diary documenting
their lives as working Hollywood screenwriters while also juggling
directing their horror film. The pair discuss meetings, foods, movies they've seen and even changes in their own lives (like fatherhood and marriage), as the film lumbers from script to production to finished film. It comes with a draft of the Haunt script as a
bonus.
Books like this are always deeply fascinating for me - I love getting inside other storytellers' minds and seeing how they tick; how they approach challenges and what are things to avoid. Beck and Woods, writing in a simple, conversational manner, offer this in easy, digestible chunks. They go over every issue that comes with making a film - pitching, writing, rewriting, notes, meeting, casting, budget, working with crew, getting locations, editing, balancing work and home life and then getting it out there. For every success, there's a bunch of setbacks, mistakes and sudden left turns, forcing the duo to think fast and still balance everything. It has the peaks and valleys of good drama, yet Beck and Woods never become sappy or maudlin - they acknowledge the pain, but endeavor to push on and enjoy the good parts.
The script draft, which follows a quick but neat interview with Scott McConnell (Gointothestory.com), was not only a fun read, but prompted some interesting questions about how the duo uses formatting to create a particular effect on the reader. Throughout, the script will have onomatopoeia to punctuate sounds and movements in scenes, as well as use the spacing and position of words themselves to create a sense of distance and atmosphere. The effect is a highly visual and evocative read that makes the script pop, even as the material itself is very firmly in its genre.
Yet, it never feels gimmicky or lazy: it always done to enhance that haunted house feeling, giving it a sense of place and style. In my time as a script reader I've seen exactly this sort of stuff done wrong. VERY wrong - quirky formatting done to mask a generic, unengaging script. I and certainly no company is impressed by 2004-level Word Art or goofy Photoshop. However, Beck and Woods do it right - the story is set in a mad haunted house attraction, so it creates the sense of being in a twisty, turny, spooky place. Form and substance marry up.
A definite recommend, even if you're not a horror hound and just like a peek behind the curtain.