EastEnders scripwriter Carey Andrews gives us the lowdown on writing for TV

by Teri Terry

Carey Andrews has written over eighty episodes of East Enders over the last eleven years. A local freelance writer, she is one of about a dozen core writers for the show.

Carey spoke about Writing for TV at the Chiltern Writers last week. And her enthusiasm and energy were contagious.

How did she get there?

Carey wanted to act, but after drama school, dodgy agents and a growing hatred of auditions, things weren’t working out: no-one wanted a six foot actress. Family pressure to get a real job – shudder – was mounting, and she spent endless days in tears watching daytime TV.

Thanks to Tempophage for the photo on Flickr!

Then somewhere along the way, she started thinking: more people watch TV than go to the theatre. She began taking note of programs with long lists of people at the end of them, and writing letters, looking for an in.

Soon she amassed over 200 rejections. Her top advice:

Keep At It

She finally got her break with East Enders: first as assistant script editor, then, script editor, and finally, on her way to maternity leave, she wrote a shadow script. They bought it! For £1. Apparently, the BBC won’t let you be on maternity leave and pay you at the same time.

But this led to more, and eventually she became one of the core writers for East Enders: under contract to write ten episodes a year.

The core team of about a dozen write roughly half of the episodes. At any time there may be up to sixty writers in total working on the show. Yet contract or no, core writers can still be given the boot at any time, and if the latest through the Executive Producer revolving door takes a dislike, this can happen. It isn’t about job security.

The core writers are always about three quarters male: ‘make of that what you will’.

How do you write an episode?

The writer is offered an episode, a document sent late on a Friday night. On Monday, they must pitch the episode back to the story department, script editors, producers etc. It is then a two to three month process to produce the script, which will go through many drafts.

The commission document for an episode is two A4 sides, and will have five or six story strands. The central strand will have a starting point A, and an ending point B with a ‘Ca Ha’ (cliff hanger).

How the writer takes the journey between A and B is the thrill. The other story strands will follow a similar pattern and must be interweaved around the central strand. Carey picks out the story beats and does scene breakdowns before she writes the first draft.

Interesting bits:

• writers are under huge constrictions with what sets they can include, dependant on what other sets are being used the same week
• they also don’t get allocated all of the characters, and, for reasons unknown, if a character has a speaking part in an episode, they must always have lines in two scenes, never one
• there are actual BBC police: if you leak something you shouldn’t, you will never work again…!
• characters can’t swear: they can’t even say ‘prat’. Carey has taken to making up her own expletives
• the rule of writing drama: give a little bit of joy, then take it away again
• one thing I like: all baddies must get their comeuppance in East Enders! It is an actual rule. It might take a while, but it will happen.
• a different sort of murder your darlings: the minute an actor starts to throw themselves around a bit, push things or believe they are essential…. ‘they will die’. Mwahahahaha...!

Last resting place of stroppy actors

Carey never planned to be a writer: she was trying to get her foot in the world of TV, and that is where her feet ended up taking her. Yet her enthusiasm and genuine thrill at what she does are so apparent. What struck me is this: creativity will have an out. It may not take you where you thought you wanted to go, but who knows what opportunities will come your way? And all down to keeping at it.

Finally?

Carey makes her children clap every one of her episodes.

Candy Gourlay Battles Exposition at the SCBWI Retreat

by Jo Wyton

Guest Blogger

Jo Wyton is another talented writing buddy from SCBWI. She is a geologist with a thoroughly impractical interest in rocks and an even more impractical interest in getting published. With deadlines looming, she is desperately trying to prop up the pile of unfinished manuscripts on her desk with one hand whilst trying to chase the elusive words 'The End' with the other. For some reason, she’s chosen to try doing that with two manuscripts at the same time. Eejit.

Exposition? Who, me?

Exposition. It’s a word most writers hate. Exposition is boring. Lots of drawn out explanations and backstory that’s guaranteed to persuade a reader to close the book and put it down.

Candy Gourlay’s advice to writers at the recent SCBWI retreat?

Cut it out.

Get rid of it.

Go on – you know you want to… (she’s very persuasive like that you know…)

Advice to hit the delete button usually leaves writers in one of three states:

One: smelling the roses 

Two: you can't be serious?!

Three: uncontrollable hysteria

Except don’t just delete it.

Not yet.

Read it – figure out why you wrote it in the first place. Exposition is dull, but it’s usually been written for a reason. Are you explaining the rules of the world your character has found himself in? Or perhaps your character is remembering an important event that the reader needs to know about? The way forward, says Candy, is to ‘break it down and build it in’.

Don't leave your readers feeling the weight of exposition

Disseminate the information as much as possible; hide it away in action if you can.

You just need to find the right way to slide it in, so the reader doesn’t even notice what you’re doing.

Health warning: Thinking about exposition may have horrible side effects. The next morning one retreatee was found to have developed a phobia of her laptop, refusing to write any more in fear of exposition spilling onto the page in an unprecedented bid for freedom. Others collapsed at the dinner table from sheer exhaustion after spending the night searching for exposition in their manuscripts.

Exposition Exhaustion

If you want to be really sneaky (and who doesn’t?) you can use your exposition even better than that. If you break it down you can use it to generate more story. 

Take that small piece of exposition that you think your reader simply can’t live without, and spin it out – create a new chapter, or a new sub-plot, or, a new character. Sometimes, you can go the whole hog and generate a whole new story.

Take any section of exposition in your manuscript, however big or small, and grab some coloured pencils (usually the key to editing – lots of coloured pencils). Draw a box around each separate fact or piece of information you are trying to feed to your reader. Then look at each one separately and think about its potential.

Candy wasn't quite prepared for the level of love some people have for their exposition

Candy used an example from an old version of her novel Tall Story. In it, she had written a few sentences about one of her characters, Andi, and her failure to get on the school’s basketball team. But that particular titbit was too interesting for Candy to leave it hidden away in exposition.

If you’ve read Tall Story in its published form, you’ll know that Andi now gets entire chapters devoted to her trying to get onto the basketball team. For Candy, this one piece of exposition spawned a sub-plot that threads right from the start of the book to its conclusion.

AHA! Exactly the advice I was in need of! I looked down at 2,000 words of a new novel sitting on my laptop, and Hey Presto, Taadaa and Huzzah.

Because here’s the thing: as someone who’s still learning how to structure a novel, I often find I rush it. I write a full novel’s worth of plot in ten pages. But Candy told us to break down what we’ve written and look at it differently.

At the time, I had about 2,000 words of a new novel in front of me. Or did I? What I think I’ve actually got is a 2,000 word plot outline for half a novel. Now if only Candy would offer to write it for me too…

The talk was called Weightwatchers for Novelists: How to Lose Exposition and Add Meaning - 28 May 2011, SCBWI Retreat, Dunford House, West Sussex

Inspired by ... Ghosts

By Fiona Dunbar
Guest Blogger

So here's a blog idea: what inspired your current work-in-progress? Do tell us in a comment or in a blog post (send us the link so that we can list it at the bottom of this post). Our askee in this post is  Fiona Dunbar, author of Toonhead, The Pink Chameleon, and  the Lulu Baker trilogy. Fiona has a new ghost mystery series starring Kitty Slade, who has something called phantorama - the power to see ghosts!

When Candy and I were discussing possible subjects for my Slushpile post the other day, she suggested I might like to do a piece on ghosts in children's literature that inspired me. 'But I can't think of a single one!' I said. And it's true: although I'm writing a six-book series of ghostly mystery stories for children, other ghost stories for kids are not what inspired me to do this.

My actual starting point was the desire to write a sort of Famous Five series for the 21st century, i.e. kids solving mysteries. I just find that premise utterly irresistible - always have. Then the ghosty thing started creeping in - as ghosty things are wont to do - and the whole axis shifted. I found myself merging the mystery-solving idea with a draft of an unfinished story from 2005 called Kit & Nan. You know how it is: you start out with a story, thinking, 'this is gonna be great!' and then...pfft. But it was a good premise, and I didn't want to waste it: in it went.



Anyway, Candy's suggestion got me thinking. It's not as if nothing I've read or seen has informed my Kitty Slade stories. What was it that got my supernatural juices flowing? So here they are: my Top Five Ghostly Inspirations:

1. Morris

Morris is the sublimely revolting creation of Hilary Mantel, in her book Beyond Black. The book is about a medium, Alison, who tours the country doing shows in which she contacts people's dead relatives for them. She is only able to do this because she has a spirit guide - i.e. a ghost that contacts the other ghosts for her. This is Morris. Alison did not seek out Morris: she did not choose him. She just...got him. He is a lowlife, disgusting in ways I cannot mention here; I felt deeply sorry for Alison, while at the same time weeping with laughter. What a delicious irony Mantel has presented us with: without Morris, Alison has no livelihood - and yet he is unbearable.

Alison wonders what she did to deserve him: he chuckles and says 'count your blessings girl, you fink I'm bad but you could of had...Pikey Pete [or] my mate Keef Capstick.' I shuddered to think what Pikey Pete or Keef Capstick were like.

I don't have anyone quite like Morris in the Kitty Slade stories (God forbid!) but there is a character in book four (sorry, you'll have to wait a while!) that in retrospect I realise probably owes something to Morris, in that she's extremely annoying but unavoidable, as Kitty needs her help.

Funnily enough, looking back over Beyond Black now, I see that Alison first encounters Morris when she is thirteen - the same age at which Kitty develops her phantorama. SO glad for Alison that she wasn't any younger...

2. The Canterville Ghost

I thought about putting Jacob Marley in this list, but then I remembered that although I am a huge Dickens fan, A Christmas Carol is my least favourite of his works.

And actually, the ghosts in my stories are not in the least bit like Marley. And nor, indeed, is Oscar Wilde's Canterville Ghost. He would so love to be Jacob Marley: he rattles chains and suits of armour and tries all manner of tricks and guises to scare off the Otises, the American family who have just moved into Canterville Chase.

But when he appears to Mr Otis, complete with Marley-esque rusty chains and manacles, the American merely presents him with a bottle of lubricant, and goes back to bed. When he moans and groans in the night, Mrs Otis offers him a cure for indigestion. The younger Otis children actually end up terrifying him, rather than the other way round.



Interestingly, it is only the teenage daughter, Victoria, who takes him seriously, and wants to help him reach his final resting place.

In a similar way, Kitty's objective in each of my stories is to help a ghost to carry out the unfinished business that's keeping them trapped in the mortal realm.

I don't think you have to have a scary ghost in order to have a scary ghost story: it helps, but a lot of the build-up of tension - in my stories, at least - has to do with the perilous situations Kitty and her siblings find themselves in, as a result of the ghostly intervention.

3. An American Werewolf In London

I cannot overstate how much I rate this film. I majorly heart it. And when a book or a movie affects you in that way, it seeps into your DNA, becoming a part of what you produce. It helps that I was roughly the same age as its protagonists when it came out: I was slap bang in the middle of the target demographic.

But more to the point, it is the best example I can think of anywhere, in books, films, TV, of something that is both funny and scary at the same time. And that is what I set out to do with Kitty - albeit in a PG-rated way! I hope I succeed.



Of course, An American Werewolf is not a ghost story but a horror film. But there is a haunting of sorts - though in this case by the character Jack, who is undead, rather than properly dead. But unlike the zombies you usually encounter in horror films, Jack has an agenda: there is something that must happen (in case you haven't seen the film, I won't say what!) in order for him to be released from his purgatory-like existence. In a similar way, all the main ghosts in my Kitty stories need her to do something, so they can be fully released into the spirit realm.

4. Scooby-Doo
As I have remarked elsewhere, I couldn't have given Kitty a dog - especially one that went round with her all over the place, being her canine assistant. Not only would that have been too Famous Five, but what with the ghosts and the camper van, even a non-talking dog might have tipped it too much in the direction of Scooby-Doo territory. Not that I felt any special need to add a dog anyway, I should add.

So what is it about all those childhood hours of watching Scooby that informed what I'm doing now? Again, it's just in my DNA. I like that combination of ghosts, fun and mystery. The 'mysteries' in Scooby-Doo, as I remember, always seemed to end up with some fraudster pretending to be a ghost, but we didn't care: it was just so much fun.



Ghosts + fun + mystery: that is exactly what I'm doing here, pure and simple. Only with, dare I say it myself, proper mysteries with outcomes you're not going to guess.

5. The Graveyard Book

This deserves a special mention, even though you could say it doesn't count as pure 'inspiration', as I didn't read it until I'd already written Kitty books one and two. But inspiration doesn't stop happening once you've embarked on a project: it goes on happening.

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book rightly attracted a clutch of awards, while up and down the country and around the world, other authors were slapping their heads, crying, "a Jungle Book set in a graveyard: why didn't I think of that?" I was one of them. A Mowgli figure, only raised by ghosts...how fantastic!



And Gaiman pulls it off brilliantly, too. So even though most of my inspiration comes from other sources, every now and then I read a children's book like this and think 'Yes! Here is the reason I'm writing this kind of book.' Sadly, it also reminds me that I'm not Chris Riddell...

Incidentally, the graveyard of the title is based on Highgate Cemetery, which is near where I live - but I won't be setting a Kitty story there. Wonderful though it is, I feel it's been 'done' enough already.

There is, however, another spooky North London setting that I will be using in the sixth book.

You won't guess it...

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MC Rogerson is inspired by pagan mysteries on the Life Beyond blog

Caroline Lawrence is inspired by music over on Wondrous Reads and by gritty westerns on her Flavia blog