Back to School with A Writers Skill Sharing Day in Birmingham

By Addy Farmer

schools - gotta love 'em

Let's imagine, just as an example, that you have one chapter book and one picture book published and another coming out in 2012 with say, Frances Lincoln (hem-hem). Let's also say you want to go into schools to supplement your meagre income. So far so good but then come the challenges:

• As an individual, it's tough-going building up relationships with lots of schools
• Schools are cash strapped
• Once you've got a gig - how do you stand out so that you're not just become another teacher?

With all this in mind, a Schools Skill Sharing Day run by the National Association of Writers in Education – NAWE, seemed to be the way forward. The idea behind this was to offer a peer-learning opportunity for writers working in

schools, to discuss the challenges and avoid the pitfalls.

As about forty eager writers from all genres gathered in the auditorium of the South Brimingham College, it became clear that the first obstacle to be overcome was the life threatening 'safety ledge' on the front row. 


Luckily only two people nearly died and the day began with a welcome from Jonathan Davidson, Head Honcho of Writing West Midlands and all round Arts Supremo.

The workshop sessions were varied and ranged from, 'Working with Children with Special Needs' through to, 'Digital/Interactive Writing'. 


Within each session there were opportunities to share experiences and learn from others. Did the conference address my questions? Well yes and no.

The most stimulating session was run by Roz Goddard about 'Maintaining Identity as a Writer'. The discussion she facilitated, led to fresh thinking about finding work in schools and in a way addressed all of my questions.

Maintaining your writing identity

Ask yourself – what image do you see when you think of yourself as a writer? What does it say about you as an author? This is your identity and it is your Legacy. 


Your originality as a writer is what schools will want and more importantly what children will remember. Children's writer, Juliet Clare Bell, tells how Alan Garner paid her primary school a visit. He talked about his work and his stories and she vividly remembers the excitement of a published writer coming to speak, of the aura surrounding him. He left his imprint behind and yes, she read his books.

All very well but how does this work in practical terms? Well, the best sessions are those which demonstrate the sort of writer you are. Be personal, show your manuscripts, your mistakes, corrections. Share how the story evolved. Get your book out. Let children ask questions. Maybe it sounds blindingly obvious but children will want to remember you and not a lesson on writing given by you.

Leave teachers with a sustainable model which will act as your legacy. Short of them adopting you, you might suggest a few excercises which you use to hone that massive imagination muscle e.g. finding the extraordinary in the ordinary – a stone, a hat, a ruler or asking the children to spend ten minutes every day writing down ideas. 


What about lunchtime clubs that you can contribute to every so often. And then, why not offer up original writing? Alison Prince wrote 'The Summerhouse' in conjunction with the children of a Lincolnshire primary school. How brilliant is that?

You can share your writing discoveries not just deliver them.

Building your business

It's a tough, cash strapped world out there. With funding gone for excellent initiatives like 'Creative Partnerships', competition for work in schools is keen. You may well have excellent contacts with a few local schools to build on but how sustainable is this?

Collaboration can be the key to building your business. There's strength in numbers of writers all gathered together in a single easily accessible database!

Here are a few places for you to check out:

• Your Local Authority - you may be lucky enough to live in an authority where the school improvements advisers have not been axed – in which case, give them a go but beware they may still charge.

• Contact an Author – a wordpool site. This is open to published writers and illustrators only.
• Regional groups like Writing West Midlands/New Writing North/Writing East Midlands - go research!

The SAS

tough crowd but they'll get you into schools

• The fabulous SCBWI offers its members a Contact a Speaker listing and this is going to be even more fabulous in the future (contact me if you want to help develop this!)
• NAWE – of course.

Next time, you can read some advice from top authors who go into schools on a regular basis. It can be done! In the meantime - write long and prosper

See the happy author!

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