Writing for continuing drama is like leaping aboard a moving train, in the case of Casualty a train that has been on the tracks since 1986. It’s a well oiled machine and for me, understanding how every piece fits into place was the first learning curve. Almost as soon as I had said yes to the contract my diary dates came through - pitch due dates, head of department meetings, treatment deadlines. Were it not all moving so fast I probably would have taken a bit of time to panic but as it stood, I was straight in at the deep end. Panicking time is a luxury in continuing drama - and honestly you’re better off without. So I threw myself in with both feet. I re-watched episodes, read character bios, timed episodes and gave them a full autopsy in order to understand the nature of the beast. Don’t get me wrong I have been an avid Casualty watcher for years, but when you know your words are going to be on that screen soon, you see it all in a different light.

I was suddenly aware of how short a lot of the scenes were, where the long ones tended to appear, how the A, B and C stories would intertwine and play out time-wise. How hooks worked, how episodes grabbed you at the beginning and gave you something to come back for next time.

Then before I knew it, it was time to read my episode serial! I couldn’t have been happier - even though lots of things shifted and changed as we progressed, I was so thrilled with my episode. But I had no idea how to translate the serial document (the storylining document for the threads of your episode) into a treatment. To me, it read like a treatment - so what was there for me to do? “Take ownership of it!” Was the headline note from my wonderful script editor (one of my favourite parts of writing for Casualty was my incredibly supportive script editors, who also doubled as my mentors/therapists/human connection during a global pandemic).

That note was one of the most helpful, I can see that now as I read my current serial. Plot the vital beats, stick to the storyline but take ownership of the detail, the motivations, the inspirations. And then there is the fun of pitching a guest story! Just don’t do what I did and suggest an old feller tripping over a hosepipe - “that might have flown in the early nineties but you are writing Saturday night drama” (a note I frequently received and now have tattooed on my lower back). The trick with guest stories is like any good bit of writing, simple story, complex character and a clear character arc.

The scary thing with a medical drama is the meds - especially if like me, the most you know about emergency medicine was the time you were sat in a festival first aid tent because you drank too much and fell out of your wellies. But that is where the brilliant medical advisors swoop in, and they are brilliant.

The big question which I begin with now is ‘what did this character learn that they wouldn’t have learnt if they hadn’t fallen over a hosepipe…’.

Next up was a pitch meeting with the Heads of Departments - which I assumed was going to be a couple of people but turned out to be an enormous zoom during which I reminded myself I did not win the lottery - I’m meant to be in this room. There I watched everyone discuss the ins and outs, what is possible to do for a guest stunt, where it is possible to film and everything else that has to be taken into account.

Then once we had the green light on that story and the treatments were all done it was onto the scene by scene! Again, this was the first time I had ever written one. I quickly discovered that I bloody love a good bit of colour coding. I would recommend it. Each thread gets its own colour and then you can see how the stories mesh and intertwine - which makes everything clearer. What has too much? What needs more? What cannot go back to back? An added complication is how the lot works. You have a set amount of time on location, and in different areas of the studio but with the help of my script editor, we made sense of it all.

A bit of back and forth on that and we were sailing into the first draft. This was where I did what I will affectionately call the continuing drama cry. “Oh God what am I doing? I have to actually write it and be good and turn this into forty pages!” (she wailed into her sauvignon blanc). But once that was out of my system and also remembering that I had the nicest team around me - it got a lot easier. And OBVIOUSLY the first draft is meant to be terrible. (She tells herself). I’m never one to let perfect get in the way of absolutely readable.

From there on it is all of the fun of rewriting - which I loved. Working on the fly, solving mysteries (Why isn’t this story working? What are these characters' real motivations? Where did all my gin go?) and finding or meeting the characters' voices. It’s great fun. Continuing drama writing takes a particular kind of writer I feel. You can’t be precious, yes that bit of dialogue might have been your Hemingway moment but is it tonally fitting? Does it have a clear thought so that the actor can make sense of what it is you want them to say? Have you nailed that character's voice? (Know your Fairheads from your Beauchamps). Because this isn’t an exercise to stroke an artistic ego, it’s adding a stroke to an already existing painting.

By the time we made it to shooting drafts, the rewrites had all slowed down and we were ready to go and I was lucky enough to get to go to set - although frankly, finding out it wasn’t a real hospital was devastating. Next they’ll be telling me Walford doesn’t actually exist. But getting to see the layout was invaluable, especially going into a second episode. And watching how scenes are turned around by a brilliant team and how the actors roll with your script is a joy. This was where I learnt two particular pieces of advice. Throughout the process I had a terrible habit of getting people stuck talking around beds, which is not that momentum-filled Saturday night drama you want. While chatting about this with one of the team, he told me about a brilliant scene in Game of Thrones, where a man is chatting whilst skinning a deer. It changes the scene completely - he is not just talking, he is skinning a wild animal. So now in any scene I always aim to skin the deer - not literally, although hey if that stunt ends up in the next script then so be it.

And the second piece of great info came from one of the actors who had shifted a few lines. I was worried I hadn’t nailed his voice but he informed me it wasn’t the voice, it was the thought. An actor will love you if you give them a script or a scene that makes sense. Because when it makes sense, the actor can make sense of it. Even if you thought that curve ball line you’d put in was pure genius, is it serving the actor and the scene, or do you just like it? A switch flicked in my head, and now I apply these two rules to everything I write.

Once my episode was all done and dusted I was lucky enough to be invited to a storylining conference. Which was super exciting (and not just because of the free stationery and fact that I hadn’t been in a room with that many people since January of 2020). Watching the team create storylines was such a learning curve too, of course I did my best to contribute but above all I wanted to be there to learn. Watching someone who really knows what they are doing, plot the trajectory of a character and how every piece of their story will fit together, is again, invaluable experience. When you’re in a room with very smart people, the smartest thing you can do is absorb it all.

And now here I am! Back again! My pitches were sent off today, my HOD meeting to discuss them is tomorrow and I couldn’t be happier to be leaping back on that train - because continuing drama is where all of my favourite writers began, and after the mentoring, experience and fun I had the first time round, I can really see why…

Watch Rachel's episode of Casualty, 'Short Fuses' on Saturday 28th August at 9.30pm on BBC One and on BBC iPlayer

Celebrating Casualty at 35 - Discover 10 Memorable Episodes and download and read the scripts

Find out more about Rachel Harper

Watch Rachel's appearance on The Ellen Show

The recent special feature-length episode of Casualty, that aired on August 14, marked both the show’s 35th anniversary and the beginning of the 36th Series.

And what an incredible 35 years it has been! Thrilling, thought-provoking and often heart-breaking, the show has gained a reputation for its combination of powerful, intimate, emotional storytelling; alongside huge stunts and one-take specials, which has gained us multiple award nominations and wins and critical acclaim.

First broadcast on BBC One on 6th September 1986, Casualty has gone on to become the world’s longest running medical drama. Moving from our original Bristol base to our current home at Cardiff’s Roath Lock studios in 2011, the show goes from strength to strength.

To mark the 35 years, we’ve mined our archive to bring you our choice of Ten Memorable Episodes; ranging from Series 4 back in 1989 up to the BAFTA winning first episode of the last series, broadcast on 2nd January 2021, which focussed on the devastating effects of the Covid pandemic on the staff and patients of the Holby-set hospital. Also included in the ten episodes is the unforgettable and controversial finale to Series 7, which saw a riot reduce the hospital to a smouldering ruin and the opening episode of Series 18 (previously voted the ‘Best Ever’ for our 25th anniversary) as a double train crash causes devastation.

The BBC Writersroom have made the scripts for these ten episodes available in their online script library and have also asked all the writers involved to introduce their own episode.

Please let us know if you agree with our choice and share your own memorable episodes in the comments below.

Series 4, Episode 11 (Episode 51) ‘Banking for Beginners’ written by Bryan Elsley (original broadcast 24/11/89)

Alex is left with lots to think about when she is offered a new job in banking, but can she leave the hospital? Meanwhile Jimmy annoyed that nobody considers his opinions and tells Alex that he is considering a career in nursing.

I think Banking For Beginners was my first script for Casualty. I can confidently say that I had no earthly idea how to go about writing it. There was no Writersroom to upskill you in those days. Luckily for me, my script editors were Sally Haynes and Jane Tranter; to this day the best script people I ever worked with. I went on to write for I think 3 or 4 further series of Casualty. I’d love to say it got easier, but it never did. I always struggled with it, but now and then I got it right. Casualty is one of the most demanding technical writing gigs you can be on. But the rewards were massive, I believe my last ever episode got 18 million viewers. Not bad. Everybody on Casualty was absolutely lovely, even when Jane Tranter was on my Ansaphone saying “Pick up Bryan, we know you’re there!”, when my script was 5 days late. I used to put the script on the train at Oxenholme in the Lake District to send it to London, Red Star. That’s how you delivered before the internet. Things have changed a bit.

Congratulations to everyone at Casualty. I was and am extremely proud to have participated in some way. It showed me how to become a professional screenwriter.

Bryan Elsley

Read and Download Series 4, Episode 11 ‘Banking for Beginners’ here

Series 7, Episode 24 (Episode 104) ‘Boiling Point’ written by Peter Bowker (original broadcast 27/2/93)

It's Rob's last day and he has a surprise patient. It looks like the end of the road for Holby City Hospital when a riot ends up in casualty.

My first episode of Casualty and the first ever thing I had on telly went out in November 1992. Under the brilliant guidance of Sally Haynes and Laura Mackie, I was then commissioned to write three further scripts, the final one of which was to be the season finale for the new extended run of 24 episodes. The area I lived in in Leeds had suffered a crime wave driven by mainly bored adolescents and after they broke in and stole my new telly while I was in the house, I wanted to write about the feelings of violence and desire for vigilante justice that their actions aroused in me - a liberal teacher who had only stopped running down the road after them when I realised I was wearing slippers . . . This became a story of how revenge just escalates violence and in my story this culminated in the burning down of the hospital. I think Pete Salt had spoken about increasing threats of violence in A & E so that fed in to the idea. But most of all, I wanted to write about what happens when people stop communicating. There are parts of the script I now cringe at - I think some of the dialogue is on the nail and I think I would like to contextualise the perpetrators a bit more. But I am on the whole proud of this. There was such a fuss in the papers that my Dad rang me after three days - this was a man who normally only used the phone after a football match or on Christmas Day, “They’re not going to sack you, are they? Only I saw that Yentob feller on Right To Reply and he didn’t seem to be sticking up for you."

Peter Bowker

Read and Download Series 7, Episode 24 ‘Boiling Point’ here

Series 15, Episode 36 (Episode 320) ‘Breaking the Spell, Part Two’ written by Katharine Way (original broadcast 28/4/01)

Concluding the two-part story. Holly regains consciousness, only to find she's been kidnapped by Tom, and seizes a dangerous opportunity to escape. Patrick makes a grave error once he realises she's missing, and blames rival suitor Ed, while Colette pulls out all the stops to salvage her relationship with daughter Natalie.

Writing the final episode of any Casualty Series is a real thrill. Characters get killed off and/or written out. In this case, Holly's crazed anaesthetist stalker, Tom, made an unexpected (and, for some, lethal) reappearance. I had a blast writing this episode. The characters did not have quite such fun inhabiting it. But hey...that's drama.

Katharine Way

Please Read and Download Series 15, Episode 36 ‘Breaking the Spell, Part Two’ here

Series 18, Episode 1 (Episode 401) ‘End of the Line, Part One’ written by Ann Marie di Mambro (original broadcast 13/9/03)

First in a two-part story which sees emergency staff members involved in a devastating train crash. Still full of excitement following their recent engagement, Fin and Comfort escape from a compromising situation in a toilet cubicle during the derailment to find a train full of panicking commuters. Meanwhile, a passenger struggles to keep calm as the full horror of her predicament becomes clear.

Writing for Casualty and being lead writer on it are highlights of my writing career, as I've always loved that show. The End of The Line was the first time I got to write the opening episode of a series,  which is very exciting as the production team really do push the boat out. When I delivered the first draft, Mal Young who was then head of drama series, decided it should be a two-parter and not a single episode. It meant a major re-write but he was right as the train crash was so ambitious and the stories it generated so impactful that it needed to breathe over two episodes. I've always loved writing for Comfort, the paramedic, who features in one of the stories. It was the producer, Steve Lightfoot's idea to see the actual crash from inside the toilet on the train where Comfort is having a sexually charged moment with her new fiancé. I am proud to have been part of the team that brought that episode to the screen.

Ann Marie Di Mambro

Read & Download Series 18, Episode 1  ‘End of the Line, Part One’ here

Series 20, Episode 44 (Episode 538) ‘Perfect Day’ written by Gaby Chiappe (original broadcast 29/7/06)

Nathan goes on the warpath after his needle-stick injury. Maggie's Hep B clinic is abused. Kelsey takes bets on Greg's sexuality. An innocent prankster becomes trapped in the boot of a stolen car.

The year I spent on Casualty was the most stable period I’d had as a writer to that time. Working to deadline is always stressful, but I remember that year as being restful - time to think and time to breathe. I loved the collaboration with the medical advisors - particularly Simon Odum and Dr Phil, fifteen years on I still remember certain conversations I had with them. Re-reading this script now I can tell was enjoying myself.

Gaby Chiappe

Read & Download Series 20, Episode 44  ‘Perfect Day’ here

Series 26, Episode 8 (Episode 789) ‘Charlie’s Angels’ written by David Bowker (original broadcast 8/10/11)

Scarlett doubts her nursing abilities, and her resolve is tested during her shift. When faced with a stab victim, does she have what it takes to save their life?

If not for the loyalty of my executive producer Johnathan Young, and my brilliant script editor, Ailsa Macaulay, this Casualty episode might never have been made. Back in 2011, a couple of our BBC colleagues were of the opinion that angels had no place in a medical drama. But the angels were only ever a device to reel viewers in - the story was really about grief and how human beings need to mourn in order to heal. And although it’s lovely that the episode is still remembered, to me, the most memorable thing about Charlie’s Angels was not the writing, but Derek Thompson’s marvellous performance as Charlie.

David Bowker

Read & Download Series 26, Episode 8 'Charlie's Angels' here

Series 31, Episode 1 (Episode 1005/06) ‘Too Old for this Shift’ written by Matthew Barry and Andy Bayliss (original broadcast 27/8/16)

Feature-length episode. As Charlie celebrates his 30th anniversary, the department is thrown into chaos, and the team face their biggest challenge yet.

What an honour and a privilege to be trusted to write such an iconic moment in this great show's history. And more importantly, what an amazing team of people who turned some words on a page into something so visually spectacular. That will always be the overriding memory for me - how everyone on set and behind the scenes, put every last ounce into making it what it was. No greater satisfaction than that. Never been so proud to be part of such a thing.

Andy Bayliss & Matthew Barry

Read & Download Series 31, Episode 1 ‘Too Old for this Shift’ here

Series 31, Episode 38 (Episode 1043) ‘Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep’ written by Dana Fainaru (original broadcast 17/6/17)

Ethan looks for answers about Cal's last moments as he plans his last goodbye.

Casualty is a show very dear to my heart. Throughout the years it's retained something pure, immediate, heartfelt - both in terms of storytelling and team of people to work with. I distinctly remember this episode because there was no story for Ethan on the table apart from a funeral. Both myself and the story editor, Roxanne, couldn't stand the thought of such a brilliant character (and actor) having to mope for an entire episode. Recently before that, we had a story conference and this amazing young woman came to talk to us about HIV in young people, I remember it touched us all so much and I was like - bagsy that story!

It really chimed so much with Ethan's own predicament so it was one of these times where things just really fell into place naturally. When I was watching this episode back one thing really shone through - just how much the cast love each other. There was so much warmth in it I'd love to take the credit for that and say it's the writing - but really, it's just the alchemy of the show and the entire bunch of people who make it.

Dana Fainaru

Read & Download Series 31, Episode 38 'Do Not Stand at my Grave and Weep' here

Series 34, Episode 36 (Episode 1175) Jade Meets her Birth Mother’ written by Charlie Swinbourne and Sophie Woolley (original broadcast 11/7/20)

Jade meets her birth mother and finally uncovers the truth behind her past, whilst Charlie is reminded of Duffy when treating a man who has recently received a heart transplant.

I’d never had the chance to write for Casualty or collaborate with Charlie Swinbourne before, so I was delighted when Loretta Preece invited me to co-write on this.

It was thrilling to see the end result – beautiful acting, John Maiden’s direction and BBC Research and Development’s innovative audio recording and design.

Sophie Woolley

This episode of Casualty stands as a marker for where the TV industry should be heading.

It is a story about a deaf nurse, which was not only written by two deaf writers, but directed by a deaf director and starring two brilliant deaf actors. I’m very proud to be one of those writers.

It all happened because the team on the show, Loretta Preece in particular, believed in us and gave us the opportunity to tell our story from an authentically deaf perspective.

Jade’s story is about how deafness has impacted on three generations of a family, and how those generations see deafness differently. It’s about a deaf nurse and how her day is different to that of those around her. It’s also a story with heartbreaking moments, and funny moments too.

We can only thank the team, and everyone involved for giving us the opportunity, as well as the BBC Writersroom for setting up the Writers Access Group, that Sophie and I were part of. I hope that people who read the script enjoy it and use it as fuel for telling their own stories in the future.

Charlie Swinbourne

Read & Download Series 34, Episode 36 "Jade Meets her Birth Mother" here

Read more about Charlie & Sophie’s experience writing this episode

Series 35, Episode 1 (Episode 1182/3) Covid Special written by Kevin Rundle (original broadcast 2/1/21)

Connie struggles to protect her team when the coronavirus pandemic hits Holby ED, Will becomes disillusioned with his work and Fenisha rushes to keep her baby safe.

From the very first conversations, this felt like it was going to be a special episode to be a part of - the ambition was to convey what the first period of lockdown was like for NHS staff in an emergency department. The storyline I was given was exceptional, the sort of outline that gives you tingles... And the first research discussion with the medic, who had lived through pretty much every event that was eventually portrayed on screen, was eye-opening and awe-inspiring. The challenge for me was; don't muck this up!

Thanks to the support of a very gifted script editor, the guidance of the entire production team, headed up by Mat McHale and Loretta Preece, a phenomenal director in Steve Hughes and a cracking cast who were all on fire... we seemed to do an alright job. When the episode was shot, it felt a bit like a retrospective on the pandemic, it was late August, early September 2020 and things were returning to normal... it eventually transmitted a few days before the third, and longest period of lockdown. We had no idea things would continue to be so tough for the incredible staff of the NHS.

Kevin Rundle

Read & Download Series 35, Episode 1 "Covid Special" here

Watch Casualty’s 35th Anniversary Episode on BBC iPlayer

Read more Casualty scripts here

Find more blog posts about writing Continuing Drama here

At the first ever Writers Access Group workshop, Anne Edyvean (the former Head of BBC Writersroom) told us that we would get work at the end. She was right. My second TV credit, and first episode of EastEnders airs on 16th June.

EastEnders was part of my life growing up in Brent, and later East London. Soap operas were the first shows on TV to be subtitled, which meant my Deaf mum could watch with us. When there was a good doof doof ending, my mum (a TV actor/producer herself) would lead a round of applause long after the credits.

Until I joined BBC Writersroom, I mostly made my own work as a writer and performer, which helped me develop my voice and confidence. I wrote for radio and theatre and I got my agent (for acting and writing) after starring in Cast Offs on Channel 4 (produced by Eleven Films).

Thanks to the efforts of Amira EI Nemr and Marigold Joy in setting up the BBC Writersroom Writers' Access Group in 2019, my name was on the industry radar. In 2020, I had a Zoom panel interview with the executive producer of EastEnders Jon Sen and three producers. They asked me to train as a writer on the show – to write a shadow script, following the same process of a real episode. The trial was supported by the show’s brilliant development producer, Kieran Grimes. He worked with me to practice the leap from the story document into making the scenes my own, writing in the voices of the show, the subtext and actions and hitting the turning points.

When the trial ended, the producers offered me a commission to write an episode for real. I was so excited to be writing for EastEnders!

The job started with a commissioning meeting for the block, where the writers ask questions about their episodes. The executives, script editors, schedulers and researchers and writers are at this meeting, and the Story document for the block goes out a few days before.

With my first episode, there were lockdown Covid restrictions in place, and so I wrote a scene breakdown for the scheduling team to check. Actors were in silos, meaning the different groups could not cross in scenes.

As a new writer on the show, I was well supported by the development producer Kieran, and script editor for that episode, Sophie Peters. Different producers and editors read different drafts. The executive producers read the second draft along with the other episodes in the block. They have a one-day meeting about the week of episodes. That’s when there can be some big changes, based on how the stories are working across the whole block. There might also be changes for continuity with the other episodes in the block through the early drafts.

The length of notes usually gets less over the course of the five drafts. On my first episode I also had a fabulous EastEnders core writer mentor, Pete Lawson, who told me that we all get certain types of notes in the beginning. It helped to know that everyone goes through it as we learn the show. By the last two drafts there are just small tweaks and the turnaround is shorter.

The writing schedule is intense and fast. There are a few days off whilst waiting for notes for the first and second draft. In order to deliver, I learnt not to fill the days off with meetings for other work, and actually take some time off. Time management is important – sticking to writing a certain number of scenes per day. Ideally I want a day or so to read and tweak before the 9am deadline.

After getting notes on a draft it’s good to read them, put them away for a bit, have a think, note down any questions for the editor, make a plan and then get on with it. There isn’t time for anything else. I was grateful for the astute clarity and directness of the notes on EastEnders, as well as the trust and collaborative process.

I loved being part of the huge gang that creates EastEnders. I also liked digging deep into my memory bank for different types of colloquial, London speech. Working on the show has stretched me and used my strengths as a writer in a way I’ve always dreamed of.

I also use my Deaf experience – of all the different Deaf identities that I’ve had over the years, as well as being from a Deaf family, speaking and signing, and now as a self-described deaf cyborg.

Tips for writing for continuing drama. Go for it – you can do it (by learning how to do it). Trust in the process. Do something nice whilst you’re waitingnotwaiting for notes.

Watch Sophie's episode of EastEnders on Wednesday 16th June at 8.35pm on BBC One or on BBC iPlayer

Find out more about Sophie Woolley on her website

The BBC Writersroom Writers' Access Group

Casualty - Writing Jade's Story - find out more on this blog post from Sophie Woolley and Charlie Swinbourne

It was the mid-nineties and I sat in a bright yellow wheelchair on stage at my secondary school in front of my entire year during assembly. For some reason I can’t explain, I would routinely write school plays about issues: drugs, bullying, disability etc, and with a group of friends perform them in front of assembly. My dear friends Joe Ferridge and Jason Health would be corralled by me to join in. I was obsessed with Bon Jovi at the time and as John belted out his lyrics we would head to the stage to act out our little pieces, hoping to positively influence our school mates with the power of drama.

Cut to January 2020 and I was working at ITV on Coronation Street, having been selected for ITV Original Voices. I was one of four people offered the chance to work with the story team and then write a sample script on a show that was turning 60 years old.

Just before I started my time at Coronation Street I had handed in draft one of a script of Doctors for BBC One. I had been commissioned on my broadcast debut script after taking part in the BBC Writersroom's Writers' Access Group. As I sat in the canteen on lunch, overlooking Weatherfield, I took script notes from the wonderful Emma Keaveney on my Doctors script. It hit me how far I had come from that boy who wrote stage plays at school, now working on two iconic TV shows. No Bon Jovi this time, but the same boy who had so much he wanted to say, and so much ambition to change the world by creating entertaining, engaging drama.

Having worked on Doctors twice as an actor I was pleased that my Writers' Access Group journey led me to a continuing drama that has a special place in my heart. I’ve been lucky to work with many departments of the BBC and without a shadow of a doubt the most welcoming, supportive and enjoyable for me has been Doctors. It is a wonderful show, and the perfect environment to grow talent. From the pitch concept, to the scene by scene, and all the subsequent drafts the team are an absolute joy to work with. It is also one of the most rewarding shows to write for, as fifty percent of the episode is completely generated by the writer, while fifty percent is the serial. It is challenging too, as the speed of production and budgets mean that you have to really engage your brain to overcome problems and work within the limits of the show. There is a reason that Doctors is a gateway into writing for the BBC, it sharpens all your tools, and many writers enjoy coming back to the show time and time again.

My first episode was delayed due to Covid-19, and now with some slight Covid tweaks it is hitting TV screens this week. Suddenly all the years of rejections that all writers experience begin to fade, all that is left is my deep gratitude to the BBC Writersroom team for amplifying my voice.

My advice to anyone still waiting for that email saying they made it to the next round is to never ever give up, keep applying. For those who do make it onto a BBC Writersroom development scheme it might feel like you are finally arriving at a destination, but it is only the beginning of a brilliant journey. The BBC Writersroom team dedicate their entire time to taking your whisper of a voice and turning it into a roar. The masterclasses, meeting commissioners, having access to mentors, all of this gives you the skills and confidence to pitch for the next project on your journey as a writer. The hard part is deciding what you want to write, and what you are trying to say.

For me, having been born with a disability, that kid on stage knew exactly what he was trying to say even back then, he just didn’t know that someday he would get the chance to say it on BBC One!

Watch David Proud's first episode of Doctors on Thursday 26th November 2020 on BBC One or on BBC iPlayer

Read more blog posts about the Writers' Access Group including the announcement of the writers for the second year of the scheme

What was the journey to the point of being given the chance to write this episode of Casualty? 

Charlie: I'd spent over a decade creating dramas, comedies and documentaries with deaf actors and contributors, in sign language, having a lot of different experiences of telling different types of stories, always with deaf people at their heart.

Becoming part of the BBC Writersroom's Writers' Access Group gave me the chance to meet mainstream producers for the first time, share my work with them and take steps into making programmes for a wider audience.

It was through the group that both Sophie Woolley and I met Loretta Preece, who worked for Doctors at the time. She later moved to Casualty and contacted us about discussing an episode about the character of Jade. We went down to Cardiff and spent a day discussing the character and potential stories, including having a tour of the set! It was a really positive, encouraging day, and we were delighted to be commissioned to co-write the episode.

Sophie: I’ve written for stage and BBC radio drama and sitcom. I took part in the BBC Writersroom's Writers' Access Group. I wrote a pitch for another show which led to being asked to pitch and then write for Casualty with Charlie. We went to Cardiff for the first two meetings and had a set visit.

Once the opportunity to write for Casualty came about, what was the process of devising and pitching this episode? Who did you work with? How long was that process?

Charlie: During the initial day we spent in Cardiff, we started sketching out stories, sharing a lot of ideas and thoughts. We then went away and wrote a treatment for the episode, before then going on to write a scene by scene document.

Along the way a lot of things changed as we got feedback from the team and made changes, big and small. It was a very collaborative process. I remember we went back to Cardiff again a couple of months later for another meeting and our sign language interpreter commented that the stories seemed completely different than the first time! We were tweaking the stories all the time as we went through different drafts and moved on to writing the scripts.

Sophie: I worked with Charlie and the script editor, the medical editor, and the producers. We also met with the wider production team including the people designing the sound, because the sound will be from Jades POV. When we got notes from the medical editor, it was from all of the medical experts employed by the show. So each section of medicine in the show, is checked. The medical aspect of the writing was as creative and exciting as the emotional and character storylines.

What help are you given in terms of story documents, character profiles etc? Do you work with a Story Producer, Script Editor? Who supports you?

We were sent documents with all the storylines for the episodes around ours, so we had a sense of what came before our episode and what was going to come after it. We also had a series bible, character biographies and a floorplan of the set!

We were directly working with our Script Editor, who'd collate the responses from the team so that we would get one set of notes for each draft, which we'd then usually talk about and discuss before working on our next draft. We also had a lot of input from the producer, Dafydd Llewelyn, throughout the process.

Is there a structure to a Casualty episode in terms of A, B and C storylines, guest stories and serial stories for the show’s permanent cast? Was this new to you?

Charlie: When you're writing a Casualty episode, it is a mixture of continuing stories about the show's permanent cast which are combined with your own guest stories and characters to create your episode.

There are A, B and C storylines, as well as other story beats that writers will need to include! I was aware of this way of working through my previous experiences, but each show is different - the team gave us great guidance and support with this.

Sophie: I hadn't used A B and C story lines in my previous theatre and radio work so that was all new and very exciting!

Can you set the scene in terms of Jade’s story to this point for anyone who hasn’t been watching?

Jade was in foster care at a young age and has put off meeting her birth mother. She doesn't know why she was given up as a child and is scared of being rejected. This episode shows her meeting her birth mother, who she knows very little about.

Recently, she's read a short letter from her birth mother and met her social worker, and this has led her to make the decision to meet her. When she does meet her, the situation is different to what she'd thought...

This episode takes Jade into new territory in terms of dealing with her history, her sense of her self, and her deafness. From now on the audience will know her in a deeper way than ever before.

At what point in the development of the script did you include elements like the audio giving the audience a sense of Jade’s hearing loss and her world, how it changes with and without hearing aids and in different environments? Are these written into the script?

Sophie: I thought about it from the start. Yes it was in the script. We spoke to the actor Gabriella Leon at the start as well, to get her experience. We all have different types of deafness. I have acquired deafness. I went totally deaf slowly, over 20 years, I used captioners and BSL interpreters to access my work and a few years ago I got a cochlear implant. This means I have experienced many types of deafness. Each time I lost more hearing, The world was suddenly changed again. 

Charlie: This was a part of the script from the earliest stages. We were always including what Jade's soundscape might be like as she went through her journey in the episode, drawing upon our conversations in Cardiff, which Gabriella Leon, who plays Jade, was a big part of.

We also made it clear which words Jade might miss, as people spoke to her. And of course, there are points when she's not wearing her hearing aids at all, so that was included.

The descriptions of the sound became a bigger part of our thinking once the team started planning how the audio would be recorded and would play out on screen, giving the audience a true sense of what Jade hears.

How important was it to show Jade’s mother being Deaf (ie using sign language) and the distinction with Jade’s use of hearing aids?

Sophie: Deaf people are all different. And we are all brought up differently. This impacts the way we communicate and our confidence in the world and in life.

Charlie: We wanted to explore deafness within a family dynamic, to show that the thing people take for granted - that you can talk to your mother, or daughter - might be a bit more complicated. This went beyond just Jade and her mother, but also reached her grandmother too. We see three generations of a family in this episode and how deafness has touched each of their lives in different ways.

What challenges did this bring for production? Did you work with the sound department to explain your intentions?

Charlie: We did quite a lot of thinking about how the sound would work as the process went on, and we had a meeting in Cardiff where we all decided that the audience would hear what Jade hears.

We talked with the sound team that day, got a sense of what they could do, and gave them a sense of our vision. A lot more work went into it as the director John Maidens (who is also deaf) became involved and started planning his vision for the episode.

Having John as director was brilliant because he completely got the story, knew from experience what we were getting at. With two deaf actors as well, the episode was made with deaf people in many of the key creative positions, which I believe is a real first and something I hope the industry sees as a real example to follow.

What do you hope people will take away from the episode?

Sophie: A deeper understandng of how brilliant Nurse Jade is. I hope people will take away understanding about the complexity of the different deaf experiences. We are all different.

Charlie: I hope the audience really enjoy it, that they're moved by the story, and get to know Jade in a different way to before. I also hope that long after they've watched it, a sense of deaf people's lives and experiences stay with them.

For many deaf people, difficulties with communicating with their own families, and sometimes the feeling of their deafness not being fully accepted by those close to them, is a big part of their lives. Knowing that from real-life experience definitely helped to inspire elements of this story. Hopefully deaf people will feel their lives are reflected in this episode, and non-deaf people get to see a side of life they might never have thought about before.

What have you got coming up next?

Sophie: I’ve been doing some more TV writing (under wraps for now!). I also have a writer bursary at Wellcome Collection, a medical archive to research there this summer.

Charlie: The Eastenders storyline I pitched is still on screen, I've also written a script for a new CBBC series, and I'm currently writing a 45 minute drama for BBC One. As well as that, I'm writing a short lockdown comedy featuring two grumpy old deaf men who are trying to talk to one another on Facetime! The current situation has delayed some of my work but I'm still writing every day and I'm hoping to keep learning and developing as time goes on. The last year has been really transformative for me and I'm really excited about what the future holds.

Watch Jade's story on Casualty on BBC One on Saturday 11th July at 8.25pm and on BBC iPlayer

Join in an accessible Facebook Live event immediately after the broadcast over on the Casualty Facebook Page

Casualty is a BBC Studios Production for BBC One

On Monday night, a special ‘silent’ episode of Eastenders was broadcast from the perspective of the character of Ben Mitchell. The episode was unlike any previous episode of the show - to reflect Ben’s deafness, it had limited audio, fractured sentences and incomplete subtitles.

Watching the episode was a proud moment for me because it was part of a storyline I pitched to the show’s writing team last summer. And it was the latest step in a journey that began when I joined the BBC Writersroom’s Writers Access Group.

How it began

Two years ago, I went to a scriptwriting workshop featuring the BBC Writersroom which was run by the Disabled Artists Networking Community (DANC) in Manchester. It was there that I found out about a new BBC writing scheme for writers with a disability.

Meeting once a month for nine months, there’d be masterclasses in all elements of scriptwriting for TV, from producers and writers from inside and outside of the BBC. It sounded almost too good to be true.

After applying with samples of my previous scripts and talking about my previous work and approach to writing at an interview in London, I was really pleased to be offered a place.

The Writers' Access Group

One of the best things about being in the group was simply getting to know the other writers as each month went by.

Everyone had previous credits in TV or theatre, and everyone was talented and passionate about their writing. They also happened to be very nice people who were willing to share their chocolate rice cakes during coffee breaks! Some of the writers became good friends and after a while we set up a WhatsApp group so that we could chat and debate stuff with one another wherever we were.

We all had different access needs which were provided for by the BBC Writersroom. I’m partially deaf and hearing everything when in group situations is the thing I find hardest, so I had a speech-to-text palantypist at each session, meaning I could read what was being said and fill in any gaps.

Monthly Masterclasses

The monthly sessions with writers like John Yorke, Tim Prager and Kirstie Swain, plus producers from different parts of the BBC, gave us a strong sense of the principles and realities of writing for TV and radio and what works for different types of programmes.

One practical tip has changed my daily writing routine. Frank Spotnitz gave us a tip of using a cork board to place story beats on, and emphasised the importance of spending serious time planning our stories. I’ve now got my own slightly worn out cork board which I spend a lot of hours staring at while rearranging pieces of card, which may not sound glamorous but has really transformed my approach to structuring my scripts. So a big thanks to Frank for that!

After initial sessions in London, we visited the set of Doctors in Birmingham to meet the show’s producers, then went up to Media City in Salford to visit CBBC and CBeebies. We were assigned script editors and worked on new spec' scripts which would help us draw more interest for our work. In our final monthly session, we had a speed dating session with producers and agents where we were able to pitch both our ideas and ourselves as writers.

Getting involved with EastEnders

Each of us was assigned a mentor and I was linked up with Jon Sen, the Executive Producer of EastEnders. Jon gave me an insight into how the programme works, and invited me to visit a long-term story conference with all the writers.

To be in a room with 30 writers and producers talking about all the show’s legendary characters and what might happen to them in the next year was an amazing experience. The BBC Writersroom arranged for me to have a palantypist there so that I could follow what was said. Listening to (and reading) all the stories and discussion got me thinking.

The character of Ben Mitchell had been deaf in one ear since childhood, but his deafness hadn’t really been focused on for many years. I’d also long wanted to see a signing deaf character become part of the square.

So on the train home, I wrote a story where Ben loses more of his hearing, with Frankie, who is a deaf character, coming into his life to support him. The idea was that the two characters represented different ways of being deaf - while Ben struggles to accept his deafness, Frankie shows him how it’s possible to be positive about deaf identity. The story drew on my own experiences of growing up knowing different types of deaf people.

After I sent the story in, Jon replied positively, asking me to develop the story further, and then after a few more drafts, he invited me to the next story conference to pitch it to the writers.

Pitching my own story

Pitching my story to the EastEnders writing team at the end of a very long, hot day of the summer was probably the most nerve-wracking moment of my life. Would they want one of their main characters to change so much? Would I be able to explain the deaf world in a way everyone could understand?

After I’d outlined my story and the character of Frankie, along with the idea of an episode from Ben’s point of view, the writers asked me lots of questions about deafness and deaf culture and how it could be portrayed on screen. This time I had two sign language interpreters, again arranged with the support of the BBC Writersroom, which enabled me to understand everyone properly and (hopefully!) explain the deaf world as clearly as possible.

As I left the room everyone seemed really positive and I felt like the story had a chance.

Multitasking

In the meantime, having made contacts through the monthly masterclasses, I’d been sending my work to different producers I’d met, which led to meetings and workshops at Casualty in Cardiff, and CBBC in Salford.

This led to a real breakthrough - two script commissions, to write an episode of a children’s series for CBBC, and co-write an episode of Casualty with another member of the Writers' Access Group, Sophie Woolley. Then I found out that EastEnders were running my story, and I was going to work as an adviser on the storyline. This is when things got really busy!

Over the next few months, if I wasn’t writing either of my scripts, I was reading EastEnders story documents and scripts relating to my story and feeding back on them. It was fascinating seeing which parts of my original story were kept and which parts were changed, as the story expanded to become part of episodes running over a number of months.

I was busier than I’d ever been in my life, working with different production teams, hitting multiple deadlines, and learning about my own strengths as well as areas I need to work on!

Reaching the screen

In late March, after EastEnders’ 35th anniversary episodes, the storyline of Ben becoming deaf finally hit the screen. It was surreal watching the story I’d pitched finally becoming part of a show I’d watched since I was a child.

A few weeks ago, Frankie (played by the brilliant deaf actor Rose Ayling-Ellis) arrived on the square, then the silent episode (I worked with the writer Simon Ashdown as Story Consultant on the episode) aired on Monday night.

It’s been incredible to see the audience response. Frankie is a character a lot of deaf people feel they relate to. I think the biggest achievement of the silent episode was taking the wider audience into a deaf person’s perspective for half an hour, showing how altered Ben’s world is. I’ve seen comments from deaf people who said that the silent episode helped their families to understand how they hear the world for the first time. It’s amazing what can be sparked off by writing a story on a long train journey from London to Yorkshire!

The future

The Writers' Access Group has definitely transformed my career. I’ve learned from the masterclasses, gained experience, made vital contacts, and written for programmes I’d always dreamed of being part of.

What the group shows is that with the right access, writers with disabilities are able to show what they can do.

There’s still a long way to go, but it feels like the industry is starting to change in terms of its approach towards disabled writers. People are realising that we offer a different perspective, whether we are writing stories related to disability or not.

The group are still in touch nearly every day, supporting one another through the ups and downs of a writer’s life on our WhatsApp group! Writing is a solitary pursuit, so having people you can chat with and ask for advice from is really valuable.

You’ll be seeing more of our work appearing on your screens soon. I’m also looking forward to seeing what future intakes of the Writers' Access Group get up to! If you’re thinking of applying, I’d definitely recommend it.

Watch the EastEnders episode from Monday 1st June on BBC iPlayer

Charlie Swinbourne has written dramas, comedies and documentaries often focusing on deaf characters. He won an RTS Yorkshire Writer Award for his sketch show Deaf Funny in 2018 and has also worked as a journalist. He is based near Leeds. The episode of Casualty which he co-wrote will be broadcast in July, and his CBBC episode will be filmed later this year.

Find out more about Charlie Swinbourne on his website 

Before the BBC Studios Writers’ Academy I worked mainly as a performance poet. I’d toured two shows, Burning Books (2015) and A Self Help Guide To Being In Love With Jeremy Corbyn (2018) to the Edinburgh Fringe and around the UK. The shows were published as poetry collections by Burning Eye Books, and I also did gigs at poetry nights & delivered workshops in schools, prisons, probation hostels, and libraries nationally. I was on the BBC’s radar because I’d won BBC Poetry Slam Champion in 2018 and done some gigs and TV and radio for them. In 2019, mid-tour, I dashed up from London to Liverpool to perform at the BBC 6 Music festival, which was special because I went to university in Liverpool, and it is a city which will always have a big chunk of my heart.

I saw Sally Abbott tweet a link to the BBC Writers' Academy around April 2019, saying that she had done it and how gruelling and brilliant it was. I had no TV writing experience but I had written a stage play which had done a 10 date tour. I really wanted to write for TV and had a spec' script that I’d been developing for a couple of years, but having sent it to various submission windows with nothing back I was close to giving up.

I didn’t rate my chances of getting very far in the selection process because I felt with a background mainly in poetry I couldn’t be what they were looking for, but three months paid training and three broadcast episodes on shows I’d grown up watching felt like too huge an opportunity to ignore. I sent off my spec' script and my pitch for a regular character in a BBC Continuing Drama (finally a chance to pitch my very exciting Valerie in Doctors storyline!) I then did what I always do, clicked send and tried to forget I’d sent it. So the email saying I’d been longlisted two months later was a surprise.

The next step was going to a workshop in London led by John Yorke, with six other people who were all as nervous and bewildered as each other. I had thought the hardest bit would be trying to overcome my imposter syndrome but it was actually the 10 question BBC Continuing Drama pop quiz (who lived either side of Dot Cotton in 1998?)

For me, the BBC Studios Writers’ Academy was transformative. I lived in London during the week, coming home to Leicester at weekends, I didn’t have to worry about how I was going to pay the bills month to month (an absolute luxury as a freelancer), I just focused on writing and I learnt so much. It’s relentless, there are no days off, you’re exhausted the entire time, but you write the most you’ve ever written in your life.

The key thing I learnt was why stories do and don’t work. My laptop was littered with half-finished scripts; stories I’d lost interest in and couldn’t work out how to fix. The Academy teaches you how to finish stories; how to identify problems and how to fix them.

The format of the Academy is 13 weeks divided into classroom lessons, writing from home, guest speakers and 1-1 tutorials. John’s a really good teacher; I realised that when I came home the first weekend and tried to explain narrative structure to my Engineer husband. On Thursdays the guest speakers ranged from previous Academy graduates to Jimmy McGovern, Laurie Nunn and Jed Mercurio.

In December we were allocated to our first BBC Continuing Drama shows. It’s terrifying when you realise that all that stuff you did in the safe environment of the classroom you now have to do for real, but I’m currently working on an EastEnders episode and they've been really supportive. You’re allocated a mentor who’s worked on the show for years, and your Script Editor and the story team know this is the first programme you’ve worked on since the Academy classroom, so you’re not thrown quite in at the deep end. There are a number of people who want to make sure you don’t sink. I’ve still got four more drafts to go before it reaches telly screens in July. By that time I’ll be working on Casualty, then Holby in the autumn, and River City for a story-lining attachment at the end of the year.

As well as guaranteed broadcast episodes with three of the BBC’s flagship shows, what makes the Writers’ Academy special is that you’re also paired up with a production company to develop an original series idea. I’ve just started working with BBC Studios London to write a treatment for the spec script which got me on the Academy.

In terms of advice for people thinking of applying I would say don’t be put off if you think you’re not what they’re looking for. They’re not looking for people with a load of TV writing credits to their name but just with a talent for writing and a desire to make good quality telly. I definitely didn’t think they’d be interested in a poet who’d been touring shows about The Labour Party for eight years!

The BBC Studios Writers’ Academy is one of a kind. It’s the hardest I’ve ever worked, but my writing’s in the best shape it’s ever been in. When I’m asked 'Why should people apply?' I think 'Well why wouldn’t you?' It’s the BBC. It’s John Yorke. If you want to learn how to write really good telly, it’s probably one of the best things you can do.

Applications for the next BBC Studios Writers' Academy will be open from Monday 30th March to Sunday 19th April. Applications will be via the BBC Writersroom E-Submissions system. This year this unique paid training programme will, for the first time, invite applications from all writers, with no professional credit or representation required.

Find out full details of the Writers' Academy on the BBC Studios website

Can you tell us about some of your previous work?

I’ve worked in theatre, film and radio. Attachments with Liverpool Everyman, Royal Exchange and the National Theatre. Recent theatre credits have been my play Wilderness at Hampstead Theatre and The Monstrum for NT Connections. I’ve written three afternoon plays for BBC Radio 4 and two films The Big Day and To Know Him. I’m currently working in a writers room with Sky.

What was it that appealed to you about the BBC Studios Writers’ Academy? Did you have experience of writing television before?

Over the past couple years I’ve had the opportunity to work on two films, which allowed me to make new connections in film and television. However, I’m still a fairly newbie when it comes to screenwriting and I wanted more practical television writing experience. The BBC Studios Writers’ Academy gives you the opportunity to write for these huge primetime shows whilst learning about all the constraints and possibilities of the development process. The added offer of getting to work with a BBC Studios affiliated independent production company on our own original idea felt like a hugely exciting prospect too.

How did you find out about the BBC Studios Writers’ Academy and what was the process of applying?

I think perhaps my agent, Julia Mills, had first mentioned it, but then a producer Luke Fresle came to see my play at Hampstead and encouraged me some more. As well as sending in our original work, we also had to pitch a storyline for an existing character.

I was then invited to a workshop, which initially I imagined would be a big room full of people, only to find myself sat round a small table of about eight people and John Yorke (they’d broken the long-list down into small groups to work with throughout the week). There was no hiding in that room, and you were quickly exposed if you were not up to date on any of the soaps and storylines. I felt pretty certain by the end of it that I was not getting a call back! But I then received the shortlist email and was invited to interview.

I made sure that I really watched, researched and had an opinion on all of the shows from then on. We also had to verbally pitch our own original series. A few days later, I was thrilled to get the email inviting me on the course.

What knowledge did you have to demonstrate with regard to your chosen show or other BBC continuing dramas? Have you been a viewer for a long time?

Well that first interview workshop with John involved a pop quiz on all of the soaps with very difficult questions! I have to say that I didn’t fare well with that. In all honesty I’ve dipped in and out of the soaps over the years, but in preparation for interview I completely absorbed myself in them again. A lot of the questions we were asked were about what we loved about them but also what we felt were their weaknesses, so a real understanding of their histories and the state of play today was important.

The course itself gives you a really thorough insight into the way these shows are constructed and how they differ. And of course, you have to keep up with watching them all! I am of course a truly avid viewer these days.

Once you found out you’d gained a place on the Writers’ Academy what happened next? What is the format of the academy?

Once I began to receive details of the course, I realised what a huge commitment and undertaking it was going to be. It’s important to note, in my case, I have two small children and I soon realised that I would have to relocate to London (I’m Liverpool based) Monday-Friday for the first three months. This was a big ask, and I’m lucky to have a supportive husband and parents who were able to step in whilst I was away. Still, that element was the hardest.

The format was Mondays and Tuesdays in class at Elstree Studios with John 10-6pm – and aside from lunch John would pretty much work us that whole time. PowerPoint lectures, quick fire individual exercises, watching/analysing clips and films and working on longer group activities that would be presented back to the group. I would often feel pretty spent come 6pm but there would usually still be homework to be taken back that night.

Wednesday was a working from home day – I would be in my hotel. Usually we would be working on a practice draft for one of the soaps or an original script that we had been set at the start of the course. Frequently we would be working on more than one task. Deadlines would be for end of day – or usually in my case, the earlier hours of the following morning!

Thursdays would be guest lecturer day. I would make my way to BBC Television Centre and there we would have a whole range of people come to speak to us – writers, directors, producers, the likes of Russell T Davies, Dearbhla Walsh, Kate Oates to mention just a few of the many brilliant people that we got to meet and hear from. And Fridays would be one to one tutorials with John and time to travel back home and collapse for me.

When did you find out that you’d been given an episode of Casualty? How does the writing process work in terms of liaising with the team there, being provided with storylines etc.? Who supports your through the process?

We started the Writers’ Academy in September 2019 and by Christmas we had all been allocated the order that we were going to work on each soap during 2020. My first soap is Casualty, which has just started this week (w/b March 9th) – so I’m just now beginning the whole process. So far I have been sent the commissioning document, which contains the episode that I will be writing. In it there’s a story document with contains all the main serial strands at play. I was given these two weeks before being introduced to my script editor, who I have just this week begun pitching guest storyline ideas to.

The great thing about Casualty is being able to really put your own stamp on an episode with a guest story, and I’m now starting to really find everything that I’ve learnt about narrative structure really helpful in looking at how the regular’s story works with the guest story. The next stage will be for me to write a three-page treatment of my episode and then go to Cardiff, where Casualty is based, to pitch my episode.

It’s then onto writing a scene by scene and then approximately six drafts of my episode. Everything I’ve been told is that the script editor is your main point of contact throughout the process. They feed through a lot of the notes and it’s important to maintain a positive relationship with them – they’re highly skilled middlemen and they should support you to realise the best version of your episode within the parameters of the show.

What stage are you at now and when does your episode reach our screens? Has it gone through lots of drafts?

So yes, the very beginning! My contract started this week with Casualty and my production draft won’t be in till June 4th. My episode is series 35, episode 13 – though I’m not sure of the exact broadcast time yet, I think that it may be November. One of the surprises for me has been realising what a huge undertaking each show is. A lot of the soap writers don’t work on anything else whilst they are working on the soaps. I’ll spend almost four months working on just one episode of Casualty and the schedule is pretty full-on in terms of treatments and drafts.

What has the process taught you? Have there been any surprises along the way so far or anything that you would do differently?

I think this process has taught me to balance theory and instinct. It was brilliant being back in the classroom – and I quickly realised that it had been a long time since I’d been there. It felt very strange being taught formally – and in the beginning I wanted to know and implement it all. But that did strangle my writing a bit. I’ve been able to step back and take the lessons that are useful whilst holding onto what feels intuitive. With the soaps, it’s interesting because you’re working in this big pre-existing engine but that same need to hold onto your voice feels important to me. To make episodes unique to you. To still have a vision for them. That’s what I hope to take forward this year.

Do you have any advice to share with people who may be thinking about applying this time?

Definitely watch the soaps! Watch them to death. Respect them, their structure, their brilliant balancing act of multi-strand, multi-layered stories, their history – and then dissect them. Really get into what you love and what you hate about them, and what excites you about writing for them.

Applications for the next BBC Studios Writers' Academy will be open from Monday 30th March to Sunday 19th April. Applications will be via the BBC Writersroom E-Submissions system. This year this unique paid training programme will, for the first time, invite applications from all writers, with no professional credit or representation required.

Find out full details of the BBC Studios Writers' Academy on the BBC Studios website

Some of our storylines are intended to hit and hit hard with the beginning of mental health awareness week, and – spoilers – we’ll be seeing some of our regulars in a new light. On top of which individual writers have pitched their own story of the day. I’ve been greedy and written two episodes (8th May & 11th May) - I would have written more but I’ve run out of blackmail material on both Peter and Naz.) One script looks at how mental health issues are impacting on public services. The second explores how our regulars are dealing with what has happened to them in various stories.

I have been asked why this subject draws me so much. There are two answers:

Apparently I very grandly announced to my parents around the time of my fifth birthday that I was going to be either a doctor or psychiatrist. There is no way I could have known what a psychiatrist was at that age, it must have sounded very impressive to me so I used it to impress them. It was a little ray of hope my father clung to until he had to accept I am academically useless, totally hopeless at taking written exams, and there was no way I would ever have either as my career. But being reminded of the story years later by him, I tried to understand what made me latch onto such an idea at that age, and stories concerning this far-ranging subject – from family therapy to case studies of multiple personality disorders – have always intrigued and informed me. They all come back to the same question, whatever the circumstances: who are we? What makes us, us?

The second reason? Whilst researching the stories for mental health week, I found this quote online: “What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candour, more unashamed conversation.”

I could not agree more, and I hope the conversation continues long after the stories we’ve told.

Special mental health episodes of Doctors will air on BBC One at 1.45pm from the 8-15 May 2018 and on BBC iPlayer

Find out more on the Doctors website and watch short films featuring the cast and relating to mental health

Catch up with episodes of Doctors on BBC iPlayer

Find out more about the whole week on a blog from Script Editor Nasreen Ahmed

I got to witness first hand the absolute necessity for excellence. I mean it’s one of the old tropes of the industry to diminish the work of people who work in soap land, but you soon realise as budgets are pinched and the demand for massive output continues the talent needed to deliver 14 pages of story each shooting day is a pre-requisite. Hard-work, skill and a love for the show keep fuelling River City and it keeps getting better and better (especially after I left, no connection, honest).

The evolution in my practice as primarily an actor who occasionally made plays into a writer driven to develop work for screen was sparked by the inspirational team of story liners, writers, script editors, story producers and episode producers that collaborate to bring each hour of storytelling to bear. Witnessing that intricate web of specialised roles in that hot house environment has helped me realise how my previously theatre focussed skills intuitively translated to storytelling on screen.

Last week’s residential was suitably fast-paced and intensive and gave us the visceral sensation of writing story and script with no grace cogitation stage and deadlines looming like the titanic. It was the brainchild of former River City writer and now producer Martin McCardie and has helped a dozen or so writers confront whether they can or want to write for River City.

Day one started with a tour around the full sized backlot and interior studio, during which I was trying to push ‘As if we never said goodbye’ from Sunset Boulevard out of my head. For me the geography of Montego Street is seared into my inner compass, but for everyone new to the set it was an insight into the complexity of plotting the who and where of any episode of the show.

Days two and three were a fast paced mixture of speaker-led sessions, writing exercises and round table peer review led by the shows' script editors. Our first brutal exercise for homework was storylining a ‘B’ story strand based on a basic story treatment. When we later got to see a real story doc there was relief all round that the story team usually deliver a lot of the narrative beats for you, although they are open to each writers' take on them. We also experimented with medium, writing the same scene between iconic characters Wee Bob and Lenny Murdoch as a piece of theatre and then as a scene for TV. We then had the pant-soiling surprise that four of those scenes would be randomly selected and performed script-in-hand by the actors who play those characters in the show. It was a pretty telling exercise in how dialogue is exposed or elevated by actors and how fundamentally all continuing drama story needs to be rooted in the truth of the character.

(At the River City Residential Stephen Purdon (Bob Adams) and Frank Gallagher (Lenny Murdoch) acting out the writers' scenes)

As a new writer for TV, I’m pretty keen to write for continuing drama and you should be too. As we see the evolution in our TV landscape with both Netflix and Amazon scouting for TV writing talent in the UK it becomes even more pertinent to understand how vital the continuing drama system is not just to audience satisfaction (through the roof by the way) BUT to writer development. One-off or returning series in the UK are commonly auteur led and for short series runs (3 or 6 episodes at the BBC). Continuing drama runs with elements of a writers' room: collaborative, co-operative and, I guess I mentioned, continuous! It’s that pace, that contemporary talent pushing forward to deliver well-loved characters and brilliant, satisfying storytelling every day that pushes you to keep being better.

As an actor I know earning my River City stripes, contrary to soap naysayers, has made me a better artist, rooted in instinct, brave and collaborative. I know that refining my writing through the eye of the continuing drama needle will do the same.

More about the River City residential from Stef Smith

Find out what's happening at BBC Writersroom Scotland

Visit the River City website and watch the latest episodes on BBC iPlayer

When you’re a brand new writer, trying to get something, anything, off the ground seems pretty daunting. My biggest piece of advice is to try a bit of DIY – do it yourself. That idea you’ve got burning inside – can it be turned into a webseries that showcases your ability to write on-going episodes, develop characters and write to cliff-hangers - all essential skills for TV writers.

My route into writing television was via short films, a stage play and webseries. My first short was produced in 2012, and my play followed hot on its heels. In 2013 I wrote and directed a webseries based on the play, 3some (careful when Googling that!) and a publisher picked up the play. That was where things started to gently snowball. I say ‘gently’, because it really was a slow process, more like a snail’s pace than an avalanche. We released the webseries to decent reviews and moderate views. One year on, the awards and festival season kicked in. Suddenly we were being nominated for, and winning, awards and being selected for festivals worldwide. We released the series on multiple platforms and watched the views creep up (across all our platforms we’re currently hovering around the 3.5 million mark). I won the 2014 Indie Series Award for Best Drama Writing, and soon there was press interest too. Then a few job offers came in and I signed to an agent. That made me eligible for the BBC Shadow Schemes… and here we are.

Doing your own work doesn’t need to cost a lot of money – get a group of filmmakers together that are all at the same stage as you and collaborate. Don’t know anyone? Get in touch with local schools, colleges and universities. Find local clubs. Trawl social media. Find your tribe. They’re out there. When we made 3some I worked with a mixed group of students and newcomers to the industry and we shot over weekends. Now most of our crew are out there doing awesome work and getting paid well for it (and we still get together when we can to collaborate for fun). Everyone has to start somewhere and for many people that’s on low budget projects. Bring together a team you trust, who will give you honest feedback, keep you grounded and kick you up the backside when you need it.

But before all that, it’s up to you, as the writer, to bring the script – something collaborators can’t say no to. Write it, write it well and don’t rush it. Yes, you’ll eventually need to learn to turn work around quickly, but your first few projects are not the time to worry about that. Craft your work, and hone it carefully before even thinking about shooting. Find other writers in your peer group to give you notes and listen to what they tell you – you might not agree with the note, but it indicates something hasn’t connected somewhere. If you get the same note more than three times, you’ve got something that needs fixing. If you are lucky enough to get an experienced reader or writer to give you notes – listen carefully to what they say. They’ve been around the block enough times to know how to make your script better.

With this in mind, write to what you can achieve. If you have no kit, write something you can shoot on a phone camera. If you’ve only got your house to shoot in, set it in your living room. If the script and acting are good enough, it will be compelling regardless. If you want to be a professional screenwriter you will have to write within restrictions and budgets – now’s the time to start. If it fails, that’s fine too. You’ll learn more from your failures than you will your successes. You don’t have to release it if it doesn’t work. Use it as a learning experience and do better next time.

In reality, it’s hard for new writers to get their scripts read, but if you’ve got something tangible to show, especially if that something has festivals and awards attached, it becomes a lot easier to get attention. It’s a big ask for someone to plough through a full length script from a new writer – even the first ten page read is quickly becoming the first couple of pages. But if it’s a four minute web episode they can watch while eating their lunchtime sandwich, it’s a much more reasonable ask. And, of course, you’re going to make your first episode so compelling that they have to watch to the end – aren’t you? And then they’re going to be fired up and request your work.

And here’s the caveat to all this. You MUST have a portfolio of writing ready as a back up before you release your series. I made this mistake in the early days. A few shorts are not enough; you need some solid TV scripts that showcase your best work ready to fire off at a moment’s notice, and some brilliant ideas for pitches in your back pocket. When you’ve got all this together, you’re in a strong position to move forward.

I did it. You can too. It was hard. It still is hard. I still make my own work. I shot a short film over a weekend last month and I’m currently raising finance for a feature film. No matter where my career goes, I can’t imagine giving up that ethos of doing my own thing alongside it, because it’s fun, it’s fulfilling and it means I get to work with my friends. There are no guarantees, but why not do something to give yourself an edge?

So what’s stopping you? See you at the web festivals.

Watch Lisa’s webseries 3some and find out more about Lisa on her website

Follow Lisa on Twitter 

The Interview

Around July, I’d submitted a spec' script, which was not medical in any way, with a CV, and my 500 word guest story (i.e. the patient’s story). I was invited to an interview in October.

A few months before I applied, I started keeping a spotty notebook of medical ideas, articles and experiences. I watched the show every week. I’d think about the characters while I was cooking the kids’ dinner. Obsessed is probably too strong a word, but then again, probably not.

Although I was nervous, I was also looking forward to the interview. It was an opportunity to talk about a show that I love, with the people who actually make it. Any nerves I had dissipated with the appearance of Rachelle Constant – who I’d known from another project – and Oliver Kent, who announced with a wry smile that they weren’t going to ask me anything horrible.

And they didn’t. They asked me some questions about my work and my script. And they asked me about Casualty – which storylines did I like? What did I think worked (and didn’t work) in the last season? Did I have any storyline ideas for their regular characters? After a pretty intense 25 minutes, it was all over.

A week later, I got an email to say I was down to the final eight - and was invited to join the Residential.

The Casualty Residential

Three weeks later, I’m on a train to Cardiff re-reading Casualty scripts, and putting the finishing touches to a guest storyline we’d been asked to prepare for a pitch to the Story Team on Thursday.

We spent four days in a hotel in Cardiff, learning about what goes into writing an episode of Casualty. Obviously there’s no set formula, and different writers approach it in different ways, but there are some ‘need to know’ ingredients, as well as some hard and fast rules.

The week was packed with fantastically useful sessions, run by the writers and producers. We had a session with John Yorke on five act structure, during which he ran through his brilliant 10 questions. We had a session with Mark Catley (Writer and Story Consultant) and Kelsey Richards (the Casualty Script Producer) who talked to us about resonance – how we relate our patients’ guest stories to the main characters’ serial stories. We spoke to the medical advisor Pete Salt and the researchers - who gave us an idea of how the medical story is put together, and we also had a session with Wendy Wright (the Line Producer), who spoke about scheduling. Later, we got to have a snoop around the incredible set.

The final pitch

On the final day, we were scheduled to pitch our guest stories to the Story Team.

Which leads me onto how I ended up ditching the guest story I’d painstakingly prepared a week earlier, and pitching one I’d rustled up the night before. It was all down to one of those hard and fast rules we’d learned during the week - namely, that the paramedics, nurses and doctors should not be upstaged by other emergency services.

The guest story I’d prepared was about an extremely heroic fireman.

So at 9pm on Wednesday night, I went back to the serial document they’d given us... It was an episode about Connie, and how she kept pushing everyone away and trying to do everything herself. So I went through my spotty notebook, and found a medical story that revolved around loneliness, and trust. Once I’d made the connection it didn’t take too long to write.

I got up early and practised my pitch, before presenting it to 13 people, including the Story Team and the other Shadow Scheme hopefuls. A highlight of that session was listening to the other writers’ stories. Although we’d all received the same serial document, our guest story pitches were all very different. I don’t think I’d be alone in saying it was supremely nerve-wracking, but the atmosphere in the room was extremely supportive.

In fact, the same goes for the whole of the application process. The Residential was very challenging - it was long days and late nights, with lots of writing assignments. But it was never intimidating.

Four things I took away 

Apart from my stash of dark chocolate, I think there were four things that helped me get through the week:

The first was preparation; I tried to go into the Residential with ideas for storylines for every character, ideas for new characters, opinions on everything, all of which really helped when it came to the writing exercises.

Second was enjoyment – I enjoy the show, and I wanted to enjoy the whole experience, whatever the outcome, which meant putting my nerves in a box for the four days of the Residential.

Third, was adaptability; although rewriting my guest story at the eleventh hour felt like a massive risk, in the feedback I received afterwards, I was told one of the reasons I’d got through was that I’d taken in the training, and changed my pitch accordingly.

Last but not least, was sharing the experience with the other writers. Although it was a competitive process, it didn’t really feel like that - and the good humour of the other writers was a huge part of what made it so much fun.

I’ll be getting my teeth into the shadow script next month, so the real work starts now!

As long as BBC Writersroom will have me back, I’ll be doing another article covering the shadow script.

Happy writing everyone!

Visit the Casualty website, watch episodes and find out more about the show

Watch our Writing for Medical Drama event

Read Casualty scripts

(The Casualty writers Shadow Scheme and the other shadow schemes for BBC Continuing Drama shows are only open to applications from agented writers)

“Ever since I was young I wanted to be a (story) gangster…..”

Upon leaving high school, a teacher gave me some sound advice for going forward with my life – “McComiskie, you will amount to nothing! Your head is full of nonsense!”

Fast forward a few years and now I get paid for emptying my head full of nonsense and putting it on the page. (In your face, Mr C!)

Humblebragging aside, finding myself in the role of Story Editor on BBC continuing drama River City, I have learned over the years that the so-called nonsense in my head was in fact something more significant and relevant. All those ideas that bobbled around in my noggin, seemingly disconnected from anything, were in fact the foundations for stories to grow. Stories don’t just automatically exist. They need to be formed, developed, explored and structured. And that’s where I (along with a bunch of other fellow story nerds) come in as a Storyliner.

It’s all about process.

I tell stories. You tell stories. But it’s not the stories themselves that are of importance – it’s how you tell them. That is our main objective as Storyliners – How do we tell the best stories? We all know that not all stories in life are interesting – word to the wise, never let anyone tell you the intricate details of how an industrial photocopier works. Part of the challenge of being a Storyliner on a continuing drama series is keeping things interesting.

For one hour on a (most likely rainy) Tuesday evening in Scotland, River City aims to hold the attention of people through their preferred viewing device. In today’s world where choice is king, it’s also the villain. People’s attention spans can wander at a flick of a remote – “Ooh look, there is a penguin sliding on its backside on channel 656!” My job is to hold your attention. To do that, I need to tell interesting stories. But what makes an interesting story?

An interesting story needs to inform and engage in equal measure – it’s a fine line and one we need to tread carefully on a show like River City. Every story we create from the story office – or what I like to affectionately call the “overshare zone”– starts with a seed of a truth. Something real and tangible that people can relate to, which often comes from personal experience. Once we have that we can add the bells, whistles, twists and turns. Notice that I said stories, plural. An episode of River City doesn’t tell just one story every week.

To generate stories on a continuing drama you need two things – 1. Stamina. 2. A shed load of caffeine. Mostly point 2, if I’m being honest…

A continuing drama like River City runs 52 weeks of the year on screen. Each hour long episode consists of no less than four different stories playing out at any one time across the episode. Each of these stories has to engage you whilst progressing the series as a whole, and also holding your attention, so needs to be constantly surprising, never repeating what has come before. Easy, eh? They also have to offer variety, wit, warmth, drama, humour, tension - and many other words that the word count on this piece won’t allow for. In essence, myself and the story team need to generate no less than 208 different stories each year on River City. This insane process has been going on for almost 15 years.

Now do you see why caffeine is so important?

Once we create the stories, it’s not the end. It’s just the beginning. The story department conceive the story babies of River City then we send them off into the world to grow and develop. The writers will give them arms and legs, then the script editors will give them a haircut, style and mould them into young interesting story teens, making them fit for purpose. The shooting crew will mature the story teens and bring them to life and take them into adulthood. Only then will the post-production team get them ready to present them to the audience as fully matured story adults… Come on, this wouldn’t have been a story blog without a forced allegory.

The stories I tell are mostly good, sometimes bad and occasionally ugly. But I am always proud. At the end of a working week I feel a sense of achievement in how much story River City creates to engage the audiences whether they shed a tear or crack a smile.

That moment, however, is short lived when the harsh reality creeps in that I need to do it all over again Monday morning.

Only 204 stories to go.

I’m going to need more coffee.

Find out more about River City and watch on BBC iPlayer

Meet the characters in River City

Keep up to date on social media

“Don’t be beige! Be bold!”

After 3 days of inspirational, informative and intensive workshops at Elstree Studios, these were the parting words Dominic Treadwell-Collins (Executive Producer and all-around EastEnders guru) left imprinted on our keen, impressionable, brains before sending us off to write a trial script. An actual, proper, 3 drafts of a 30 minute EastEnders episode. Do a good job of that and you’ll be rewarded with an actual, proper, commission to put words in Danny Dyer’s ‘North and South’.

An abundance of further ‘do’s and dont’s’ - or, more accurately, hours of invaluable insight into the start to finish process of making EastEnders - followed over the next few days which included sessions with Rob Gittins (legendary ‘Enders writer with over 250 eps and counting), Kris Green (Senior Script Editor), Anne Edyvean (Head of BBC Writersroom, ex-Producer of EastEnders), Alex Lamb (Story Producer), Ray McBride (Senior Researcher - and, I suspect, secret comic genius), Jane Watson (Programme Scheduler) and the lovely Nicole Fitzpatrick (Script Producer) who held our hands all the way through the 3 days (along with Ros, Rachelle and Kiren).

Perhaps the biggest, and most obvious, ‘do’ is to WATCH EastEnders. If you KNOW the show, LOVE the show, and are PASSIONATE about writing for it then ‘you’re already half way there’ we were optimistically assured (at this point, my inner 10-year-old still practising Grant Mitchell impressions was absolutely buzzing).

My writing experience to date has mainly been working in theatre. However, I’ve spent the last couple of years (very slowly) writing TV spec scripts and short films with an ever-growing paranoia that I will never work again as the whole writing world had forgotten I exist! So when my agent forwarded me the opportunity to apply for this year's shadow scheme (November 2015), I applied with very little confidence I would get to the point where I’d be rabbiting on in this blog. Fortunately, looking back, I realise that my 20 or so years watching EastEnders as a fan has been unbeknown training in secret. To get onto this year's scheme (in addition to a spec script) we had to pitch a 3-month storyline for an existing character, interview face-to-face to discuss all things EastEnders and, finally, write a 2-3 page scene from a previous episode. So, if you already know your Beale’s from your Hubbard’s, then you’re already on to a winner.

As with all continuing drama shows EastEnders is storylined months in advance however, unlike the BBC’s other shows (Casualty, Holby and Doctors), there is no original ‘guest story/story of the day’ for new writers to come up with (although regular writers are invited to monthly and quarterly story meetings to pitch ideas). Instead, writers are given a story (commissioning) document which, in 3 pages of prose, details your A, B, C, D and (sometimes) E storylines for your episode. However, I learned that this isn’t as prescriptive as you might think. Rather, you are advised to treat this document as a ‘blueprint only’ meaning there is still room for you to have your own ‘vision’ of how to tell your stories for that episode.

So, for example, if your A story is Ian Beale plucking up the courage to propose to yet another wife and you have a great idea of how he could go about doing that (spelling out ‘Marry Me’ with left over chips from Beale’s Plaice anyone?), then pitch it. But if your ‘vision’ is that Ian decides marriage isn’t the answer anymore. Instead, he decides to leave Walford to fulfil a secret burning desire to change the world through the medium of interpretive dance, then you probably need to rein it in a bit… The main point is to be mindful you are still hitting the necessary story beats so that previous and future episodes still make sense and marry up with yours.

For me, this ‘mindfulness’ is important because what you realise very quickly is that EastEnders is MEGA. An absolute meticulous machine in fact and the writers (albeit very important - I know what an egotistical bunch we are) are just one cog in this machine. The show produces 4 episodes per week (classed as 1 block) and they have only 9 days to film 1 block. Regularly they need to film several blocks at once and not always (if ever?) in chronological order too. Imagine shedding tears at someone’s funeral today and tomorrow you’re having a pint with the same dead person in The Vic (do my NUT in!). But hang on… it gets worse. The actor had a fall last night and broke their leg. So they died with two perfectly good legs - skipping around and everything - but now, a week before their death, they’re suddenly wearing a cast and can’t walk without crutches! “We’ll just have to film them sat down at all times — shoot from the waist up”. Looks like you’ll have to scrap that table dancing scene in The Albert then… but needs must!

But, as we quickly learned, that’s the nature of the beast. Every cog needs to work together to keep the machine running. No excuses. No delays. The show must go on whether you like it or not. Because, ultimately, the show isn’t about you. Or any one person in any particular department. EastEnders is about the audience and what struck me the most was the passion and enthusiasm of everybody working there - whether it be Script Editors, Researchers, Schedulers, whoever - to make EastEnders the best possible show it can be for its audience.

Therefore, I think that’s the most important thing to keep in mind. The most recent episodes (Jan 2016) are averaging around 8 million viewers and that deserves a lot of respect and appreciation. So for every unforeseen problem - whether it be unusable actors or unusable sets/locations - there’s no point sitting around sulking about it. Think of ‘limitations’ as ‘new opportunities’. Embrace the framework you’re working within and be open and adaptable to finding creative and practical solutions which are still going to live up to and surpass the audiences expectations. Because their loyalty deserves it.

I hope most/some of that has been useful and apologies if I’ve waffled on a bit. If I had more time, I’d have written a shorter version (as they say). As I type this, I’m currently 5 days (and less than 5 pages) into my first draft and still in a bit of a daze as to how I got here. It’s a Friday night, I still haven’t bathed, and I’ve been wearing the same black Ghostbusters t-shirt (that glows in the dark) for the past two days. If that’s not bold Dominic, I’m not sure what is?

And on that note. I’ll see myself out…

Read James Payne's blog Writing the live episode for EastEnders' 30th anniversary.

Also Tara Gladden's The 'Doctors' Shadow Scheme for writers.

Find out more about EastEnders.

What’s the importance of having a good spec’ script, even if it won’t get made? 

You can’t be a writer without a good spec script.  Yes, you can “write” but you can’t make a career out of it without one.  Everyone has brilliant ideas but it takes something else to turn those ideas into a script.  It takes work and frustration, perseverance and a LOT of rewriting.  

By the time I wrote my spec script I had a Doctors script, a co-written play and “Cowboys and Indians” a script and TV series I’d been developing (for years) with Michael and writer/director Jon Sen. But what I didn’t have was anything that had been written just by me, with characters and stories that I was solely responsible for.  If I wanted to get on schemes, write on continuing drama or existing TV shows or even meet anyone then I needed to have a script which was 100% me.  I needed to show who *I* was.  What everyone wants to know is “what’s your voice?”  Unless you’re always going to be in writing partnership, you need to show people that pure unadulterated voice.  A spec script is like a dating app for writers and script execs. 

Everything I’ve got is a result of my first spec, a coming-of-age horror film called “Camp Fear”.  I wrote it quickly – in about three weeks.  To be honest, I wrote it before I even knew what I was really doing as a writer.  I did a few rewrites and my agent started sending it out.  It got me onto the EastEnders shadow scheme, the BBC Writers Academy, and through so many other doors. Things accelerated for me within a couple of months of writing it - notably doing the Writers Academy – and I’ve gone from script to script ever since.  I’m embarrassed to admit it but it’s my only spec script.  It’s still not been produced.  My agent always asks “where’s your next spec?” I know I’d get more work if I did another.   (H’mm.  *Adds new spec script on “to do” list*.)

What are your top tips for developing strong and believable characters? 

In my experience, characters either emerge fully formed – like the ones in “Camp Fear” and Marcia Warren’s character Olive Russell in “Sweetie” for Casualty – or they take a huge amount of sweat and tears.  

A useful tip is to have five or so words to describe them and make sure at least one of them is a contradiction.  Characters like people should be complex.  They’re not all one way or another.  If they were, they’d be boring.  

I often think of people I know or actors I’d like to play them.  I’ve written two parts for Sean Cernow who’s one of the quickest and cleverest actors I’ve ever met.  He can switch energy and emotion instantly which is a gift to a writer. 

Characters should have secrets; they need to be driven by wants and needs that contradict each other.  A character without a want is impossible to write. They all need to be different and be able to drive the story forwards in different ways.  

It’s an old tip but if you can cover the names of the characters up on a script and NOT be able to see a difference then you’ve got trouble.  They need to have their own distinct original voice.  

I do John Yorke’s ten questions on each character along with police lists, a biography and occasionally write monologues for them before I send them into a script.  I usually only find out what they’re really like when I write the script.  

Most importantly they have to feel “alive” and jump off the page. You know when it happens – you can feel it.  In the same way, you can feel when they’re not.  Trust that instinct.

Pete Lawson (a brilliant writer who recently wrote Shabnam’s still birth on EastEnders) once said to me: “dig deep not wide”.  Mine your characters, get under their skins, find their heart.  And make sure you love them. 

And whatever you do, make them active.  A passive character is impossible to write and just as hard to watch.

What has working on Continuing Drama taught you?  Why is it so valuable for a writer? 

Continuing Drama taught me everything about writing TV.  You get to work with generous people who are cleverer than you.  Being in a story conference is like a masterclass in storytelling. 

It’s collaborative – you’re not working on your own, you have a huge team supporting you.  There are often scheduling, story, compliance and budget restrictions - it’s like a puzzle you have to solve. 

More than anything you get to pitch, write and WATCH.  Within three months of an episode finishing shooting, you watch it on screen with millions of other people.  You quickly learn what works and what doesn’t; what you could or should have written better or differently; what story point you undersold; which actors surprise you with what they can/can’t do; how your written words translate on screen.  Nothing helps you learn more than watching your work.  

You learn that the thing you felt was a fudge when you wrote now looks like a massive box of fudge on screen.  You learn how to write better, how to trust your instincts, how to listen to a production team and take on board their views. 

Never underestimate the huge skill you develop in writing to a deadline too.  EastEnders and Casualty can’t wait until you get it 100% perfect or for the “muse” to hit.  They need that draft at 9am on Monday.  No excuses.  You have to deliver. You learn how to write even though you feel ill or tired or paralysed by “the fear”.  And you learn how to write with joy and to touch millions – what can beat that? 

I don’t know the exact figures but I guess most writers start in continuing drama.  There’s a reason for that.  Despite whatever anyone says, those shows want your original voice, your “take” on that episode, that story, those characters.  They need you to make it great. To take the story document and write an episode which shines.  If you can do that you will be noticed, I promise.    

Continuing Drama is an incredible place to develop and hone your craft.   Never think it’s an easy option. Writing on continuing drama is often even harder and tougher than writing original work. 

You’ve said that writing is a marathon not a sprint, what do you mean? 

New writers worry too much about it not happening for them “right now”.  Some get bitter, jealous and competitive about other writers and constantly compare themselves to them.  We’ve all done it.  It isn’t helpful.  And it’s definitely not an empowering or powerful way of being.  I think some writers beat themselves up for it and make it mean they’re a failure.   They’re not – it’s just this industry is unremittingly tough and hard to get into.*  It’s not about winning or losing the sprint, it’s about setting yourself up for the marathon.  

I believe you have to be ready for it. It’s not just about being able to write.  It’s about being able to take on notes – sift through what works and what makes it worse; being able to work with people and not be a dick; being confident enough to know when to challenge and also to say when you need help.  

People worry about missing the boat, that it’ll never happen but everything you do as a writer feeds into everything you do as a writer.  You don’t have to be 24 to make it as a writer, you can be in your 30’s or 40’s or 50’s.  Yes, people will always be interested in the hot young things but not at the exclusion of all else. 

Ideas and stories never die.  I’m currently developing ones I’ve had for years.  Some I’d deliberately held back because I didn’t feel I was ready to develop them or could do them justice.  I had to trust there would be a time when I felt ready and feel I am now.  Plus it helps that I’ve reached a stage where companies will (hopefully) listen to them when I bring an idea.  I’ve written enough scripts for them to (again, hopefully) be able to trust me. It’s a long-term approach. 

* No writer ever feels they’ve “made it”.  The fear of rejection is ALWAYS there. 

How can aspiring writers build their ‘writing muscles’? 

Most importantly – WRITE and REWRITE.  Write when you don’t want to not just when you feel like it.  Write to deadlines.  Find competitions or schemes to go for. 

Set yourself achievable goals.  Don’t feel you have to try and do the whole thing at once, it’s easier in manageable chunks.  Start with an idea, then work out the story and characters, then an outline, then a treatment (a scene by scene for the whole script) then attack your first draft. Give yourself task/page count goals so you know when you can relax and feel smug you’ve hit your goal for the day. 

Study writing – read scripts, watch TV and films.   The BBC Writersroom has LOADS of scripts by brilliant writers. 

Join a writing group, especially if it’s led by another writer or person in the industry.   Not because you can use their contacts and for networking but because, hopefully, they really know what they’re talking about. 

Get used to showing people your scripts and ask them to tell you honestly what they thought.  Don’t get defensive if they say they didn’t like it.  Get friends to read it out loud with you – work out when the energy and focus dipped, which bits bored you, which bits excited you, what questions it raised. 

And finally – remember that the most important thing to do is write and rewrite. Most of your working life as a writer is spent rewriting.  It’s never perfect on a first or the second or even third draft.  

The only way to really develop your writing muscles is to write.

What setbacks have you had and how did you deal with them? 

After my first commission I couldn’t get another one for years. I was sacked from my second ever script and sacked from a fairly recent one too. I’ve spent a year developing stories for an incredible “would have been life changing” TV job and was rejected.  I’ve developed TV series for years that ended up getting rejected.  I’ve had tough, brutal, soul destroying notes and been told that what I’m doing is NOT good enough.  I’ve turned down paid work to develop my film because “the money is definitely there” only to get dropped.  I’ve spent months writing scripts on projects which ended up dying a death. 

In other words, exactly what most other writers go through. 

The way to deal with all these things is the same.  Feel sorry for yourself for about five minutes then suck it up.  Move on.  And get writing.  Write your way out of the funk.  Fight back with writing. 

Bryan Elsley says you’re not a proper writer until you’ve been sacked.   Rejection is part of being a writer.  No writer has EVER had a career without rejection.  It’s a horribly paranoia inducing profession – Tony Jordan once said the collective term for writers is “an insecurity of writers”.   Never were truer words said. 

That doesn’t make it easier.  Rejection is sh*t.  It’s easy to take it personally and feel like you’re the tw*t who got it wrong.  Rejection is a writer’s badge of honour.  Take what positives you can from each experience and move on.  And know that working on several projects at a time makes rejection easier to handle. 

What have you got coming up? 

I’ve created and written 3 episodes of a new series called “The Coroner” for BBC Birmingham, BBC Daytime and BBC Worldwide.  It’s a 10 part series for BBC1 shot earlier this year with Claire Goose and Matt Bardock as the leads.  Each episode is self-contained with a “death of the day”.  Despite being about death, it’s also very much about life with bags of humour and joy. 

I’m currently working on series two (fingers crossed) and developing a mixture of comedies and dramas for TV.  

I’m also involved in the Hat Factory in Luton’s SCRIPT LAB a brilliant opportunity for new writers (closing date 15 November 2015).

Be Inspired: Watch loads more interviews with writers on our website