Sunday 5 May 2019

RTFM

I just entered the biggest competition of my life. Well, technically it wasn’t a competition - every now and then, the BBC scouts for fresh talent by opening its inbox for the submission of speculative scripts. The BBC makes it quite clear that this isn’t actually a competition and there aren’t prizes per se; however, those writers with the strongest potential to be developed and produced are invited on to a six-month development scheme for writers. Personally, I can’t see how such a life-changing opportunity isn’t a prize, but then semantics isn’t my strong point.

So, yes, I’ve been quiet of late because I’ve been putting an indescribable amount of effort into writing a sitcom about superheroes that contains no superheroes. A disproportionate amount of that effort was made in the last few days. Not because I care to be a last-minuter (I really don’t), but because I only scrutinised the instructions for authors four days before the deadline.

I’ve a degree in literature and a career in publishing. I’ve spent more hours reworking other people’s manuscripts than I’ve slept in the last ten years. But can I actually read instructions? (Clue: no).

Things I’d missed on the first pass included (a) how to format the screenplay; (b) the minimum length of the screenplay; and (c) all that extra stuff you have to include, such as outlines for the next two episodes.

For the uninitiated, screenplays are generally typeset in 12pt Courier, with all manner of prescriptions for where to lay out (i) this; (ii) that; and (iii) the other. Do it wrong, and your script goes straight for recycling. It’s basically combat school for writers. I’d researched elsewhere how to format a script, so my formatting wasn’t awful; on the other hand it wasn’t perfect, so it had to be fixed. Really though, that was the least of my worries.

The big problems were the fact that my screenplay was timed to accommodate an ad break - not something there’s much call for at the BBC, and that I hadn’t even thought about outlining further episodes.

In other words, I went from thinking I was an hour or two away from submission to finding about one-third of the labour still lay ahead. Oops.

Screenplay titlepage

On top of that, my eyes were bubbling from my heinous week of work, and my blood was boiling from my heinous week of parenting.

Blessed was I then that my incredibly supportive wife effectively locked me into my office, acted as a human shield, and sent in food as and when I sent out words.

Realistically, the odds of getting through to the final stages are punitively long. Last year, there were over 2600 submissions, most of which were likely discarded after the first ten pages were read. For this reason, if twenty pages of my work get read, I’m doing well.

I’m not sure they let you know how far you make through the process, but rest assured, if I find out someone has read the whole thing, I’ll be popping fizz.

The fact is, it’s a learning experience. And already I’m better prepared for my next effort-based competition as I’ve learned the hard way that instructions are designed to be read at the outset, not retrospectively!

Wish me luck!

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