Workshops outside Newport

At the Atrium

 

Laura Cotton of Touchpaper gave a useful insight into the work of a script editor. She assigns writers an episode in a series, governs continuity and checks for negatives such as dialogue that may cause offence.
 

Tip: Start with a well-defined character and grow plot from this.

Online elements of her series Being Human were produced by Telegraph Hill, digital producer  of multiplatform online shows like Being Human for e.g 360

 

The best testing grounds for writers are:-

• short films - It’s my Shout 
• theatre  - Dry Write, Bush Theatre, Dirty Protest

Glamorgan University MA student writers can be found at Octopus Writers

 

At Duke of York Theatre, St Martins Lane

 

After seeing Constellations, Lynne Gagliano of Royal Court Theatre ran a workshop for us. We did some exercises in pairs alternating lines. One of us wanted something, the other was to refuse it. The drama had to be a short dialogue of 10 lines, reducing number of words by one each time. Then the actors had to swap roles half way through.

Check their young writers programme

 

The Welsh Academy’s Writers’ Fair 3/11/2012

A valuable day of informative and creative sessions and the chance to meet fellow writers, industry professionals and publishers from Wales.

These are the main points I took away from the Welsh Academy Writers' Fair, sponsored by Literature Wales.
 

Promote your work by intelligent use of social media.

Author and arts critic Jasper Rees, social media consultant Emma Meese and poet Osian Rhys Jones gave advice about using:-

Twitter

• Build or join a community of interest around your writing. 50 followers you keep communicating with is worth more than touting for 1000s with no guarantee they will contribute or seriously comment on your work.
• Devise profiles for your characters to maintain interest in your story
• Use nostalgia as a tool for arousing interest.

Facebook 

• Use lists to target your audience.
• Beware sharing tweets with FB which treats them as spam.
• Use a quote of the day & photo to support it.

Promoting your work abroad – Wales Arts International have grants for attending workshops & conferences abroad. Nia Davies from Welsh Literature Exchange will handle translations of your work.

Genre Writing – don’t be slavish to what conventions are expected. Write what pleases you and you will be able to argue about genre when you have the ear of a publisher, says science fiction author Jasper Fforde and crime novelist Belinda Bauer.

Getting an agent. Enter your work in competitions. Publishers and agents will contact you if you are shortlisted.

Jasper Rees (Jasper.Rees@btconnect.com) & writer Angela Graham offered this advice on how to pitch your creative ideas, in person or in writing, to a publisher or agent.

Angela's 7 Key Points of Pitching                                                                               

1. What EXACTLY are you pitching? What exactly do you want? To convince an industry professional first convince yourelf by answering the question “Why does this book need to be written?”
2. Who is your catcher? What does the catcher want?
3. The right ball for this game?
4. Designing a pitch –matching what you and your catcher offer and want
5. Structuring for maximum impact. Start the pitch with a para stating why the book must be written and a log line of the story. 2^nd para should be an outline of the plot to give reader a desire to turn the pages
6. The catcher sees and sees why 
7.  Pitch to be catchable

Mention must be made too of Jon Gower's contributions, anecdotes of his encounters abroad and poetic readings from his book Too Cold for Snow. Also from Christine James who read in Welsh with those of us non-speakers being provided with headphones and a live translation service (thank you Christian). Such was welcome lubrication for the drier mechanics of information exchange, useful as it all was. 

Notes from Wednesday 17/10/2012

In revising the notes I took of the session we had with Markus Markou (@PapaSonsFilm), I thought it might be useful if I shared them with you on a blog. I thought Markus gave great value and certainly kept my attention well. It was clear he had his heart in what he was doing, having followed some fruitless trails earlier in his career (who hasn’t?!).

Clearly his message was a recommendation that we should control the means of our own production and collaborate. After all, as Phil said, we don’t want to be trees unheard as they fall in the forest...
 

These are the web sites he referred to:

 

1. Withoutabox.com allows independent filmmakers to self-distribute their films.
2. Theatre503 is the home of fearless, irreverent, brave and provocative new plays.
3. Mandy.com publish jobs in film and tv production; casting-calls; and yellow pages of producers and technicians.
4. Talentcircles.com A cloud-based platform, TalentCircles allows you to build, brand, own and manage your live talent communities
5. Lulu.com for self-publishing
6. Papdopoulosandsons.com for Marcus Markou’s  blog
7. Wirelesstheatrecompany.com audio theatre company producing original FREE radio drama, comedy, short stories and more from our site straight to your iPod, MP3 etc
8. Distrify.com turns film sharing into sales and your fans into a community.  Gives access to Distrify's accumulated data detailing how your film is being engaged with.
9. Createspace.com provides free tools to help you self-publish and distribute your books, DVDs, CDs, video downloads and MP3s on-demand