What’s your name/age/job title?

Rachel Hirons, 24, playwright and screenwriter.

Please give us an overview of your average day. 

I get up about 10:30am, after sleeping through eight well-intentioned alarms, drink my body weight in coffee, while answering missed calls and emails, before getting down to writing at midday. I'm currently working on a new play, a sitcom pilot and a film treatment. I write for four hours on one project until I lose concentration and start writing any old shit. I read my housemates some dialogue to ascertain whether it’s natural and that any jokes land, before making tweaks. I write for a couple more hours on another project so that nothing becomes stale. I usually have my first meal of the day at 6pm – it’s not ideal, but eating slows me down. In the evening I go to the theatre or watch a film for inspiration, come home and send more emails until about 3am.

What’s the most common misconception about your job? 

That writing about everyday experiences is easier than creating fantastical worlds. When you’ve writing a comedy about everyday events you have to take care to ensure you’re writing about circumstances and characters everyone can identify with, otherwise the humour is lost. Often I’ll read something to a friend that I think is great and they’re like, “What? No one does that, I think that’s just you”. That’s always disconcerting. 

What’s the hardest thing about your role? 

Treatments. Writers aren’t necessarily great salespeople, and if you’ve created this world, you tend to over complicate the idea. The first treatment I wrote was 16 pages long. I thought I’d really got my point across but they said, “If you can't tell me in two sentences what your idea is, why it's unique and why I want to watch it more than anything else, I'm not interested”. Treatments are something you have to become great at. If you can't sell your idea, you can't make a living. 

When did you decide what you wanted to do with your life and how did you set out to achieve it? 

I wrote my first play, When Women Wee, for fun. When the play sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe and I heard the audience laughing at jokes I’d written, I thought, “This is it. This is what I want to do”. I was so amazed that someone other than me thought I was funny, I rushed to write my next play, A Guide To Second Date Sex, as soon as I came back to London. 

What can you do to get a head start? 

Start writing. That sounds obvious but I know so many people who have ideas, half-finished scripts and treatments sat in notebooks, computer files or their head. 

Ensure you’re out there networking, speaking to people who’ve done similar things and making sure industry people know who you are. The more connections you have, the greater the opportunities. For A Guide To Second Date Sex I worked with TEAFilms. They not only co-produced the play and sorted out publicity images but also added filmic elements to the production. I’d never have been able to do that alone. 

Could you describe the creative element to your job? 

The whole thing’s creative. From the inception of an idea – in my case usually an image or a funny line – to creating the entire universe and the characters   – their lives, their way of speaking and so on. In fact, when I speak to people in real life, all I have to talk about are characters and worlds that don’t exist. 

What’s the one thing you wish you had known at the start of your career that you know now? 

You don’t need to wait around for others. If no one wants to put your work on – do it yourself. I began by submitting my scripts everywhere and seldom hearing anything. Then Stef [O'Driscoll] and I created our own company, Dirty Stop-Out, and produced our first play together. We literally held weekly car boot sales and sold most of our possessions to get that play on, but it worked! 

Which organisations/websites/resources do you think would be useful for people entering your industry?

Soho Theatre offers fantastic feedback on scripts and is always keen to develop young writers. I owe them a lot as both my plays have been shown there. Their Verity Bargate Award is coming up this year and they also host monthly workshops on writing techniques and methods. 

For screenwriting any book by Syd Field is a godsend. I also find 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters motivating when I start procrastinating. It gives you insight into how others deal with this largely solitary career. There's a great documentary called Tales From the Script, which gives loads of tips.

A Guide to Second Date Sex runs until 30 March at Soho Theatre. A Dirty Stop Out and TEAFilms production. 

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