BBC Writersroom workshop

Omar El-Khairy

After graduating I joined writers groups at the Royal Court, the Soho Theatre, and the Arcola and last year I was invited by OVNV to showcase my short play Latitudes in New York as part of the T.S. Eliot US/UK Exchange.

It was wonderful to get some feedback on our pitches from Paul. What I learned at the workshop would be to make the most of the opportunities that come up. I hadn't considered writing for television until this series of workshops, and now I have the opportunity to write an episode for my own show and have it read by the BBC.
 
I'm trying to find time for two projects. One is a play inspired by the story of the Sony factory workers in France who took their boss hostage last year. The second is a screenplay: a satire about a dictator of a fictitious Arab country, influenced by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene.

Kirstie Swain

I used to work as a corporate video producer, so I wrote comedy and drama scripts for various companies. While I was doing that I did a PG CERT in Screenwriting at Screen Academy Scotland and off the back of that I had a sitcom pilot optioned. Since then I’ve been shortlisted for schemes like BBC Scotland Writes and my first stage play, called Demolition in Progress, will be performed in April at the Baron’s Court Theatre.

Over the day I learnt to not to be scared of endings. I’m quite impatient and so my process usually begins with me getting a feel for different characters. But doing that usually just means I don’t plan properly. I just want to get in there and write the entire thing. I’ve been told it before, but this process really reinforced the importance of planning a script before you sit down and write it.

I’ve finished the first draft of a sitcom pilot that I came up with during the workshops, so I’m going to be workshopping that with actors over the next few weeks and then bombarding comedy producers with it.

Frances Bushe

I've been lucky to have some great writing opportunities. I did the Young Writers Programme at The Royal Court and a writing project at the National Theatre. I was also shortlisted for NYT’s Word Play competition. 

I met some amazing young writers with very exciting fresh ideas. I learnt how to discuss and pitch my ideas and got very helpful feedback from Paul Ashton. The workshop with him was great and gave me lots of confidence in my idea. We looked at endings, and how to condense one idea onto a page of A4.

What one piece of advice would I pass on to other IdeasTap members? Don't get it right, get it written!

I'm currently taking the Young Writers course at The Lyric. I'm also working on my television series idea, which came out of the first BBC Writersroom session and a stage play. I like to have lots of projects on the go at once, so my plan is just to keep on writing.