It’s pretty quiet here script-reading wise as it is every April (with it being the end of the tax year), so I’ve been taking the opportunity to spend some time with the kids as it’s the Easter holiday. I’ve also been doing my Writers’ Academy application: I’ve written a script especially for it this year and am taking my time, right up to the deadline – usually I write the application and send off a sample from my portfolio in the first week, but that hasn’t exactly held me in good stead in previous years, since I haven’t progressed to the next stage. This year I’m hoping that will change, but we’ll have to wait and see. I want to write for continuing drama SO MUCH – and not just for the money, but because I LOVE continuing drama. I can’t stand “soap snobs”; I’ve watched Eastenders, Casualty, Holby, Corrie, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks etc literally since I was a girl and can safely say they are every bit as real and demanding as those other dramas said snobs say are somehow *so much better*. What’s more, audiences come to love and love-to-hate characters in them: my heart broke a little bit for Jac in Holby City last week; she’s such a bitch but she does love Joseph and what’s more, he loves her. Argh! And in Doctors, Ruth’s increasingly fragile mental state leading to her sectioning and the fabulous episode “Hole” this week was just fabulous.
Anyway, I’m just passing through to say have a great Easter weekend, don’t eat too much chocolate and if you’re with the relatives, try and avoid any soap-style big revelations like your Mum is your sister; your Dad is your brother; ; running someone over with a car; your adopted child turning up on the doorstep; your adopted child turning up on your doorstep and then getting run over by a car; getting murdered by a jealous/obsessed work colleague; telling your parents you’re gay; killing your husband and burying him under the patio; sleeping with your mother-in-law; an airplane falling on your house and/or village; a storm making a house fall on you; having a baby when you think you have appendicitis; getting kidnapped; having a massive car crash while attempting to dump toxic waste; having a massive car crash and running into the flames to save a crying baby; crashing INTO the hospital itself and making the doctors and nurses have to operate while having to try and survive themselves… Have I missed any?
Happy Easter!
I loved that Doctors episode!
Good luck with your application.
Good luck. Love all of those too.
I take it you mean avoid them if you’re in the “real” zone, but not if you’re in the “writing” zone. Otherwise the scriptwriting will be a tad dull this weekend… 😉
Mark Illes said the wipeout scene in Emmerdale was very cathartic…
Script competition for Sequel will definitely happen, received notification and all going according to plan… Yay!
Yeah good luck with the writers academy app.
I love eastenders and did watch a lot of corrie and hollyoaks back in my day, but now that i live across the ocean I have grown rather fond of the american shows.
Although we do have classics like days of our lives. Man what I wouldn’t give to write for that show.
I could even sneak in my idea about the person who has an evil twin! MWUHAHAHA.
Charles
Good luck! x