Of Fish and Hedges.

I've never met a writer who didn't obsess about some part of the 'how to' of our craft. It's in our nature. We worry about margins (every form of writing comes with its own set; radio is different from television, television is different from film and no-one quite knows what the industry standard is for plays because there isn't one - which is something else to worry about).

What the work looks like on the page is important and don't let anyone tell you different. A reader can pick up a script, flick through it and immediately tell if the writer knows how to format. I've heard execs say, it doesn't matter, I'll read anything - send it in on the back of a fag packet if it's good, it's good. I don't believe those stories.

You wouldn't buy a car if it looked like a bicycle, you wouldn't buy a fish if it looked like a hedge. Readers like to know what they're reading and, to be fair, there are so many How To books out there and so much formatting advice on the t'internet that you have no excuse to turn in a piece of work that doesn't look right.

A few months back someone asked me to read his script. I'm ten pages in and I'm thinking, this is wrong, this would make a much better radio piece when it suddenly struck me like the 9.05 to Paddington. How dim can you be; this IS a radio script. But when I'd opened it it was formatted like a TV sit-com, so that's what my eye told my brain to expect, and that's what I was reading it as.

If you've never seen a professionally written script and you want to be a writer - that's you and ten million others, so brace yourself for the rejection letters - search out one of the many script sites on the net and read, read, read. The more you read the more you'll understand what makes a good script, what makes a bad one. You'll also pick up how to format.

Make your fishes look like fishes.