BBC Writer's Festival

"We were all made to sit in front of the TV and if we were very bad Mother threatened to turn it on".

This last week I packed my bag and headed to the frozen North, which turned out not to be frozen at all. Leeds was bathed in sunshine and a very different place than the city I used to visit when I was writing series for the old Yorkshire Television.

The BBC Writersroom Writer's Festival was a bit like Glastonbury with more ink. Star scribes took to stages and platforms whilst mere mortals gathered close to hear gobbets of wisdom and experience. Shedding light on 'how to' and often 'how not to'.

The great thing about this festival is that it's 'for writers and by writers'. The guys at the BBC Writersroom had worked hard on gathering the right people to make the sessions relevant. And there was a lot to choose from.

Danny Brocklehurst (Shameless, Exile) talked about his working relationship with his producer Nicola Shindler. Hugo Blick talked about The Shadowline, Tony Marchant about getting into hot water - there was even a session on compliance (didn't go, don't know how many did but it was there if you fancied it).

If you want to start your own series there was a session on that, if you wanted to learn about what writers could learn there was a session on that as well as team writing US style and being political and writing thrillers and whether writing gurus had anything to offer that was original or were they all saying the same thing? Turns out they all same the same thing and we should be looking to write in a five act structure. Thanks John Yorke, a very entertaining and illuminating hour. Looks like Shakespeare and my English teacher were right.

The highlight, for me, was an hour listening to Jimmy McGovern as he spewed passion and rage in equal measure. I particularly enjoyed his contention that contemporary playwrights are all shit. Discuss.

He'd received a lost of flak and criticism over his his drama about Bloody Sunday but when last year's Saville report was published he felt vindicated, he'd got it all right but he knew that because he'd spent so much time in Northern Ireland talking to all sections of society before he wrote the thing. Do your research.

God bless Jimmy, he has so much enthusiasm, so much rage and refuses to suffer fools gladly or any other way. It turns out that what he likes to do these days is just a spit away from what they do in the US. He heartily approves of the writing room where stories get thrashed out before somebody puts their ass on a chair and 'writes' it.

I wrote about this before - don't confuse typing with writing. The rush to get something down on paper, (to use an old and now pretty much defunct phrase though I still know people who pen their first draft longhand ) is the curse of storytelling. I was certainly guilty of it as I groped my way from sketches to something approaching longer narratives. Dismiss your first thought - it'll probably be the cliched one anyway - dismiss your second, your third thought...go for a walk, soak in the bath, come up with some way of doing your scene that hasn't been done before - or at least you haven't seen done.

And when he comes to write it down Jimmy's method is two drafts - one from the heart, full of rage and fury and then one from the head. 

A tall guy from ITV commissioning told us all the things they want from writers  - turns out that's everything - apart from Detetctives, they have eleven of those already. Don't fret ITV, the BBC has more chefs. But of course they don't actually want any direct contact with writers, take your wares to a trusted production company, one of those providing the eleven different detectiives will do nicely.

But the thing that came through from everyone from BBC Head honchos Ben Stephenson and John Yorke to Jimmy McGovern and Toby Whithouse, Paula Milne, Hugo Blick, Danny Brocklehurst and just about everyone who shared their experiences was this:

                                                                       Passion.

Believe in your script, believe in your characters, your world and your view and write it with all the passion you can muster

Then, I suggest, like Jimmy, rewrite it.