Screenwriting: The Craft and The Career

Philip Shelley is a producer and script editor who has been working with Pscreenwriters for the last thirty years.

He has run the Channel 4 screenwriting course since 2010, and also runs the Greenlight Screenwriting Lab for new writers in Ireland. Many of the UK’s most successful screenwriters and script editors have come through the Channel 4 course, including Charlie Covell, Cat Jones, Anna Symon, Vinay Patel, Nida Manzoor, Theresa Ikoko, Nathaniel Price and Grace Ofori-Attah.

Philip has run many screenwriting and script-editing courses through his own script consultancy and with BBC Studios, ITV Studios, thinkBIGGER! Channel 4 ProductionTrainee Scheme, Screen Ireland, BBCWriters, Northern Ireland Screen, Screenskills, University of the Arts London, De Montfort University, Filmnation UK, Baby Cow Productions, and many others.

He has extensive experience as a script editor on series like Waking the Dead (BBC), Inspector Morse, Kavanagh QC, The Knock, Staying Alive, Cider With Rosie, Medics (all ITV), and produced First Sign of Madness (which won awards at the New York TV Festival, Worldfest Houston, and the Columbus Ohio TV Festival), Margery and Gladys and Making Waves (all ITV).

He was Head of Development for Carlton TV Drama for seven years, where he also ran the Carlton New Writers’Course, and has worked in script development for BBC TV Drama and several independent production companies.

Philip runs his own script consultancy (www.script-consultant.co.uk) and works with writers of all levels of experience, as well as production companies and broadcasters.

‘For writers and script editors looking for help and guidance, there is no better resource than Philip Shelley and this book!’ Nathaniel Price (Mr Loverman, Noughts + Crosses)

‘Getting a place on Philip Shelley’s 4Screenwriting course was one of the most important things to ever happen to me. It taught me so much, and gave me a great start in the industry. Philip’s knowledge and guidance is unparalleled: this book is wise, practical, and brilliantly helpful.’ Charlie Covell (The End of the F***ing World, Kaos)

‘This brilliantly executed, comprehensive book is the definitive guide to screenwriting. Packed with invaluable information, personal insights, practical tasks, and references from across the TV landscape, it is essential reading for newcomers to the art form, as well as anyone who wants to work with screenwriters.’ Grace Ofori-Attah (Malpractice, In the Long Run)

‘An indispensable book for anyone who writes TV, who’s thinking of writing TV, or is simply interested in how creativity works. Philip writes with passion, knowledge and sensitivity.’ Laurence Bowen, CEO of Dancing Ledge Productions (The Responder, Wedding Season)

‘This brilliant, highly informative guide to screenwriting demonstrates, step by step, how to create a dramatic story from scratch, as well as the key components that are needed to make a script both original and compelling. Drawing on his own vast experience of working with writers, Phillip Shelley illustrates in real detail how to radically improve screenwriting craft and build a successful career in the industry. I wish it had been published when I was starting out.’ Anna Symon (The Essex Serpent, Joan)

Philip Shelley

Screen-writing

The Craft and The Career

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

A Nick Hern Book

Screenwriting: The Craft and The Career

first published in Great Britain in 2025

by Nick Hern Books Limited

The Glasshouse, 49a Goldhawk Road, London W12 8QP

This ebook first published 2025

Copyright © 2025 Philip Shelley

Cover image: Shutterstock.com/Plasteed

Designed and typeset by Nick Hern Books, London

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 83904 409 0 (print edition)

ISBN 978 1 78850 852 0 (ebook editon)

CAUTION This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

For my darling wife Cindy,

who is everything to me.

I love you.

Contents

____________________________________________

Preface

Introduction: The Inspiration of Story

PART ONE: THE CRAFT

I. Creativity and Screenwriting: Getting Started

Where We’re At

Your ‘Spec’ or ‘Calling Card’ Script

Voice

UK screenwriters and what defines their voice

II. Story Ideas

Ideas that Inspire Dramatic Stories

Testing your ideas

Dreaming and Creativity

Collaboration and discussion

Dreams

Don’t create?

Generating Ideas from Other Media

Documentaries: the lessons for screenwriters

What is Your Story About?

Story Ideas: Conclusion

III. Storytelling for the Screen

The Basis of Your Story

The logline

The story premise

The dramatic proposition

Genre

Tone

Form

Principles of Dramatic Storytelling

Introduction

Research: know what you write

The essential dramatic events of your story should happen on, not off screen

Withhold exposition until the moment of maximum dramatic impact

The hook: posing questions is at the heart of effective storytelling

Generate suspense

Make a virtue of context

Subtext and counterpoint are essential elements in dramatic storytelling

Humour and humanity are the bedrock of story

Good writing is about accessing an emotional response to an event

Acknowledge and subvert tropes and clichés

Think carefully about what to include and what to leave out

Every single scene needs to change the status quo of your story

Make use of the infinite potential variety in the nature and character of scenes

Tell the story through the cut

Pay attention to the rhythm of how your story plays

Hit the ground running

Key Storytelling Elements

Stakes

Narrative clarity and connections

Story gaps

Point of view

Set-ups and pay-offs

Signposts

Metaphors, imagery and motifs

Movement

Story world

Things to Consider Carefully

Random events and deus ex machina

Politics and preaching to the converted

Character-driven versus plot-driven

Two Further Thoughts

Be specific

Get your story onto the page

Aspects of Exposition

Disguise or dramatise exposition

Reveal exposition through action rather than dialogue

Exposition and evoking an emotional response through the use of objects

Who knows what, when?

Familiar expositional devices and tropes

Stylised Storytelling Devices

Voice-over

Flashback

Direct address to camera

Mockumentary

Montage

Captions

Treatment of Time

Condensing time

The ticking clock

Structure

Introduction: what is ‘structure’ and how can it be useful to us?

The units of storytelling for the screen

Shots

Beats

Scenes

Acts

Sequences

The beginning and end of your story

Aspects of structure

Time structures

Form structures

Societal structures

Physical structures

Creative approaches to story structure

Football matches

Other media

Structure ≠ story

Structure: Conclusions

IV. Character

Introduction

Elements of Characterisation

Empathy

Character choices

The character journey

Distinctive characters

Internal conflict and contradiction

Subtext

Character ‘intelligence’

Heightened but identifiable

Conjunctions of character and story world

Throw stones at your characters

Character and risk

Character and tone

Active versus passive

Character arcs

Real people

Self-awareness

Character agenda

Character detail

Appearance and physicality

Character status

Characters and communities

Relationships

Non-human relationships

Relationship units

The family unit

Stereotypes

Character history and backstory

Audience perception of character

Characters who are engaged by their own story

Engaging characters, characters we care about

V. Dialogue

Introduction

Dialogue Considerations

Dialogue and exposition

Reality versus economy

Articulate versus inarticulate

Subtext in dialogue

Dialogue and genre

Dialogue and story

Dialogue and the intention of the scene

Dialogue is speaking and listening

Dialogue and research

Distinctive dialogue

Dialogue as ‘voice’

Dialogue and dialect

Foreign language

Subtitles

Texting, messaging, WhatsApp, etc.

Dialogue: Conclusions

VI. Presentation

Introduction: Getting Your Story onto the Page

Read screenplays

Use screenwriting software

Presentation Considerations

Tell your story with clarity and simplicity

The reader experience should be as close as possible to the audience experience

Introducing characters

Imagine your script from the reader’s perspective

Open your script on the protagonist

Distinguish between what the writer and director brings to the film

Guiding the reader

Don’t cheat!

Writer’s commentary

Some principles for directions

Elements of the Screenplay

Scene headings

Action

Character names

Parentheticals

Dialogue

Dual dialogue

Transitions

Once You’ve Finished Writing

Proofread on paper, not on screen

The objective read

Titles

VII. Supplementary Screenwriting Documents

Pre-script Documents:Treatments, Outlines, Beat Sheets

They’re important!

Pitching:Verbal and Written

Don’t ‘perform’ your pitch!

The context of the pitch

The quality of the idea

Meetings and written pitches

Copyright and ownership

Trust

Pitching: essential elements?

The incomplete pitch

Pre-meeting research

What’s your story?

Know what genre your story is

The form of the written pitch

Deliver content

Pitch decks

Visual details

References and comparisons

Writer’s agenda, and theme

Character biographies

Loglines

Pitching – sealing the deal

Story Documents: Outlines, Beat Sheets, or Scene-by-Scenes

Developing an idea

Learning from the best…

Visual, dramatic storytelling

PART TWO: THE CAREER

Introduction

I. Breaking In

Screenwriting Training

Longer university courses – BAs and MAs

Shorter courses

Competitions

CVs and Interviews

CVs

Interviews

Your Network: Writing Groups, Peers and Support, Community

Networking

Selling yourself and your work

Events

Champions

Readings and showcases

Do your research

Friend of a friend of a friend

Other Media

Podcasts

Theatre

Audio and radio

Short films

Other writing

Journalism

Novels

Graphic novels and comics

Blogs

Documentary film-making

Poetry and songs

Social Media

X (Twitter)

Facebook/Meta

WhatsApp

LinkedIn

TikTok

Instagram

II. Sustaining a Career

Strategy: Making the Most of the Opportunities

General Meetings

What are general meetings for?

Come prepared

A two-way relationship

Literary Agents

The writer and literary agent relationship

Finding the right agent

Approaching agents

What should you expect from your agent?

What should your agent expect from you?

Notes, Feedback and Collaboration:Working with Script Editors

Notes

The fragility of story

Writers’ rooms

Love the craft

Process, longevity and sustainability

Vomiters versus plotters

Career: Conclusions

Afterword

Further Reading and Resources

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Index of Names and Titles

Index of Subjects

Preface

____________________________________________

Ihave been working with writers and on scripts for over twenty-five years – Iand this book is a response to that hugely enjoyable experience. Through my teenage years, I had always been passionately interested in dramatic writing through television, cinema and theatre and then, as a struggling actor, I started writing myself. A screenplay, then a stage play which I submitted to Paines Plough theatre company. The literary manager at the time, the excellent Robin Hooper, let me down gently and with great kindness and took me on as a script reader and occasional dramaturg. It was reading my first script professionally and then beginning to talk to writers face-to-face about their work that introduced me to the possibility of script-editing as a career.

Trying to balance the dying days of my thirteen years as a professional actor with an ever-increasing pile of script-reading work eventually led to my first two-week contract in the Granada TV drama department offices in Golden Square, London.

The bridge from life as an actor into script-editing was through this reading work for theatre, TV and film. One of the most interesting jobs I had was for Anthony Hopkins’ acting agent, reading and assessing the scripts he had been sent as job offers. One script I read for this was Dennis Potter’s adaptation of Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I remember to this day as a dark, brilliant, inspiring piece of writing (sadly a film that never got made). Among many other companies, I read for David Puttnam’s Enigma Films, Film 4, Paramount Pictures and the First Film Foundation.

This was pre-internet days and script-reading work often meant coming into London for meetings in which you hand-delivered your (paper) script reports, returned the (paper) scripts and discussed your feedback with the (flesh and blood) development person at the company in question who had hired you. This face-to-face time with such industry luminaries as Laurence Bowen (I remember Laurence talking to me about what ‘structure’ in dramatic storytelling was all about!), Kate Leys, Allon Reich and Tony Dinner at the old BBC Script Unit – the less publicised forerunner of the current BBC Writers – was invaluable. (Tony, for instance, was a brilliant supporter of new writers and budding script editors, one of those people that the industry relies upon.)

I sat at home, between acting jobs, reading scripts – of variable quality – for the best part of two years; and it was the most brilliant grounding in scripts and story, particularly having to write a report on each script – synopsis, comment, verdict – trying to make sense of the pros and cons of every story, and thinking about why the good ones were good and the other ones not so good.

It made me realise that you learn at least as much from the bad as the good scripts. It also made me appreciate the power of genuinely excellent dramatic writing. There are scripts I read in those two years that I remember to this day – or I remember at least the thrill I felt in reading work that was outstanding.

On arrival for my two weeks at Granada to research a drama series idea about missing people written by Paul Abbott (another show that never got made) I remember what seemed like the extraordinary novelty of having my own office. It was a great first job to have as my introduction to the world of TV drama. My wonderful, eccentric bosses, Sally Head and Gwenda Bagshaw, ran a department that created and produced such seminal shows as Cracker (Jimmy McGovern), Prime Suspect (Lynda La Plante) and Band of Gold (Kay Mellor). My first script-editing job was on a long-running 9 p.m. medical drama series, Medics, working with many outstanding writers including Neil McKay and Sarah Daniels.

The world of the drama departments at ITV companies, Granada TV and after that London Weekend Television (again with Sally and Gwenda) was incredibly exciting but, in retrospect, something of an emotional whirlwind. Although people probably behave with greater circumspection and courtesy now than they did when I first started, I think this is still to some extent true of a lot of film and TV drama development and production in the UK.

Most producers get to where they are more often for their creative than their organisational skills. To this day, there is too rarely in the production of TV drama a really well-organised system to support the creative endeavours of writer, director, actors, etc., but that’s a whole other story.

I still remember (at this distance, with a smile) some of the more emotionally jagged moments. For instance – the first ever script meeting I attended as junior, observing script editor (after the script editor I was replacing had fallen out with the producer and been summarily sacked), consisted of a writer declining – politely but firmly and with no real creative explanation – to address every single note the script editor suggested in a two-hour meeting. After the writer left, this script editor (understandably) burst into tears. The following day the meeting was reconvened with writer, script editor and – this time – executive producer present and giving the notes. On this occasion the writer enthusiastically agreed to address the exact same notes they had declined the previous day. I can see no evidence that this writer ever worked in TV drama again! (Not that there was a witch-hunt, just that this writer must have decided collaboration was not for them.)

I remember a meeting in which a head of department threw a very weighty script at a producer in some argument over a minor story point; a stand-up row between head of department and producer at a read-through in front of the assembled cast; leaving the office at 8 p.m. one evening and returning next morning to discover my fellow script editor and producer were still in the meeting I had left and had been working on the script through the whole night; and an 11 p.m. meeting with a (drunk) executive producer who praised my work and promised to pay me a substantial financial bonus (which was never mentioned again, let alone paid, in the sober light of day).

It can be an intense, difficult process – but it can also be incredibly exciting, creatively rewarding and a lot of fun.

The lesson from all of this is that creating a TV show or film is an emotive business, particularly in production where all the deadlines are locked in and there can be no stopping (or leaping off) the runaway train that is production. When a lot of egos come together in a creative undertaking, there are bound to be occasional clashes and disagreements; creative decisions are personal. It’s sometimes hard to find that distinction between the story you’re trying to tell and your own personal feelings.

I think it’s true of all of the best writers that there is a huge amount of themselves in their work. Writing and delivering any script is a personal act of courage. As a writer, even if you’re not intending it to, your writing will reveal a huge amount about you. Writing is very exposing in what you reveal about yourself and even more so in the way you open yourself up to instant judgement. To put yourself through this, you have to need to be a writer, it needs to be a huge part of who you are as a person. Writing – and screenwriting in particular – is for the brave and the resilient.

The other side of that coin is that there is of course enormous fulfilment in writing a script of which you’re proud and seeing it being launched into the world; of seeing people responding positively to it; and sometimes through your script, changing entrenched attitudes and the world around you (campaigning TV films like Jimmy McGovern’s Hillsborough, Nicole Taylor’s Three Girls and Jack Thorne’s Help are outstanding examples of what can be achieved socially and politically through great screenwriting).

But, in trying to sustain your morale and your career, you need to have some method, technique and storytelling principles to call on. Much of writing is instinctive but instinct needs to be supported by craft and guiding principles.

* * *

Part of the purpose of this preface is to make the distinction that I am not a screenwriter (a lot of my professional life is spent writing – but not screenwriting), but that what I can bring to the table for you as screenwriters/dramatic writers is the fact that, for such a long time, and continuing right now and into the future, I am one of those industry people to whom you will be submitting your script. And through years of thinking about story and observing and working with many successful writers, I have developed strong views as to what it takes to gain success as a professional dramatic writer, both in terms of the craft of dramatic storytelling and the more pragmatic areas of building and sustaining a career – and this, I hope, is how I can be helpful to you.

In both regards, my last fifteen years as a freelancer, running my own independent script consultancy and the Channel 4 screenwriting course, have been particularly valuable.

In my work as a script consultant, I have now fed-back on over 2,000 different projects.

The Channel 4 screenwriting course is now in its fourteenth year. More than a hundred and fifty writers have come through the course and many of the course alumni are among the hottest properties in UK screenwriting.

Writers need to write – every day. For professional and budding professional writers, writing is more than a habit or a hobby, it’s a compulsion, it’s unthinking. It’s important that script editors like me recognise that big distinction between the script editors, producers and executives on one side of the table and the writer on the other (more of which later) – although it should be noted that there are also many people who successfully move between working as script editors or development executives and screenwriting themselves.

What I can bring you is the perspective of someone who has worked with writers for more than twenty-five years, who has read and assessed many thousands of scripts, and worked face-to-face with hundreds of writers.

Introduction:

The Inspiration of Story

____________________________________________

The real inspiration for this book is a life lived enjoying story in all its forms. Storytelling is an inextricable part of all our lives. The way we think about our own lives is often the same way we think about fictional stories. The way journalists work is to select information and work it into the coherent shape of a ‘story’.

Life is fundamentally mysterious and we all have a deep need to create and/or experience fictional stories – or fictionalised dramatisations of ‘true’ stories – to inform and impose order on the ordinary and extraordinary, strange and often unfathomable events of our real lives.

Story helps to make sense of the confusion, mystery and messiness of real life. Story in all its forms addresses the primal mysteries of birth, death, procreation, individuality, fate, time, disease, natural disasters, love – and all the other multifarious aspects of life that defy rational explanation.

Story goes some way to providing both an intellectual – but more importantly emotional – response to the Great Uncertainties of Life.

At its epic, large-scale best, the way we experience story is akin to a religious experience. (What is the New Testament if not a series of artfully constructed, character-driven, human stories?)

We all have an intimate, personal connection to those televisual and cinematic stories that we first experienced and enjoyed at a formative, impressionable age. For me those stories were films like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Annie Hall, Manhattan, A Hard Day’s Night, Harold and Maude, The Graduate, Kramer vs. Kramer, American Graffiti, Jaws… I could go on. Those films that still say something fresh to you every time you see them, while at the same time giving you that repeated appreciation of those story moments that make your heart jump, that send a chill down your spine. The Godfather is packed full of those – images and moments that are imprinted on my retina.

The first time I saw The Godfather I was in the US, where we lived for two years in the 1970s. The film had just come out and was already a big hit. I can’t remember exactly where we saw it but it was in a packed movie theatre somewhere in the suburbs of Philadelphia. As well as being struck by my first experience of a US movie audience – and how vocal and raucous they were in their expressions of excitement at the film – I remember being taken by what I saw as some of the explicit sexual moments; and simultaneously by the uncomfortable awareness that the most explicit sex scenes I had ever seen in a film (it had been a sheltered upbringing) were experienced sitting next to my dad.

But also I remember being incredibly excited by the visceral power of the story, the images and moments that felt so powerfully dramatic and have stayed with me to this day. The Godfather is one of those seminal films where virtually every scene and sequence feels like a ‘greatest hits’ moment.

I have seen the film many times since and every time I watch it, I marvel at some other scene or sequence that strikes me anew as brilliant screen storytelling.

Among other formative cinema-going memories is one of the very first films I ever saw in a cinema (by which I mean one of the first films I saw, full stop, as films on TV weren’t a thing back in the mid-1960s). This was The Beatles’ Richard Lester-directed A Hard Day’s Night. I still recall the joyful rush that film and The Beatles’ music gave (and still gives) me. Many years later I had two stints working as drama script editor for Sally Head Productions at Twickenham Studios. There was one small office on our corridor that belonged not to SHP but to the great man himself, a film-maker with a key role in the history of British Cinema – Richard Lester – a gentle presence who would quietly and politely greet you on his way to and from his office.

Two John Wayne films also come to mind: firstly, The Alamo, to which my mother took me as a desperate displacement activity on the last miserable day of the school holidays before I was packed off to boarding school. This was actually one instance when a film story didn’t work its magic – the memory of the whole experience of this visit to an empty-ish matinee in a cinema in Canterbury, Kent, is one of misery.

And then another Wayne film, True Grit. There is a scene where a character falls into a pit of snakes. The woman in the row in front was so lost in the film that she started hitting her rolled-up newspaper on the back of the seat in front of her, yelling and warding off the imagined snakes. A wonderful and funny example of the power of cinema to enable you to inhabit a story so completely.

Cinema continues to this day to be one of the hugely positive aspects of my life. Nothing compares to the escape and joy of being pulled into a compelling story in the comforting isolation of a cinema.

* * *

In my youth, television fiction soon became as big a joy as cinema – from the comedy genius of Monty Python and Morecambe and Wise to wonderful TV dramas – the riches of BBC drama in the 1970s and ’80s – Play for Today, and so many other brilliant writer-led strands (The Wednesday Play, Screen One, Screen Two, Second City Firsts, etc.). In fact it was this sort of wonderful TV drama – strands that highlighted the creative primacy of the writer – that first alerted me to the exciting world of dramatic writing in general and screenwriting in particular – exceptional writers like Jack Rosenthal, Dennis Potter, Mike Leigh, Peter Nichols, Stephen Poliakoff, Howard Schuman, Ken Loach, Alan Clarke, G. F. Newman, Jim Allen and Alan Bennett, all starting to make their mark as dramatists for the screen. (Not a lot of gender or racial diversity in the profile of TV writers of that period!)

Each generation form their beliefs, passions and identities at least partly around the films, plays, books and music they experience at that formative age.

One of the real strengths and virtues of screenwriting is in the narrative possibilities, the range and richness, of series TV – multi-stranded, ensemble series like Call My Agent! (Fanny Herrero), Euphoria (Sam Levinson), Orange Is the New Black (Jenji Kohan) and Last Tango in Halifax (Sally Wainwright).

Series TV at its best is about our emotional investment in character and how this investment deepens and grows with every passing episode and season. Of course, it’s also about story and the situations in which these characters find themselves. But without character, story can soon wear thin. Money Heist is an example of brilliant storytelling but with characters who don’t, in my opinion, have the requisite texture of the very best TV series. I stuck with this for ten episodes, but my interest waned as the writing revealed the limits of the character definition.

On the other hand, the pilot episode of Succession is a wonderful example of the most brilliantly flawed and fascinating characters arriving fully formed on screen the moment you meet them. The way characters enter the story in this opening episode is memorable; inspiring examples of how to introduce your characters – Kendall on the way to his meeting in the chauffeur-driven limo, psyching himself up to rap music on his earphones, cousin Greg being humiliated in an animal costume at one of the Waystar theme parks; Logan waking confused in the night and pissing on the carpet. All of these opening character moments are utterly distinctive, idiosyncratic and dynamic; and they instantly get us to the heart of each of these characters’ internal conflicts.

The shows that first really excited me in the way they exploited the series format were US productions like Homicide: Life on the Street (Paul Attanasio), Oz (Tom Fontana) and Thirtysomething (Marshall Herskovitz, Edward Zwick).

All the best series make a necessary virtue of their limitations, of containing their stories in particular settings (precincts). In this way, series set in prisons, hospitals and police stations have spawned so many brilliant formats over the years.

* * *

My experiences running the Channel 4 screenwriting course feel like a wonderful mirroring of my first experience of TV dramatists. Remembering the joy and education (above all, a political education, for which I am eternally grateful) those writers above mentioned gave me, it’s now deeply pleasing to be part of a course that introduces new dramatists to TV drama – brilliant, innovative, original writers like Charlie Covell, Anna Symon, Vinay Patel, Theresa Ikoko, Inua Ellams, and so many more, who I feel confident will be among the groundbreaking screenwriters of the next decade and beyond: the 2020s equivalents of current star TV dramatists like Sally Wainwright, Russell T Davies, Jack Thorne, James Graham, etc.

I’m in the privileged position of being at the cutting edge of trends in new dramatic writing. Above all, over the last ten years, it’s been a privilege to see the blossoming of increased racial diversity in UK screenwriting. The range and quality of dramatic writing by new voices from the Black and Asian communities in particular has been a joy to behold and be a part of – writers like the aforementioned Inua Ellams (writer of acclaimed stage play Barber Shop Chronicles – a National Theatre production), Theresa Ikoko (Rocks), Vinay Patel (Murdered by My Father) and Abraham Adeyemi, Dipo Baruwa-Etti, Archie Maddocks, Nathaniel Price, Chandni Lakhani, Matthew Jacobs Morgan, Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini, Anna Ssemuyaba, Shyam Popat, Jenny Takahashi Stark, Kirsty Rider and many others – these are all writers who are starting to make a real impact and about whom you will hear much more in the coming years.

* * *

Screenwriting is hard. There are a lot of screenplays, a lot of films and TV shows, and not many of them are outstanding. Not only that, not many of the initial ideas for films and TV shows are outstanding. So it’s something to strive for – to write a seriously good screenplay is a real achievement. Perversely this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to suffer, that it will be a hard, painful, stressful process. Sometimes the best scripts will come easily, will pour out of you. Equally, sometimes a good script will take months and years of dead ends, strife and rethinks. There is no rhyme or reason to the process, to what clicks. There are some brilliant writers who have written some poor scripts; and some writers who have written one brilliant script and are then never able to repeat it. Not only is it difficult, it’s mysterious and mercurial. So this book doesn’t attempt to offer artificial short cuts. Trying to reduce the process and the template for stories to a single, reductive formula is simplistic, unrealistic and, frankly, insulting to the real writers who strive endlessly, coming at story from so many different angles, constantly learning, over a career