Writing Television Drama

by Nicholas Gibbs

  NG: With those iconic characters such as Phil Mitchell is there a fine line between nailing that character and going into caricature?

  BK: Yes, absolutely. I mean interestingly the character of Janine is one of our larger-than-life characters. She is very colourful but sometimes when I read a script by an aspiring EastEnders writer Janine is written like a pantomime queen. So there is absolutely a danger that, in pursuing the uniqueness of the character voice, they can slip into caricature, and that is something to look out for.

  What is unique about this show is the obviously often heard but slightly unfortunate tag of EastEnders being depressing and I would always be looking for a writer to challenge that tag. The show is not predisposed to be negative and sometimes I think new writers feel that is the role they’ve got to perform and I will always challenge that.

  NG: What sort of things do you hate seeing in an episode of EastEnders?

  BK: Avoid self-pity in the characters. We don’t always get this right. It’s about that classic British kind of strength of character based on the Blitz spirit. Our show should be about our characters’ survival – their spirit and their ambition survives. Their aspirations are in a resolutely working-class environment but I would always ask us to strive towards positivity and have them making the best of their situation.

  NG: When a writer joins the show, what is the induction process?

  BK: What would happen is the writer would attend a monthly meeting. Once a month the core writers meet and talk about the next month’s set of episodes. A new writer might attend that monthly meeting to get up to speed with where we are in stories, obviously because we would be a month ahead of them to what has been transmitted at the time. They will be assigned a script editor who they will work very closely with throughout the process. They’ll get to know that script editor very well and it’s a friendly face, someone on the end of the phone. They are given a commissioning document which is every episode across that month period and also given previous commissioning documents in order to get up to speed with what stories we’re telling. After that there’s a mammoth amount of homework: they are given their three-page episode document featuring their A story, their B story and couple of other supporting stories. Now I would always task the writer to make that content their own. They have got to interrogate that information and challenge it, ask questions and, if they don’t like it, then come up with something better. And if they don’t believe in it, then ask why they don’t believe in it. What they must do is ask every single question of themselves and of the story team before they type a word.

  NG: How long does a writer get to work on their episode?

  BK: It is a balanced and well-oiled machine. From the commissioning conference, where we discuss the changes they have to make to their episode, what to keep, what’s got to change, what to tweak so that it works across the continuity of the whole block. Then, with everything signed off, the writer is in full possession of the facts with what they are about to write. They have roughly about two weeks to go away and write their first draft. If they are later in the block in weeks 2, 3 and 4, they have a bit longer. After the first draft is delivered and, depending where they are in the block, a week or so later we will meet collectively – myself, the script editor and a couple of my editorial colleagues will meet and we’ll discuss that week’s episodes of first drafts.

  On EastEnders after the first draft you’re given notes. The writer delivers a second draft about a week or so later, then there is another meeting which the director comes in on and that becomes very much a live production. That’s when the director starts visualizing, wardrobe, design, the props… the whole production starts moving at the second draft. And so it is much more difficult at that stage making anything other than small changes. Another two further drafts where hopefully all is going well; the notes will be about spelling, typos, long-term character continuity and scheduling.

  NG: What about rewriting by script editors?

  BK: It never happens. I’m extremely tough on the idea of that. I think it is the wrong thing to happen, the wrong thing to do and I always insist that, if something isn’t working, the script editor goes back to the writer. If things are falling apart, which they occasionally do – and I’m told it happens much less now than it used to on EastEnders – for any number of reasons, it doesn’t work out with a particular writer. It could simply be the wrong writer with the wrong episode. We have to make a judgement call early on in the process to relieve the writer of the episode and recommission it.

  NG: Like any other job, for you to take on somebody else there has to be a vacancy. What is the writer turnover? Is there an extended pool to call on?

  BK: I would be foolish to turn down a brilliant writer for EastEnders – that’s a fact. They have to be brilliant. It’s what’s at stake. Whether they are brand new or whether they’ve got 30 years’ experience, I don’t care. I’d be delighted to welcome someone who has never written for television before, but if they have come through the correct entry system by the trial, by John’s Writers’ Academy, and if they are up to the job, then brilliant – welcome! That said, we only have a set number of episodes a year, and we already have a number of writers on the team. Inevitably, there will be some writers who want a holiday or extended break for six months off to write for another show or writers who think they have done their time and want to go somewhere else. So there is some movement on the edges of the team.

  NG: Do writers need to be fans of EastEnders or do they need to do their homework?

  BK: I’d say they do need to be a fan of the show. It is a labour of love. To be honest, I don’t know why you would write for the show if you didn’t love it. You have got to love every character. We have some very uncompromising characters and again, if you come to write for the show believing the worst of its reputation, I don’t think it is going to benefit anyone, least of all the writer and certainly not the audience.

  Emmerdale

  ITV’s Emmerdale is the most prolific soap on British television, producing an incredible six episodes a week. The show debuted in 1972 and is set in the fictional Yorkshire village of Emmerdale.

  Tony Hammond knows the show inside out, having joined the show in 2003, and has worked as a script editor, a storyliner, story producer, script producer and assistant producer.

  Nicholas Gibbs: For the three people who don’t know, what is Emmerdale?

  Tony Hammond: Emmerdale is a six-times-a-week rural serial drama (soap opera). We commonly use the term ‘small village, big drama’, which hopefully gives the best impression of what we are trying to create with our show.

  NG: How many writers work on Emmerdale? How many are core writers?

  TH: We currently have a team of 23 core writers. Over the years this has fluctuated between 19 and 25 writers, depending on the producer’s vision for the show. All writers who work on the show are considered core team.

  NG: How do you source new writers for the show?

  TH: Obviously, we are contacted by agents all the time who advertise their clients and some writers have been successful in this route. We source new writers from all areas. Predominantly, we search for writers with proven past drama experience. Many of our writers have written for other dramas and soaps but we do also consider writers who have solely written for theatre and/or radio etc. A few writers have progressed from the story and script offices also.

  NG: What would you look for in the writer’s original script that would suggest to you and your team that the writer could potentially write for Emmerdale?

  TH: When a writer sends in their unsolicited script there is a select team of script readers on Emmerdale whose job is to filter the scripts depending on their writing skills and then recommend whether we should consider sending them a trial script to work on. The filtering system works on the fundamental premise that we want to be entertained by the dialogue and most people fall short, as their dialogue is sometimes too mundane. We look for truthful, natural, emotion
al and characterful speeches. While not essential, having watched the show and knowing the characters is very useful.

  NG: When a writer joins the show, what is the induction process and the guidance they are given to be an Emmerdale writer?

  TH: As we usually employ writers with proven experience of writing drama, there’s not really any guidance they are given in terms of writing for the show. Practically, though, they are given a writer’s pack which includes basic biogs and maps and character information they will need to write their episodes. We also give them a tour of both the studio sets and location sets to familiarize themselves with the characters’ surroundings.

  NG: What is the process, from the writing point of view, of an Emmerdale episode? What information is the writer given to write an episode?

  TH: Each writer is given a storyline document which provides the basic beats. Each storyline usually has four to six stories involving a specific number of characters. Writers are expected to structure their own episodes and provide a basic outline of their proposed episode to be discussed at commissioning. Writers also have access to our in-house researcher and archivist who can provide information to help make the story as truthful as possible.

  NG: Are the core writers part of the storylining team or does Emmerdale have separate storyliners from the writing team?

  TH: We have a separate team of six storyliners led by a story editor who write and provide the storyline document for the writers to base their episode on.

  NG: From commission to delivery, what is the timescale for an Emmerdale script?

  TH: It takes approximately four to five months in total from commissioning through to seeing the episode transmitted on air. A single script goes through a three-month process of editing before hitting the production teams for filming and editing.

  NG: What are the benefits of writing for Emmerdale to a writer’s career?

  TH: I believe a serial drama is a great career for any writer. Most writers tend to see it as a massive learning curve due to the amount of writing and crafting a single episode takes and the speed at which they have to do it. Some writers do see writing for soap to be a stepping stone to greater things, but I know many writers who are happy to stay in the genre and earn a very decent crust from it.

  NG: What makes a good Emmerdale script?

  TH: A good balance of light and dark stories mixed with humour and emotion, combined with brilliant pace and structure and drama! Overall, it needs to be a bloody good entertaining read!

  NG: What are the common, avoidable mistakes in Emmerdale scripts?

  TH: Mundane dialogue. It might be realistic but would you yourself want to watch two people discussing ‘how many sugars’? Also, writers must remember they are writing for a visual medium. It’s not purely about the words but also the actions and showing and not always telling. On a personal level – clichés are the bane of my life. Also, I hate the words ‘anyway’, ‘just’, and the phrases ‘what’s going on?’ and ‘of course’.

  NG: To what extent, if any, does rewriting take place by the head writer or script editor?

  TH: We rarely rewrite writers’ work. Only in emergencies when the writer is unavailable will we tweak and fiddle with dialogue. From Emmerdale’s perspective the writer is the auteur and takes full responsibility for every word and full stop in their script.

  NG: Do you associate particular writers with particular characters? That is, if it is a certain character-centric episode, is there a preference for a particular writer to write that episode?

  TH: The simple answer to this is yes. Obviously, all episodes have lots of different characters in it so writers need to know each voice and how they would react to write a truthful script. However, there is obviously an A story in each episode and certain writers do have more of a connection to certain characters. So, where possible, we try to place writers on episodes which we feel they will write the best. Sometimes this boils down to the specific characters which feature in the episode, but this can also be based on the story and tone of the episode. Some writers are more comfortable with darker stories whereas some are better at comedic stories.

  NG: For a new writer to join the show presumably, like any other job, there has to be a vacancy? Do you have a pool of writers-in-waiting as such?

  TH: To a certain extent, there has to be a vacancy – we can’t take on a limitless number of writers as budget does come into the equation. We tend not to keep writers waiting for vacancies as it can take a very long time for the core team to change and it would be unfair and soul-destroying for the writer to be kept dangling in the hope of a slot arising. There have been occasions where we have been interested in taking on a writer but our schedules and their schedules just did not match up and therefore unfortunately it didn’t work out.

  NG: Do writers need to be a fan of Emmerdale to join the show?

  TH: I would never say we never take on writers who haven’t watched the show as I’d be fearful of missing the next big thing. However, as with most shows, I would presume, having knowledge of the show would put you in good stead for getting a job writing on it. It’s certainly one of the first questions I always ask writers who approach us or whom I meet at events.

  Hollyoaks

  Channel 4’s Hollyoaks, produced by Lime Pictures, is a five-night youth drama that was created by Phil Redmond and set in the fictional Cheshire suburb of Hollyoaks.

  Emma Smithwick, a former scriptwriter and script supervisor on the BBC teen soap, The Cut, joined the Hollyoaks script department before becoming the show’s series producer in 2011.

  Nicholas Gibbs: What is Hollyoaks?

  Emma Smithwick: What I am aiming for is Hollyoaks to be more of a youth drama than a soap. I think possibly it would be fair to differentiate Hollyoaks from any other soap by saying what I am after is real, emotional integrity and character development. I think our audience can be anaesthetized if you just keep throwing masses of storylines and story plot without really rooting it in character. That’s what I want Hollyoaks to be.

  NG: How do you source your writers?

  ES: In a number of different ways. A lot of agents come to me with established soap writers. I also look at Edinburgh Fringe or see as many plays as I can. For me, we have such well-established soap hands on this show that do such a brilliant job but there is something special about getting brand-new writers. Since I’ve been here there has been about ten brand-new writers getting their first ever credit. So, while we need the experience, it is quite nice to look for brand-new writers and they come from anywhere. There are big brands I will look at like E20 or Skins. To me, they fit in straight away with what we are trying to do with Hollyoaks or looking at brand-new writers like Daniel Moven. He is 19 and he just sent in his scripted authored piece. It made me laugh. It needed work structurally. You can tell by reading it that he wasn’t experienced but he got that immediate authenticity and the voice I’m looking for. Similarly, another girl, Marnie Dickens, got her first ever TV credit when she did a spec script for Hollyoaks. It was terrific.

  NG: How does your shadow script scheme work?

  ES: Writers come to conference and we ask them if they liked to pitch, which can be incredibly daunting when you’re coming into a very established show. Most of them come in armed with a pitch which is brilliant. Then I will, depending on their experience, put them straight onto a broadcast trial. So their trial script will be a broadcast episode because I feel confident in their writing. I feel confident in the support network we have here to mould them to a place when they can get a broadcast opportunity. Then with other writers perhaps I might feel like that they should do a shadow trial and they will shadow somebody and they will deliver a script. They will all go to at least one conference before they get a commission.

  NG: What is the timeframe from commission to delivery?

  ES: The timeframe in the conference is three days and they finish on the Friday and a week later we ask for a scene-by-scene after commissioning. It’s two weeks
to deliver their first draft from commissioning. Then from first draft to second draft about eight days; then another three to five days for the producer, director; then another three or four days for a shooting script – that’s about five, six weeks. From conference it is about eight weeks. In conference, we actually say to the writer here is your episode.

  NG: Are they given character and set availability in advance?

  ES: The Friday after conference they send in the Character Emotional Journeys only and a week later they send in their Scene Breakdown. Our story team – we’ve got a story associate and a story producer – who take in all their emotional breakdowns to make sure that it all tallies and that they don’t have any repeat beats. Then they send them back out to the writers with their character lists, character counts. We usually don’t do locations because we will work that out in Scene Breakdowns.

  NG: How are emotional breakdowns presented?

  ES: They are presented in a paragraph and they are coloured up in their strands and it is the main protagonist in each of the main story strands but it is just emotional. Basically, where they start off in their episode and where they leave them off. So we can be sure of the dynamics journey for them.