ABBA is back

Theatre by the Lake, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Writersroom are running this to help with the competition. Thought you might be interested.


Are you interested in writing for radio?

Would you like a £5,000 writing bursary and the chance of a Radio 4 drama commission?

On Thursday 14th July BBC Radio Drama North will launch their 2011 Alfred Bradley Bursary Award, an open submissions process which aims to find talented Northern based writers who are interested in writing for radio.

Charlotte Riches, Producer for BBC Radio Drama Development, and Jo Combes, New Writing Development Manager for BBC Writersroom, will be here at Theatre by the Lake at 6.30pm on Thursday 25th August to discuss what the judges will be looking for in submissions and how you can make your writing stand out from the rest. They will also be on hand to answer any questions about the award and about how you can get your first writing break at the BBC.

The award is run in partnership with the BBC Writersroom and full Award details, entry forms, terms and conditions and sample scripts are available on the Writersroom website from Friday 15th July. www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/.

This event is free but places are limited – please contact the box office at Theatre by the Lake for tickets. 017687 74411

If you fancy a bit of light entertainment.

I have a short play (about 5mins) on Radio Cumbia. It is one of a set of five with the theme Winter.

They will be broadcast each day starting Monday 20th December at about 930 with a repeat between 5 and 7pm and between 10pm and 1am. Mine is on Tuesday.

You can listen in from beyond Cumbria because the live broadcasts and replays (for a few days)are homed here. Catch them while you can.

Nanowrimo

Just popped by to say I've got past 25,000 words at the end of the 15th day. Way hay.

Back to writing.

Oh and for those wondering what on earth I'm talking about look here.

A list of novels

I spotted this in Piers blog and thought, well I have a bit of time. Little did I guess how long I would be searching my shelves for a book beginning with E or X. I remember plots but not titles.

So the idea is to list books for each letter of the alphabet. Only using the first one you think of and not the one you find later that is more impressive. And it must be one you have really read, not just one you keep on your coffee table to shock the vicar.

This is tougher than it looks. Epecially when you keep remembering ones and finding the letter is already used. There are a lot of books beginning with M and W on my shelves.

So here is my list. Like Piers I will not select a victim. Just read, enjoy and if you have a couple of hours to kill where you should really be writing or washing out the bin then have a go.

A: Animal Farm: George Orwell
B: The Big Sleep: Raymond Chandler
C The Chrysalids: John Wyndham
D: Dracula: Bram Stoker
E: Empire of the Sun: JG Ballard
F: Frankenstein: Mary Shelley
G: Greenwitch: Susan Cooper
H: The Hobbit: J.R.Tolkein
I: The Inheritors: William Golding
J: Judgement on Janus: Andre Norton
K: King Solomon's Mines: H Rider Hubbard
L: Labyrinth: Kate Mosse
M: The Midwitch Cuckoos: John Wyndham
N: The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency: Alexander McCall Smith
O: The Osterman Weekend: Robert Ludlum
P: Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen
Q: Queen of Sorcery: David Eddings
R: Revelation: C J Sansom
S: Swallows and Amazons: Arthur Ransome
T: A Town Like Alice: Neville Shute
U: Ubix: Philip K Dick
V: Virgin in the Ice: Ellis Peters
W: The Wierdstone of Brisingamen: Alan Garner
X: (Essential) X-men: Chris Claremont- Well I was struggling on this one.
Y: The Year of the Comet: John Christopher
Z: Zanthan at Moon's Madness: R M Williams

Bumblebee Mode

OK. As Piers noted my two week break turned into a year. Lots of things were happening and juggling them all isn't easy when you can't even throw a ball properly.
Really, I can't. I was fielding in rounders recently, well you can sit and pick the daisies if you deep field can't you, and I caught the ball. Don't ask me how, because if I'd tried I'd have missed it. I must have been distracted by the pretty daisy chain, spread my hands in admiration at how well I'd constructed it when the ball plonked down into my palm.
Anyway everyone was shouting at me to throw it and my aim is so bad I worried I'd hit someone because rounders balls are hard and so the only place I could see with no people in it was the space above my head so I filled it. With the ball. Then realised there's gravity isn't there and heavy ball plus gravity moves much faster than fielder plus large drag area so I made like a cartoon and said Doh.
Back to the story. So some things had to be dropped for a while. I did lurk around the blogs when I could. Just to check you were all OK. You are all OK aren't you? All producing masterpieces and getting them commissioned?
Not that I really dropped writing I supposed. I just went into bumble bee mode. Flitting from project to project and finishing nothing. It was such a relief to discover from the local scriptwriting group that they'd all gone through it and it does pass.
Well it has and I'm back writing properly again. Can't promise to post regularly though. I'll see how it goes. And what have I managed to write over the past year?
A short radio script for a local competition that didn't get picked. It was a spooky one that required some tricky sound effects. Local radio doesn't have the budget or facilities for a Foley library so it was a bit dumb of me to write it like that I suppose. I did get feedback that it might have success if it was a longer psychological piece to submit to writersroom instead. So that's one that needs a bit more work.
A half hour, one act stage play. This was a collaboration between the local scriptwriting group and a local theatre company. The theatre company will pick three of the scripts to make up a full play, each act being a different story with the same setting and cast.
Writing for this one clashed with Red Planet Comp and I couldn't manage to do both well so I picked the play instead. I took the opportunity to experiment with this one and I'll talk more about the challenges it threw at me once they've made the selection. If it isn't picked then I plan to expand the play into a longer piece. Waste not want not.
Right now I'm finishing a radio play that I began two years ago for ABBA 2009. It was dropped so I could concentrate on my other entry and I've finally got back to finishing this one off. Or rather I've taken the concept and am re-writing from the beginning again. Looking at something after a long break really does help.
I hear my keyboard calling so must go for now. Keep writing.

Incommunicado for a Fortnight

To meditate and ruminate and cogitate and percolate and basically have a good rest.

See you in a fortnight.

The name's the thing.

Discovering Axel Rose's real name was Bill Bailey made me wonder what I would have chosen as a Rock name. Wanting something that would make me cool I hunted around for inspiration and came up with...nothing. I can't do cool. Not even slightly tepid.

However the internet claimed it could do better. Just type in your first name here and whether you're male of female then away it goes. So details went in and it came up with...Ellyn Sixx. What? A rock star called Ellyn? I could believe the lack of spelling ability but purlease. Even the website reckons I am a chill free zone. It gives me the name of an android or a murder victim. Great.

But there was hope. Maybe I could be a street-wise, angst ridden rapper. Hold on. Do they do angst-ridden or is it just a revamp of "You think you've got it hard kid? In my day we had to use go-carts for driveby shootings." So I put my info in again and I got Femme Rose. Cheers. Now I'm a ribbon wrapped, glitter covered perfume bottle. More glam rock than rapper. Think I'll bin this internet search.

I do have a big problem with names. Tell me yours and guaranteed it will go in one ear and out the other. Not because I mean to be rude but my brain holds that kind of information like a herring net holds a midge.

I've stated vociferously (now there's a lovely word) to phonecallers at the office that Methuselah Bates* does not and has never worked here until Methuselah taps me on the shoulder. Is it my fault I've know him as boy* for past ten years?

The problem doesn't stop there. I have to think of names for my characters. I call them A, B and C for as long as I can but eventually it gets awkward. And names are important as Daniel Gritten guest posted on Danny Stack's site in his write up of the William Ackers talk.

It would be nice to say I can just pull names out of the air but every time I try I just get two syllable names that end in eeeee. Like a register being read out at a chav convention.

So instead I try to find names that mean who they are. I have a couple of baby name books and I hit the internet again. Once I've applied my rule that no two names should have the same first letter I end up with a very short list. Too short. So off I go again for another dig. I can send a few evenings doing this.

I wish I could put aside the suspicion that it is all just another form of procrastination. Maybe I should go down the Prisoner route and bin the names all together.

So how do you handle naming?

* Name changed so he won't thump me.