First published in End of Term magazine (Winter 2006).
What does your ‘average’ day involve?
There’s no such thing, really. On an average writing day I start at about 10 o’clock in the morning and I just carry on writing till about three o’clock the next morning. But when I’m producing at the same time, the writing is very much interrupted by edits, sound dubs, script read-throughs and script editing sessions. And I currently split my time between Manchester (where I live) and Cardiff (where Doctor Who is made).
Did you always want to be a television writer?
Yes I did, absolutely. If I’m looking for an evening’s entertainment, watching television is what I do rather than see a film or go to the theatre. It’s absolutely my favourite thing. So it was my ambition, and here I am – I did it!
Was your writing encouraged at school?
Not at school particularly, but I belonged to a youth theatre which was brilliant. We used to put on plays – classic plays, Shakespeare and things like that – but when I was around 15 they let us start writing 10-minute plays, then half-hour plays, then hour-long plays. They were the very first things I had put on; that’s when I really realised what I loved doing.
Did you have any unusual jobs before you became a full-time writer?
Well, I worked on a fruit and veg stall on Swansea Market, and I was the cartoonist for a quite short-lived magazine called Blitz. I also auditioned and got a job presenting the young children’s TV show Play School. I did the one and thought ‘I’m never doing that again!’
Was that your ‘Big Break’ into television?
No, Play School came afterwards. I’d applied for lots of television training schemes, and never got in. Then, while I was working in a theatre in Cardiff, an actor said — completely by chance — that a friend of hers was looking for someone to direct kids in a television studio. She recommended me, so I went for an interview and I got the job on Why Don’t You? Everything else I’ve done stems from that one interview, that one job.
How much control do you have over your scripts now?
Oh, a lot. Without being dictatorial, I have a say over who’s directing it, who the cast is, what the design of it is. I go to every edit and I have a lot to say at those meetings. But television is a collaboration. If you want to be a dictator as a writer, you should really be a novelist — that’s where you can really create your own world without other people!
Many people don’t seem to realise what scriptwriting involves…
Oh, yes — I always get that off taxi drivers: “You just write the words?” It drives me mad when a review will praise the beautiful scenery and images and the reviewer doesn’t realise that they’re in the script, they were written as well. It’s not just the dialogue. My boyfriend’s nothing to do with television; before he met me he had no idea what writers do, and it still sort of amuses him that it’s a way to make a living.
How would you describe your writing?
Oh gosh; the best way to describe it is that it’s very, very me. It’s the hardest thing to do as you progress in your career — to find your own voice, and not to write generically, not to write like the American stuff or the British soaps you watch. I can hear my own voice in every character I’ve ever written, which takes a bit of nerve! That’s the main thing; I’m not sure what it is exactly, but it is very me.
What advice do you have for wannbe TV scriptwriters?
First of all, watch television. It’s amazing how many people say “Oh I’d love to work in television,” and don’t watch a single thing on it, or they despise soap operas and hate lots of shows on television. That’s the most ridiculous approach I’ve ever heard; if you want to work in television, then like it and work out which area you enjoy.
Secondly, the classic mistake is to say ‘I want to write Doctor Who.’ There are only about six people in the country who write Doctor Who at the moment and we’ve already decided who they are, even for next year. You’ve got to want to write — full stop. You’ve got to want to write lots of things, and that might be Holby City or something that’s very close to your heart but is brand new. But you can’t sit there and expect your first script to jump fully formed onto television. You’ve got to have a track record, you’ve got to persevere. That means writing for theatre or for radio, or anything else that’ll get your work out there.
The first proper scripts I started writing were links for television magazine shows, delivered by presenters to camera. They weren’t drama at all, but they were still scripts, I got paid for them, and I learnt an awful lot by doing it. You’ve just got to start anywhere.
As a life-long Doctor Who fan, how does it feel to be writing it?
I was wary of taking on the show, but only a bit, because I absolutely knew how good Doctor Who could be. Honestly, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who loves their job more than I do. Over this weekend I got a new edit of Series 3 Episode 3, which is one I wrote. It’s not finished — it doesn’t have any special effects or music on it yet — but I sat down and watched it and I could not have been happier. We’ve still got to change a few things, but there’s no other show I’d rather watch – this is a spectacularly brilliant job.
© Craven Publishing
