BBC Writers Room

The Writersroom creates a file for every person who sends a script in, and they do take quite seriously the process of tracking individual writers to spot improvement, progression etc. So, ideally if you send something else in, it should show some advancement from your last. Simply put, your next script should be better.

As for the Writersroom itself, I'll tell you what I personally feel about the setup. (I've been right through their system, by the way, and met all the head honchos at the Writersroom in London and Manchester and their contacts at BBC Continuing Drama and Drama.)

If you're looking to get into writing Continuing Drama (Doctors, Eastenders, Casualty, Holby City) or smaller, perhaps more regional radio productions (Radio 4 Drama etc), or comedy (though I'm talking about smaller sketch-based programmes, not original sitcoms), then the Writersroom can help you achieve that.

If you're trying to get an original drama series or sitcom made, or you want to write for Doctor Who, Hotel Babylon, Silent Witness, Robin Hood, Merlin or any of the other big flagship BBC shows, then the Writersroom is not going to help you achieve that. At least not directly. They would put you onto Doctors, say, and you'd cut your teeth there and work your way onto other shows through contacts and new stuff you've written. The queue for writers wanting to earn £90k for a double bill of Silent Witness is rather long and crammed with pros who've been doing this for decades but are still having to fight tooth and nail for a shot at an episode. They're just not going to entrust that responsibility to new writers. Not saying anything about your individual talents, by the way. It's that new writers are unknown, and unproven.

See, the biggest misconception about the WR is that they're looking for things to make. They're not. It's purely a talent search. OK, yes, it's possible that something you send in could be so spectacular that it leads to amazing things but it's an occurrence so rare that it's not worth considering as a possibility.

Although the WR does work with some other BBC departments, they are most closely linked to Continuing Drama, and Doctors is the route that the vast majority of new writers will use to get in. A great deal more are recommended for the Writers Academy, which also leads to Doctors.

So my advice would be if you're interested in Continuing Drama, keep up with the WritersRoom, but be prepared for a long slog. It took me 18 months after meeting the head of the WR before I even got a Doctors trial. The place moves slower than molasses, sadly.

But if you're trying to get something original made, I would say in my humble opinoion, that the WR will ultimately not help you achieve that, and you should perhaps instead go the route of submitting to agents and production companies.

I've also got something with writersroom, should be hearing back in around 3 months, I think.

My sister got her script back with an invitation to sub something else, too. Definitely be pleased, and if you actually want to write for Easties or Casualty or Doctors, you should be on a great road. Most writers are frustrated because they want to get to their own stuff, so lucky you!

Chris has wonderful advice, but I should add, don't resub what they've already seen, they won't read it. You have to send something new.

Good luck!

zahra said:

I should add, don't resub what they've already seen, they won't read it. You have to send something new.

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Good point! And that's to do with the whole keeping track of writers thing. They also changed some of their other rules recently, something like they don't accept submissions from overseas anymore. Big to-do about that when they announced it but I can understand. Their focus is big on continuing drama and I'm not sure how it'd work with overseas writers. Not saying it couldn't work, I bet it could but it would depend on the writer I guess.