Search Cheshire Communities

  • Looking for a service or community in Cheshire, search our extensive guide below

Save money off your water bill with Cheshire Communities

Grab my RSS feed | (What's this?)

About this site

Interested in joining Cheshire Communities? Click here to find out how

This is your community website, and the content will be driven by you.
If you find any offensive or insulting material on this site please report it to the administrators or phone 01244 606 409

Advice for users - click here to find out how to get the most out of your website.

The views carried on this site are not necessarily shared by the Cheshire Newspaper Titiles, or its parent company Trinity Mirror.

Keywords

Recent Articles

Recent Comments

Feeds

Monthly Archives

The Drama Queens

The Drama Queens - final episode

Posted by The Drama Queens on December 8, 2008 11:41 AM

The letter from the BBC was very, very detailed. Sam and I will treasure it always. To see what writing projects have been undertaken since go to www.commissionme.blogspot.com - particularly Friday 21st November.

On the crest of a wave

Posted by The Drama Queens on February 29, 2008 9:29 AM

Sam and I had a fantastic session together today. We worked flat out from 9am until 1.30pm. We raced through episode 5, we discussed episode 6; we even had enough drive and inspiration to outline series two! We also began to imagine another comedy drama series, on a completely different theme. The next Sam and Anna collaboration would be about couples; forty-somethings with marriages, children, second marriages, affairs, broken promises, failed dreams, sadnesses and triumphs. The new series would include characters like Charlotte and Ray; one minute they’re on top of the world, happily married, a golden couple, in love with each other, sustained by shared values, the importance of good friends, good wine and their thriving careers helping others. The next minute, Ray is struck down with depression.

Continue reading "On the crest of a wave"

Read me, Kate

Posted by The Drama Queens on February 26, 2008 11:33 AM

Sam has had a reply from the BBC. I did what any fledgling scriptwriter would do and clicked on the link. Kate Rowlands, creative director new writing, had received our script entitled 'Cleaning Up' and had replied.
I know there's no way she would have had time to read it so was this just a polite 'no' do you think? My finger hovered. Actually I'm not sure I wouldn't rather leave it a few months before reading it. I'm not ready for rejection yet; I'd quite like to be a 'possible sriptwriter' rather than a 'failed scriptwriter'.
But then I caught sight of Sam's message at the top of the email: 'We haven't fallen at the first hurdle' and believed her....

Continue reading "Read me, Kate"

BBC reponds

Posted by The Drama Queens on February 21, 2008 10:47 AM

I’ve been reading the BBC website’s Writers’ Room again, concentrating specifically on the ‘tips for writers’ from people such as Paul Cornell and Sarah Phelps. If anyone out there is ever thinking of doing what Sam and I have done i.e. write a script for TV, then you must read their tips.
Mind you, I read them and now I feel totally inadequate.
Sarah Phelps is a core writer for Eastenders. Paul Cornell has written for Doctor Who, Casualty, Holby City, Doctors and Robin Hood in between writing a very informative blog. He started a degree in astrophysics but couldn’t manage the maths and so turned to writing instead. He writes 5,000 words a day – A DAY – and doesn’t believe in writers block.
I’m lucky if I manage 1,000 words a day.
Not only that – he writes 5,000 words in the MORNING and then goes to the cinema in the afternoon! The man’s a powerhouse.

Continue reading "BBC reponds"

Off it goes

Posted by The Drama Queens on February 6, 2008 12:21 PM

It's gone; our script has gone! Our script - entitled Cleaning Up has left us at long last. Sam simply attached it to an email and sent it to three people: a colleague from her telly days; Katherine Beacon at BBC North and Ric Michael at Baby Cow. . That's eight main characters speaking 59 pages of dialogue, or 691 paragraphs, or 9,919 words.
There must be one or two good ones in there, surely? I've heard it takes a long time to reply; six months in most cases.
That's a long time to wait to hear the word 'No' isn't it?
Then again, they might say: 'No...but.'

Waving goodbye

Posted by The Drama Queens on January 28, 2008 10:54 AM

Well, Sam and I have read though the whole script adding scene numbers as and when they are required but it still seems a little light on stage directions. Nevertheless we’ve decided it’s time to let someone else see it. We toyed with the idea of getting together with friends, allocating them a part each and reading it over a bottle of wine – or two – but have decided instead to concentrate specifically on Sam’s two friends, the ones who still work in the TV industry that is.
Drama%20Queen%20blog%20logo2.jpg

Continue reading "Waving goodbye"

Is it all pie in the sky?

Posted by The Drama Queens on January 20, 2008 9:29 PM

Sam and I are worried we’re neglecting the day jobs. She runs her own business and will soon be more involved in her husband’s business too, if he has his way; I’m a freelance journalist and I don’t mind admitting that there hasn’t been as much freelancing recently as there should have been. Sam and I have become a little obsessed with our comedy drama and the idea that is going to be one of six hour long episodes on a prime time TV slot on BBC2 or Channel 4.
drama.jpg

Continue reading "Is it all pie in the sky?"

Read on...and on...and on

Posted by The Drama Queens on December 18, 2007 9:05 AM

Sam has quite a few ex-colleagues from her days spent working for Granada TV, one of whom came to visit this weekend. Not only has this particular colleague had a script made into a TV drama, it won the prestigious Dennis Potter Screenwriting Award.
This Little Life is a harrowing story of the birth of a premature baby and the effect it has on a husband and wife and was based on her novel, Between Two Eternities. So when Sam and I arranged to meet for our now weekly scriptwriting morning, I was nervous. Had she shown our raw script to her friend? Did I want her to? What if she hated it?
Worse, what if she didn’t hate it but didn’t particularly like it either?

Continue reading "Read on...and on...and on"

Thinking aloud

Posted by The Drama Queens on December 10, 2007 4:13 PM

Sam and I have just had our weekly meeting to discuss the script. We are now aiming to send it to Ric Michael at Baby Cow, even if deep down we know our programme idea is not exactly comedy and consequently not suitable for his production company. But, hey ho, we’ve got to start somewhere and it’s good to have an aim.
Hyacinth.jpg

Continue reading "Thinking aloud"

Seminar success?

Posted by The Drama Queens on December 5, 2007 10:56 PM

Sam and I have just got back from the seminar on writing for TV and radio at the Waterside Arts Centre in Sale, Manchester.
Joanne Lafferty was there from BBC radio, Jane Smith, literary agent and Ric Michael from Baby Cow productions.
drama.jpg

Continue reading "Seminar success?"

First draft

Posted by The Drama Queens on December 3, 2007 9:59 AM

Sam and I have completed the first draft of our comedy drama! We’ve got a cast of six main characters; not too many that we don’t have time to flesh them out and not too few to be boring. We want to appeal to as many people as possible, but given that we are forty-something housewives with jobs, kids and husbands, I suppose we’ve narrowed it down to your middle class, dysfunctional, argumentative, modern, happy family viewer, just like us. Even if we never get any further than reading it out loud to each other in Sam’s kitchen we feel we’ve achieved something.
mighty%20boosh.jpg
Actually that last sentence is completely untrue

Continue reading "First draft"

Background research

Posted by The Drama Queens on November 27, 2007 7:32 PM

Sam and I had our third script meeting today and this time we decided to do a run-through, just to check how much we’d written. We read alternate characters out loud and we paused for ‘stage’ directions in all the right places.
We realised that we had written 16 minutes of our comedy drama. Sixteen minutes! Four weeks ago this script was just a twinkle in Sam’s eye and I had spent a whole six months just considering enrolling on the University of Liverpool’s scriptwriting course.
drama.jpg

Continue reading "Background research"

Leading man

Posted by The Drama Queens on November 26, 2007 8:12 PM

Sam and I have had two sessions now where we meet and write our Chester-based comedy drama.
Part of us is shocked that we even suggested writing it, having done nothing like it before and part of us is wondering what on earth came over us when we said we’d have a go. (By the way, we said yes to each other, not a producer…we haven’t got that far yet.)
David%20Brent.jpg

Continue reading "Leading man"

Act I scene 1

Posted by The Drama Queens on November 24, 2007 4:17 PM

Sam wants the mother-in-law in our comedy drama to be the sane ‘voice of reason’ in the family and, well, I don’t know if that’s a good idea - is there such a thing? Yes, yes, I know – we’ll all be mother-in-laws eventually - but sane? I doubt it. By the time my son marries, I’m going to be completely loopy. If it’s not his irritating habit of having a shower and washing his hair before he plays football that sends me over the edge it’ll be his habit of taking everything out of the packed lunch I prepare for him and repacking his own.
And then he brings most of it home from school – uneaten.
In real life Sam has two daughters and they seem to me to be so much more uncomplicated - although perhaps I should ask Sam about that, sometimes things aren’t what they seem are they?
Anyway, according to William Smethurst in How to Write for Television, character is important, but we shouldn’t have too many of them. Better, apparently, to have a small group of characters than to juggle a large cast. And we’ve decided that our fictional family should have a teenaged daughter.
We also think that a couple of badly behaved twin boys aged six or eight would have great comic potential – but we don’t know yet whether they play football. Perhaps they do and perhaps they will also insist on taking a shower before their football matches when they get to be 12 years old?
And of course, that would then explain why the mother in our comedy drama is an absolute nutcase.
drama.jpg

Setting the scene

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on November 21, 2007 10:44 AM

When my sports-mad hubby asks: “Remember the night of the Rugby World Cup final in 2007…?� I’ll be able to reply: “Yes, yes, yes,� without lying.

drama.jpg

That night, my friend Sam suggested to me that we write a comedy drama series for TV and I agreed.

Continue reading "Setting the scene"