Niall Leonard's Website

I was invited onto a seminar in Dublin a while back to talk to Irish writers who wanted to break into British TV.  I was puzzled to be asked, because that’s how I usually think of myself, and when people point out that I already have written quite a bit for UK TV it always takes me by surprise.

So there I was on the podium beside TJ, a distinguished screenwriter who worked his way up from the writers’ stable to become showrunner on a major TV soap.  He was – is, rather – the best sort of producer, for whom only the story and the writing matters. He feels if you get that right everything else will follow, and he’s right, of course. Anyway someone in the audience asked TJ what they should do to get work in UK TV drama, and he replied, ‘Watch everything’.  There was a sort of gasp from the audience.

How could you possibly watch every drama on TV – every cop show, soap, and Dickens adaptation – and still have a life?  And write as well?  Even for such an energetic, driven character as TJ it would be a tall order.  Maybe he didn’t mean it literally.

I piped up and said that I usually made time to watch the shows that amazed me and left me thinking, ‘Wish I could write like that’ – the shows I aspire to work on, even if I never will.  The Wire for example.  But if I wanted to go for a job on a specific TV show, I would watch previous episodes and read old scripts, get to know the characters and the setup, and figure out the way the stories worked.  In other words, I’d do my homework.  (I was relieved at this point to see TJ nodding vigorously.)

TV producers rarely take risks with new screenwriters.  There are usually lots of old hands available, and bringing in less experienced writers can involve extra work and extra risk.   That’s what gives rise to the ‘closed shop syndrome’ where you won’t get hired unless someone else has previously hired you. When you are trying to get your first break that’s incredibly frustrating, especially when you know you could a better job than some ‘established’ writers.

You just have to keep plugging away.  Do everything you can to show producers that you’re already up to speed with their show, that you can do it just as well as the regulars.  There’s a form of mimicry involved: you have to assume the voice of the show, to find dramas that not only involve its established characters but also engage you as a writer.  You have to get excited about what you can offer, if you want the producers to share that excitement.  You can even push the boundaries of what’s been established – if you’ve done your homework properly, you should have a good idea of what you can get away with.

Admittedly this advice is less relevant than it used to be. The current fashion in UK TV is for ‘authored’ pieces, where an entire series will be created by one screenwriter.  It’s part of a growing appreciation for the craft of writing and for the distinctive individual voice that started in the US, when writers like Aaron Sorkin and David Chase were allowed to write quirky, demanding shows such asThe West Wing and The Sopranos that had previously been rejected by networks locked into established formulae. (Sorkin had been told at one point ’you can’t have a leading man with a beard.’)

New networks like HBO wanted intelligent, adult dramas and were prepared to take risks – Sorkin is a mercurial character who would sometimes still be writing the script when the crew had started shooting, but the finished product was worth it.

Nowadays UK broadcasters too are more willing to take risks, and let one writer devise and script an entire series. While this is good news for the art of screenwriting, it makes life harder for jobbing scriptwriters who make ends meet doing an episode here and an episode there, and harder still for unknown writers hoping to get a break on a long-running TV show.  It makes it more important than ever to keep developing new projects of your own.

There are a handful of UK TV productions that make it their business to find and develop new talent – low-budget daytime soaps, for example.  They use new writers because they’re cheap and will (usually) do what they’re told.  It’s not very glamorous or boast-worthy, but it’s a great way to learn the ropes and add weight to your CV.  Just try to make sure you never work for less than the Writer’s Guild minimum (Google it). I know of some up-and-coming writers so eager for a break they worked for months for a pittance, effectively subsidising the indie that hired them.  No respectable TV producer should ask you to work for less than the WG/PACT minimum rate on a show that’s intended for broadcast.

There is one thing I should have said at that Dublin seminar and didn’t: I should have asked the audience why they were so eager to work on UK TV anyhow. I mean I know the answer – that for Irish writers it’s close to home, and we know all the shows – but it’s not very ambitious. British TV is a small pond, after all, with an awful lot of big fish in it. If I were starting out from scratch, trying to flog a screenplay, I’d try to do it in Hollywood. The US market is enormous, and even if it takes a while to get a break I’d rather be a skint struggling writer on Venice Beach than a skint struggling writer in Shepherd’s Bush. The bullshit is the same over there, but the rewards for surviving it are vastly greater. If you’ve got the talent, go for it, aim high.  The British TV market will still be here if you decide to come back.

And the more bright young talent heads west, the more work there’ll be in the UK for old farts like me. Off you go, aim high, send us a postcard.

When I was a film student the perennial problem was getting hold of good actors who would appear in your amateur productions for expenses only.  We were afraid at first to ask the people we really wanted, because we thought they might take it as an insult.  In time you grow a thicker skin and realise that it costs nothing to ask and having someone tell you to eff off is not actually fatal. In fact, begging, pestering and cajoling people to lend you equipment or props or locations for little or no money – ‘blagging’ as it’s called – is a vital skill for a film maker, because even in major professional productions sometimes all that’s between you and disaster is the ability to persuade panicking producers that everything’s going to turn out fine.

In fact getting experienced professional actors to appear in student movies was often easier than you’d imagine, because most actors know it’s better to be working than sitting at home twiddling your thumbs.  On a student shoot at least you’re practising your craft and getting seen. At the very least you’ll get fed.  If the shoot’s a fiasco you’ll have some wonderful disaster stories to tell your friends in the pub, but it’s also possible you’ll be working with a genuinely talented young filmmaker.  Then your performance will be seen at festivals around the world.  More to the point, producers will be looking at it, because it’s their job to spot new talent.  If it leads to a job even that awful shoot where you sat for twelve hours in a derelict hospital ward full of dead pigeons, waiting for the director of photography to figure out the lighting, will have been worthwhile.

My graduation film Over the Wild Frontier no longer exists as a print, to the best of my knowledge.  That’s probably a good thing because although I was very proud of it at the time, and it made people laugh, it was pretty bloody rough. But now it’s gone I can describe it as a lost masterpiece.  Part of it, coincidentally, was shot in a derelict hospital full of dead pigeons.

I had never heard of the Irish actor who played the lead role before I cast him, and few other people had either.  Immensely tall and immensely handsome, Patrick Bergin has roguish charm by the bucketful, and he made every woman on the set come over all unnecessary.  He worked with me for eight weeks or so over one glorious summer, and such was his dedication he even did his own stunts.  He fell off a motorbike in the middle of a grassy field for a shot that wasn’t in the script and which in the end I never used.  I remember at the end of the shoot handing him a wad of notes as his expenses, and feeling embarrassed it was so little for all the work he had put in.  Especially as he was still limping.

But what Patrick really got out of it was a thirty-minute comedy film where he was onscreen nearly all the time.  He sent a copy to an Irish director, Pat O’Connor, who was doing very well in Hollywood that year.  And one day in LA O’Connor got a phone call from the veteran director Bob Rafaelson, who was casting a movie called Mountains Of The Moon about the Victorian explorer Richard Burton (yes, the Welsh actor named himself after him.)  Burton was from Dublin, and Rafaelson was looking for a tall handsome Irish actor, and could O’Connor suggest anybody?  And O’Connor told him about a guy he’d just seen in this wonderful student movie Over the Wild Frontier.  (OK, he may not have used the term ‘wonderful’.  But this is my anecdote.)

So Patrick got to play Richard Burton opposite Fiona Shaw, because he had spent those weeks in South Armagh falling off a motorbike. That job in turn led to a role as the abusive husband of Julia Roberts in Sleeping With The Enemy, a movie that became a huge hit, coming out very soon after Pretty Woman.

Anyway this is all ages ago now, but the principle still applies – that dumb luck and coincidence can only help if you’re already making the effort to help yourself.  Keep plugging away, producing work and getting stuff out there, because you really don’t know when it will pay off, where it will end up or where it might take you.

But if a student director asks you to ride a motorbike across a wet grassy field in South Armagh, tell him to find a stunt double or forget it.

Shortly after we both graduated from Film School a good friend of mine spent a year developing a movie script.  We both knew that if you are unknown and unproven as a writer/director, writing a great script is a good way to get noticed.  Even today, when it’s possible to shoot high-definition video on a shoestring, a script still offers far more scope to engage the imagination of the reader.  There are no budget restrictions on paper, no duff performances you can’t re-shoot, no music royalties to fret about.

After twelve months or so my friend showed me his first draft.  Like me, he was fond of conventional narrative (‘Hollywood’ movies if you like), so when I pointed out that the hero of his script never took the initiative in the story, never made a difference to the course of events, and did not know what was going on most of the time, my friend got quite upset.

He had spent a year working on a script that was deeply flawed.  He shouldn’t have put all his eggs in one basket, I told him – a writer/director starting out should have a dozen ideas and treatments on the go, all pitched at different markets, to maximise the chances of one being picked up and produced.  One big-budget idea, one or two low-to-no budget ideas, a proposal for a TV series, a one-off real-life drama…

But his approach was right, and mine was wrong.  Yes, he had been wasting his time, but that’s because his script was structurally flawed in ways that could have been avoided from the start.  But it’s vital for writers starting out to have a finished original script to show commissioners and producers, a script that reflects the writer’s unique individual voice.  A folder full of ideas and pitches is shows energy and enthusiasm, but that’s not enough. Ideas and pitches are ten a penny – it’s easy to make an idea sound brilliant in a pitch, where you can skate around all the difficult bits.  The real achievement, the value you add, is turning that idea into a solid, engaging script.

Many up-and-coming writers aspire to write episodes of TV series.  These can be great fun to work on, but the characters, the setting and the tone have all previously been established.  (Sometimes even the ending, if it’s that sort of show.)  You’re just filling in the blanks.  You’ll get paid of course, which is wonderful, but never confuse a TV episode with proper writing.  If you are lucky enough to get one, use it to subsidise the creation of your own original material.

Starting, structuring, writing, finishing and revising a script, on spec, is immensely hard work, but nothing teaches you about scripts like writing one. And when you have finished that one, start another.  Someday you’ll be in a meeting where a producer who’s read your script will ask you what else you have – and that’s when you realise why you spent all that time slogging over the other scripts, because now you have a solid, distinctive portfolio.

And although it’s important to revise and polish your scripts, don’t get obsessive – try to know when to put it down and move on to the next.  Twenty years ago I met a young screenwriter who had just won a major prize for his first script.  I was consumed with envy, of course.  Twenty years later – neither of us exactly young any more – we met again, and I asked what he was working on.  ‘The script’ he replied.  ‘Which script?’  I asked.  He looked at me as if I was being thick.

He had been rewriting the same screenplay for twenty years – draft after draft after draft – without ever coming any closer to getting it made.  In fact, as far as I know, he still is.

Be careful what you wish for.