A Meme: It All Started When... How I Got Into Screenwriting

Neil Baker over at the Writing is a Scientific Art blog recently tagged me in a screenwriting meme. "It all started when..." is the theme and looks at "that moment where you decided that this was something you could/should/would do".

My moment came in the summer of 2008 in Australia (well, British summer, Australia's winter!) Working part-time to save up for a road trip up and back down the East coast of Australia, I had a bit more spare time on my hands than I usually would when working full-time in England and decided to use it to embark on a long-time coming activity. Something I'd always thought about and wanted to do, but never had the time or found the courage to actually start on. And I knew exactly what that was.

Writing. Everyone wants to pen a novel, and I was no exception. I had a laptop with me and decided to take the plunge. I chose a theme I'd always wanted to write on - obsessive compulsive disorder. Having suffered it myself when I was younger I felt knowledgeable enough on the topic to portray it convincingly. But of course this theme would perhaps be a little dull by itself, so I threw in a fellow sufferer in Canada, a dying grandmother who predicts forthcoming disasters, and set the two sufferers on a path to meeting each other and helping each other overcome their problems.

Only I had a problem myself. A whirlwind of tapping away and I had 22,000 words down. Blimey. I was impressed with myself! But then I got distracted...

I'd been looking into writing groups on facebook (you know, back when there were some great community groups and not just page after page of rubbish to "like"). I'd joined several novel-writing groups and had come across some screenwriting groups, too. Reading through the threads, I got into a long-winded conversation about screenwriting with none other than Mr Neil Baker! It was the start of many essay-length conversations, spurring each other on as we learnt the craft, for we were both newcomers.

Celtx was my first discovery and I joined Project Central, a part of the Celtx website which has since disappeared. It was a hub of newcomers and more experienced screenwriters alike, publishing their scripts and having them critiqued by others. It was like a virtual writing school with the older, cooler kids helping out the newbies, telling them what they were doing wrong and offering suggestions for improvement. Whilst Project Central is no more, you can still publish your work for critique through their forum.

St Agnes, the area in which I was living in Adelaide, had a fantastic library down the road. I scoured it for writing books and went home with Alex Epstein's Crafty TV Writing and William Smethurst's Writing for Television. Two cracking reads that fired me up no end.

Writing scripts was an experience unlike no other. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed writing my novel, but screenwriting was different. Instant, exhilarating and explosively visual. Throughout my road trip I unfortunately didn't have the time to write, but I was, however, constantly inspired by my surroundings. Never before had my ideas sprung to life in such a dramatic way. Everything I saw, heard and experienced was a potential scene in a screenplay.

Writing my first screenplays (a children's drama, a comedy sitcom episode, a teenage drama and an artistic short) felt like immense achievements. I knew this was something I would stick with, unlike many other hobbies and career aspirations that has fallen flat at the first hurdles. I explained about all this in my very first blog entry, dated July 30th 2008, which you can read here.

So there you have it. A trip to Australia caused me to head in a career direction which I'd only ever dreamed of. That trip set me on a journey to becoming a writer. A journey I've continued through thick and thin. Road blocks have been raised along the way in the way of rejections, but they can't hurt me. Writing has seen me through difficult times; times in which I felt the world fall apart around me. Writing is my heart, my soul. My best friend. I'll continue working my way up, achievement by achievement, and get to the end of that journey :)

So, how did you start out? I hereby meme Dom Carver, Laurence Timms, Steve Turnbull, Jez Freedman and Laura Anderson!