Outsiders is a new team-written comedy developed by BBC Writersroom Wales. 5 writers and scripts combine into one half-hour comedy which is broadcast on Wednesday 10th October on BBC Two Wales as part of the BBC Wales Festival of Funny and to mark World Mental Health Day.
Darragh Mortell is one of the writers. He explains how this was his first experience of a writers' room, what that involved and why writers should embrace the opportunity.
The show was titled ‘Outsiders’ which was very fitting for my involvement, as working with other writers and producers was something beyond foreign to me. The closest I’d come to working with other writers was strongly voicing an opinion to a pre-recorded writers' lecture from the University of Youtube. But however anxious I may have felt before entering the writers' room to conceive a thirty-minute musical, comedy drama about mental health, the challenge of it all was tantalising.
I received my invitation to join four other writers, a script editor and a few producers in fleshing out what turned out to be a daring premise. My invitation came after a musical comedy short film (Beauty in the Street) I had written and directed was spotted by Rachel Williams, the then Head of BBC Writersroom Wales. My film cost next to nothing to make but was all about the script. As a first time, upcoming or even experienced writer, the medium of short film is exactly the place you need to be flexing your skills for all to see. Even if you have to film it on your phone, just do it to the best of your ability, upload it and get sharing, people will watch it! Who knows, it might even land you in a writers' room.
If I remember accurately, for day one on ‘Outsiders’ we were asked to come prepared to talk about mental health and more specifically, an area in which we either had some form of experience with or wished to explore. I found the next few hours hugely beneficial as instead of exchanging stories about our previous work experience and how we take our coffee, we went straight into talking (passionately in some cases) about mental health, the subject we were hoping to tackle appropriately with a fistful of genres hitchhiking a ride.
One thing I’d say to writers yet to experience a writers' room is that there is little benefit in staying quiet in these spaces. Even if you don’t like to throw an unformed idea into the mix for fear of ridicule, that’s EXACTLY what you should be doing. It really is. This is a writers' room not a writer’s cubicle, there are multiple creative minds standing by, ready to peel or slap a lil more clay on the ting as you all move forward (and inevitably back) together. It also may sound basic as a blink but make sure you’re up to date on what “the people” are watching. You’ll spend a healthy amount of time discussing what you felt worked and what didn’t in shows you all watch. I found all of this to be light mental sparring as we all got to know each other’s tastes and preferred tones and when contributing to a single script, there’s nothing more important than understanding the tone collectively.
An hour was allotted to brainstorming potential storylines within our individual episode segments while also incorporating our partners’ characters into it. Myself and Sam Bees (a fantastically talented writer from Treorchy) for some reason chose the canteen as our place of work. Our script editor Jay Harley then came around, spending a few minutes in each of the groups acting as a sounding board, encouraging us to keep burrowing if she felt we were on to something. As I mentioned, this kind of structure was new to me, previously my mantra was “If the ideas aren’t coming, don’t push it.” Well, under this set up I had to push it, and much to my surprise the ideas did come.
The afternoon session started with mini pitches. The canteen duo along with their scribing comrades all reported their progress. Like before, we gently probed at the ideas offering each other extra ammunition when it came to draft one.
After a two-day process, we managed to nail down the characters, place, structure, tone (I think) and off we went, set free to scribble in our creative pockets of choice. You should know that a two/three-day writers' room is the norm and you’d be expected to emerge with what we did in that time in most other places. While in attendance, I’d advise the consumption of copious amounts of coffee, water and fruit in that order.
The weeks that followed the storylining days were just as productive, as we were given very clear tasks then guidance to help us hit our deadlines. I made sure to grasp the olive branch offered up by the script supervisor to read a rough draft of mine days before the actual date, to judge whether I was on track. This was mainly with regards to how my draft was fitting in with the others as it’s easy to change lines in a script, make them funnier or what not but having the wrong tone is a whole different ball game. I just found it gave me more peace of mind when actually submitting, knowing a version had already been approved or directed. The BBC Writersroom folk are very generous in this respect.
One thing that took me by surprise was an invitation to recce a potential location. I’d always known a recce to be way past a writer’s watershed but now having experienced it I would advise any writer presented with this opportunity to grab it with a Kung-Fu tight grip! What it provided was a physical space to what was previously only imagined. An odd-looking tree right outside of the interior location could spark off the beginnings of a scene or even just the geography can help you map out the characters physical journey. Do it!!!
Though I was welcomed and supported throughout this project by a lovely and talented team of people, I will always consider myself to be an outsider. Most writers do as it’s often such an isolated existence with occasional moments in time like a writers' rooms. I’d encourage anyone reading this who wishes to take their writing to the next level to make a short, send in a spec script or just drop BBC Writersroom an email to say “Hey...I write”. You can still be an outsider but just from the inside.
Darragh ‘Da’ Mortell
Watch Outsiders on BBC Two Wales on Wednesday 10th October 2018 at 11.15pm or on BBC iPlayer
