Editor's Note: The Scottish women's comedy writing residential took place recently in the magnificent surroundings of Cove Park, overlooking Loch Long on Scotland's West Coast. It offered a group of female comedy writers development workshops and writing exercises, plus an opportunity to pitch their ideas to BBC Scotland's comedy department. Fern Brady explains what it meant to her...
I work as a full time stand up comedian and have had one pilot commissioned for the BBC's Comedy Feeds in 2014 - but it was the first script I’d ever written so I still felt clueless when it came to treatments and episode outlines.
Since returning from the Edinburgh Festival this year I was in the fortunate position of a lot of people from the industry asking to see something I’d written off the back of my Fringe show (good) but feeling paralysed when it came to doing anything about it (bad). The old me, the one that used to read everything on the BBC Writersroom when I had zero interest from the industry, would be baffled at this new person who got opportunities and then procrastinated by watching funny cat videos.
I had lots of ideas but was unable to actually sit down and complete even a treatment before I’d get caught up in emails or gigs. I was unable to focus for long enough to get any meaningful work done and began to panic that I wouldn’t get even one of my ideas submitted.
I was pleased to be invited on the Cove Park retreat but wasn’t sure how they’d manage to get me to produce work as I felt so stuck. I anticipated the course would consist of maybe one hour a day with BBC staff then 12 hours writing time/me finding innovative new ways to avoid writing in my room. This wasn’t the case at all and the way the course was set up (generally 2 hour workshops interspersed with 2-3 hours writing time throughout the day) meant my head was buzzing with ideas any time it came to a writing break and I wrote consistently with no breaks or procrastinating. We had very limited access to Wifi, no mobile reception and no TVs in our bedrooms so I got more work done in 4 days than I had in two months.
Following the sessions on character and episode structure I suddenly saw all the flaws in a second script I’d been struggling to finish for two years and blasted through a ton of work for that in addition to finishing my treatment for BBC Scotland.
On the first day we had to tell the whole group our sitcom idea. Sharing my thoughts with a group of people I’d just met was truly my idea of hell and I was dreading it so much I only slept three hours the night before, but it was nothing like as bad as I imagined. I’ve always found talking to other people about new ideas mortifying but by the end of the week I was so much more confident in communicating my idea when discussing it with Steve Canny (Executive Producer for Comedy at BBC Scotland). This will be invaluable in future meetings with execs. Before, even when I had a clear idea in my head I’d just mumble something incoherent at producers then feel frustrated at myself.
We got one to one advice on our treatments from BBC Writersroom script editors and this was unbelievably useful. I’d been working on my idea since the start of the year and knew my characters reasonably well but was unsure of the setting or how a series would progress. Within two minutes of chatting to Justine from BBC Writersroom North I had the first four scenes of the pilot in my head. She didn’t try and force her own ideas on me, all she did was ask questions and reflect stuff back at me till I knew what I was doing. I just wish I could hire her to come round my house every time I’m writing!
It was fantastic meeting so many other women who are enthusiastic about the same TV shows but to be honest the biggest realisation I had on the retreat was that my entire career has been slowed down by my online procrastination. Genuinely, were it not for me pouring years of my life into writing hilarious Facebook status updates I’d be an award-winning screenwriter by now. Probably. For now, I’ve put a childlock on my laptop’s internet access until I finish my current script and I suggest you do the same.
