I’m delighted to announce that the following make up the longlist for our 2020 Open Radio Play competition.

• Acedia by Judith Inseon
• Anna Freud is Dead! by Phillip Marriot
• Classic Zom by Matt Wixey
• Ecosystem X by Amber Elen-Forbat
• Fatima by Sigita Vesele
• Fresher by Richard Brabin
• Grandfather is Dead by C Lyengar
• Miniature Pineapples by Simon Rowe
• One Dead Dog by Olivia Neale
• Roadkill by J. Weintraub
• Shampoo the Carpet by Declan Kennedy
• Television is Bad for You by Mark Blayney
• The Last Parent-Teacher Meeting by Denise Deegan
• Tomatoes are Scary by Paul Stone

Warmest congratulations to everyone who made our longlist. Over the next month I’ll be rounding up a team of writing experts to provide feedback on your work, which you will then receive along with a deadline to revise and resubmit before we chose five finalists that will be performed before a live audience here in Paris.

Dates are a little fuzzy at the moment – if you follow me on social media you’ll know things have been a bit rough as of late, but we are mostly on schedule and I’ll keep you up to date as I have more news.

For everyone who missed the list, commiserations, and please don’t stop writing or feeling like a writer because of this. As usual there was enormous diversity in the entries, from plays that didn’t work, to a sadly large number that didn’t meet the entry conditions including one or two really quite good film scripts (hot tip – if you’ve left stage directions/camera instructions in your script I’m going to figure out it isn’t really a radio play.) There were also some really good plays that on a different day might have made the list. So don’t lose heart, and keep writing.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for tips on how to up your chances next time round, here’s some articles on writing better plays:

Waiting for an Interview in Purgatory: On Originality

The Delights and Dangers of Causing Offence (About writing offensive plays)

Four Questions to make you Ready to Start your Story

On the Importance of Cast Lists

How Long should your Story be?

Don’t Build to a Climax: Start with a Bang!

Thank you so much to everybody who entered our competition and I look forward to working with our longlistees in the coming months.

Last November I ran a successful Kickstarter that led to the publication of my first novel, Vile, a Science Fantasy adventure about Elianor Paine and just how much she is prepared to sacrifice to subvert her masters and start a revolution. It’s got monsters, sword-fights, and arguments about ontology – what more could you want?

In this article I’ve gathered together all the best bits of material from the Kickstarter, so if you missed all that or it wasn’t your thing then you can find out all about the book here. There are videos, readings, the film of my opening my first copy, and even me singing. Yes, I was that desperate. So, if you want to find out about Vile, read on! If I had you at “November”, you can skips straight ahead to Amazon and buy a copy now 🙂

The 2019 Open Competition is now closed for entries. Good luck to everyone who submitted a play. I shall start reading everything once the holidays are over and announce the longlist as soon as possible.

I’m aware that some people did not receive a notification when they submitted their play, or did not see the notification; either way I’ll take a look at making it work in a different way should we run another competition.

Equally, I know one or two people were concerned that a part of one form said “2018” rather than “2019”. There’s nothing to worry about, that’s just my failure to fully update everything from last year. Again, if we run a new competition, I’m going to work on new pages to make things a little clearer.

As of now we have a little more than 200 entries, which is impressive over the holiday season and should keep me busy for a while! Thank you everyone who has taken part, and best of luck.