Star Trek on the Radio (Sort Of)
This week we got back on track after all our IT problems and released an original play: “First Officer”, a sci-fi adventure with spaceships, explosions and devious betrayal. You can listen to it below and then click on the “more” button for some discussion about the making of the play and what we learned.
But first, the play:
The exceptionally talented and handsome Oliver Warren is a screenwriter, director, and one of the judges in our Little Wonder Radio Play competition. Watch this space because in the not so distant future he’s going to be a big deal (we just slipped in before the feeding frenzy!)
In this short interview Oliver talks about his experiences as a writer/director, how the roots of storytelling can be found in everything from a script to a fashion shoot, and gives some advice on how to survive the tough old world of writing.
Click on “more” to get to the good stuff!
Last night, as I was preparing to send out feedback to non-longlistees for the Little Wonder competition, I encountered an IT disaster which basically ruined everything. The discs on which I had the data were corrupted, and I lost thousands of files – the scripts, the notes, recordings, work-in-progress, two of my own plays, and, perhaps most painfully of all, more than 50,000 words worth of feedback to writers that did not make the longlist. To be honest, I’m still rather in shock. And I’m very, very sorry to everyone that was hoping to receive feedback[i].
It was slightly surreal, but just as we were reaching peak activity with the Little Wonder Radio Play Competition I won a stage play competition. I’m certain that organising the first helped me with the second, although the two were quite different. Cité 27 wanted a 27-minute-long stage play, to be played in a 27m2 space, to an audience of 27 people, using only 3 actors. One of the organisers got in touch with me about 10 days before the deadline to say “hey, have you seen this, you should think about submitting”, and because I love a) a deadline and b) a brief, I said “sure, great.” The next day my wife went into labour.[i] Somehow, I managed to finish some sort of play and send it the day before the deadline.
A couple of weeks later I got a lovely email confirming my play had been selected. How? How could such a thing happen? Did I really write a winning play in a week at the same time as dealing with a new baby and very tired wife? Just how many chickens did I sacrifice to Satan?
Well, I can promise you that no chickens were harmed, and that it certainly had nothing to do with talent. But I do have some thoughts about what worked. Read on if you’d like to learn how to fluke your way through a play competition.
So, you didn’t make the longlist. You read the list of names. Then, you read it again. Then, if you’re like me, you went looking for chocolate.
All our judges are writers. That means all of us, at some point, have been rejected. Again, and again, and again. Rejected when we’ve poured our hearts and souls into a piece of work. Rejected when we really thought we’d got it this time. It hurts. I’m sorry. We don’t want anyone to feel like that.
The most important thing to remember is that rejection is part of the process and happens to everyone. In this post I’m going to talk a little about how we made our decision, the most common mistakes that kept people off the longlist, and those qualities that saw our 17 longlistees make it through. Hopefully you’ll find it useful – more importantly, you should find it encouraging.
