On the 14th September 2014, having scraped my way through my A Levels, I moved to Cardiff city to study BA Scriptwriting at the University of South Wales. My goal? To be the next big thing in TV before my three years were up. My plan? Probably to bump into Steven Moffat, give him my killer idea for a Doctor Who spin off, and make my fortune.
Ten years, two jobs, two degrees, and a global pandemic later, I’m still waiting for Mr Davies to option my fabulously original idea.
My relationship with writing has been a tumultuous one. I’ve fallen in and out of love with it routinely in the last decade, but I can still confidently say that writing is what I want to do with my life. Through all the changes in my late teens and most of my twenties, that’s been one thing I’ve always been committed to.
So, to celebrate spending nearly a third of my life in one place, I thought I’d look back at ten scripts I’ve written since my undergraduate started. I’ll be honest, they’re mostly dreadful. I’m not showcasing them as a form of self-flagellation, but to highlight just how far I’ve come in the last decade. From beating nuanced topics with a naïve sledgehammer, to finally understanding what it means to ‘write what you know’, every script is a showcase of who I am, who I was, and what I’ve learned.
That said, and to save your eyes, I will only upload an extract from each piece, depending on their length. I’ll even do a little write-up on each one so, if you want, you don’t have to read the scripts at all (please take that option – they’re so bad).
Without further ado, here are the first two extracts.
A Court Room
Written in my first year of University, A Court Room was a short theatre piece about a father put on trial for the murder of his daughter. The twist? He’s dead too! The court? Overseen by angels! The courtroom? Purgatory! And to top it off, gasp, the daughter is a closeted lesbian!
Jokes aside, I do actually like the concept of this theatre piece. The notion that purgatory is a literal court where souls are judged before being passed to either Heaven or Hell is a concept with limitless possibilities. Well, I say limitless, this particular story might be one of those…
This was the first piece of theatre I ever wrote to completion. I’d dabbled in high school for Drama or Theatre Studies homework, but this was the real deal. We had a whole lecture on creating a stage play format preset in Microsoft Word that I still use. So, whatever the shortfalls, I learned a lot while writing this.
The Ward Episode 03
That’s right, episode 03. In my second year of studying, my course was introduced to the concept of a writers room. Two projects were written, if memory serves. One was a radio series about the son of Death who is disowned and sent to Earth. Sort of a Thor meets The Sandman. That comedy series became the bane of my life as, in our youthful, naïve, and ambitious minds, we could of course produce the thirteen episode series. After all, it’s only radio. When we realised it was an unreasonable ambition, it became my job to edit the series from thirteen episodes down to a workable six (which we still didn’t produce all of).
However, that’s not the series I’ll be presenting. No, no, you’ve had one poorly executed, high concept script already. This time I’ll be showing a story set in a children’s mental health ward! These colourful and sensitively drawn characters have one hell of a journey over the course of the series. There’s romance, intrigue, only one doctor, and more dodgy parents than an episode of Tracy Beaker.
I loved writing this episode. Not because of the content, but from working in a writers room environment. Creating an arching narrative as a group, ideas thrown around, judged, and either adopted or dropped. This module developed a humility to my writing and began to foster my love of giving and receiving feedback. Realising that last nights solo genius is todays collaborative punching bag is humbling and necessary both in writing and in life.
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