Intro:
During the course of March, I have finished the first draft of two new screenplays and am now trying to edit them into some coherent form. One is about witches. It was only at the end of the first draft that I realised why in fact my main character is accused of being a witch. Before that, there was no logic to the story whatsoever. Not even 1600s Puritan England logic. There is now.

I have also signed up to the website the-dots.com which lists all kinds of jobs in the industry from sound production to video editing and more. I haven’t found anything I want to apply for yet, but am looking on a regular basis.

I have realised, as well, that in terms of editing-assistant work there is in fact a surprising amount of transferable skills with my current job of working with rare books. Editing assistant work often involves labelling shots, putting them in order, syncing sound and so on. My current job involves making sure all the information given to me by the valuer matches the book I have in front of me: from title and author, to edition and value. It is the same thing only with words instead of video and audio. All I need now is to make it clear in my CV that these are transferable skills!

So on to the update!

Scripts Update:
Have not managed to do work on my audio drama this mont. I will research budgeting for a podcast studio for a few days in April and I hope to be able to book one in May.

Also in April, I will have another read-through/edit of my screenplay about actors in the 1665 plague lockdown. I try to read through my work out loud every few months, just so I am not abandoning any works before anything is done with them! Plus, if I leave the work for a few months, I’m more likely to notice mistakes when I go back to it.

My pilot scripts of a re-telling of Troy, and time travel are now back in my hands and I will re-edit them in April. The Troy script is the one I am hoping to submit into the Scribe Lounge Elevate competition, so editing that will be my priority between now and June.

The time-travel one is still submitted into another competition that I am waiting to hear from.

The draft 0 of one of my three different screenplays is now complete. The arduous task of editing has begun! I am making progress with the one about a con-artist in the Californian gold rush – I just can’t seem to work out the ending it needs. Also, as mentioned at the top, I have had a break-through in the one about the Puritan witch trials (It’s the water!) so need to go back through and make sure that doesn’t just randomly come up at the end, but is laid down from the beginning. Finally, am still working on the draft 0 of an alternate re-telling of the Napoleonic Wars where women were allowed in the army and navy in the 1700s.

Editing for my two other scripts is still ongoing. The screenplay about two actors both up for the same role might do with some time being ignored in a drawer before I go back to it, but I’m still editing it at the moment. The pilot script about vampire highwaymen now has a one-page pitch for it! I am hoping the pitch will make it clearer how I can set up what is quite a lot of lore. I have been ruthless, however, and cut out an entire main character as I realised the story would be better without them. I was only keeping them in because I liked them. You really do have to Kill Your Darlings in editing!

The short film I wrote for my film course is shot and edited! Just under three minutes long. I’m very proud with how it turned out.

Things Learnt:
Have been doing research into some agencies as I want to start sending out query letters. I have been doing research into who I want to submit to and have a list.

I have a tendency to get very overwhelmed with these sorts of things – when anything becomes official I want to run a mile – so, to make it less overwhelming, I am giving myself the whole year to submit these query letters. I have 14 agents I would like to query overall. As long as I average two a month, I’ll be done by the end of the year. The worst that will happen is I don’t hear back!

Finally, I have been hearing a lot recently about the benefits of going to production companies over agents first as that way you can approach an agent by saying you have a production company interested already – making their job a lot easier. I am unsure if this is the right fit for me, but provided I don’t get overwhelmed, maybe in a few months’ time I can have a separate list with which I can approach both at once to see who bites first.

What are your thoughts on the ‘production companies versus agencies first’ debate?