Derbyshire Scriptwriters

Happy New Year! Now the final turkey vol-au-vent has been munched, it's time to say hello to a new year of writing. Derbyshire Scriptwriters are kickstarting 2015 with a write in on Sunday 4 January, and anyone writing for stage, screen or radio is welcome to join us. Write-ins are a great way of forcing all those good story ideas out of our head and onto the page, with a little peer pressure from fellow writers who are doing the same thing around you. We'll spend a couple of minutes telling one another what we'll be working on, take out our pads, pens and laptops, and get going! There'll be time to talk about what we've achieved at the end, and if anyone is feeling brave, maybe a reading... This is your year to write - make it happen!

Hello, just to let you know October's Derbyshire Scriptwriters meeting has been replaced by a group outing to the Neil McKay event at the University of Derby this evening. We'll all be having a natter after the event; so if you're going too, stop behind and say hello - we'll be meeting up again properly on November 1st. If you're not going to the event, but would like to catch up with us in November, send us an email to joinus@derbyshirescriptwriters.com and we'll let you know where we'll be discussing scripts and our own forthcoming workshop with Neil.

Exciting stuff for aspiring filmakers in the East Midlands- Quad Shorts 2 launches in September - a chance to turn your short film idea into... a short film! For more information, take a look here .

First post. Hmm. For me, there's a strange commitment to the first words on the page; and the notion of changing them, or deleting them, or ignoring them completely in the future feels a bit like an act of betrayal to the story idea you first had. Of course by the time you reach the end, it's likely they're not the right first words any more. You've spent more time with the characters in the story; they're doing things you didn't expect they'd do at the start. In fact, the story might need to start from somewhere else entirely. It's a point that regularly comes up when members' scripts are reviewed in Derbyshire Scriptwriters' monthly crit sessions; and it's fantastic to see how the group's thoughts can help give you a fresh point of view on what really counts - getting your script to tell the heart of your story. So, here comes our next first post; if you feel something's missing, just wait 'til you see the rewrite...