If like me you’ve written a screenplay and been lucky enough to have had it made, you’ll be wondering what to do next. Does your film have a life beyond the first screening? Yes, on the festival circuit. But some producers and / or directors may not seem too keen to do the legwork involved in getting it onto the circuit (fortunately my director is, and ‘Enemy Lines’ has just been nominated for the Best Short Film at this year’s Rushes Soho Short Film Festival – but more of that in another post). If that’s the case with you, perhaps you should consider distributing your film yourself (check with your producer first that you have the right to do so). And of course, if you’re an independent who has written, directed and produced your film, you’ll need to do it anyway. Screenwriter Keith Jewitt gives us some advice on how to go about it.
Continue reading ‘How to get your short film onto the festival circuit’
Archive for June, 2009
All writers struggle to ‘make it’ in the commercial world of publishing, but none more than poets. So it is always heartening to hear of publishers investing in emerging writers and new collections. Scotland’s Andrew Philip has published two poetry pamphlets with HappenStance Press – Tonguefire (2005) and Andrew Philip: A Sampler (2008) – and was chosen as a Scottish Poetry Library “New Voice” in 2006. The Ambulance Box (2009) by Salt Publishing is his first book of poems. In this interview he discusses writing as therapy, writing in Scots, the effect of the credit crunch on new poets and the business of getting your poetry into print and trying to earn money from it.
Continue reading ‘The Ambulance Box – getting your poetry in print’
He shot him twice in the back, and the figure jerked each time. Petrovitch watched the man start to turn, then slip heavily to one knee. The strange green-glowing eye of night vision rested on him. Their guns came around, and Petrovitch fired first, straight into his face.
(From ‘Equations of Life’, Simon Morden)
Science Fiction writer Simon Morden writes violent novels. Another War (2005), was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award, and 2007 saw the publication of The Lost Art which has been shortlisted for the 2009 Catalyst Award for best teen fiction. He’s currently writing his next novel, ‘Equations of Life’, which he tells us is set in a future London packed with refugees, armoured nuns, Stalin-lookalikes, and seriously hard-core science. So how does he do it?
Continue reading ‘Writing violence – ‘easier than sex’’
Rosalie Warren was born in West Yorkshire but lived for many years in Scotland before moving to Coventry in 2002. She has two grown-up children, a PhD in cognitive science, and was a university lecturer before taking early retirement to pursue her lifelong dream of being a writer. She has had two novels published. The first, Charity’s Child by Circaidy Gregory Press; the second, Low Tide, Lunan Bay by Robert Hale. We asked her to talk to us about writing romantic suspense, a genre she said she ‘stumbled into’.
Continue reading ‘Writing Romantic Suspense – When Love Gets Mysterious’
