I have never really been sure if I could write or not. I’m still not. It seems perfectly possible that all three judges could have experienced a collective moment of madness or simply got my name and telephone number mixed up with someone else’s. Believe me when I say that I have seriously considered these possibilities. I am a glass half empty kind of a lass. I know I shouldn’t admit to this because the other sort are more likeable aren’t they? The half full brigade? Understandable, I guess. If you were throwing a party you wouldn’t want a load of half-empty types lining the hallway ... you’d want a load of devil-may-care effortlessly successful rock climbing half-fulls about the place – the sort who have “Carpe Diem” written in cross stitch, framed and hung by the door in case you’d forgotten to kill yourself already by the time you leave their house …

Sorry what just happened? To continue the story:

Flash back. At school the closest we got to being creative was in English language lessons. Not grammar and all that (you may have surmised), but essays. Fiction. Making stuff up. I was a troubled teen (yawn) so writing stories was a great outlet for my angst. Most of them were about sensitive boys dying in house fires. But there was also comedy.

After a degree in performing arts where the only thing I wrote was scorned at by my most erudite friend, who had written entire plays and been to a proper school (where they did teach grammar), I decided to become an actor. I was ill -equipped for the world of acting however, with no agent and absolutely no idea how to get work. I didn’t go to drama school because you had to pay … and also my parents would probably have shot themselves. So, being young and naïve, I wrote my first play ‘Slipper Trips’, so that I could cast myself and get an agent. Then I wrote two more, got an agent and stopped writing for theatre. I started writing comedy for my double act WonderHorse and became interested in screen writing, supported by the UK Film Council (RIP) to make several short films. But always directing or producing my own writing.

In June of last year I was commissioned purely as a writer for the first time ever by the Royal Court Theatre to write a scene to go in a sketch show curated by Anthony Neilson. It was three pages long but I felt like Harold Pinter. 'Doyouwishtocontinue' will be my second ever proper writing commission and my first for radio.

So now I am going to try my very best not to mess up the opportunity of a life time. All sorts of monsters lie between me and a decent rewrite. But I have been matched with a great producer, I have dates and deadlines, and I know that everything I write will be read carefully and responded to. I feel supported and understood and I am being encouraged to write the piece I want to write. The decisions are ultimately mine. Pretty much The Holy Grail?

Advice

I don’t have any advice. Writing is messy. I’m a mess. My life’s a mess (you should see my kitchen drawers). But here’s the thing. I have spent twelve years writing a play that nobody wants and I’m still writing it. I spent four days writing Doyouwishtocontinue and it won the Writer’s Prize. Possible conclusions: life is totally random; my theatre play is sh*t (completely possible); I was the only person to enter the BBC Writer’s Prize.

So here we are – and this is the reason why life is a mess. You could either think: “if the door you keep knocking at doesn’t open, try another door”. But this seems to fly in the face of “just keep going”.

I would say “good luck” but it always makes me feel like I’m in a raffle at the fair. Plus if you’ve been bloody unlucky for ages, why would that suddenly change? What I will say instead is: tell the truth. In your writing and to yourself. And write about whatever you want to write about, in whatever way you want to write it. Oh yeah. And keep getting up in the morning.

A note to lasses

I was talking to a very successful playwright recently and she told me that in a writer’s group she ran, all the young writers were asked to submit a play at the end and the best one would be produced. The class was evenly split men and women. But here’s the thing. All the lads submitted work and only half the lasses. Upon investigation it was found that those lasses who hadn’t submitted had held back because they didn’t feel that what they had written was “good enough”. Come on lasses. You have enough enemies already without becoming your own worst. Get cracking. Just write the bloody thing and send it off.

*displacement activity, not progressive form of rewrite

Find out more about the Writer's Prize for Radio Drama

Listen to Doyouwishtocontinue until 6 July 2015

Download and read the script for Doyouwishtocontinue

Read a blog by BBC Writersroom's Kate Rowland about the winners of the first Writer's Prize in 2013 

Previous winner Sarah Hehir blogs about the experience

Watch an interview with previous winner Simon Topping

1. Get work as a UK writer – and use it to propel yourself into the US

When Matt Jones started his TV career, as a storyliner on Coronation Street in the late 1990s, he never dreamed he’d end up in a Writers Room in LA. And yet, just over ten years later this is where he found himself, working on a “sweary, violent, undercover cop show” called Rogue. But it might have never happened if he hadn’t asked Russell T Davies if, as a favour, he could write a practice report on a script Davies was working on at the time – one that turned out to be Queer as Folk. Matt’s notes went down so well he was offered a job as a script editor on the series. More script editing work followed, on Linda Green and Clocking Off. “I’ve always been very lucky in my career,” Matt says, “I’ve worked for very talented writers.”

It was through script editing that Matt got his first UK writing commission. He was working on a new series, Love in the 21st Century, when the final episode fell through at the last minute. Producer Nicola Shindler said to him, “Matt, you’ve written things. Go home and write this half hour script by Monday.” And that’s what he did. Next he wrote for Children’s Ward, wrote and produced his own original single drama, Now You See Her, and produced Shameless. “I wrote in the evenings on shows and then produced in the daytime,” he says, “It was crazy.”

But it was as a producer rather than a writer that Matt ended up working in New York and Toronto for a year, on the American version of Skins. At around the same time he was commissioned by UK producer Brian Elsley to write a script about four gay best friends based upon his childhood. It didn’t get commissioned in the end, but became his ‘calling card’ script. “Off the back of [that script] I got a job as a writer in America on Rogue, and so I was in a Writers Room in Los Angeles for 10 months,” Matt explains, “It was a British Canadian co-production, so they needed British writers. And one of the production companies knew me from working in Toronto on Skins.”

Matt thinks that the UK writers who have found work in the US “most successfully are the ones who have established themselves very strongly in the UK first.” However, getting commissioned here isn’t the only way to attract American producers’ interests.

2. Win a writing competition Americans have heard of

Two of the four winners of this year’s Academy Nicholl Fellowship – basically the Oscars for new writers – are British: Melissa Iqbal, and Sam Baron. When I speak to them they are about to head off to Hollywood for an awards ceremony which, I like to imagine, will be a cocktail of glitter, diamonds and emotions – or, at the very least, provide good opportunities for networking.

I ask Melissa whether she thinks it will lead to more writing opportunities in America. “I think it’s a fantastic way to break into America,” she says, “The Nicholl Fellowship is really well respected, especially in the US, so there’s been a lot of interest in [my] script, which is fantastic. It’s a great way to get your name out there.”

Sam agrees: “Just being shortlisted was incredible, but winning was mind-blowing. [It] opens lots of doors in the US. As soon as you get shortlisted, you wake up to find hundreds of emails from producers, agents and managers all congratulating you and wanting to read your script and meet you.”

Both Melissa and Sam point out that it’s still early days, with the winners having only been announced in October, but when it’s difficult to get anyone to read your script in the UK, let alone America, winning a prize, particularly one that is well-known over there certainly seems to help. However…

3. Don’t give up if you don’t win a writing competition Americans have heard of

Not everyone agrees on what a prize-winning script looks like. Sam says: “The thing to remember with these contests is that while they’re great if you win…you can’t take it too hard if you don’t win. The day after I won the Nicholl Fellowship, I got rejection emails from two other screenwriting contests, for the exact same draft of the script – so it’s all subjective. A handful of rejections are no reason to give up.”

Melissa almost didn’t enter the Nicholl Fellowship at all. “I’d never had much luck with screenwriting competitions in the past,” she says, “I was feeling a bit disheartened at the time, but I told myself every competition is different and has different readers, so you never know. Of course I never thought I would actually win!”

4. Get an agent with connections in America

When I first speak to screenwriters agent Ed Hughes he’s about to jet off to LA for the kind of jam-packed business trip of appointments and meetings that I like to think I’m familiar with purely from reading Julia Phillips book ‘You’ll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again’. I ask him how he gets UK writers work in the US. “Ideally we hook them up with a US agent and/ or manager,” he says, “The US reps can then spearhead looking for US work. But we have also got clients work direct from the UK with US companies. Most often [this is] by getting their feature spec scripts optioned by US companies.”

However, as pretty much everyone knows, getting an agent isn’t easy. “A [US] agent is good, but if you’re early in your career you’ll have a hard time landing one,” says Ed, “A good manager is actually a better bet to start off with. They are more focussed on the career development side of things and tend to be more proactive than agents.”

Having a well-connected agent and/ or manager certainly sounds useful. Matt, Melissa and Sam all have one (Bethan Evans at The Agency, Tracey Hyde at Casarotto, and Amanda Davis at Curtis Brown, respectively) although at some point in their careers they didn’t and still managed to get to where they are now. There are also lots of things you can do without an agent, such as…

5. Write a spec script Americans might like – but make sure you like it too

Some scripts feel perfect for an American audience. Others feel like the writer has been so dazzled by imaginary gold dollar signs that the characters, dialogue and story have disappeared under pile of estimated earnings calculations.

Ed suggests writing “several great US-set spec [scripts]” and to “write commercial material” but also “high-quality material, of course.” Regarding what American executives are looking for, he says “[There are] probably less period drama movies in the US than the UK. More genre TV shows get made in the US as there are more outlets for that kind of thing and more of an appetite too. More sports movies get made there than here. They love a good inspirational true story sports movie… One thing executives will ask for is a strong voice or unique point-of-view. But also big ideas and concepts really appeal.”

Talking about her Nicholl Fellowship-winning script, Melissa says: “I didn’t write it for an American audience, but I do tend to write quite commercial stories and usually genre. Having said that, I took the opportunity to write something a bit different…Obviously scripts should be written with some thought to how they might be marketed, but everything else should be from the heart.”

Sam explains how he came to create his prize-winning script: “I didn’t write it with an American audience in mind – although I do love lots of American movies, particularly character-driven American indies, and I did set out to write the film I would most like to see, which is how I’m convinced all films should be written – so perhaps it happened accidentally.”

In the BBC Writersroom we often read screenplays aimed at an American audience where the characters talk in a strange, heightened movie-inspired kind of language that doesn’t exist in real life or, indeed, movies (at least, not good ones). Like a lot of British writers, something Matt struggled with – when he was writing Rogue – was getting the America characters’ voices right. “It’s easy to work out the words you need to use,” he says, “but what’s hard is to realise what the phrases are that we use that they think sound really weird. And there are lots of those.” So how did he manage to avoid them? “It was really about being in America, reading other scripts and watching the actors,” he explains.

6. Work in other areas of the UK film and television industries

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” people sometimes say – and a good way of getting to know people is by working with them. Matt had jobs as a storyliner, script editor and producer before becoming a full-time writer, which led to some great contacts in the industry, such as Russell T Davies and Nicola Shindler.

Sam has also worked in other areas of film and TV and started off “making no-budget films with my friends as a teenager”. He explains: “They often didn’t even have a script, but we had an unexpected success when one of them went viral.” After going to university, he got a job as a runner. Despite doing long production days he describes how “every evening and weekend I would write, and lots of my Nicholl script was written in the margins of tattered call sheets on set, and then carefully transcribed on the night bus home.” After two years of writing his script, along with jobs in Development at Ealing Studios and as a script reader for BBC Drama and BBC Wales “some very supportive colleagues introduced me to my agent at Curtis Brown, who started getting me meetings with lots of producers, and soon after that I won the Nicholl Fellowship.”

7. If you can, take a trip to LA

Ed regularly visits LA and thinks writers who want to work there should aim to do the same, if their circumstances allow it. “You need to be ready to get over to LA at least a couple of times a year, for maybe two weeks at a time,” he says, “LA is the main place [in the US]. There’s not much happening in New York or elsewhere.” Obviously, this won’t be possible for everyone, but sometimes writing work can take you there.

Matt moved to LA to work on Rogue, since being part of a team of writers in a Writers Room meant he needed to go into the office every day. “I think you really have to be in America to write American TV,” he says. “All of the big shows have a Writers Room…You get a weekly wage. You are employees.”

Whereas Matt works in his home office when he’s in the UK, in LA it’s very different. He talks about juggling writing an episode with other responsibilities, such as storylining and polishing other writers’ scripts: “They wouldn’t let me go home and write my [episode]. I said, ‘Look, I’m not writing the script because I’m doing 10-hour days in the Writers Room.’ [The showrunner] said ‘You’ve got four days. Go in that room and write a script.’ I said, ‘Can’t I go home?’ and he said, ‘No, I need you around.’ So I sat in an office for four days and wrote.”

While becoming a Hollywood writer might often seem exciting, glamourous and well paid, it’s not all dark sunglasses, large cheques and apartments overlooking Santa Monica Beach. Ed explains: “[American] TV is more stable business these days, for sure. On the movie side there is not much of an indie scene in the UK, whereas there is a good indie scene in the US, which means more targets to aim for and hopefully hit.” However, “competition is fierce and [in the US] TV is now filling up with movie people looking to reap the benefits of the TV world.” Does Ed think writers get treated better in the UK or the US? “I think they get a hard time wherever they are generally!”

Matt explains some of the differences between writing for American and British television: “[In the US] there’s a massive investment in the writing process. We [writers] mapped scenes out and pitched things over and over. There was much less rewriting than in Britain and consequently when we wrote our first drafts, we wrote them very quickly. I wrote mine in four days.”

However, you don’t need to go to the US to experience the American way of working as, increasingly, it’s being adopted here. Matt has recently been working on Mr Selfridge, which runs a mini-Writers Room. He says: “Gradually producers have learnt that it’s better to spend a bit more money initially so writers can spend more time with the lead writer and really feel a series and understand what it is... But you’re still undergoing the process of writing drafts, getting notes and rewriting. That’s the same whether you’re in a Writers Room or home office.”

“I think people love to be negative about both the British film industry and the whole notion of Hollywood,” says Sam, “and I’m sure they have their reasons, but I think there’s brilliant creative work happening in both places, in film and TV.” Melissa agrees. “I used to think Britain didn’t like big concepts,” she says, “This couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Unlike writers who spend many years trying to get to Hollywood, Matt never had a dream to do this. For him, living in LA and writing for a US television show was a surprising but enjoyable opportunity. It “came out of the blue,” he explains. “And it was great, it was a fantastic experience. But my first love is British television.” He’s currently working on two new pilots: one for Channel Four and one for BBC America, but he would like go back to LA in the future.

Nearly 15 years after I was in America, I feel the same. And so, as Melissa and Sam head off to Hollywood for their awards ceremony and Ed rattles through his “crazy schedule” of meetings there, I start planning ways I too can step out of a plane at LAX into the world’s most glamourous car park. “Dear UCLA, you know you said ‘if ever I want to come back…?’” Dear Nicholl Fellowship, do you ever use British script readers…?” “Dear Valerie, do you still have the truck…?”

Sally Stott is a script reader for the BBC Writersroom and regular contributor to the BBC Writersroom blog.

Read more posts by Sally on our blog 

Find out more on her own blog - including a blog about her time in LA and other stories

Sally Stott is on Twitter @sallystott

Watch interviews with Nicola Shindler & Bryan Elsley on our website

Whenever we do live events – Q&As, masterclasses, workshops – writers always want to know about success stories. As we’re so busy beavering away making things happen for as many writers as we can, it’s sometimes easy to forget to make a fuss of those times when the magic really works. So here’s more info about some of those success stories – original shows that came out of our work, and BBC shows/strands for which writers have gone on to write.

At a glance, it’s well over 100 writers who have gone on to be commissioned and produced for TV and film, and well over 200 for radio - which by any standards is a very real success rate. We’ve had writers go on to be nominated for and win a BAFTA, we’ve had an OSCAR nomination, we’ve had Imison, Tinniswood and Sony award winners. But more importantly, we’ve had writers who have developed a long-standing relationship with the BBC - in some cases various parts of the BBC – and writers who are now some of the most sought-after talents and voices of their generation. And for each and every one of them, it all essentially started with a script.

Find out more about some of the writers who we have developed.

Explore opportunities for writers on our Opportunities page.

I knew pretty quickly what the story was about: a girl who’d always kept a secret, abut her family and herself, and a boy who threatened to betray that secret to the world by refusing to live the way she did. It would riff on werewolf clichés, but it wouldn’t be bound by them. Being a Wolfblood wasn’t a curse, but just who they were; they would have to change at full moon, but could also transform at other times. There would be echoes of The Incredible Hulk, Jekyll & Hyde, and perhaps most all, The X-Men, who often had more problems with just being teenagers than with defeating super-villains…

What I didn’t really know was what to do with the idea. I was more used to writing genre pieces – science fiction, crime, thrillers – and I’d never written for children. But when the writersroom announced an open call for children’s drama scripts, in association with CBBC, the opportunity seemed too good to miss.

When Wolfblood made it through to the final round, I was among the eight writers whisked off to a remote conference centre for a few days of intensive development. This also functioned as an introduction to the unique challenges and possibilities of writing for eight to twelve year-olds. Children view the world very differently to adults, and the desires and emotions that would drive an adult drama may not appeal to them. It’s also a challengingly wide age group to write for: you can’t scare or bore the younger viewers, but neither can you pitch the story too far towards older viewers. A good CBBC show has to have something for everyone.

To my amazement, Wolfblood was one of two projects chosen to be developed by CBBC – and then the real work began! “Development” is probably the most accurate term in television: you’re taking something largely unformed, like a negative from a camera, and developing it into the best possible version of what that negative contained. Characters get bigger and bolder, locations and plot evolve to reflect the themes of the series, backstories, rules and mythologies are tweaked to ensure we have interesting places to take the characters.

The real elephant in the room, though, was money for the visual effects. A show where characters regularly take the form of wolves is never going to be cheap – and it was vital that the wolf-forms felt every bit as real as the human characters and the dramatic Northumbria locations. A co-production deal with ZDF/ZDFE brought in European funding, and with German FX house Trixter on board, we were finally ready to go…

As I and the team of other writers raced to finish the scripts, filming started – in the coldest, wettest and generally most hostile February for years! Cast and crew shivered through night shoots in the woods, presumably cursing my name...

For me, the major attraction of television writing is that you’re creating a starting point for a collaborative effort. Your ideas don’t just sit there on a page – they inspire others to contribute their ideas and skills to a work that’s bigger and better than any individual’s contribution. What started as a random made-up word is now a whole dramatic world brought to life by dozens of talented people. And now the audience can share that world too.

So, welcome to Stoneybridge, where no one is quite what they seem – but be careful in the woods, especially at full moon…

Debbie Moon is the writer and creator of Wolfblood, a brand new fantasy action drama for CBBC.  Watch the first episode today at 17.15 on CBBC.

Tom teamed up with Casualty director Ian Barnes to make his film, and in addition, former EastEnders director, Tom Hooper is up for awards for hot favourite best film The King's Speech. All in all a good week for Continuing Drama.

" A huge percentage of our continuing drama graduates have gone on to play major roles as directors, writers, producers, script editors and commissioning editors, across not only the British television industry but the American one as well.", says John Yorke, Controller, Drama Production and New Talent.

We even made a film about it...

In addition this week Continuing Drama has announed the appointment of an External Writers Ombudsman to look after the interests of writers working for the department. Tony Garnett, the hugely experienced and respected independent television producer has agreed to take on the role.

The purpose of an ombudsman will be to offer writers the opportunity to benefit from Garnett's wealth of expertise as a script editor, screen writer, director and producer when they feel they need third party guidance beyond the BBC or Writers Guild.

The new role is set to support BBC Continuing Drama's on-going drive to attract and develop the highest quality talent and place writers right at the heart of the drama production process. The new role has been set up with the blessing of the Writers Guild who work to protect the interests of all writers working in the industry.

And finally, Writers Academy applications will be open this year from 11th April. For details of the online application process keep you eye on this site.