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| What to Do If You're A Writer Who Isn't At London Screenwriters Festival |
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| It’s that magical time of year where every aspiring writer worth their salt heads to our majestic capital with starry-eyed dreams of hitting the big time, making lifelong friends and pretending to know who everyone else is. Unfortunately, my doctor has advised me against salt for the better part of a year, and, like many other writers, I find myself at home like the other 362 days of this celestial cycle. However, time spared should not be time wasted, and with a clear agenda of things to be getting on with, writers can turn their “stay-at-home” festival experience into an equally productive long weekend. | |||||||||
| Gratuitously Plan
Your Trip to Next Year’s Festival |
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| Most
people who buy tickets to events often find that they don’t
have time to sufficiently plan out their agenda before the trip comes
around – that’s why my last expedition to Glastonbury
Festival involved me queuing for a single portaloo for 5 whole days.
Planning before you have the tickets, however, let alone before
the event and its line-up are even announced, gives you infinite
creative freedom in your preparation stages. With nothing else to
be getting on with this year, you can make yourself to appear almost
God-like in your knowledge when next year comes around. London ain’t cheap. I’m led to believe that the Shard wasn’t actually built out of stretched cling film. Booking the best value accommodation is paramount, and you have a massive head start on getting the best of the best. Learn the intricacies of the tube and bus schedule too, making them appear with open arms before you whenever you elect to stop at a platform. Schedule definitive bathroom breaks, opportunities for wardrobe changes, brief windows for “impromptu” social interactions, EVERYTHING... Before you know it, you’ll have gained a reputation at the festival as a human encyclopaedia, or, more likely, a frightening weirdo. |
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| Plot A Way to Infiltrate This Year’s Festival |  |
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| If
you’re already in London, then you have an unmissable opportunity
here. So for some reason you weren’t able to get tickets because
you didn’t have the money, or you weren’t sure if you’d
be available, or a burglar broke into your house and only stole your
internet router, or whatever. There’s no law against you just
happening to be in the vicinity of the festival as it takes
place, or even hanging around to ambush any of the famous speakers
on their way back to their mode of transportation (Note to Editor:
Check Laws). They may be reluctant, even scared, to give you that
one on one time, but thrusting a 100 page feature script into their
hands will definitely change their mind. Maybe lurking around on the outside isn’t your bag. Maybe being carried inside of your bag and dropped near a luggage pile by a helpful |
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| Start Your Own Rival Scriptwriting Festival |  |
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|
Ok, this approach does particularly reek of “I’LL SHOW
THEM”, but hear me out. The vast majority of working screenwriters
statistically aren’t going to London Screenwriters Festival
this year, because there’s just too many of us. Maybe this is
a geographical phenomenon? Who is to say that there shouldn’t
be a Scottish Highlands Screenwriters Festival or an Isle of Wight
Screenwriters Festival or a John O’Groats to Land’s End
Screenwriters Festival / Tour Bus? Just by not being in London, you
have an opportunity to massively undercut LSF on price alone, because
let’s face it, not all writers are completely loaded from birth. Perhaps your approach could be to “go niche” and pick a specific cult genre that already has a built-in fan base. But what good is the “Steampunk-Western-RomCom-Noir Screenwriters Festival” if you have no guest speakers, I presumably hear you ask? That presents you with a number of options... Option Number 1: Find random people of the street, show them a quick PowerPoint and then dress them up as your “industry experts”. Option Number 2: Actually do some research and seek out real experts, if they exist, and then negotiate travel, accommodation, payment, blah blah blah... Or, my personal favourite, Option Number 3: Take your guest’s money and run / save it for next year’s LSF. |
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| Take A Luxurious
Holiday From Writing |
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| Obviously,
you’ve spent every waking hour of every waking day for the last
year working hard and constantly writing, right? You haven’t
been, say, scouring the internet for cat memes, cleaning your house
to avoid calling it “procrastination”, out drinking with
friends, watching TV, watching movies, watching YouTube, watching
people in the park, aimlessly wandering around the park, wondering
if there’s any point to it all, video gaming, popping out to
the post office in search of excitement, gambling, more drinking with
friends, calling cinema trips “research”, drinking alone,
attending illegal underground cock-fighting matches, or treating yourself
to expensive ready meals... have you? No? Good. Then you deserve a
holiday. Book yourself a flight to a place you’ve never heard of on the departures board, and ask the check-in girl that there aren’t any sort of wars going on there. If not, then you’re in for the holiday of a lifetime! You can relax by the beach, sip on a pina colada, stare out into- what’s that? Kathmandu doesn’t have any beaches? Well then, a sightseeing hike will definitely reinvigorate your senses, after a quick stop off at their local Subway, where- Oh. Wow, this isn’t like Stoke at all... Hmm, maybe you should have spent your time last year while you weren’t at London Screenwriters Festival planning this trip to avoid such embarrassment. |
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| Write |  |
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You
have a three day head start on everyone who is at the Festival right
now. Use it wisely.
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