hetreedOlivia Hetreed is the new President of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain, following a vote at the Guild's AGM

Olivia, best known for scripting the hugely successful film Girl With A Pearl Earring, has served for several years as Chair of the Guild's Film Committee and a member of our Executive Council. Olivia started her career as a documentary, drama and film editor and moved into writing with a series of family films for ITV including The Treasure Seekers and The Canterville Ghost. Other credits include the award-winning Man of Law’s Tale for the BBC and the feature film Wuthering Heights, released in 2011. She is currently in development with Philip and Liz, the love story of the young Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth. Olivia’s unopposed election as President was announced at today’s Guild Annual General Meeting. She takes over from the eminent playwright David Edgar, who has been our distinguished President for the past six years.

Addressing the AGM, Olivia was passionate about the role of writers. 'We all need stories – to tell us who we are, what we have been and what we aspire to, what’s good and bad in our lives today and what concerns we have for ourselves and our children,' she said. 'We are the storytellers for our generation, a huge trust and responsibility. Without us, without the stories we tell, there is no bigger story. I would like all Guild members to hold on to that thought on the many occasions when you are made to feel that you or your work is not important. Your words, our words, are essential, whatever the medium. Without the storyteller, there is no story, only incoherent fragments.'

Olivia continued: 'Most of the Guild’s efforts remain unseen and unknown to members or the outside world. My focus as President will be to make the work of the Guild and its members more visible, both internally and externally.'

The Guild's chair, Roger Williams; the two deputy chairs Ming Ho and Antony Pickthall, and the treasurer Andrew S. Walsh, have all been re-elected unopposed. There are some new faces on the Executive Council of the Guild: Piers Beckley will represent members in London and the South-East of England, with Jayne Kirkham representing the South-West region around Bristol and Bath. Bill Armstrong takes over as television rep, and Nick Wood is the new theatre rep. Several vacancies remain, so if you are interested in helping to run your union, please see the nomination forms that were enclosed with the recent issue of UK Writer – or contact the Guild office.

The AGM approved a rule change to introduce a banding system for subscriptions – this has been designed to make administration easier, while ensuring that most members will notice little or no difference in the amount they pay for Guild membership.

An emergency motion was carried deploring the Greek government’s closure of its national public service broadcaster, ERT, describing it as "a vital component of a properly functioning democracy and a mainstay of national culture. The motion calls on the Greek government to reinstate ERT immediately and honour all contracts with writers and other staff and suppliers.

Christos Callow Jr. introduces a call for papers for a conference on science fiction theatre

Stage The Future will be, to my knowledge, the first academic conference on science fiction theatre. The idea for such an event came last year when I realised that science fiction and theatre can produce fascinating results when combined.

The first thing to do was to decide where a conference should happen and with whom I would organise it. There are almost no academics researching this subject, but there’s another PhD student – and fellow SF playwright – Susan Gray, who’s researching SF Theatre for her PhD. I wrote to her and I’m happy to say she accepted, so we started planning the conference.

But just what is SF Theatre exactly?

Science fiction theatre could be the answer to how – and why – theatre would survive the modern digital age; it could also attract an important part of the young generation, namely the geeks, to theatres where they’d get much more than the big budget visual effects of Hollywood.

As a genre, science fiction theatre can contribute to both science fiction and theatre, offering new insights, new ways of exploring the relationship between humanity and technology and, of course, new challenges for theatre-makers. Indeed, this could well be the theatre of the future.

The Annual General Meeting of the Writers' Guild will take place on Friday 14 June 2013, from 10.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m., at the St Alban's Centre, Baldwins Gardens, London EC1N 7RA. All Guild members are urged to attend. We do know that AGMs can be a bit, well, er, dull, what with all the committee reports, audited accounts, and what-have-you. So this year we have done our best to make it a must-go event, with two star speakers:

Lucy Davies is the new Executive Director of the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London – probably this country's leading showcase for new writing and new ideas in theatre. She will talk to us and answer questions about Open Court – the Court's season handing the keys over to writers -- plus other issues relating to writing for the stage, such as how we approach the tough area of devised works and improvisation.

Fin Kennedy is a member of the Guild who has not only won writing awards and established himself as a leading educator, but has also rocked government and the creative world with his hard-hitting report In Battalions, setting out in gruesome detail the effects of public spending cuts on our world-leading theatre industry.

Only Guild members have the opportunity to hear and challenge this amazing double-bill of leading theatre personalities. Don't miss it!

Not only that, but this year's AGM will mark the departure of leading playwright David Edgar after his sparkling six-year stint as President of the Guild. Edgar has hugely raised the profile of the Guild, and spearheaded a major membership recruitment campaign. You need to hear what he has to tell us about the future of trade unionism for writers. Also . . . which leading writer will be taking over as the president of this influential and important writers' union? Find out at the AGM.

On a slightly more bureaucratic level, the AGM will vote and decide on a proposal to change the rules to introduce a new system of income bands as a better way of working out how much each member should pay in subscriptions. It is part of a big project to revolutionise the way the Guild handles its membership and subscriptions procedures. If agreed this would be the first major change to Guild subscriptions for over five years . . . and it could affect you!

All this, plus the chance to hob-nob and network with other writers, Guild members and office holders -- no one else has this opportunity.

The latest edition of UK Writer, the Guild magazine, is on its way to you now, and more details about the AGM are enclosed in that mailing. Further information will be posted on the Writers' Guild website next week.

Don't miss the Guild's best-ever AGM! We look forward to seeing you there.

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Paul Goetzee reflects on his recent trip to the Cannes Film Festival with the Maison des Scénaristes

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Are you a scénariste? Or are you an auteur?

In France apparently all screenwriters are expected to be auteurs. A legacy of the anti-literary La Nouvelle Vague, Les Cahiers du Cinéma, Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer and all, no doubt. There is no such thing as a writer in film, only an auteur, which my French dictionary defines as ‘author, creator... perpetrator’ – the last one probably very apt in a lot of film-making.

However, as far as Sarah Gurévick and Nicolas Zappi, founders of the Maison des Scénaristes (the House of Screenwriters) are concerned, writers should not have to be burdened with the obligation to direct. They are screenwriters, not auteurs, creators nor indeed perpetrators.

This may sound odd to English ears. I don’t know about you, but as a screenwriter I feel I’m constantly being nagged to ‘write visually’, ‘think like a director’ and so on. In France this is a given. You think up your story, plan your film... then get behind the camera and make it.

I have to admit I do like directing as well as writing. Whether I am any good at it is another matter. I like planning the whole project from the back of the envelope to the back of beyond. I like working with actors. I like designing sets and costumes, drawing up shooting scripts and storyboards. But a lot of writers I know don’t care about directing – whether it’s a play, a film or anything else. That’s someone else’s job. Someone with more energy, skill and, well, hubris. Writers are there to come up with a good story, then tussle with and defeat all the little narrative gremlins of plot, structure and character motivation that almost always – no, always – rear their beastly little heads.

So what exactly is Maison des Scénaristes (MdS) and how did I come to take part in their event in Cannes?

Dinah Rose QC (author of the BBC's Respect at Work Review) will be part of the panel at an event staged by the union BECTU on Tuesday 18th June called Britain’s Got Bullies: Bullying in The Creative Sector.

The session will be chaired by Lisa Campbell, Broadcast editor. Other contributors will include Graham Russell (Change Associates), Donna Taberer (BBC), Anne-Marie Quigg (author of Bullying in the Arts) and Rebecca Peyton (actor and playwright) and sister to the former BBC journalist Kate Peyton who was killed in Somalia in 2005.

This is part of a larger event, the BECTU Freelance Fair , which has sessions covering professional development and networking for film and TV workers people.

There is a booking fee of £10.00 to attend any of the sessions including Britain’s Got Bullies for those who are not BECTU members.

Full details: http://www.bectu.org.uk/news/1937

William Gallagher on what to write between the dialogue

william-gallagherAlan Plater used to read my scripts and you know that he was tremendously useful, you know he was kind. But let me say it anyway: he was terrifically useful and he was really kind, most especially on the very first one. The Strawberry Thief – I still like the title – got the full Plater treatment in the 1990s and I've remembered every word he wrote me.

The key part, I think, was what you'd now call a praise sandwich or at least a criticism with a bit of a praise topping. He told me that my stage directions had regularly made him laugh aloud, but that my job was to get that life and humour into the dialogue instead. Because, after all, the audience never sees the stage descriptions.

I also remember that when I next did a script, his key comment was that I'd done this, I'd got the energy into where it could be seen. He said it was 'a great step for writer-kind'.

I've only recently realised quite how much he shaped me in how I write descriptions in scripts. I'm a dialogue man, I'm a dialogue fan, that's where I would've said I put my attention and effort and – however much it is – my talent. No, I'm hesitating over that word. Can I go again? I'm a dialogue fan, that's where I would've said I put my attention and effort and – however fast it is – my typing.

But I wrote a book about Alan's The Beiderbecke Affair and he has great descriptions in there. What's more, he wrote them with a very canny eye toward getting cast and crew to read them where usually they, well, don't.

'That’s right, actors don’t,' said James Bolam in my book. 'You go yeah, yeah, but his you read. I mean, his stage directions are worth a read in themselves. They’re so funny, some of them, and they’re so evocative. They create the mood that he wants, that he feels, that he thinks. They’re all done in the same way, not sort of stuck in there but part of the narrative.'

He also had a way of writing just the right amount. He'd conjure that mood in a very short line and sometimes they'd be funny, always they'd be efficient: you'd get his point immediately and you'd enjoy getting it. So – again, I'm ripping off my own book here, but – take this for an example of apparently simple, short, description. It's from The Beiderbecke Affair:

SC. 11 EXT. TREVOR'S FLAT – NIGHT

Establishing shot of Trevor's flat. The cityscape of Leeds, lights shining like it was LA.

(You can see it for yourself in episode 1, What I Don't Understand is This... which is on a really good Beiderbecke DVD set from Network DVD.)

But can you believe that description was one reason I wanted to write about the show? There were myriad reasons but I knew that if I included that scene description, I could also include one of my favourite Alan Plater passages: the equivalent description from his Beiderbecke Affair novel. The story is that an editor from Methuen was on location, had read the Affair script and specifically because of those descriptions asked Alan if he'd like to try writing a novel. He did and this is what he did with that same moment, translated to a novel:

A panoramic sweep across the urban landscape of the mighty Leeds conurbation at night could easily lead to confusion with San Francisco, if there were a bridge, Rome, if there were a Vatican, or Athens, given an Acropolis and a whiff of lapsed glory. In the blackness, the sub-standard housing and empty factories disappear, and the lights shining out, from street lamps and buses, public houses and filling-stations, police cars and off-licences, seem like beacons of hope in a hostile world. They are not, but they look like it.

I love that because of its way of getting you to picture a beautiful camera move, because of its Plateresque wry way of appearing to say very little and to say it with humour while it's really undercut with a vivid example of his worldview. That last 'They are not, but they look like it' seems to me to be final, closed, decisive and firmly bleak yet still open and hopeful. It's someone who sees the world as it is but also as it could be, as perhaps it should be and is neither ashamed of being cynical nor makes any effort to hide idealism. If you want to get really, really, pixel-picky, it's the comma. The entire description has stayed in my mind for three decades in part because of that rolling series of city names but mostly because of that comma in the last line. It's a beat, a breath, a voice.

Tell me I'm not detail-orientated.

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The Writers’ Guild, along with other unions in the arts and culture sector, supports the Lost Arts campaign to monitor and restore Government spending cuts. Visit lost-arts.org to submit information, and follow on Twitter and Facebook.