Knowing Yourself

The New Year is a perfect time to establish new habits as writers.

Script Club’s first blog of 2026, therefore, is going to be a kind of collective call-to-arms, packed with industry inspiration, aimed at skills “beyond craft”: the hard-to-pin-down skills and thought processes that make good writers working writers (according to some people who know).

For this, I will be summarising key lessons from 4Skills/NFTS Script to Screen programme; a week of webinars hosted by a range of film & television professionals, from producers to writers, agents to development executives.

Taking place every year in December, I cannot recommend this amazing week-long and entirely free programme enough.

Processed through my own understanding, what follows is paraphrased advice and provocations that stood out to me, with facilitators credited as accurately as possible.

Happy reading! Here's to a year of smashing it.

Scriptwriter Hugh Dichmont

As a writer, I have always been frustrated by the discourse around strategy, when it comes to choosing what script to work on next. Too often people seem to fall into one camp, either:

• Follow your creativity, or

• Study the market

Writer and Script and Development Editor Zina Wegrzynski recommends a balance between these two approaches. She suggests having four scripts on the go at a time, comprised of:

1) A no-holds-barred love script. Pure YOU, unfiltered, as big a budget as you like

2) A script as far away from that as possible: eg. if you’re genre, this script is the opposite, such as grounded drama

3) A script that is one of a police, legal or medical drama

4) A script centred around a social issue or an interesting character

To secure representation (the only way to have a career as a scriptwriter: a sentence repeated multiple times throughout the week), Zina Wegrzynski recommended developing then showcasing your versatility to potential agents; your spec samples a testament to this marketability… however.

The key, always, is that you should love what you are writing- to find yourself in each of these four spec projects, not merely apeing what already exists. That uniqueness we bring is the only way we can make our shows different to others in the same category, and thus the only way we can stand out.

Tied very much to this was writer/producer Matt Delargy’s talk on ‘Cultural IP’, in which he described the Venn Diagram of 3 skills for writers, when thinking of what to write about:

1) Being open to world: what events in the world interest you? News stories, trends, ideas, etc.

2) Introspection: What kind of things do you want to make? How is your taste is defined? Is it broad but falls into 2-3 categories? Limited series? Sitcom? What kind of stories- not just what you like; Which show do you wish you’d made?

3) Alertness to what does the industry wants: what is getting commissioned? What is the reality of the market? What genres are busy and buoyant?

The space in which these 3 overlap is potentially your career.

Of course, what is getting made now is not necessarily what will be getting made in 5 years’ time. What he instead emphasised was the usefulness of, when watching a show or film, asking ourselves why this show got made, with the following provocations:

• What is the familiar element? E.g. cop show, mystery

• What is the unique element? E.g. tone, character

• What are the 3 or 4 big choices that are different for another similar show?

• Is this a good story world? Genuine jeopardy? How are they generating story? How are they managing to sustain it? What are the mechanics of their story engine?

• How are the characters great? What is their predicament?

Tied to all this is the identity of the writers. He used the example of Blue Lights, the BBC Drama about rookie police officers working in Belfast, a show with a little-seen take on a familiar world, which got made, in part because because the POV of the creators (former Panorama researchers) was assured, journalistic and robust. It wasn't a world that they had lived, exactly, but was one they understood intimately.

In her session on Written Pitches, Scripted Producer and Exec Lizzie Gray’s further developed this notion, emphasising this importance of developing ideas that have something different to say. How is your idea different? What similar shows are out there? What are they not saying? Whose story are they not telling?

She then emphasised the importance of British writers not watching only US TV. That, most likely, is not your market. Watch UK TV. Develop your sense of what is being made, and, a clear sense how you can offer something different. What are YOU bringing to the table from your experiences, knowledge base, your life? In short, your identity.

This last, important point, requires an element of rationalisation; something we as writers are prone to resist. It feels like marketing, which, especially if we have few or no credits to our name, feels at best limiting, at worst, cynical.

However, circling back to Matt Delargy’s talk, when self-knowledge is done right, it is only part of a wider process of self-development, including, but reaching beyond craft; a process that encompasses looking out and looking in, not snatching nor shielding. Honing.

A career, which Matt Delargy suggested, is underpinned by three underrated creative skills:

1) How to be nimble

2) How to have good taste

3) How to come up with ideas that matter

If I have learned anything from a week of talks, it is that learning to know yourself as a writer, as that Self shifts and grows, is one of the key tools to a writing career with longevity.

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