What to Do If You're A Writer Who Isn't At London Screenwriters Festival

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.

1) Gratuitously Plan Your Trip to Next Year’s Festival

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.

2) Plot A Way to Infiltrate This Year’s Festival

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 minion associate is the perfect way to gain access. Alternatively, find someone’s festival schedule booklet and Tip-Ex in your name as a keynote speaker – a trick that will certainly best any door staff if 90s family comedies are to be believed. Perhaps you could try the old “ambush a staff member in a cupboard and steal their uniform” trick? It’s possible that this is all getting a bit too “illegal” for your tastes... Well, we’ve all got to do things were not proud of to get on the Ladder of Success.

3) Start Your Own Rival Scriptwriting Festival

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.

4) Take A Luxurious Holiday From Writing

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.

5) Write

You have a three day head start on everyone who is at the Festival right now. Use it wisely.

James Cottle, after studying Scriptwriting for 4 years, is now an embittered real life freelance writer, and seeks to unlearn everything he knows. But he needs your help... Follow him on Twitter @Jxmxsc and share this blog to help spread his anarchic plight for reform amongst the writing masses.