The Spec Script
bbc.co.uk – Wednesday August 6, 2025
As the dates for our next annual Open Call will be announced very soon, we turned to Script Consultant Philip Shelley to outline some of the key things you should be thinking about if you are considering entering your script.
What is a Spec Script and Why is it Important? Will it get made?
‘Spec’ as in speculative. Also known as a ‘calling card’ script, 'specimen' script or ‘writing sample’.
For new screenwriters looking to break into the industry – indeed even for experienced writers looking to refresh / relaunch themselves – spec scripts are absolutely fundamental. They are your currency as a writer. Everything good will come from a promising spec script. And without it, potential employers won’t be able to engage with you as a serious proposition.
The Channel 4 screenwriting course is all about the spec script. Initially we choose 12 writers largely based on the script they have submitted. The main purpose of the course is for them to then write another script. So, by the end of the course, they should all have two outstanding spec scripts.
I have witnessed these scripts kickstarting and indeed sustaining careers over many years. That’s the very good news. The less good news is that while, over the years, many of these projects have been optioned by production companies and taken into active, paid development, they pretty much never seem to end up getting made. What they do instead is get you in the door, initiate conversations and relationships with the producers and development executives who have the power to commission you to write your next scripts.
New Writing North | Channel 4 Northern Talent Network: Script Hubs
bbc.co.uk – Tuesday August 5, 2025
In partnership with Channel 4, New Writing North's Script Hubs provide peer support and networking to writers across the North looking to take their career in TV forward.
Their next application window is open to all writers living in Cumbria and members of the global majority across the North of England.
Over a five-month period, ten writers in each Script Hub collaborate on a series of peer group sessions and professional development workshops. Each group is led by an experienced facilitator writer, with the workshops featuring guest writers, producers, and other broadcast professionals.
New Literary Agency Listing: Featherstone Cairns
firstwriter.com – Tuesday August 5, 2025
Welcomes submissions. We mainly represent adult nonfiction, and we occasionally represent fiction and children’s. We are always looking for dynamic new voices and original ideas.
Writing What You Want to Learn: The Joy of Real-World Research When Crafting a Novel
crimereads.com – Monday August 4, 2025
I have never believed in the adage Write What You Know. How boring is that? Frankly, my life’s just not that interesting. Instead, I prefer to write what I want to learn.
Case in point, I travelled to Yorkshire, England to do location research for Tea with Jam and Dread, the newest Tea by the Sea mystery. I’ve been to London several times but never to Yorkshire. In earlier books in the series it was mentioned that the grandmother character, Rose Campbell, had been a kitchen maid at a grand manor house near Halifax in her youth before marrying a visiting American, and moving to his country.
When I decided I wanted to take Rose back to Thornecroft Castle House, which is now a hotel, for the hundredth birthday celebrations of Elizabeth, the Dowager Countess of Frockmorton, I knew right away I’d have to make the trip myself before I could take my characters there.
These days you can do an enormous amount of research on the internet. Examine historical records, check up on the weather and the climate, study other people’s tourist photos, follow the layout of roads and streets on maps and zoom in at the level of an individual house or pan out to see the spread of the coastline.
The end of the road? What The Salt Path scandal means for the nature memoir
theguardian.com – Saturday August 2, 2025
When The Salt Path came out in 2018, it was a publishing phenomenon, going on to sell more than 2m copies globally. As even those who haven’t read it are likely to know by now, the book charted Raynor Winn and her husband Moth’s emotionally and physically transformative long-distance walk along the South West Coast Path in the wake of utter disaster: a financial collapse that cost them their home, and Moth’s diagnosis with an incurable neurological disorder. Winn followed it with two further books in a similar vein, The Wild Silence and Landlines, also bestsellers. Earlier this year came a film of The Salt Path, starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs. That original book by a first-time writer had become what writers, editors and booksellers all dream of: a bestselling, spin-off generating brand.
But it wasn’t the first nature memoir to top the charts, by any means. In 2012, Wild by Cheryl Strayed described the 26-year‑old’s hike across the west coast of America in the wake of her mother’s death and the end of her marriage, and after soaring up the book charts it was made into a film starring Reese Witherspoon two years later. That same year, H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald was a surprise bestseller, telling the story of a year spent training a Eurasian goshawk as a journey through grief after the death of their father. In 2016, Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun saw her return to the sheep farm on Orkney where she’d grown up in order to recover from addiction through contact with nature; it was also recently filmed, with Saoirse Ronan in the lead role. Meanwhile, in last year’s bestselling Raising Hare, foreign policy adviser Chloe Dalton describes moving to the countryside, rescuing a leveret and rediscovering her relationship with the land.
Nero New Writers Prize
brunel.ac.uk – Friday August 1, 2025
Brunel University of London and premium coffee house Caffè Nero have jointly opened submissions for the Nero New Writers Prize, a bold new award searching for the best original short stories from unpublished and aspiring writers from the UK and Ireland.
Entries must be an original, unpublished short story of up to 5,000 words in either fiction or non-fiction, and the Prize is open to adults who are citizens of, or resident in, the UK and Ireland.
Submissions will be judged anonymously on the quality of prose and readability by a panel chaired by author and journalist Sophie Elmhirst, winner of the 2024 Nero Gold Prize for Maurice and Maralyn. She is joined by two of Brunel’s Creative Writing faculty, Bernardine Evaristo, bestselling author and Professor of Creative Writing, and novelist and academic Helen Cullen, Reader in Creative Writing.
New Literary Agent Listing: Casey Conniff
firstwriter.com – Thursday July 31, 2025
Currently looking for cozy fantasy, all things romance (romcoms, dark romance, sports romance, small town romance), commercial book club fiction, romantasy, thrillers and suspense, and magical realism. She is particularly drawn to stories with a strong voice and immersive relationships at their core.
FlipHTML5 Launches a Novel Writing AI Tool for Innovative Novel Creation
prunderground.com – Wednesday July 30, 2025
FlipHTML5, a leading digital publishing platform, is revolutionizing the creation and telling of stories with its newly launched novel writing AI tool. With this AI-powered solution, authors no longer need to face the normally overwhelming challenge of developing plotlines, creating characters, writing content, or formatting books for publishing by themselves. FlipHTML5’s AI novel generator provides a seamless and intelligent storytelling experience that takes writers from the first spark of an idea to the final step of digital publishing.
The novel writing AI is not just designed to speed up the writing process, it’s designed to enhance the whole reading experience, too. Writers can now develop new concepts, produce entire chapters, edit manuscripts, and publish multimedia-rich, interactive novels that simulate the experience of flipping through an actual printed book. Authors can simply start with a topic idea or use their existing draft, and the AI novel generator will produce a well-structured book complete with layout design in minutes.
Romance Writing Festival
bournemouthecho.co.uk – Wednesday July 30, 2025
One-day festival celebrating romance writing, offering a mix of panel discussions, agent 1-2-1s, workshops, activities and networking opportunities.
Sunday Times bestselling authors Milly Johnson and Paige Toon will headline the inaugural Romance Writing Festival, taking place in Bournemouth on 18th October 2025. They join fellow Sunday Times bestseller Katie Fforde on an impressive programme featuring award-winning authors, editors, literary agents, and publishers.
The one-day event is dedicated to romance writing, offering a mix of panel discussions, workshops, and networking opportunities. Attendees can also book one-to-one sessions with agents and editors or take part in free activities designed to inspire writers at all stages of their journey.
"The key to creating a character is in the detail": writing advice from best-selling author Jennie Godfrey
goodhousekeeping.com – Tuesday July 29, 2025
Jennie Godfrey is author of Sunday Times bestseller The List Of Suspicious Things, which has sold over 100,000 copies in paperback alone. Her debut was inspired by her childhood in West Yorkshire in the 1970s. Jennie is from a mill-working family, but as the first of the generation born after the mills closed, she went to university and built a career in the corporate world. In 2020 she left and began to write.
She is now a writer and part-time Waterstones bookseller and lives in the Somerset countryside. She is a judge for Good Housekeeping's 2025 writing competition, which is running until 31 August.
7 brilliant pieces of writing advice
1 The best opening paragraphs give a flavour of what's coming and why the reader should care, with a big dollop of voice. For me the voice is the most important aspect of the opening. If I am hooked by the voice, I am hooked full stop.
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