Helen Jacey - Life as a Scriptwriter and the Future

Helen’s lecture made me think about the future and where I would like to be I around 5 years time. She brought to light that scriptwriting is a very hard career choice and highlighted the importance of work experience and networking. Two major professional aspects that will help advance ones career. Also something that was interesting was the kind of people you send your work to. Something that I had not thought of.

Thinking about it in 5 years time I hope to have sold a number of scripts and maybe have a job in the media industry. Gaining work experience now will be vital in making this come to fruition, something Helen made me realise. The media industry as a whole is a tough industry to break into so having work experience particularly within the industry would be a great place to start. Also within this time I hope to have a number of scripts in different stages of development and hopefully start to make a name for myself in the industry. I understand how hard it is to sell a script in an absolutely saturated market and hopefully within these 5 years I hope to develop my craft in the hopes that my script will be innovative enough to catch someone’s eye and hopefully end up being produced.

Networking was a main focus of the lecture and the importance of it was heavily highlighted. What I took from the lecture was that networking should be something scriptwriters do constantly and almost subconsciously. Throughout the career of a scriptwriter they will be networking every day working and communicating with new people. It are these connections that will eventually help scriptwriters break into the industry. Another point brought up was working with people that “know” you. Maybe on a professional and personal level. From this it will be a much more enjoyable experience to collaborate with someone that knows you well rather than a stranger. Hopefully through networking I am able to meet a lot of people who get to know me therefore wanting to work with me in the future. Reflecting on how I am currently networking I think I need to create more opportunities for myself to network and maybe network more among my peers at my university.