They will be, don't worry. They'll read the first ten pages, but if it's not selling it to them by about five or 6, it's 'Hello bin'. That's the only way they can get through so many in a week.

I wish I hadn't made mine so 'mature' - though the sex scene was essential to the plot, so my hands were tied.

700 hundred entries? Oh well, never mind then! I liked what I wrote, but it's the first childrens script I've ever written, I'm sure there would have been a lot of people more experienced in that field giving it a bash.

Got thrown by looking at the blog today - thought the 'contacting people at the end of next week' had been written today. But no, they're still on schedule.

I imagine that, enormous cull to get down to 20 or not, some people of promise might get notified regardless of the fact they haven't made the final list.

"I wish I hadn't made mine so 'mature' - though the sex scene was essential to the plot, so my hands were tied."

I know what you mean, besides I think the children of today need to know the full horror of the underground sex trade

Out of curiosity - one thing I steered clear of when I was doing my script was something that was broadly speaking 'fantasy' because I thought it was likely that that would be an area a lot of the scripts would fall into and I wanted to stand out a bit. So how many people went into the kind of fantasy/sci-fi/unreal concept area?

Mine was definitely in the 'unreal' sector. Basically being influenced by things like Eerie Indiana, Sarah Jane Adventures; shows like that. I assumed a lot of people would have gone down the fantasy/sci-fi route, but I didn't have any interest in writing a straight, 'real' kids drama. You're right that not going the fantastical route will probably help you stand out a bit from the crowd.

20 out of 700. 1 out of 35. Not the most frightening odds really. Though I most certainly went down the fantasy route, so where that leaves me I don't know.

Quote: writer_for_hire @ July 6 2009, 7:48 PM BST

"I wish I hadn't made mine so 'mature' - though the sex scene was essential to the plot, so my hands were tied."

I know what you mean, besides I think the children of today need to know the full horror of the underground sex trade

View original

Setting it in a virtual reality, 3D world, filled with dinosaurs and robots from the future probably wasn't a good idea neither. Damn that BBC budget!

Yeah, I bet loads of people send in boy wizardy stuff. (or girl wizardy stuff if they didn't want to look too obvious!)

Or stuff about aliens, with the Earth heroes being kids with lots of gadgets.

A lot of script submissions do seem to follow a main trend. For example, it said on the BBC blogs a while back that the majority of Drama Academy entries one year were teen dramas, not that long after Skins had become a success.

It said on the CBBC contest page that they're looking for new and original ideas, so it could mean that anything resembling Doctor Who, Harry Potter, MI High or a younger version of Skins/Inbetweeners might not get picked.

At the end of the day it's just got to be a story that you care about. Whilst it's hard not to, second guessing what they may or may not want never really helps.

Having said that a lot of it's common sense. If they want NEW ideas and they've just done a show about a time travelling hedgehog... best put your idea about a time travelling hedgehog back in the drawer for another time.

Bang goes To the Hedge of Time.

Bang goes 'Sonic: The Crusade Years'

I still hold out hope for Beslam Play School

So... is anybody going to reveal what kind of show they did submit?