WRITING NOVELS AND TELEVISION DRAMA FOR CHILDREN

 I had always known I was a writer, but would probably have been surprised if you had told me when I was in the sixth form that I would be writing for children. I was heavily into verse drama and poetry and saw myself more as Christopher Fry or Virginia Woolf. Anyone who is going to write will almost certainly be a compulsive reader from an early age, and in my own case I was also writing, mainly poetry, from the age of six or so. While you are finding your own “voice” there is nothing wrong with imitating the style of writers you admire. I would set myself “five-finger exercises” in the form of dissecting, say, a stanza of Keats’ Ode, or Gerard Manley Hopkins, then writing one myself.
 
Writing is a vocation and most people are aware of it early on. The problem is that there is no career structure, no syllabus and no guarantee of publication or performance. So a day job is essential, particularly in the early days. A recent survey by the Society of Authors showed that less than 15% of writers of any age are able to support themselves by writing. In any case, withdrawal into the ivory tower at an early age gives a writer very little experience of the world and therefore very little to write about.
 
I read English at King’s College, London, but a degree is not necessary. If I had my time again I would read psychology. I worked as literary assistant to a Dutch millionaire who was writing a book about van Gogh, a trainee fashion buyer, a secretary in the BBC Natural History Unit, and was teaching on supply when I had my first book accepted in my mid-twenties. I picked an agent from the Authors and Writers Yearbook. They placed my first book and I have been with them ever since. The Yearbook is essential for any aspiring writer – full of practical advice on submission, finding an agent/publisher, presentation, markets and so on.
 
My third book, The Piemakers, was written just after I married and had my first child, and was my big break. It attracted critical acclaim both sides of the Atlantic and was runner-up for the Carnegie Medal (of which I had never heard!). Importantly, it was the book where I felt I had found my “voice”. It was read on Jackanory, then the dream of any children’s writer, and so were most of my subsequent books.
 
Then luck played a part, as it does in most successful writers’ careers. The BBC decided to set up a Children’s Drama Department. There was obviously no existing pool of experienced writers, and so they approached me, among others, as one whose work they were familiar with. So Lizzie Dripping was born – first one series, then another, and all filmed here in my own village of Eakring. This was ideal – I was able to watch the whole thing being made – a school on my own doorstep.
 
Needless to say, TV has been evolving throughout my career, and what I learned on Lizzie Dripping would be of little use to me now. As a matter of fact, contrary to popular belief, a screenwriter need know very little of the technicalities of film-making. It one need special effects, one needs to be clear whether these are possible, but that is all. What is required from the writer is not technical know-how but a strong feeling for dramatic narrative and pace, the ability to create convincing characters, and an ear for dialogue.
 
These days you will be able to pursue media studies and attend scriptwriting courses, though these will not guarantee work. I did my first adaptation, E. Nesbit’s Five Children and It, having had no training at all, and it won a BAFTA nomination. I put this down to having been good at précis at school (having wondered at the time what précis was for)!
 
Here are some final daunting statistics from the Society of Authors survey. 75% of writers earn less than £2,000 a year and two-thirds earn less than half the national average wage. They do it for love, not money.
 
If you want to write, nothing will stop you. And you will have your own voice and your own individual things you want to say that nobody else can say in quite the same way. The world needs you. Good luck!
 
 Helen Cresswell is a leading children’s writer, author of over 90 books and numerous television dramas, both originals and adaptations. She is the recipient of many awards, the most recent being the BAFTA Writer’s Award 2000.