1. INT. LAURENCE’S PLACE – DAY 1 17:00

LAURENCE is writing a blog post. He’s on his own. He leans over the keyboard, intermittently reading back his words to himself, shaking his head, gazing out of the window at the summer rain and sipping coffee from a dirty mug.

LAURENCE

I’ve never seriously considered writing a script of any kind. Don’t know why, really. Never really thought about it. The only objective I ever had was to write a novel.

(beat; LAURENCE drains his coffee)

Now I’ve been writing – I mean really writing – for a year and a half now, and it’s kind of opened the floodgates. I want to have a stab at all kinds of fiction. Novels, short stories, scripts for telly, maybe even a film script. Uh, everything except poetry. Did that when I was seventeen. Never again.

(LAURENCE picks up coffee cup, looks in it, is disappointed to find it empty)

I read about this Red Planet prize. These geezers that do telly programmes are giving away cash for a decent script. Not only that, they’ll maybe get it into production. Talk about a bloody shortcut. I thought, wouldn’t it be so bloody fantastic if I could just crack out a script, bung it over and hey-ho, off we go.

‘Cept it ain’t so easy as that, as I found out. I sat down, got an idea for a script, started writing it, and discovered that I’d ended up with Hustle meets Spooks. Interesting, but not exactly original. Then I pulled my favourite characters out of that and put them in a sitcom set in a mental hospital. Turned out they weren’t any good at being funny. Nor was the mental hospital, come to think of it.

(beat; LAURENCE sighs)

So yesterday I thought, forget it, concentrate on the novel. Come back to scripts and stuff like that another time. Then I read another blog post from these Red Planet guys – nothing special, just one of them FAQs – and I’m all inspired to write a script again. Maybe a sitcom about a struggling writer? Heh. Don’t think so. That’s been done. Hasn’t it?

END

You can find out more about the Red Planet Prize here.