How did you come up with the idea for your winning project? [Orpheus with his lyre]
I have from a child loved Greek (and other) myths, intensified by doing a first degree in classical literature. I’ve always been especially moved by the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, the most tragic tale ever, and I suppose, being a romantic, wanted to see how it could possibly ever have a happy ending ( that turn in my perspective was started, I’m sure of it, by hearing Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits’ from his take on the tale: if the tale could have something so beautiful in it he could it be ultimately Unhappy? (here, as I also argue in some of my academic work, music surely comes first)

I think the screenplay is also a bit about the deep nature and challenge of people, as well as about the significance of the relation (and parallels) between humans and birds (I’ve been fascinated enough by this to have penned a book on the subject under my maternal grandfather‘s name, David Callender Campbell).

It is also saturated with music, very much part of my life – not a “musical”, just how else for a play about the beginning of the lyre/lute/guitar and about the then greatest musician in the world?

The title is a near quotation from Shakespeare, also a recurrent part of my experience.

Do you recommend screenwriters submit Golden Draft Awards?
Yes, absolutely – nice logo as well as terrific and really useful PRACTICAL feedback.

Did you find the feedback helpful?
Yes VERY. Will definitely use it in any new script I write ( the next one, partly written, is likely to be the story of Theseus set in modern times) and maybe one or two of my favorite old ones too. It was especially good to have the feedback written from the point of view of the PRODUCER, not, as with most comments, of the reader.

What are the best thing and most challenging things about screenwriting?
Not sure – it just happens ( see below on writing routine), I have no option.

One very enjoyable and pleasurably challenging thing, though, is that since for many years I have been an academic writer and then also, to my absolute surprise, also a novelist, it’s been fascinating and in a way a lot of hard work (practice through trial and error, NOT, as is more usual, through courses or manuals) to see what very different skills and approaches are needed for screenwriting, and to start learning them. This difference comes out especially clearly when adapting a book to a screenplay – the contrasts and necessary changes really hit you ( a useful exercise for any learner i’d suggest)

Can you please give the emerging screenwriters a few screenwriting tips?
For the key story and characters ONLY write from your own deeply felt personal experience (which could be genuinely felt imagination as well as “actual”). Even if you didn’t write them down explicitly, good if you know and can actually Picture the details – yes the details – of the setting,

Don’t give in to the temptations (I often have in the past and, oh dear, sometimes still do !) to
1) Put action into a parenthesis (I assume these should essentially be adverbial, about how something is said; action needs a separate line)
2) Overdo the parentheses: fine, in fact good, in the first draft while you’re sorting out the emotions, but if your script is any good by the end most (not all) will no longer need to be written in, the actors will just know/feel how it should be said.

It’s known that screenplays, unlike stage plays, can’t do soliloquies and that when you do need to convey a character’s inner thoughts/ emotions/ dilemmas you need someone to be there as the listener/confident. What I didn’t realize for some time ( a chance acquaintance on a train journey told me !) is that, so long as it’s set up properly and seen to flow naturally as part of the story, the confidant spoken to can be a thing as well as a person: the character’s reflection in a mirror or lake; the moon; a photograph; a jewel; his/her future dead self (have used all of these); etc etc.
Knowing that has made life much easier!

Be prepared to oink up tips from ANYWHERE (like my man-in-the-train), not just solemn books or dedicated websites, or even wonderful Golden Draft.

PS haha – how strange to think of ME ( still, I feel, just a screenplay beginner with a few years experience) giving other people writing tips!!

How often do you write? Do you have a writing routine?
In a way I have no routine, the stories and scripts just arrive, they already somehow exist, waiting for me. That means I write any old time, but a lot of the time (I’m freelance so it’s up to me). They often arrive in the middle of the night in that magic “ liminal” space that is neither sleeping nor waking but somehow both, or when I’m walking in the countryside. I very seldom actually write the words down then but always remember them the next day or the day after; but once it’s written down I tend to fiet the details ( it’s the same with my novels, they too have only arrived in the last few years).

I suppose that with all creative writers, inspiration, as with Orpheus, is a kind of madness – out of the self, something out of and beyond ordinary life and yet at the same time absolutely rooted in it.

Ruth Finnegan
www ruthhfinnegan.com, www.callendervision.org