It's Week 11 of the course and the writers are all redrafting their "graduation" pieces - an episode of Doctors. If these scripts are deemed OK by the show, they will then pass on to their full commisssioning round on Holby, Casualty and EastEnders starting in January. As this will be the first piece of TV drama some of them will ever have have made, it's a big moment.
It's been a rollercoaster few weeks for us and them, and it always goes by in a flash, so it's hard to believe it's nearly over. They've written wonderful adaptations of fairy tales - some of which I'm sure will get made as films one day. They've stood on sets and watched filming. They've structured and restructured the same episode of Holby City. They've watched a lot of telly and lots of movies. They've had wonderful generous sessions with Russell T Davies, Richard Curtis, Tony Jordan, Peter Bowker and a host of other writers at the top of their game. But most of all they've written, written and rewritten.
So they're about to go off and do one of the hardest and most rewarding writing jobs in television. Any advice you want to give them, you writers out there? The experienced and the less experienced... what should we tell them?