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The Newsjack Writers' Room

2017-02-08T17:12:49+00:00

Exclusive to �� Radio 4 Extra, Newsjack showcases the week's news stories which have been lovingly bashed, mashed and moulded into sketches and one-liners. Anyone can submit material to go into the show alongside material from the show's core group of writers. Claire Wetton explains how she made the move from submitting material to being part of the show's Writers' Room...

When I first received an email asking me into the Writers' Room as a commissioned writer for an episode of Newsjack, I did what I presume all professional comedy writers do. I screamed, jumped in the air, did a little dance, ran down the stairs, ran back up the stairs, did another little dance…and then freaked the motherfudger* out.

Like most people, Newsjack was my first ‘proper’ job in comedy writing. Up to that point, I’d been writing sketches on my own, in my PJs, in the hope that I was maybe producing something mildly amusing. But writing a sketch about a killer gang of goats in my bedroom on a Sunday evening was one thing. Writing some award-winning, cutting edge, biting satire at the ��, in front of actual producers, whilst wearing actual clothes, was something totally different. I was filled with a mixture of overwhelming terror, irrepressible excitement, and of course, an unnecessary amount of anxiety about which notepad I should use to make sure I was being taken seriously.

Claire Wetton

If you don’t know what the Newsjack Writers' Room is, then let me explain. As you probably know, Newsjack is the ��’s open door show (if you don’t know about Newsjack, there are plenty of blogs on here about how you can get involved). Anyone can submit either sketches or one-liners to the show. If the production team consistently enjoys the work you’re submitting, they may ask you to come in and be part of the Writers' Room. I’d been submitting both one-liners and sketches every week for one series when I was called in. In that time, I’d had one sketch and 3 one-liners on air.

So what happens in the Newsjack Writers' Room? Well, about six writers and two producers meet on a Monday morning somewhere in the ��, to come up with ideas for that week’s show. As a writer you’re expected to come to the meeting with two to three sketch ideas, based on stories from that weekend’s news. I tend to take four to six ideas, as sometimes another writer pitches a brilliantly biting sketch idea about killer goats, which blows yours out the water. You want to have something else you can fall back on.

Claire (second from right) with the Newsjack Writers' Room

The pitching meeting sounds scarier than it is. The good thing about Newsjack is that it’s a show for new writers. Everyone in the room remembers what it was like the first time they pitched a sketch in front of a roomful of strangers. There’s a definite spirit of support in the room, and no one is judging you based on your pitches.** Some of the worst pitches end up being the best sketches, and vice versa.

The producers will ask each writer to pitch their favourite idea. If it’s your first time in the room, you won’t be asked to pitch first, so you’ll have the chance to see how it’s done before it’s your go. Once you’ve pitched an idea, the producer may make some suggestions on how you might want to frame the sketch or how to best focus the idea. The rest of the writers may then pitch in some jokes or ideas that may help you write your sketch (which you are free to use or ignore). Then we keep doing that until all the ideas have been pitched, and everyone has at least two sketches to work on.

Once the morning meeting is done, you have about two hours to write your first drafts. You can do this however you want. Most writers tend to stay in the meeting room, and work in there where we can support each other with ideas and cups of tea, but you’re welcome to go and find a quiet space on your own if you work better that way.

Once you’ve finished your first draft, the producers will read them and provide you with some feedback, so you have the afternoon to redraft and create some truly award-winning, cutting edge, biting satire. Or a sketch about a gang of killer goats. You never know with Newsjack.

Newjack presenter Angela Barnes gives tips on how you can get your material on the show…

Excellent things about writing for Newsjack in the writers room.

1. You get to pitch your idea to a producer before you write it. That way, you know whether they’re interested in putting it in the show or not, before you come up with 25 puns about killer goats.
2. You get to meet and work with other writers. Everyone at Newsjack is really supportive and generous with their ideas, so when, for example you shout out ‘Urgh, apparently I can’t murder this robot at the end of my sketch. What can I do?!’ Someone else might shout out, ‘Send him off to Robot Wars!’ thereby, giving you a perfect ending you’d have never thought of yourself. (This is a true story. I told you the Newsjack room’s full of award winning, biting satire.)
3. There’s no guarantee your work will make it to air just because you’re in the Writers' Room, but as you’ve spent a whole day getting feedback from producers, you do have a much better chance.
4. You get to go and work at Television Centre. And drink tea out of �� mugs. And pretend you’re dead cool and important.
5. You get to build up relationships with producers across the radio comedy department, which can lead to work on other comedy shows. Which is also exciting.

Bad things about writing for Newsjack in the writers room.

1. They really do frown on you writing in your PJs.

I’m writing for my 5th series of Newsjack now, and I’ve had all sorts of opportunities and experiences from it. It’s one of my very favourite things to do. And someone always comments on my choice of notepad.

*Insert your own expletive here
**Although I may be judging you on your choice of notepad.

Newsjack is open for submissions of sketches and one-liners now with weekly deadlines on Mondays and Tuesdays until 28th February

Find out more about Newsjack including How to submit your sketches and one-liners

Listen to Newsjack on �� iPlayer

Newsjack: The radio comedy show that anyone can write for

2015-08-21T10:11:40+00:00

Calling all comedy writers! Newsjack, the topical sketch show that anyone can write for is back for its thirteenth series and we need you to send us your comedy gold!

The brilliant Nish Kumar is back as host and we’ve made a launch video to get you in the mood.

Newsjack is back!

Every episode is packed with sketches and one-liners submitted by aspiring comedy writers. You don’t need to have any credits or previous experience to get your work on air, just be really funny and believe in yourself… Well, don’t just believe in yourself, as Nish said, he doesn’t just want a load of bits of paper saying you ‘believe in yourself’.

Newsjack is known to be the first rung on the comedy writing ladder, with writers such as James Kettle, Gabby Hutchinson Crouch and James Bugg starting their careers submitting material to the show. We purposefully leave spots in our writer’s room for new people coming through who get their sketches and one-liners broadcast, meaning that anyone is in with a chance of joining us at the ��'s Grafton House to work with the producers, script editors and other writers.

One of our fantastic contract writers, Gabby Hutchinson Crouch has some tips to help you during the writing process:

- Look through the news at the weekend for stories to use, especially on a Sunday night or Monday morning if you have the time to then. The sketch deadline’s Monday at noon, but the show doesn’t go out til Thursday, so the fresher the story the better. Unless it’s a massive story, if it happened any earlier than Saturday I treat it as old news.

- Don’t just look at the big political stories, lots of people are going to be doing sketches about those and they’re not going to broadcast two sketches about the same story. I find going through the Science, Environment & Tech sections particularly useful, as well as Arts & Entertainment. Last series we were also noticeably low on Sports sketches, so that’s worth having a crack at, even if you don’t know much about the sport in question, as long as you can find what’s funny about the story. I know very little about horse racing, but one of the Newsjack sketches I’m proudest of is in the form of a horse race commentary.

- Good sketches are joke-lead. If it doesn’t contain at least one joke per line (or one short line that’s a set-up followed by a punchline) then it’s going to die. Newsjack’s recorded in front of an audience of about 200, your sketch has to have them laughing out loud throughout.

- Be as brief as you can. Make your point in as funny a way as possible, and then get out quickly. I aim for sketches to be under 3 pages. Chances are, if it makes it through, it’ll be cut to under 2 pages anyway.

- Write a short introduction for the host. Introduce the story, add a quick joke, set up the sketch and you should be away.

- Remember that there will always be a cast of 2 women and 2 men. You’ll be surprised how many sketches we get with 5 people in, or 3 characters that have to be played by men, or sketches where there’s one woman who’s just there to feed lines to the male voices. We’ve got some brilliant female talent on the show, and the producers are going to want material that makes good use of them.

- Know how your sketch is going to end before you start writing it. You need to go out on a strong punchline or funny twist, it helps to have the backbone of the sketch planned out first so you can get the structure right. It’ll save you a lot of staring at a three page sketch wondering how the Hell to make it stop. I speak from bitter experience here.

Extra extra writing tips:

- Decide on the angle or point of the sketch before you write it and make sure everything in the sketch serves that point.

- Try not to go down the obvious route with a news story. If you have an idea, it might be worth searching Twitter to see if the same idea has already been told by 1000 people on there already. If it has, then it’s probably a good idea to think of a less obvious joke.

Nish also has his own nuggets of wisdom about submitting to the show:

Nish's Newsjack Nuggets

The first deadline for submissions this series are:

Sketches: 12.00pm Monday 7 September 2015

One-Liners: 12.00pm Tuesday 8 September 2015

Then at the same times each week for the following five weeks.

Please note that submissions submitted after the deadline each week will not be read. All submissions should be sent to newsjacksubmissions@bbc.co.uk.

You can read the full submission guidelines, as well as download formatted templates on the Newsjack website. You can also listen to clips from the previous series to hear the types of sketches that have got on to Newsjack.

So, what do we want you take away from this blog?

Anyone can write for us. Just be satirical, original and funny.

Newsjack is being produced by Matt Stronge and Suzy Grant. The first episode airs on Thursday 10th September on �� Radio 4 Extra.

Follow Newsjack on Twitter for the latest updates

On our blog: Find out more about producing Newsjack

Read a blog by former Newsjack contributor Tom Neenan

Adapting Ursula Le Guin's 'Earthsea' and 'The Left Hand of Darkness' for Radio

2015-04-14T09:21:55+00:00

What is your writing background? What part did Le Guin’s work play in it?

I had no formal training. In my youth creative writing courses didn’t exist. I settled for always wanting to be a writer. Then discovered, when I began, that it was a playwright I wanted to be: making four dimensional models with words that could stand up off the page and move and speak and shape environments or respond to environments in quasi- or super-real time. Acting was my second love and possible direction – but I discovered quite soon there weren’t enough of the parts for women I would, in my youthful arrogance, have wanted to play. I decided to create some.

I read English at Cambridge 1970-3. In those days the dominance of the male principle in academia, at least at Cambridge, on all levels, dead or alive, was as complete as to seem natural and insurmountable. The message was: I was a man. Or must act being one to get anywhere. But not man enough, whatever, to be a serious writer – least of all a playwright.

I’m pretty sure when she wrote her essay about being a man (which she quoted from in the �� Radio 4 documentary) Ursula Le Guin was referring to the same sense of gender impersonation in her life and career. As the generic pronoun which I battled to exclude from her novel "The Left Hand of Darkness" still attests, ‘he’ is The Human Being – and as I/we are human and all wish (to paraphrase Michèle Roberts) to play hero, heroine and monster in the stories we read and live, we too must be a “he”, as best we might. The Brontës, and wondrous George Eliot, would certainly have understood that thorny path.

When, in my twenties, I discovered the people of Gethen in "The Left Hand of Darkness" I finally felt at home in the head of another writer asking the questions that bedevilled me about “reality”. Not least because of their use of the generic “he”. Unless a new pronoun was invented, there was no choice but to make all the ambigendered seem male in the readers’ heads. It wasn’t until I started to dramatise the book last year that I discovered how deeply it’s embedded in my own scripting psyche even now. Terrifying. Like a virus that never goes away.

After University I trained as a teacher in Drama and English. I did a project on the use and influence of children’s fiction in education and found Le Guin. Like the Brontës, she had maps and worlds and powerful women in men’s worlds trying to find a new ecology and voice and way to live more gently with each other and the world.

It wasn’t until I was 42 that I became a playwright. I jumped off a cliff like my first heroine, Lady Grange, in my first (epic) stage play. I was driven to jump, because I’d found the story of a silenced woman whose life existed only in scrawled letters in the archives of Edinburgh Library and in the footnotes of history. Every footnote told a different version of her story. So I had discovered that:

• history is mainly centred on men and action with a few hooks in real fabric – much like fiction
• women’s history and fiction is out beyond the horizon, like dragons
• where mad women are involved research often discovers that it’s the world around them that’s insane (Juana la Loca was my next discovery – man! was the world mad under her mum and dad: Ferdinand and Isabella)
• I wanted to give these women voices more than I wanted to stay scared, please, or earn a regular salary

After I jumped off the cliffs of St Kilda with Lady Grange - writing it in three weeks straight, out of what was composed already in my head - Fate set her wheel spinning. I sent it to the National Theatre and �� (Radio 4). The latter offered me a production for The Monday Play slot (now sadly extinct). I could keep my big cast and crazy birds through doubling on radio, if I cut it down to 90 minutes. They paid me, so I did sell my play’s soul to that temptation.

My career continues in the same ad hoc way into my sixties – regular but evanescent, in that each project is a passing bird. One constant is that they are (whenever possible, and often when impossible) about women and children and their lost lives and histories, like Tenar in Earthsea. I have brought Tenar in from the beginning of my adaptation, to parallel her childhood of name-stripping and powerlessness with Ged’s of name-giving and power.

How did you get involved in the project?

I’d been trying to dramatise Le Guin for twenty years and was always told ‘no’ – as were many others. I’d given up. Then a new producer on a drama placement rang up and asked if I was interested in writing a proposal with her for "The Left Hand of Darkness". After which another producer rang up and asked if I was still interested in that "Other Earthsea idea" (I’d always wanted to focus on the later books – beginning in the labyrinth in The Tombs of Atuan and moving to Tehanu through Tales from Earthsea to The Other Wind). If so, he said, we would have to start with the first three. The second three are still part of our Complete Earthsea proposal, sent to Le Guin for her permission, which she has given. So far the �� has only commissioned the first half of our concept.

Like buses – you stand waiting for years, then two arrive at once. Three, I hope. I fought like a tiger to do it all, outrageously, given the deadlines we had. I’m sorry for all the other writers aching for years to do it – but not that sorry.

What is your connection to Le Guin’s works?

I was obsessed from childhood by mythology, human psychology and travel books. It seems to me that myth and geography and the nature of humans are the raw materials of all fiction, and that science fiction perceived of as a genre is one thing, and Le Guin’s books, quite another - or rather, many other things.

Strange to think it now – but my mind received a thump of enlightenment when it was Ged’s shadow he’d been chasing. “Yes”, I thought, “that’s the truth”.

I loved the Ged stories – in spite of my doubts about the exclusive male bonding of Tolkien that influenced them. Then, many years later, Le Guin went back to Earthsea and turned the boat around and flung out, as it were, the generic “he”, in Tehanu and the later tales, changing the roles and natures of both genders and of the endlessly charismatic dragons. My psyche, life and work was changed forever. As always, she kicks boundaries and opens doors on the impossible; touches the nerve of that familiar sense of loss, and recovery, of better worlds than this. Edens just in our grasp, if only we embrace changes within. Change is the core of her work and process. Change and the power of coming home from a place of abandonment. No wonder she speaks so powerfully to women and children.

She can still make my heart sing with a sentence.

Reading her essays and now, having had a chance to communicate with her over this work (to see her name in my inbox is still the most astonishing thing about the luck I’ve had getting this job), I find her the most extraordinary being. Wise, trenchant, staggeringly intelligent, beautifully witty, patient, generous and courteous. And Oh! rarest of talents to one stretched out on the rack of an eye-watering deadline or two: swift to respond. A saint, David Mitchell calls her. A saint with a sword though (for example her attack at a book awards ceremony last year on publishers and Amazon and capitalism).

Ursula Le Guin

Do you think we are in a golden age for fantasy and sci-fi – has it now become mainstream?

I think of all fiction as one stream – with its springs in myth, oral storytelling, poems like Gilgamesh and Beowulf, comics and that greatest of all fictions: the "realist" novel – and reality itself. Resist all boundaries and genres, I think. Game of Thrones is clever and compelling, but insists “all men (sic) must die”, and portrays violence and sexual violence as endemic. If only Gandhi’s genes and not Genghis Khan’s had inseminated our cultures, the ways of women might play a bigger part in what was “endemic”.

What were the challenges of adapting Le Guin’s books specifically for Radio while keeping what is special and unique in the works?

I think radio has just begun to feel more confident about offering the audience complex plots thanks to writers like Gaiman, the impact of Game of Thrones, film and computer gaming. It would be nice to appeal to that (possibly) younger audience. Complex plots on radio are always a challenge.

Names were a challenge. We read all the names to Le Guin and she spoke them back and then the �� pronunciation unit got busy; but with such large casts, changing as the characters grew up, packed recording days, retakes and editing, and ten days of back-to-back recording, there were always going to be challenges policing complete consistency.

I would have liked a bigger canvas to work the versions onto. But then, to have a canvas at all was a glorious thing. Where else but on radio would I have got this?

Neil Gaiman on the influence of Ursula Le Guin

Did you speak to Ursula Le Guin about the adaptations and did she offer any advice?

She approved the entire proposal prior to it being considered for commissioning. (A proposal takes months to write. In a way, it’s the biggest job because it needs all the thinking that might make the piece fit the slot and (one passionately hopes) honour the books and their original author.) She read early drafts of both projects, offered suggestions, and approved the directions we were taking. She also read the final drafts. She said, quite early in the process, she felt her books were in good hands, which was a massive relief for me to hear. At Christmas. The best of presents.

Both producers talked with her regularly and one - Allegra McIlroy – arranged, conceived and produced the exquisite documentary broadcast last week, where it’s mostly le Guin’s current voice we hear.

Do you have any advice you can share for other budding writers?

Discover a story you absolutely have to tell – or reframe – and do it with all your being.

Then be content to step off a cliff.

Every time.

Would you recommend Radio as a medium for writers? Why?

I simply love and prefer it as a medium. It has no real boundaries. You access thousands of imaginations that are at liberty to make of it what they will. It is the drama medium where your work is allowed to take more risks – because it costs less to make a dragon or a mistake, I suppose, than it would on television or in films.
There’s a big output – though less than there used to be.

�� Radio Drama is a rare and precious beast. It needs more funding and space to flourish regardless of audience size or demographic. Some things are too valuable to compromise for cash, “news” and populism.

Listen to The Left Hand of Darkness on �� Radio 4 and �� iPlayer

Earthsea on �� Radio 4 Extra - begins Monday 27 April

Ursula Le Guin at 85 - with contributions from fans including David Mitchell and Neil Gaiman

Find out more about Judith Adams on her website

Producing Radio 4 Extra's Newsjack - From the Writers Room to the Edit Suite

2014-10-31T11:02:33+00:00

Charlie Perkins and Arnab Chanda

Hello. We are Charlie Perkins and Arnab Chanda. Charlie is a girl. Arnab is a boy. We are the Producers of the 10th and 11th series of Radio 4 Extra’s topical sketch show Newsjack. It’s quite an unorthodox show, in that it’s written almost entirely by the public, and put together in just two days. It’s an insanely quick turnaround, and can lead to panic attacks.

The work begins for us on Monday, when we read all the sketch submissions from the public and also run the Writers Room, which usually consists of 6 writers- young standups, sketch comedians, or writers who have consistently sent great sketches into the show. In it, each writer presents three sketch ideas they have, and the whole room tries to help them shape it. It’s a very friendly and collaborative room. We hope.

Newsjack writers meeting

So, what makes a good topical sketch? Well, maybe the most important thing is having a target. Comedians such as Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Charlie Brooker all have fantastic satirical shows because they know their point of view and what they want to attack. A great topical sketch similarly needs to do the same. Otherwise it can be funny, but utterly pointless. Sounds obvious, but there also needs to be a good beginning, middle, and end to the sketch. In the Writers Room, we ask everyone just to outline the sketch during the morning, and then actually write the dialogue in the afternoon once they’ve figured out the structure of it. It’s often the same in sitcom writing- you don’t actually start writing the dialogue until you’ve outlined the plot. It’s often laborious and boring, but incredibly important.

Arnab noting news stories

On Tuesday we work with the Script Editors in shaping the top 25 sketches from the Monday. Romesh also comes in to the office to write his monologue based on the biggest news story that week. We also read ALL the one-liner submissions. This series we had a week where we received over 2,500. That was crazy. By the time the show airs, only about 30-40 will survive....

On Wednesday, we make final changes to the sketches and one-liners, and have two read-throughs with the entire cast in the �� Radio Theatre, after which we make even more tweaks, and then record the final show at 7:30pm. Hopefully people laugh. If they don’t, everyone stares at each other in horror.

Newsjack Recording

On Thursday, we spend the day in the edit suite with our edit maestro Chris Morris, and add all sorts of stings and music to help the sketches come alive. And then the show goes out that very evening at 10:30pm on Radio 4 Extra! Then Charlie and Arnab go to bed.

Newsjack Edit room

It’s been an incredible experience producing the past two series of NewsJack. In the 11th series, we incredibly had 131 individual contributors, which is so exciting to have found that many promising writers. Our main goal when producing this show was not only to have this show be a platform for new writers, but also for new performers, and script editors, and we hope this tradition continues for years to come.

So thanks for writing and keep submitting to the show!

�� iPlayer: Listen back to the last episode of series 11.

Newsjack website: Find out how you can submit to the next series including tips and advice.

Previously on the Writersroom blog:

Newsjack by Numbers

Newsjack: A Hero's Journey

�������� Writers Feed

The Newsjack Writers' Room

Newsjack: The radio comedy show that anyone can write for

Adapting Ursula Le Guin's 'Earthsea' and 'The Left Hand of Darkness' for Radio

Producing Radio 4 Extra's Newsjack - From the Writers Room to the Edit Suite

�� Writers Feed