WRITER PROFILE
It’s always great to get together with a large group of writers and investors and keep up to date on what’s new, the screenplay contest, any recent deals, new dealmaker contacts, agents or managers that are looking and simply encouraging everyone to keep going after every dream in this difficult industry. For the hard working writer we want to do as much as we can to continue the exposure and word of mouth in the investment circles of the industry. Another way we do this is with writer interviews that we send far and wide and showcase at all possible meetings and markets.
We want to encourage your writing spirit, motivate you and again give you the accolades you so deserve.
REIVERS
Written by Stephen Potts
What motivated you to become a writer?
First up – being a reader! As a kid I always had a book in my pocket, sometimes two. The town library reserved a seat for me. Writing those books seemed reserved for people different to me, but slowly, gradually, my wish to become one of them hardened into a determination to make it happen. Until it did.
Later, as I got deeper into movies, something similar happened, and I found myself wanting to write the kind of films I wanted to see. Where does that want spring from? I can’t tell you, because I don’t know. It’s a bit like asking what drew me to my day job (I’m a psychiatrist in a kidney transplant unit). I have a large family on both my parents’ sides, but few had gone to university and none to medical school. So what made me declare an ambition to be a doctor when I was seven? The fact I didn’t have an answer to that question was an obstacle to me getting in. Until I did.
Starting on a blank page is not easy- where does your creativity come from?
If I sit down with a blank page or empty screen and wait for words or images to come, I know they won’t. I have to be thinking about the story and the characters on the commute to work, or on my daily dog walks, and I read widely about the worlds they inhabit, for a long time, before I write a word. And then, when I turn the page, or switch the screen on, it all comes out. I don’t know where it comes from, and to be honest I don’t want to know. I fear that if I understood it, It wouldn’t come any more.
Do you write projects knowing that so many other factors need to happen to get it to screen and does that come into your project creation?
Perhaps not enough, so far. But maybe if I did think more about these things I’d be too daunted to pick up a pen. If you think how big the mountain is you might never take the first step.
What is your dream for this project and what other ancillary revenue do you think it could generate? Please include script title in reply.
REIVERS is my second TV pilot, after writing 11 feature scripts. It’s a historical drama set in the 15th century, in the wild border country between Scotland and England, where I now live, and where my ancestors plied their trade as cattle thieves and outlaws. I’m pitching it as Game of Thrones meets Braveheart meets Rawhide. If it ends up one hundredth as successful as any one of those shows, then all my dreams will have been met and I can die a happy man (though not quite yet, you understand….)
How has your experience been with screenwriting contests for this project so far?
This project is still pretty fresh and I have not yet entered it into any competitions. I have entered previous projects, both TV and features, with a number of wins, and late-round placings. These have definitely boosted my confidence, and I am no longer crushed by failing to get past the first round. Although I am still bemused when the same script is a finalist in one contest but doesn’t get past Reader One in the next, it reminds me that this whole business is governed by subjective responses, and I should not be deflated by rejection.
If you could stand in a room full of investor partners looking at many projects what would you like them to know about you and this project?
That I am immersed in the world of this story. I know its geography intimately because I live in it: I climb these hills, I hike these woods, these rivers and beaches. I know its history because I have walked the walls of ruined castles and the blood-soaked battle sites, and I have read the many accounts of what happened here. I am personally connected because mine is a name that has belonged to this part of Britain since at least the Battle of Solway Moss in 1542, when one of my forebears took captive a Scottish nobleman and presented him as a prisoner to King Henry VIII. But mainly because these stories have never been properly told on screen.
Do you have any website links for your writing, credits, background, etc that you would like to share?
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