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Scriptwriter Workshop

Scriptwriter Darren Tomalin spent a day at the Academy on Tuesday as part of KSA’s Book Week for World Book Day.

Scriptwriter Darren Tomalin spent a day at the Academy on Tuesday as part of KSA’s Book Week for World Book Day.
Mr Tomalin spent time with some of our Race To The Top Students and a group of Year 11 expressive arts students, who looked at his script for a television series entitled Edgers and looked at developing characters and how script ideas are born.
A group of twelve Race To The Students met with Mr Tomalin first in the library and he worked with them on a character workshop, which encouraged them to think more about the dynamics of a character and the ways in which their character traits and flaws can naturally lend to storylines being created.
Head librarian at KSA, Heidi Economou said: “It was a very positive and productive workshop with lots of creative and imaginative ideas coming forward from our students. It provided them with an opportunity to start thinking more about the creating of a character and they were set 4 tasks by Mr Tomalin. The students had to start by firstly describing their character’s looks, traits, physical form and any stereotypical quirks. Next they were asked to build on their personalities and look at any fears or habits that might affect the way they are. They then looked at the ‘Thorn in the side’ effect, whether a character had been damaged by something that had happened to them, like a loss of a close family member, a lack of confidence bought on by a past event or something that might make them act in a certain way, like being angry or nervous. Then finally they were asked to think about the character and what they believed would happen to him or her in the script.”
Mr Tomalin said: “I worked with some interesting groups of writers and I am going away with some really good character ideas from the students and I hope I have given them some inspiration to carry on with their writing.”
He said his day at the academy had only just scraped the surface of what goes into creating scripts and he offered to answer any further questions or provide any more advice via email and left the online link to his scripts with the students if they wanted to read more of his work.
Mr Tomalin said to the students during the day that it is not an easy industry to get a break in but he encouraged the students to keep writing and working on a script that is different from the rest and stands out.
Darren Tomalin said he was very lucky to get his Edgers series for television noticed and selcted by producers and he hopes it will be produced and shown on the HBO cable TV channel in the next few years.

To read more of his work visit: http://darrentomalin.webs.com/