Skriva Writing School, in association with The Bridge Awards, is delighted to announce that the winner of our 2016 Film Script Development Award is Jan Smith, with her script 'Victory Park'. Jan will have her script read and appraised by Douglas Dougan and receive an intensive script development session. Douglas said: ‘The standard of all entries was encouragingly high, but we chose Jan because there was a developing original voice in her writing. Her script project – set in

Emma Beeby tries to explain what it is she does for a living, and why the aspiring writer shouldn’t dismiss comics as a career path… Here’s the typical conversation I have when trying to explain that I write comics for a living to strangers. Comics! Really? So… you draw the pictures? Oh no. I think folk would generally prefer a comic not composed of stick figures! I’m just a writer. The artist draws it, you see. Ah, right. So you do the words in the balloons. No. Well, okay,

Doug and I have been looking for ways to make our courses more accessible. With that in mind, we've just launched a new award for writers on tight budgets: the Skriva Novelist Scholarship. We're offering a place on one of the 6-week Novel Writing courses, taught by myself, to the winner of the award. The award is open to writers who have not previously had a novel published, and who would otherwise struggle to pay for one of our courses. The Scholarship: If you win the award,