Script Essentials 2026 Summary Notes - Session 3: Story and Structure with Simon Nelson
bbc.co.uk – Monday June 8, 2026
Our third session in our 2026 Script Essentials webinar series was hosted by Simon Nelson (Development Executive, BBC Writers) who broke down the importance of structure, as well as how to use structure to improve your TV writing.
You can watch the full recording of our session on the Script Essentials page, accessible by clicking this link here. Or, you can read the summary notes below to get some key takeaways from Simon's session!
What is the purpose of TV Drama Structure
This session began by reframing what structure means for early TV writers, within a UK drama context. Structure is not a set of rigid rules or a formula designed to make scripts feel generic. Instead, it is best understood as the craft of managing the audience’s attention and emotional engagement over time.
Viewers do not consciously track acts, beats, or turning points, but they instinctively feel when a story is carrying them forward or when it has stalled. Effective structure ensures that an episode feels purposeful from beginning to end, even when the storytelling is quiet, character-led, or emotionally restrained. In UK television drama, where subtlety and realism are often prized, structure operates beneath the surface, shaping the experience without drawing attention to itself.
AI and the Future of Writing
yalereview.org – Monday June 8, 2026
A roundtable of authors discuss the ramifications for art—and life.
ON APRIL 8, at Yale University, Ayad Akhtar, Daniel Kehlmann and Meghan O’Rourke, three writers at the vanguard of creative engagement with AI, gathered with James Surowiecki, a journalist and senior editor at The Yale Review, to talk about AI and the future of the humanities. The following conversation ranged across the social ramifications of the LLM era, from changes in our cognition to shifting notions about the nature of language itself. The transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity and concision.
JAMES SUROWIECKI I want to start with a really big question, but Meghan suggested that might not be the best way in. So I’ll start by easing in. Can you describe your relationship to AI at the moment?
MEGHAN O’ROURKE That is not a small question.
DANIEL KEHLMANN It’s a great question, and it’s very hard to answer. It’s not a stable relationship, because I’m still in the process of finding out what AI is and what it can do. It can be extremely helpful and utterly amazing. And, at the same time, most of us will agree that it is very dangerous. It’s very hard to have a stable inner relationship to something like that.
"The power of the internet:" How a Chicago writer founded an international literary magazine from her bedroom
cbsnews.com – Friday June 5, 2026
Saber-toothed tigers have been extinct for millennia, but for one Chicago writer, the name is alive with meaning.
Sabr Tooth Tiger Magazine is a new Chicago-based publication with, as founder Madeline Blair describes it, "claws, teeth, and heart."
The name has a dual meaning. "The Arabic word 'sabr' means steadfastness, resilience, and patience," Blair said, which she learned as she began to explore Islam.
The 2023 University of Illinois creative writing graduate wanted the name to carry the magazine's mission.
"Saber-toothed tigers used to be a huge pinnacle of strength and ferocity, so I want that to exhibit our strength in writing," she said.
But strength and resilience aren't just themes in her magazine. They're a part of her own life. Blair had lived with long COVID for nearly a year after her first infection in 2022.
She described "strange" health issues: lung problems, blood vessel complications, "bruising so severe my arm would turn purple after blood draws," Blair said. "Doctors noted hazy opacities on my lungs, but couldn't fully explain."
Whisper it: becoming a mum can make you a more productive writer
theguardian.com – Friday May 29, 2026
Before having a child, I had endless days to think about writing. Now, half an hour can suddenly become a window of creativity
Becoming a parent is hard. Eight to 12 hours a day are spent breastfeeding or preparing formula milk and washing bottles. In addition, there is carrying, singing, soothing, putting to sleep, trying to sleep yourself and waking up to repeat this several times a night. So many new activities that before were unknown, filling up every day.
This is time that was once completely at your own discretion, and the new constriction is a shock.
But – after the necessary physical and mental healing – it is also what can make parents become creative about their use of time: being a parent can make you more productive by using the gaps in the daily routine. While enhancing productivity is a trope of self-optimisation content, this is not a capitalistic productivity. Caring for a baby can feel like a remove from the self previously constructed. To me, writing felt like an alleviation of this loss of self. Simply draft a paragraph, a few sentences, get on with a text as a means to stimulate the insufficiently challenged mind.
Laura B. McGrath on Middlemen
press.princeton.edu – Sunday May 24, 2026
Middlemen rewrites literary history from the perspective of one of its most important but least visible figures: the literary agent. Chronicling the story of agents in the United States from the 1950s to today, Laura B. McGrath uncovers their critical role in the making of American literature. From the famed three-martini lunch to the Frankfurt Book Fair, Middlemen takes readers behind the scenes to show how agents influence what we read. Along the way, it explains why many debut novelists never publish another book, why agents champion short story collections even though they sell poorly, how agents advocate for writers of color in a system that values whiteness, and why there are so many New York novels.
What do literary agents do?
Laura B. McGrath: Literary agents represent authors in every aspect of a book deal: they receive manuscripts, submit them to the appropriate editors, and handle every aspect of the sale. This may seem cut-and-dried, but agents exert a great deal of influence over books! After the receive a manuscript, they work with an author to revise it—and they won’t send it to editors until they believe it’s ready. They work behind-the-scenes to make sure that editors are excited about a manuscript, primed to read it favorably and buy it for as high a price as possible. They serve as confidantes and advisers to authors throughout the entire publication process, educating them about the process and advocating for them when necessary. And, in an ideal world, an agent represents an author over many years and many books, helping them strategize about their long-term career prospects. Their influence may happen behind-the-scenes and it may be challenging to quantify, but it is, nevertheless, incredibly powerful in shaping the books that we read.
How to Write (and Direct) a Contained Story
nofilmschool.com – Wednesday May 20, 2026
Low-budget and accessible—but how do you start?
I'm on a contained story kick right now. My creative partner and I are fresh off a short film shoot and want to make something else, but we want to make it as easy on ourselves as possible in terms of production, and cheap. So, of course, my mind went straight to single-location, contained ideas.
While contained stories are easier to produce and one of the most practical formats for emerging filmmakers, they're also one of the hardest to pull off well at the writing stage. You have to have characters that are interesting enough to carry 90 minutes, as well as a plot compelling enough to keep the audience hooked.
So I was excited to find StudioBinder's breakdown today. It's a good excuse to go through the core mechanics, from the page to the set.
From counterculture to pop culture: The story of indie publisher Headpress Books
mancunion.com – Monday May 18, 2026
It all started with “quite an outrageous horror film,” says David Kerekes, one of the three original founders and head of Headpress. I am on a zoom call with him and the other core member of the team, press officer Jen Wallis, to discuss the company’s story and its upcoming anniversary.
The film David refers to is Jörg Buttgereit’s Der Todesking, the follow up to the German director’s cult horror Nekromantik. Headpress was founded to release Der Todesking in 1991 and the money it made was put into Headpress magazine. David explains that many horror-film-related things emerged from the video’s nasty furor, including a number of magazines. The founders of Headpress were interested in that progression and keen on anti-censorship. Each of them learnt to write on the job.
The counterculture tone of the magazine steadily established itself, its masthead being ‘sex religion death’. David highlights “the circle of interest was really very strong,” especially pre-internet. “It was a touchstone for a lot of people.”
Is ChatGPT a good writer?
the-berliner.com – Sunday May 17, 2026
In the summer of 2022, I met the founder of a Berlin publishing company that used early AI-writing tools like Rytr to write novels. They were quickly going out of business. The writing made absolutely no sense and took too long to edit. Later that year, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, gaining over one million users in less than five days, and AI writing has only grown more sophisticated since. I don’t know if that company is still in business, but if it is, it isn’t alone, because using AI to write a novel is no longer the novelty it once was.
AI is all over publishing. According to a BookBub survey, 45% of authors use it. Penguin Random House recently filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT mimicked and sold a popular German children’s book series, Ingo Siegner’s Coconut the Little Dragon. Last year, the AI firm Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by authors who claimed the company stole their work to train its AI models.
That’s not to mention the Shy Girl drama.
'I'm a literary agent - here's what makes me sign a writer instantly and what most authors actually earn'
news.sky.com – Monday May 11, 2026
Want to make it as an author? Or to choose their fate? The Money team spoke with an agent about what makes a good literary submission, the pitching mistake many authors make, and what she finds "offensive" about the industry for our regular careers feature.
If you've ever spent your morning commute daydreaming about starting afresh with your career, this feature is for you. Each week, we speak to someone from a different profession to discover what it's really like. Today we speak to literary agent Maddalena Cavaciuti, from David Higham Associates (DHA)...
A literary agent might start on a salary... between £30,000 and £40,000 if they're building a list from scratch. As agents build a successful and reliable client list that could comfortably rise to a six-figure salary, including bonuses and/or commission. It's worth noting, though, that some agencies don't pay salaries at all - some agents are paid on a commission share only.
How to Publish a Book With the Big 5: 6 Experts Weigh in
pen.org – Friday May 8, 2026
Daunted by the publishing world and how to navigate it? You’ve come to the right blog post.
To unravel insider secrets on how to be published with the Big Five, PEN America hosted a panel discussion where award-winning author Susan Shapiro spoke with six industry experts. Audience members heard helpful tidbits from Johanna V. Castillo, a literary agent at Writers House, Eamon Dolan, an author and editor at Simon & Schuster, Deborah Garrison, a poet and editor at Penguin Random House, Clarence A. Haynes, an author and freelance editor, Emi Ikkanda, an author and editor at Penguin Random House, and Kevin Nguyen, an author and editor at The Verge.
If you couldn’t make the event, hosted at the family-owned independent bookstore P&T Knitwear, here are five takeaways:
Consider starting small.
To kick off the conversation, Shapiro shared one of the lines she frequently tells her students looking to publish books in any genre: “Three pages can change your life.” “Say somebody has an idea, even for a book, I always think it’s a million times easier to write a great three pages and publish that than 300,” she said.
Back when Garrison worked at The New Yorker, the pieces she pulled from the slush pile — written by authors whom “nobody had ever heard of” — would become projects that would be nominated for prizes like National Book Award, she said.
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