Corey Montague-Sholay is a writer on EastEnders' online spin-off 'E20', which focuses on the youth side of the popular, award-winning soap. Series 3 premieres online on September 20th with new episodes every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday for the next five weeks. Check out Corey's blog on his experience writing for the series.
"E20 was the first piece of professional writing I had ever done and I was very much aware that as young writers, we're almost expected to have a message. I remember sitting on a train ride back from summer school and wondered if I had one, or more so, if I wanted to have one. For me, when drama pushes a message it can become preachy. That's where I think E20 hit gold, it never pushes too much either way throughout the series, and in such a compact timescale, it's seeing those highs and lows which make you love the characters and empathise with what they're going through.
Our training came through our four week intensive course at the BBC's Summer School led by Peter and Debs. The summer school was where we learnt the forms of scriptwriting and developed our writer's toolkit. Getting onto it was through application, advertised through various other mediums. We had to send in a character we've always wanted to see in a drama and then a monologue/diary extract for them. We then had to introduce them to EastEnders in a short scene with a Walford resident, and had an interview at BBC Elstree."
To read the rest of his blog, click here.
