Take One – Part 2. Scriptwriting with Anjum Malik

Words by Monita Mohan

Having walked away with a renewed sense of purpose, we regrouped at UAS on Saturday morning raring to go and armed with a greater knowledge of our stories and characters. 

Ready to help us develop further with our writing, Anjum Malik returned as part of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature’s prologue, in association with the Manchester Children’s Book Festival.

We had hardly sunk into our seats before Anjum delivered a googly – we were to pair up with one of the other classes and read out our written work at the end of the day. It was a shock! Okay, it was a shock for me, because when it comes to public speaking I usually closely resemble a rabbit caught in the headlights.

But, considering the enthusiasm of the rest of the group, I felt I could hardly reject the offer. And seriously, where else are you going to get a captive audience to sit down and listen to your work? I was up for it.

With this daunting, yet inviting prospect looming ahead of us, Anjum gave us the freedom to finish off as much writing as we could. Leaving us to our own devices proved a surprisingly useful exercise, as we all set down to the work with great gusto. 

We were assigned three tasks to complete before show time:

1. Write the premise of the script.

2. Complete the step outline (also called scene-by-scene).

3. Write out 2-3 scenes.

The premise was a slightly tougher task than expected, as it required answering a few questions – who was the protagonist, what’s happening, what’s the problem. It required a hook. 

Setting the scenes out was a fascinating process and a very rewarding one as well. Anjum had mentioned to us that scripts often follow a pattern of up scenes and down scenes, which tied in with an important point she had made the previous day about figuring out the main scenes, and then writing up the fillers.

Since most of us were working on short pieces, dividing scenes up and charting the character arcs was a priority. It felt oddly satisfying to map out a beginning, middle and end. It required a lot of thought, and strange little details slipped in while writing. It almost felt like the job had been done.

The scenes themselves were hard. I struggled with mine, even though I knew most of what would happen from my writings the previous day. One thing Anjum emphasised was that getting the story down was much more important than laying out the format. That was a relief, as struggling with the story was hard enough without having to worry about getting the terminology right. 

A deadline often gets the best and the most out of people, and it wasn’t long before we were ready with our work and rehearsing. Despite being very familiar with the audience members, I still ended up panicking when it was my turn, but considering the raucous applause that greeted every reading, we couldn’t help but feel like we had achieved a great deal.

Anjum’s parting words were to keep going at it. She herself writes for 4-6 hours a day, especially when working to a deadline. For a course that had seemed quite daunting to us novices at the start, it ended up being one of the most rewarding. Anjum’s an unrelenting and hard task master, but she was able to whip us all into shape in an extraordinarily short space of time.

Anjum Malik is a poet and scriptwriter who also exhibits and performs her work. She is a fellow of Manchester Metropolitan University and lectures to the new writers at the Manchester Writing School. Find out more about Anjum at www.anjummalik.com.

Take One – Part 1. Scriptwriting with Anjum Malik

Words by Monita Mohan

Of the many forms of writing that I have dallied in, script-writing is one that has always eluded me. The form itself has always been a mystery to me. So, to unmask this hidden beast, I decided to attend Anjum Malik’s Scriptwriting Course held at the Universal American School, Dubai Festival City as part of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature’s Festival Prologue. 

The prospect was daunting, to say the least, but Anjum quickly put us at ease with her easy manner and penchant for both humour and relating many anecdotes from her life. It also helped that we were a small but diverse group, interested in a variety of script-writing; radio, film and television.

Anjum has been a poet for around fifteen years, and actually entered the world of poetry due to the ministrations of her mentor, and 2014 Festival Author Lemn Sissay. He heard her poetry and insisted she take up the position of resident poet.

A few years later, she began her Master’s degree in Scriptwriting. This is why, Anjum tells us, poetry and scripts have a lot in common – compact, concise writing and optimum use of white space. This is news to me, but I understand what she means over the course of the day.

She starts us off by giving us a free writing exercise based on an idea (ours or hers), which will become the theme of our scripts. It was the ideal exercise to, in the words of Hercule Poirot, get the little grey cells working.

Our next exercise was writing a character bio – always a particularly difficult exercise, but one that ended up being well received by all.

It was during lunch that the majority of us revealed how anxious, and, well, downright scared we all were when attending the course. Anni had already admitted to being afraid, and well, so did I. Frank, also a poet, eloquently explained the upside of these workshops.

“Working with a practitioner [of the arts] makes all the difference. It’s authentic and real, and comes from experience. You learn so much from them.

“The best part is you take away the things that will take you to the next big step.”

Without a doubt, a non-lecture style workshop is more engaging. Marie, a photographic artist and winner of the Short + Sweet Theatre Competition, mentioned that despite her initial apprehensions, she’d already come away with new ideas and new methodologies for acquiring new ideas.

The afternoon session began with a viewing of Casablanca, with an emphasis on the introduction of protagonist Rick. Using the film as a pointer, we continued with the introduction of our own protagonists with a fun exercise. I thoroughly enjoyed this exercise and it must have shown, as I evoked a fair bit of laughter from my colleagues. 

With our stories already shaping up, Anjum left us with some homework and a great deal of thinking to take away with us – we were to write a premise for our stories, but we were also to begin answering some important questions, i.e., Who, What, When, Where and How.

To find out more, tune in tomorrow, same time, same channel.

Anjum Malik is a poet and scriptwriter who also exhibits and performs her work. She is a fellow of Manchester Metropolitan University and lectures to the new writers at the Manchester Writing School. Find out more about Anjum at www.anjummalik.com.

How to Write a Monologue

Words by Karan Maitra

This week Manchester Writing School’s Sherry Ashworth and Anjum Malik are in Dubai to take part in the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature, in association with this summer’s Manchester Children’s Book Festival. As part of the trip Anjum held a writing workshop attended by local students at GEMS Wellington Academy, aged 15 to 17.

Anjum felt that the workshop was a fantastic experience, not just for the students but for herself as well, “I had an amazing day with them, I was made very welcome and started with the performance of my monologue, Nahid, based on my own story of arriving in England as a young girl from Pakistan to join my Dad in London with my family. This was followed by a Q&A where the students were firing away some amazing questions. I then ran a workshop where they all began their own monologues.” One of the students, Karan Maitra, wrote this blog. 

Anjum Malik joined us to give a talk on monologues and scriptwriting. Anjum was born in Saudi Arabia and has spent most of her life in Pakistan.

Ms Malik began with a monologue titled Nahid. It was from the point of view of a girl talking about moving to the UK from her home country of Pakistan. Many important sociological issues were brought up in the first few minutes. This included racism, as well as the Indo-Pakistan war. 

In the monologue, the ratio of boys to girls in the education system was noted; it was interesting to see that the genders mix more freely in Pakistan than in the UK. 

The protagonist of the monologue was sad. She did not like the new atmosphere and longed for her home country. After moving twice, her family had faced nothing but racism. Her dad had been sacked. He fought with the bus driver because the driver threw expletives at him. He was not happy with himself as he said it’s a bad thing to fight back. 

The education system was shown to be very discriminative. The teachers picked on the students from Asia saying, “Go back where you came from,” despite the students being apt at studies. The Indo-Pakistan war is highlighted again when the lead falls in love with Jaswant, a Sikh from India. To get married he changes his name to Jameel to fit in with the Muslim community as this union enraged them.

Her dad is in hospital, dying. She spends her last moments with him by his bed talking about times that have passed, taking joy in the reminiscence. After he passes away, he is buried there, in Bradford. He did not wish his body to be sent back to Pakistan as that would be Un-Islamic. 

After the monologue had ended, we had a question-answer session with Ms Malik. The audience asked a number of questions. One student asked, “Is it more enjoyable to write a story or perform it?” Ms Malik responded by saying that she started acting only a year ago. She was previously only a writer, with other actors performing her work. She was initially petrified by the prospect of acting, but has since overcome her fears.

Mrs Malik told us more about her roots. She was born in Saudi, but her father went back to Pakistan after receiving a letter from her Grandfather. They later went on to move to the UK as her father preferred a more social environment and he did not feel that Pakistan was conducive to his mind set.

Ms Malik held a writing workshop after theQ&A. We started with a synopsis of the Nahid monologue that we had seen earlier. Many ideas were brought up. Some people believed the monologue was more about family and family ties, while others thought the main aspect was highlighting racism, and even others believed it was mainly about cultural diversity.

All of us in the workshop then tried writing a monologue in a specified time frame. This helped us experience a bit of the real world by putting us under pressure to ignite a creative spark within us.

We all attempted writing a monologue about ourselves. We followed this by discussing how our ideas change as they go along and don’t conform to what we originally thought. Ms Malik told us about overcoming writers block by trying ‘free writing’.

We were all mustering the courage to speak up and present our monologues. Individuals took it in turn to read their monologues and received feedback from the rest of the class. A lot of feedback was shared. It seemed as though we were beginning to understand the concept of saying a lot in very few words. We all thoroughly enjoyed the seminar. 

Here are a few excerpts from the students’ monologues: 

1. “Ages. It took ages to convince my dad. Then the decision was made. We are leaving.”

2. “It makes me think now. This very moment, is something happening while I write this that I will think about in a few years.”

3. “I don’t want to be spending time with Year 7’s and 8’s when I don’t have to.”

4. “A tall man with glasses appears in front of me blocking my view of a better morning.”

5. “Subconsciously I noted different faces waiting around me, counting who had been there before I had arrived and how many had been there before me.”

6. “He watched me extricate my purse from the bundle and use my credit card to pay the 63 pound fine.”

7. “Getting directions in New York City, I keep walking and turn right at Starbucks. It’s not like there is one on every corner.”

8. “The other kids weren’t as impressed as I was. They were indifferent while I was in love.”

9. “Whether I changed or not for the better or the worse, I will never know.”

10. “I am sitting here trying to think of something to write.”

11. “I feel like I am the only normal person in this Alien and messed up world.”

12. “It was difficult because I had to live with my mother alone for three years in Greece.”

13. “But then sometimes reality comes knocking and tells me that I am just being egocentric and that I have no idea what I’m talking about.”

14. “My dad used to talk to me in English but I was stubborn and would just answer back in Dutch. But now I have to work harder. School was harder.”

15. “We were firstly friends. Best friends. Then secondly cousins. “

16. “I am also afraid now. I hold my nerves steady but my hand is shaking slightly. If my parents get to know I’ve skipped a class it will be hell for me at home.”

17. “I felt like I was a Jigsaw piece. The completing piece in this portrait was finally complete. I am home.”

18. “No one is a small blip of existence. If anyone is, I am.”

GEMS Wellington Academy - Silicon Oasis offers a uniquely crafted progression from the Early Years Foundation Stage, through an enriched and developed National Curriculum for England into personalised qualification pathways. The Academy offers world class facilities set in a modern campus in one of Dubai’s most prestigious new developments.

Anjum Malik is a poet and scriptwriter who also exhibits and performs her work. She is a fellow of Manchester Metropolitan University and lectures to the new writers at the Manchester Writing School. Find out more about Anjum at www.anjummalik.com.

Manchester Writing School Visiting Teaching Fellows to Attend Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature – Interview with Sherry Ashworth & Anjum Malik

Interviewed by Justine Chamberlain

Manchester Writing School Visiting Teaching Fellows Sherry Ashworth and Anjum Malik are heading out to Dubai to visit the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature, in association with MMU's Manchester Children’s Book Festival. I caught up with them in between prepping their work and packing their cases.

Dubai isn’t a place I’d normally connect with Manchester Metropolitan University. Why are MMU sending you out there?

Sherry: We have an exciting opportunity to partner up with the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature (EAFL). MMU is always seeking to widen its reach and an international audience is very exciting to us, particularly because we teach so many of our Masters courses online. This means that we have students regularly from all over the world, so any opportunity of showcasing what we do in other locations is very exciting. Also, it’s because we enjoy literature festivals!

Anjum: It’s great that EAFL and MMU have come together in such a good cause, like giving people the opportunity to learn about literature and be a part of it too.

Are you also going to be blogging out there?

Anjum: The groups I’m working with have students who are interested in blogging, and are going to be doing this for me. I’ve asked if anyone would like to do it and knew that younger people will be much better at it than me! I will also be running some writing workshops, and I’m going to be performing one of my monologues in a school, where I will be getting the kids to write their own monologues. One of my guises is as a scriptwriter and I’ve been performing my monologues for some years now, and encouraging others to do the same. Sherry and I will be sending updates back to the Manchester Children’s Book Festival’s blog.

Who are you meeting out there?

Anjum: The literature festival have organised a two-day workshop where people want to do some screenwriting. The school I’m working with is GEMS Wellington Academy and I’m really looking forward to that.

Sherry: I’m going to be visiting Dubai Gem Private School to do creative writing workshops with teenagers, which is something I love doing because most of my novels are for teenagers. For these two days, I’ll be doing an intensive creative writing workshop with some keen and talented writers who live and work in Dubai. It’s going to be very intensive and exciting.

Growing up as a child, what was your favourite book?

Sherry: Oh, there are so many I can’t say! I’d probably plump for The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnet, which was the first children’s book I read that featured children I could identify with. Being a working class kid from North London all this Swallows and Amazons, and being able to go on boats and take picnics and ginger beer in the countryside left me cold. I’ve always been a reader that’s looked to find myself inside a book. The Family from One End Street was about slum dwellers and even though I wasn’t a slum dweller, it resonated more. It was written in the 1920's and I have no idea how it found its way into our house!

Anjum: I did my growing up in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and England, so my books will be very different to any books people will be used to in the UK. My favourite books were actually comics in Pakistan, which were about djinns, which are like giants in fairy books and how their life would be as some tiny bird in a cage on top of a mountain. So I grew up on those. I also did a lot of reading of Urdu literature as a child in Pakistan and loved the big poets of Pakistan.

Children are notoriously picky about what they read. What do you think the special ingredient is, in a children’s book?

Sherry Ashworth

Sherry: Drama and immediacy. Children get bored if you spend ages setting a scene. Children get resentful if you preach at them. They need to be in the book, they need to identify strongly with what’s going on. You need character and story and immediacy.

Anjum: I don’t think children are picky. I think children are very honest and they don’t waste time. I’ve performed to young people of all ages and the younger they are, the more honest they are – they just fall asleep or walk away if they’re not interested. You’ve got to get them interested in your characters, and I think as a child I loved being taken away into the world of who I was reading at the time.

Does MMU have a way to support people who want to specialise in writing for children?

Anjum: MMU runs children’s writing courses at the Manchester Writing School – one of the branches of the MA they run in Creative Writing is a specialist Writing for Children route. It’s run by brilliant tutors!

Sherry: Would-be writers who are particularly interested in writing for seven-year-olds upwards to about 15, will get special support from qualified tutors in teaching writing for that audience age group. It’s available on campus in Manchester or online to anyone, anywhere.

Manchester hosts the Manchester Children’s Book Festival, the Manchester Writing Competitions, and the Manchester Literary Festival. It has its own world class Writing School at MMU, which offers online master’s degrees in Creative Writing to people anywhere in the world. Do you think Manchester can challenge for literary hotspot of the UK and maybe even the world?

Anjum Malik

Anjum: Absolutely. It just shows in all those things we’re doing in Manchester; we are leading the way. Especially MMU; they have so many different things going on in the literary world – they were the first to do a children’s book festival – no one else in the North West does that – so definitely. I think we’re doing marvellously. Why not take over the literary world?

Sherry: There is something very, very special about Manchester and literature. This city is of just the right size to foster writers and it means they’re very much part of a community. With MMU, its traditions are rooted in real Manchester – it used to be Manchester Polytechnic and we’ve always looked out for non-standard students, whether they are international or they’ve come to us through an indirect pathway. I like to think that we have our finger on the pulse of Manchester’s creativity. The synergy between the university, its traditions and the students and city is really unbeatable.

When does the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature start and where can I find out more information?

Anjum: The EAFL in Dubai runs from the 4th to the 8th of March and has a massive programme of events. It’s the first time MMU are working with EALF and I think it’s great that MMU are going out into the world and forming international partnerships.

Sherry: Our workshops are a prequel to the main festival, which commences on the 2nd March. There’s a website with all the information: www.emirateslitfest.com. 

And the Manchester Children’s Book Festival?

Sherry: That starts on 26th June and runs for a week and a half, hopefully with the same weather the Dubai festival will have!

Anjum: It has some great authors booked already who are being kept under wraps! Anyone can be first to know who is attending by signing up to the MCBF newsletter or by keeping an eye on the website: www.mcbf.org.uk. If people are quick, there’s also the Manchester Writing for Children Prize for anyone who’s a children’s poetry writer.

Manchester Children’s Book Festival will run from 26th June – 6th July 2014 and the full programme of free and ticketed events for the public will be announced at the end of March. 

Sherry Ashworth has written fiction for children, teenagers and adults. She is a visiting teach fellow at the Manchester Writing School and runs a publishing company Hidden Gems Press. Find out more about Sherry at www.sherryashworth.com.

Anjum Malik is a poet and scriptwriter who also exhibits and performs her work. She is a fellow of Manchester Metropolitan University and lectures to the new writers at the Manchester Writing School. Find out more about Anjum at www.anjummalik.com.

Justine Chamberlain is a Masters student in the MMU Writing School, specialising in poetry. Her blog can be found here and you can follow her on Twitter @justineswriting.

Interactive CPD Opportunities

Poets & Workshops, Sunday, 13th May, People's History Museum

Photo: www.babiesinthecity.co.uk

Here are two fantastic CPD opportunities for teachers, writers and art practitioners in the next couple of months. 

The first event, The Cultural Exchange, is free, open to all and suitable for people of all ages. The performance poets of the day will include Terry Caffrey, Mandy Coe, Kate Fox, Anjum Malik and Tony Walsh. You will find them performing around the museum throughout the day, with opportunities to find out more about how they can work with schools to develop pupils' writings and enjoyment of literature. Other practitioners and organisations will also be on hand to give details about their projects, competitions, venues, workshops and events.  As well as workshops and activities that include book-making, living history sessions and giant knitting with most of the city’s museums, galleries, libraries, theatres, festivals, writers and arts practitioners will be showcasing their offers for families and schools. 

Come and find out what’s on offer to schools in June/July 2012, including a taster of Manchester Children’s Book Festival events, and pick up some great ideas and contacts to help in your planning for the 2012/13 school year.  As well as the schools' offers, this event is suitable for the whole family and open to all with fun activities to occupy and stimulate all ages. Remember, free entry and all welcome – no need to book. 

Survive and Subvert Conference, 28th & 29th June, MMU's Geoffrey Manton Building 

The second is the Survive and Subvert CPD Conference launching the 2012 Manchester Children's Book Festival. In a comprehensive programme co-ordinated by Mandy Coe, guest speakers include Michael Rosen, Mick Waters and Levi Tafari.  A suite of practical, critical and creative workshops and debates will focus on maintaining passion and creativity in teaching in the face of cuts to Arts and Education funding.  All participants will leave armed with a ‘Survival Kit’ containing resources and ideas that will ensure impact and legacy long beyond the conference.   

Suitable for anyone involved with or interested in teaching children and young people of all ages. Further details can be found on www.mcbf.org.uk. The full programme will be available shortly and will be distributed to senior staff in schools, posted on the MCBF website and emailed to everyone on our mailing list.  Flag up the dates now and book your places to ensure you don’t miss out.