Award-winning writer and director Mike Bartlett didn’t always write: he dabbled in acting at university and afterwards wanted to go into directing theatre but would always “flunk the interviews”. Bad times.
He began to write for a few reasons - one of which was boredom - and suddenly found his job interviews started to go well. Good times.
The reason? “Because I didn’t have to sell myself - I just put the script on the table. It was all about the work, not me.”
His latest show on BBC One was the massively popular Doctor Foster starring Suranne Jones and Bertie Carvel. The series was the most watched new BBC TV drama so far this year with nearly 8 million people tuning into the finale.
Writing for TV didn’t come until quite a few years into his career, but that wasn’t a conscious decision, he says.
Mike has written for quite a few mediums. He’s adapted theatre for radio (Not Talking), turned radio plays into stage plays (Contractions) and written for TV (ITV’s The Town and BBC One’s Doctor Foster). Is his approach the same for all those mediums? What are the main differences he’s found?
In this podcast Mike talks to Henry Swindell of BBC Writersroom about the importance of planning before writing absolutely anything. He discusses the differences when writing for different mediums, talks about how he came to write for TV, and shares his techniques for getting into the psyche for writing.