Screenwriting

I’ve just had to write a few paragraphs about my writing for one of the screenwriting competitions I’ve entered recently. Thought some of you here might be interested in reading it:
I’ve come to writing rather late in life, although I’ve been working from scripts and telling stories for most of career. I’m a freelance illustrator and comic book artist. My best known credit to date is a three year stint I spent drawing the Iron Man comic book for Marvel Comics.
During my time on the book I designed a couple of characters which have since made it into the movies. Being invited to the premiere of Avengers 2 in LA gave me a taste for red carpet events, although next time I’d like to be there as a writer!
I started writing seriously about a year ago. I live in the South London suburb of Bromley, which is where the late David Bowie was raised. My commute to my studio used to take me past his old house in nearby Beckenham, where his first four albums were conceived. I’d often thought that there’s a story to be told about this strange flowering that occurred as the Sixties turned into the Seventies in this rather strait laced outpost of suburbia.
With his untimely death last year, I figured there might actually be some interest in this story, and if I didn’t write it, somebody else probably would. It’d just be too annoying if came out and I hadn’t even given it a go!
A rolled my sleeves up and got down to it . I found that I really enjoyed writing. Others will judge if I’m actually any good at it, but I was enthused enough by how “ A London Boy” had turned out that I wanted to write another one. I’d been working on an idea for a Napoleonic war story that I wanted to do as a graphic novel called
“Lawless”. Annoyingly both a film and a comic book came out about the same time called Lawless. If anything, it shows that it’s not a bad title, but I put the idea on ice for a while. While looking around for an idea for my next screenplay I picked Lawless off the shelf and blew the dust off of it. This is what’s become “Vinegar Hill”.
I’m finding that I enjoy writing comedy. The previous two screenplays, while having dark moments, have a fair few laughs in them. With this in mind, my latest screenplay is a comedy/horror called “Grease Trap”. It’s loosely inspired by one of my son’s experiences working in the drainage industry. Very loosely…