Alison Pennells is a scriptwriter, playwright, novelist and script consultant from Leeds

As a female script consultant and female script writer for hire I get hired a lot by producers and production companies to write gender specific scripts from a female perspective.

It’s true that a lot of the high profile scriptwriters in the film and TV business are men, but there are some big hitter female scriptwriters too.

There’s Kay Mellor, whom I have worked with (she’s also from Yorkshire where I hail from).  Kay had huge successes with ‘Fat Friends’ and more recently ‘The Syndicate’.

Sally Wainwright (also from Yorkshire) is a household name due to her successful series ‘Happy Valley’.

Its interesting that both Kay and Sally both wrote for the soaps for many years (as I did on Emmerdale).

Apart from the Yorkshire lasses above, Lisa McGee has a huge recent success with ‘Derry Girls’. Abi Morgan started her writing career on Peak Practice but has delivered some brilliant original work including ‘Suffragette’.

Fleabag was a huge hit for Phoebe Waller-Bridge – IMDb who’s also well known as an actress and ‘show runner’.

Recent research by the British Film Institute (BFI) shows that women make up a much higher proportion of screenwriting students than professional screenwriters, indicating that producers are more inclined to hire male script writers than female ones, despite the success of the handful of female scriptwriters mentioned above.  But, things are getting better, and female scriptwriters are breaking through more often than when I started out in film and TV in the 90s.

As well as script reports and script consultancy work, I’m also available to write:

  • Short films
  • Feature films
  • Novel Adaptations
  • TV serials/continuing drama
  • Scripts for online projects

Some projects really do need a woman’s touch.

Alison Pennells is a scriptwriter, playwright, novelist, female script consultant and producer from Leeds. Alison was a core scriptwriter on Emmerdale and The Royal Today. Her short film ‘Me Head’s a Shed’ was winner of The Yorkshire Short film award. Her play ‘Dirty Laundry’ has been a huge success and raised much needed funds for cancer charities across the UK. In recent years Alison has worked as a female script consultant and producer on three feature films. Alison is married, has a daughter, three doggies and no cats (at the moment).

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