Emily Burnett is 23 and from Cardiff. Her current focus is scriptwriting, although she has broad ambitions for her future writing endeavours. She has been working as a professional actor in theatre, radio, TV and film for the past six years, as well as a part-time fine artist specialising in portraiture commissions. In 2019 she won a BAFTA award for best performance in a children’s programme for her role as Charlie Morris in CBBC’s The Dumping Ground. Through acting, she discovered a love for telling untold stories and is currently working on various television spec and pilot scripts with the hope of getting a piece of her writing brought to life through a production.
Twitter: @emilyburnett97
Instagram: @emily_burnett_
How do you envisage the programme will help you in terms of your development?
“I think confidence is everything when it comes to my writing. You can have all the ideas in the world but unless you have the confidence to put them down on paper and tell those stories, they will only ever stay as ideas. I think this programme will give me the confidence to keep moving forward as a writer, and hopefully get my writing read, seen and experienced by other people. I hope to keep learning, and to keep my options open as to where my writing could be taken. In addition to this, I think building up a network of people you trust to help support you reach your writing goals, alongside giving you honest feedback, is very important. I am hoping this programme will give me the opportunity to meet new people and to build up a new community of writers who can support each other whilst reaching our individual potential.”
What are you most looking forward to as part of the programme? What are you hoping to achieve by taking part?
“Having the opportunity to look at different types of writing crafts. All the writing courses and groups I have taken part in so far have been completely tailored towards screenwriting, so I am looking forward to discovering other techniques and other writing styles. I am really looking forward to having some one-on-one mentoring with someone in my field, I think that time and advise will be invaluable. Having a clear set goal and objectives will really benefit me going forward. To have a piece of writing that feels complete and has a future somewhere by the end of this programme would be amazing. Focusing on my television projects, it would be great to have a piece of writing that is being read by some production companies, with the hope of it moving forward. Perhaps having the aim to get a table read for one of my scripts so that I can hear some of my work out loud in a professional setting would be great. Most of all, I just hope to grow in confidence and build more professional relationships throughout the programme.”
As a writer, where would you like to be in 5 years?
“In five years time, I would like to have some professional writing credits to my name. I would love to see a piece of my writing come to life through television, film, or radio- to see all of my passions come together. By then it would be lovely to have formed a strong relationship with an agent and to get some professional representation for my writing. I see writing as a marathon not a race and this is a part of my career I want to nurture over a lot of time. So I truly see 5 years time as, still, only the beginning. As I mentioned in my bio, I’m also an actor and an artist, and I see my career nurturing all three of these passions equally.”