The Kill Your Darlings Podcast took a trip to the National Young Writers’ Festival last month – lucky for you we’ve remembered the rules about sharing, and brought back enough for everyone. In this edition, Kylie Maslen (of book–plate) explains why she loves reading and writing about food, Magda Woźniak speaks about screenwriting, scripts and soapies, while Izzy Roberts-Orr tackles working with (and being) a volunteer.

You can stream the podcast above or on Soundcloud, or subscribe on iTunes or through your favourite podcasting app.

Meaghan Dew (KYD): Hello and welcome back to the Kill Your Darlings Podcast. We’ve just finished recovering from the National Young Writers’ Festival, so it seemed like a good time to reflect. If you couldn’t make it, catching up with us is the next best thing. So sit back as we chat with some of the writers and programmers involved in the festival. You’ll hear from one of the festival co-directors, Izzy Roberts-Orr, as well as from writer Kylie Maslen, who ran the session on food writing. But first off, we go to Magda Woźniak, who ran the screenwriting workshop this year. Magda has worked on a number of television programs including Neighbours and Home and Away, as well as a few short films. So I asked her, how did she first start out as a screenwriter?

Magda Woźniak: I guess I started with an interest more in film from a critical perspective, so I did like a normal Bachelor of Arts, and I did film studies and I did my Honours in film studies and communications, blah blah blah, and I was encouraged by my supervisor at the time to give screenwriting a go. And it was sort of, really a weird thing on a whim that I tried, and I found out that I really enjoyed, and I ended up applying for a Masters course in screenwriting, and that is how I really, like, got into it. At the time I wasn’t even sure if I was going to focus on screenwriting or directing, but I ended up just sort of falling into it and really enjoying it.

KYD: And what was your first screenwriting job?

MW: So I started working at Southern Star in Sydney. I got a director’s attachment, which is, again, a thing that is funded partly through ScreenWest, where they sort of pay you a little bit so that you can be attached to a production company. And I worked in the script department of the show called Rescue: Special Ops, which was on Channel Nine – it was one of those classic 1-hour rescue dramas, of people, like, rescuing people from clifftops and buildings, and all of the drama of that. And that’s where I worked as an attachment, and then you just sort of get to experience all the different process.

And then from there I ended up getting a script coordinating job on a show called Wild Boys which was also being produced by Southern Star.

KYD: And so working on Neighbours, that must be quite a hectic schedule, because it’s a very regular show, what does a day look like for you working on that?

MW: Well, there are sort of two sides to the job. So you are either going to be doing the editing side, or the story or plotting side. So if you are on the plotting side then your day is sitting in a room, planning out what is going to happen in an episode of Neighbours, and/or communicat