Radio 4 Blog

Hurrah! At last. After all the waiting, and the reading, and the deliberating we have at last reached the moment when we can reveal this year's short-list of five contenders for the BBC National Short Story Award (BBC NSSA). These five have survived the turbulent and exacting examination of first our teams of sifters and then, for those that made it through the first hoop, intense discussion and dissection by this year's judges - the writers, Dame Margaret Drabble and Helen Dunmore, the broadcaster Tom Sutcliffe, the singer-songwriter Will Young, and me.

The process of judging is a fascinating and sometimes unsettling one. As the summer progressed I read through my teetering pile of short stories. There were very short stories and those that almost tipped the 8000 word limit; there were first person monologues, futuristic visions, time travellers, llamas, historical adventures and not a few, often moving, parent-and-child stories. There were relationship breakdowns and tender endings to long marriages; a man who disappears, literally, in a fancy dress costume, a woman who disappears through the ice, an artist's glove that reappears as art. This year the quality of the writing and the names of the writers who now take this award seriously, were more impressive than ever.

Filtering the pile of sixty odd stories down to a long list is hard; conceding personal treasures and reaching a consensus on our final five took most of a pleasurable autumn's afternoon but of course one of the joys of this experience is re-assessing stories and uncovering new depths. Passionate defences of certain stories moved them up our list; general approval was not, in itself, sometimes enough. It was the most good-natured judging meeting I've been involved in but very rigorous as we debated futuristic feminism, and whether a monk's pursuit of an orphan over four pages qualified as a short story - even if it was wonderful writing (it almost did!), and, was too much plot actually a disguise for a proto-novel?

The other four judges are even now pondering and re-reading the final five and discussing them in the press - but in the Readings Unit a large part of the job only kicks in once we can get on with turning beautiful writing into equally beautiful radio. Casting the right voice is always the key element in production - these five stories were gifts - we set off in pursuit of the best of British and to everyone's joy secured just the actors we were after.

We needed someone to capture the nuances of North London's Hendon community - Miriam Margolyes is starring round the corner from Bush House (where we live) in Samuel Beckett's 'Endgame' - she was happy to emerge from her dustbin to read Naomi Alderman's 'Other People's Gods'. Julia MacKenzie abandoned the acuity of Miss Marple for the confusion of the protoganist in 'Hitting Trees with Sticks' by Jane Rogers - in a monologue of Bennettian perception. Two of our favourite and most long-standing of readers were instantly perfect casting for their two very different stories; Hannah Gordon has flavoured Sara Maitland's magical mix of science and witches with a heady Highland density in 'Moss Witch', and Penelope Wilton displays her customary restraint and compassion in Kate Clanchy's moving and original 'The Not-Dead and the Saved'. However it is probably fair to say that there was most excitement amongst the team here over the re-jigging of studios to fit in with the latest Harry Potter filming schedule, so that Jason Isaacs could transform briefly from the sinister Lucius Malfoy to a hapless middle-aged American son in Lionel Shriver's 'Exchange Rates'.

And now the whole experience is gathering speed as we head towards the culmination of our work - and the revelation on Monday 7th Dec of this year's winner. As well as a chance to hear the stories on air, there's the build up to the award ceremony, and terrific coverage of the short story genre and the award with interviews with Will, Tom, Margaret and Helen on air and in the press; Julian Gough, winner of the 2007 award, is tweeting, and for the first time, we have gone multi-platform. More on that on Monday - meantime Will Young and Tom Sutcliffe reveal the short-list and discuss the stories on tonight's (Friday's) edition of Front Row. They are a great selection - we hope you enjoy hearing them next week. And wondering which one will win.

Di Speirs is Editor, Readings at BBC Radio 4

• The shortlist was revealed on this evening's Front Row, presented by Kirsty Lang.
• Full details of the BBC National Short Story Award on the official web site.
• The animated reading above is an excerpt from Other People's Gods by Naomi Alderman. View clips from the other shortlisted stories here.

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I'm quite new at the BBC but I've been listening to The Archers since I was a small child. Its characters have been companions for decades. Events from Archers episodes are mixed up with those from my early life in a quite confusing way. I don't listen every day but the fine grain of life in and around Ambridge is a kind of essential background to my life. I'm not overstating this and I know I'm not alone. I know there's a reasonable chance that you too remember the arrival of strident Pat at Bridge Farm or the mysterious disappearance of Nelson Gabriel or Eddie's dalliance with Jolene...

So it's obviously been a career highlight to spend some time with The Archers team at the BBC's office in central Birmingham. And what I've learnt hasn't eroded the magic at all. I know now that keeping a drama with a cast of 60-ish on-air 6-days-a-week requires something like a military operation with strong leadership and the kind of team spirit I've rarely met. My dealings with the Archers team have been a bit like an encounter with a rather benign cult. Everybody on the team, from cast to producers to engineers and assistants greeted me with the kind of clear-eyed passion for the programme that any network would kill for (but you wouldn't want to cross them). It's been a huge pleasure to experience the pride of the Archers team in what they do. I hope you've been able to share a little of it here on the blog.

Today is the last day of Archers Week and - I'll be honest - I've been finding it quite hard to keep up with the flow of behind-the-scenes insights as they've come in so here's a final-day round-up of fascinating posts from Archers people:

• Studio Manager Liza Wallis on creating sound in the studio. It's fascinating to watch Liza at work, creating a convincing sound-scene amongst the actors by rattling pots, pouring water and moving furniture...
• Producer Kate Oates with a vignette about directing a Christmas episode and presenting long-term plotlines to the boss.
• Producer Mel Ward on the pleasures of the archive. A story that's been running for nearly sixty years needs a good memory.
• Keri Davies has written about his many roles on The Archers team. He's well-known online. He's hosted the Archers message boards for several years and manages the Archers web site. He's also a scriptwriter.
• Michael Harrison operates one of the terrifying desks in the Archers cubicle. He's responsible for levels and recording. His preternatural calm and dry wit keep the studio moving. He's glad that Christmas is over.

At the beginning, I promised to stick to the rule that listeners shouldn't be confronted with pictures that mess with their personal images of Archers characters, so you've seen no pictures of Archers cast members here on the blog. I took a few on my visit to the studios, though. They're here. And there's a fantastically-useful Who's Who on The Archers web site.

Steve Bowbrick is editor of the Radio 4 blog

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Tim Stimpson is an Archers scriptwriter (the youngest ever). Here he shares with us some of the tricks of his trade, including the unique visualisation above - SB.

Whilst episodes written in September are now being broadcast and episodes written in October are being recorded. I'm now working on scripts for the middle of January. Normally there are four writers working at any one time, but because of the Christmas break we're working on two months of scripts meaning that there are eight of us writers busily typing away. Some of us look out across rolling hills, but I look out across a barbed-wired wall into the back of a postal depot in south Birmingham. Writing the Archers is my own imaginary escape to the country.

Reading the blogs this week has been quite interesting for me too. As a writer I only visit the Mailbox once a month for our regular script meetings and as one becomes engrossed in one's own scripts it's easy to forget that the machine that is 'The Archers' is still busily running away. After the script meeting we all head back to our homes in Bristol, Dorset, Cheshire - or in my case just four miles down the road - and wait by our inboxes for the storylines. We then have five or six days to write a synopsis and then twelve days to complete our six episodes.

I've already had a first sweep at most of my scripts. Generally I like to get them written as quickly as possible, which then gives me plenty of time to go back and tinker. Today I've already been busy redrafting my Tuesday episode. Because of restrictions with actor availability it's meant that my two main storylines have become tethered together. Normally I'd try to spread them out into separate episodes, but I'm rather enjoying having to interweave my two most high-powered storylines. They're both mainly two-headers, they're both emotional (although in different ways) and, as often happens as one goes along, I'm discovering themes and resonances between the two threads.

Writing for The Archers can often seems like a big puzzle. To help me get my head around this when I first receive the storylines I normally draw a graph with the days of the week along the x axis and the intensity of the individual storylines along the y. It sounds horribly technical (although I do draw it in pretty colours!) but it allows me to better understand the shape of my week. All the writers have a very different ways of approaching their scripts. For instance some prefer to start at Sunday and write straight through to Friday. I prefer to go with the mood I'm in that day. So if I'm feeling light-hearted I might choose to spend some time with Lynda and the Parish Council, or if I'm ready for something a bit more hard-hitting I might have a crack at... Oh but that would be giving the story away!

So - the sun is shining, the red vans of the Royal Mail have all left the yard and the cat, as usual, is trying to make her own contribution by walking across the keyboard. Where shall I go now? I think I head down to The Bull. I could do with a pint.

Tim Stimpson is a scriptwriter on The Archers

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