For those unfamiliar with Days, Billie is a one-time crack-addicted porn star, stripper, prostitute-turned-undercover ISA agent and police officer. In her spare time, she used to run the Countess Wilhemina Cosmetics Company and once got amnesia because her car was hit by a falling meteor. Talk about unlucky. As for looks, Billie has the lips of Meg Ryan and the hair of someone who should know better.

The scene opens. B1 (Bo) and B2 (Billie) are in some kind of control room. I know this because there are lots of computers. They're embracing. B2 pulls back. Sorry, she looks away.

It's okay. Don't be. B1 furrows his brow (he's wondering if she's going to charge him for the embrace).

Thanks for being there for me, Bo. B2 bats her eyelashes.

Wish I coulda been there for you when it really counted. B1 pauses dramatically, letting us know a tender moment is coming. When you lost OUR DAUGHTER.

Yeah. Well, that was a long time ago. And I need to focus on the present. B2 tosses her hair and flashes a cheeky, over-stuffed smile. In other words, daughter schmaughter. So what do you say, Bo Brady, wanna go out there and kick some DiMera ass?

Bo smiles in a "Is the Pope Catholic?" kinda way. The door is only a metre away but B1 and B2 tiptoe towards it. B1 struggles to open and then close the heavy, steel door. Sadly, this illusion is ruined by the props department sound of a foam door closing.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking: That dialogue is worse than what Lucas penned in Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith. And, how do I get to be a TV scriptwriter? As fate would have it, later this month the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (www.aftrs.edu.au) is running a four-day course in writing TV series drama.

Of course, there's a big difference between penning a soap-opera (like Days of Our Lives) and penning a TV drama (like ER). For one thing, soapie characters are constantly talking out loud to themselves when they're alone. They also have a tendency to get amnesia, wear big hair and sleep around a lot. You get the idea?

With that in mind, the AFTRS Writing For TV Series Drama course will explore the various stages involved with writing long-form television drama, including structure and scene breakdown, dialogue, timing and layout.

Much of the course will be focused on getting students to write. Rather than just listening to experienced scriptwriter Andrew Kelly waffle on for four days, the general objective is that, by the end of the course, participants will have taken part in the plotting and writing of an episode of a TV drama series.

And there are few more experienced teachers than Kelly. Starting in the early 1990s as a trainee script editor on A Country Practice, he moved on to write episodes of The Secret Life of Us, All Saints, Pacific Drive, Water Rats, Always Greener, Murder Call, McLeod's Daughters, Fat Cow Motel, The Cooks, The Ferals and the TV mini-series Heartland.

During that time he's won an AWGIE (Australian Writers' Guild) Award and has been responsible for some memorable TV moments. It was Kelly who penned the AWGIE-winning Secret Life episode in which Alex and Evan first kissed (and where Miranda finally discovered that Richie was gay). He also wrote the heart-breaking episode of All Saints in which Mitch discovered he had a brain tumour. More recently, he wrote the episode (to air on 21st June) in which Terri Sullivan (Georgie Parker) leaves the show. It's interesting then, that despite these high-profile TV drama moments, Kelly cites his career highlight as working on the short-lived, 2004 drama series, The Cooks.

It says a lot about television networks and viewing audiences that, out of the 13 Cooks scripts, one was nominated for an AWGIE and another won the Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Screenwriting. It seems that if a show doesn't feature SMS voting or a perfectly coiffed and cheery Johanna Griggs brandishing a chainsaw, it's already behind the eight ball.