Student scriptwriters launch online soap with audience input

If the trials and tribulations of TV soap-opera characters such as Dirty Den or Ken Barlow make you wish you could rewrite the plot, students at De Montfort University may have the answer. Students on the television scriptwriting course have devised an interactive online soap in collaboration with the BBC that allows its audience to influence the storyline.

The seven students pen weekly episodes of the soap, Q Gardens , which appears on the BBC Leicester website.

The webpages provide a history and map of Quincy Gardens, Leicester, where the soap takes place. Fans can also email their ideas on how the soap's plot should develop to help determine a character's fate.

Project team leader Roger Wood said: "The benefit of an online soap is that it can reflect real life and local events. The first episode was launched to coincide with a Leicester versus Manchester United football match and had the score written into the script."

Q Gardens appears every Tuesday at www.bbc.co.uk/leicester/q_gardens