The Business of Screenwriting: Do you know your stuff?
It’s one thing to write a script. It’s another thing to understand the craft.
For over a decade, I have taught screenwriting at a major university, first part-time at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, now full-time as an assistant professor at the DePaul University School of Cinematic Arts.
Every year at least some of the graduating seniors, busily working on a feature length screenplay or original TV pilot script, ask me about how they should go about trying to sell their creative pride and joy, visions of million dollar deals, and the gilded life in La La Land.
That’s when I invite them on a different fantasy… the same one I’m going to share with you now.
Let’s say you finish that script. And it’s a good one. It winds up in the hands of a manager. They love it. Before you know it, you’ve got representation. Awesome!
On the strength of that script, your manager sends you out for what are known as ‘general meetings’ with producers or development execs who have read your script, see something they like in your writing, and want to do a face-to-face with this new talent.
So you make the bottled water tour from Burbank to Universal City, Hollywood to Culver City.
At one of these meetings, things are going particularly well, a studio exec taking a real shine to you. She laments how there’s this one story on their slate she’s hugely passionate about, they’ve brought in a bunch of writers, but no one has cracked it yet.
You ask, “What’s it about?”
She tells you the basic concept. As you listen to her, the heavens open, a shaft of glowing golden light hits your brain, and suddenly you see the story.
Off you go, pitching your take. And man, you are spitting pearls, one great plot twist after another, this incredible saga spinning out as you become more and more animated.
The exec is getting excited. Her assistant in the corner is furiously scrawling down your pitch. At the end, the exec is pumping your hand, saying, I have to take this upstairs.”
In your car as you fight L.A. traffic, your cell suddenly rings. It’s your manager. Turns out the exec pitched it to the president of production…
And they bought it.
“Congratulations! You’ve got a deal!”
Cut to several weeks later. You’re in your lawyer’s office flipping through your deal contract. There on the page in front of you, the total amount for the commencement fee, then the completion fee for the first draft. We are talking six figures.
Amazing, right?
Then you flip the page where you see the date when the draft you are supposed to write is due.
It’s twelve weeks from today.
Twelve. Weeks.
At which point, you have to ask yourself this very honest and very important question:
Do you know your stuff?
Because while everything in this saga so far has been a wondrous ride in fantasyland, the fact is there is a harsh reality looming out there whereby you actually have to go write the script and deliver it in a timely fashion.
I ask my students: Do you have an approach prep-writing from research to brainstorming, character development to plotting to know how to break that story in two weeks? Do you have the confidence based on your history as a writer that you can churn out a first draft, then revise and edit it, so you hit the due date?
In other words… do you know your stuff?
My basic point with students is not to scare them, but cajole them to learn to walk before they run. I advise them to write at least three original screenplays before they go to market with any of them. They need to have the experience and understanding that can only come from writing several scripts in order to be able to have a legitimate belief in one’s self that they can nail that project.
Know what? That’s my basic point to you, too.
This is why I say it’s not just about the script, it’s about the writer.
Watch movies. Read scripts. Write pages. Study the business. Learn your craft. Test out techniques. Find your voice. Know your strengths. Understand your weaknesses. Do whatever you can to turn those weak areas into strengths.
This is not to suggest you absolutely must know everything before you can submit your scripts to buyers and put yourself out there. No one knows everything. You will always be learning. You will make mistakes. You will get rewritten. But hopefully you’ll also find some successes. Some, even much of what you learn about the craft and yourself as a writer, you will come to understand by doing it in the run of play. So don’t allow some gauzy notion of having to be a Perfect Writer stifle your creativity and ambition.
However, you would be wise to know as much as you can and put that into practice with your writing, so that by the time you do put yourself out there to buyers, you have at least some confidence you can pull it off.
A few years ago, I interviewed a well-known screenwriter who has written several hit movies and has had a twenty-plus year career in the business. He told me one thing he knows about himself is this: “In twelve weeks, I am confident I will deliver a screenplay.”
Those are the words of a screenwriter who knows his stuff.
Do you?
The Business of Screenwriting is a weekly series of GITS posts based upon my experiences as a complete Hollywood outsider who sold a spec script for a lot of money, parlayed that into a screenwriting career during which time I’ve made some good choices, some okay decisions, and some really stupid ones. Hopefully you’ll be the wiser for what you learn here.
For more Business of Screenwriting articles, go here.
