May 9, 2016

Last screenwriting update! Hope you’ve gleaned some interesting things from these, can’t wait to show you the new cover on the next update!

SCREENWRITING TIP #7:  THE MARKET PLACE

A good many writers try to write for the marketplace, for what is showing in the theaters right now or what is on television.  The trouble with that theory is that if you can see the trend you are too far behind the curve to take advantage of it.  But the bigger problem is that you don’t necessarily write for the movie going audience or the television audience.  The only way that you are writing for the audience directly is if you have your own money or access to someone with money to produce and distribute your film outside the system.  Few people do.

So, who do you write for?  The studio executives, (Or more exactly for their readers.  These people are too busy to read for themselves.  They have someone “cover” scripts and only read it when Tom Cruise is attached and the budget has been finalized.  If then.)  You write for the development people, the agents, the actors, anyone you can get to read your script.  I mean the audience should be your customer but often is not.  Your audience becomes the agents and development people, who have little contact with or understanding of the audience, some even have a disdain for the “flyover states” and the folks who buy tickets or watch television.  And remember that these people have to plow through hundreds of screenplays, a dozen a week.  How can you make yours stand out from the stack?

Studios used to make movies by finding or developing a script and then hiring actors and a director.  They don’t do that anymore except for certain genres, broad comedies (usually with a name comedian attached) or horror films.  Today the studios usually wait for a package to come to them with some element attached, actor, money, director, pre-sold brand., these attachments collected by a producer.

One way to help you sell a script is to get a bankable actor attached and to do that you have to write a role that a star wants to do, usually where they are in every scene and have a turn that is Oscar worthy.  Getting to that star is the problem because the gatekeepers, agents and managers don’t want their actors attached to something that isn’t a sure thing, one of those aforesaid packages. 

The thing to do is just write something great and beat your head against that wall of gatekeepers until you bust through.  That old saw about writing what you know is true.  That doesn’t necessarily mean writing about being a barista at Starbucks.  Maybe you know Science Fiction better than anyone and you think Hollywood is doing it wrong.   That works.  My favorite though is when someone writes about a subculture that I am unfamiliar with, Creole life in Louisiana, farming in Minnesota.  If you do that right you will get attention, the authenticity will shine among those trying to write the next “Fast and Furious.”  It may not get made but it may get you a job as a sample to demonstrate your strengths as a writer.

And if you have an idea that everyone says is impossible to sell or even accomplish does not meant that you shouldn’t try.  Just acknowledge the size of the risk you are taking and don’t whine when the predictions come true.  Write it, you may be creating the next “Rocky” or “Star Wars”, both outliers when they were made.