Rule #6: You Need To Make Writing a Full Time Job

If you’re a writer, at some point you’ve probably heard yourself say some version of the following sentence:

“If I could just get (one day/one week/one month/one year) off from my (day job/kids/spouse/everyday life) to focus full time on my writing, then I could actually finish my (screenplay/novel/other creative project) and finally feel like a writer.”

At some point, maybe you even went for it.  Took a leave of absence, called out sick for a week, locked yourself in the library for a weekend and resolved to focus 24/7 on your writing…

…Only to find that your writing life didn’t change in the way you expected.

You imagined yourself writing every minute of every day, but instead found yourself unable to stick to your deadlines, blowing those precious hours on Facebook or solitaire, and creating new and inventive procrastination techniques that robbed you of your precious writing time.

You imagined the words flowing effortlessly onto the page, and instead found yourself staring at a blank screen, lost somewhere in the middle of your screenplay or afraid to even start.

You imagined being at one with your creativity, and instead found yourself alone in a scary place, feeling even more blocked, more overwhelmed, more stuck, and more frustrated.

Perhaps at that moment, you started to ask yourself “do I really want this?”  or “do I even have what it takes to be a writer?”

The Journey and the Destination

Building a healthy relationship with your writing is not about teleporting yourself to an alternate universe where everything changes overnight.

Rather, it’s about embarking on a journey with your creativity, through which writing gradually becomes so naturally integrated with your daily life that when you finally reach your destination, you may even find yourself wondering exactly how you got there.

Understanding The Power of a Single Drop of Water

Dump 100,000 gallons of water onto an arid desert, and you don’t get a river.  You get a terrifying flash flood that overwhelms everything in its path and then disappears just as quickly into the sand.

Let that same stream of water trickle slowly and steadily over time, and gradually a channel will start to form, getting deeper and wider until it becomes a mighty river, which can carry that water all the way to the sea.

This is how you build a writing life.  Not with a 100,000 gallon flash flood.  But with a small, steady trickle that gradually grows stronger and more powerful.  For most of us, the time to create that trickle already exists in our lives.  It’s just about making it a priority, and getting the support you need to make the most of the time you have.

How Much Time You Really Need To Write?

One of my most prolific students writes for 90 minutes a day. 45 minutes on the train ride to work.  And 45 minutes on the train ride back.

One of my good friends, Christine Boylan, a highly successful TV writer, writes in chunks of 48 minutes on and 12 minutes off-and forces herself to stop writing after 48 minutes no matter what in order to train her subconscious mind to follow her impulses and make decisions quickly.

The truth is that it doesn’t matter whether you have 5 minutes or 5 hours to write.  If you train yourself to set achievable goals, and then force yourself to stick to them, you will notice that your writing time, and the ease with which you generate material, starts to expand naturally.

5 minutes of writing in the morning gives rise to a whole day of thought about your screenplay.  During your coffee break, you jot down a couple of notes.  Instead of updating your Facebook status, you suddenly find yourself pounding out a scene.

That night, you don’t go home and turn on the TV.  You find yourself back at your computer, putting on the finishing touches on the work you’ve done.  You go to bed dreaming about your script, and you wake up the next morning racing to get everything out on the page before you leave for work.

You’re no longer writing because you have to write.  You’re writing because you want to write, because you already feel successful as a writer.  Not because of the huge goals you dreamed of, but because of the 5 minute goal you stuck to.

Create The Steady Stream of Writing that Changes Your Life

If you wrote one page a day for a year, at the end of the year, you’d have written three screenplays.  But getting that page written, day after day, can be a real challenge.

Our lives are filled with so many “urgent” demands from so many people, that sometimes the things that are really important end up falling to the wayside, simply because there is no one but ourselves to demand it from us.

If you’re going to succeed as a writer, you need to find a way to make whatever writing time you do have as urgent and non-negotiable as showing up for work in the morning.

You need someone to hold you responsible for hitting your goals, to let you know when you’ve done well, and to demand more out of you when you’ve fallen short.

If you’ve ever gone to the gym with a personal trainer, you know that even 45 minutes working out with a personal trainer can give you ten times the workout of hours spent working out on your own.

That’s why I’m introducing a new service to help you keep your focus on what really matters to you.   It’s called Personal Training for Writers.   And it’s just like working out with a trainer in the gym.

Here’s how it works:

• Subscribe: For 3 months, 6 months, or a full year of weekly training sessions.

• Create Your Gameplan:  Discuss your writing goals with your personal trainer, and create a personalized writing schedule and regimen of exercises, to maximize the time you have to write, and integrate your creative goals with your daily life.

• Stick To Your Goals: Halfway through your writing week, your Personal Trainer will call to check in on how you’re proceeding, answer urgent questions, and give you the guidance (or tough love) you need to meet your deadlines.

• Turn in Your Pages: Each week, you’ll submit up to ten pages of writing to your Personal Trainer, hitting your deadlines just like professional writers do.

• Get Personalized Feedback:  With weekly one-on-one sessions with your personal trainer.  Get in depth feedback on the pages you’ve  written, and the guidance you need to keep moving forward, so you can stay on track and growing as a writer.

• In Person or Online: Meet with your trainer from anywhere in the world: in-person in NYC, or online via video chat.

Students Save 50% or More on Personal Training!

Take any of our NYC Write Your Screenplay classes and save 50% off your first month of Personal Training for Screenwriters.

Don’t live in NYC?  Take a Write Your Screenplay class online, and receive up to a month of Personal Training for FREE.

100 Rules and How To Break Them

Rule #5:  Show Don’t Tell

That you should “show” instead of “telling” is perhaps the most sound advice any screenwriter can follow.

After all, movies are visual, and it’s almost always more interesting to see someone do something right now in the present than to hear them talk about doing something, explain about feeling something, or worst of all reminisce about having done something in the past.

In general, telling leads to boring exposition that slows down your story, undermines your visual storytelling, and turns your characters into talking heads.

Showing, on the other hand, forces you to make exciting choices for your character, leading you naturally to the compelling images that drive your character’s journey forward and help your audience to connect to your story.

For all these reasons “Show Don’t Tell” is a mantra drilled into the mind of almost any student at almost any writing program in almost any genre anywhere in the world.

It’s just a good thing no one told Nora Ephron, or she could never have written When Harry Met Sally.

Here’s an Academy Award nominated script that somehow manages to break nearly every fundamental principle of screenwriting: monologues that run on for pages, characters that recount entire phases of their histories, and a multitude of scenes where characters do nothing but tell.

Had Nora Ephron taken the final draft of When Harry Met Sally to the average screenwriting teacher, she probably would have gotten a kind and supportive lecture about easy ways to “fix” her script simply by using “show don’t tell.”

You can probably imagine it now:

“Why don’t we just SEE Harry’s relationship with his ex-wife, rather than hear him talk about it during a baseball game?”

Yup, there goes the famous “doing the wave” scene at Yankee Stadium.

When Harry Met Sally works BECAUSE of it’s “telling” scenes, not in spite of them.

That’s because When Harry Met Sally is a movie about storytelling.

It begins with a story told by an elderly couple directly to the camera. And it ends with similar story told by the elderly Harry and Sally.

The movie is about the stories people tell themselves and each other about their relationships. These stories provide the fundamental structure of the screenplay; to tell the story in any other way would undermine the very instincts that made it worth telling in the first place.

Furthermore, by allowing the characters to tell their stories to each other, Ephron is able to keep her focus on the characters that matter, even as she covers large periods of time when they are apart.

We’re watching the story of Harry and Sally and Jess and Marie, not the story of Harry and his ex-wife or Sally and her ex-boyfriend.   These are the hot relationships in the movie, and the only characters we care about.

So, though these characters may spend half the movie “telling” their stories to each other, by allowing them to spend all their screen-time together, Ephron is actually showing us the story that matters.

When to follow the rules? And when to break them?

Make no mistake, it takes a heck of a lot of skill to write a story like When Harry Met Sally and make all that “telling” work for you. Ephron uses all sorts of advanced screenwriting techniques to keep her story moving, her drama building, and her characters growing, even as she breaks all the rules of this traditional principle of screenwriting.

In most cases, if you find yourself “telling” in your script, it’s worth at least asking the question of whether or not you’d be better off “showing” the scene dramatically. And if you’re not sure, it’s probably worth at least scribbling out a scene or two to find out.

But the most important thing to remember when it comes to “Show Don’t Tell” or any of the other so-called rules of screenwriting, is quite simply this:

The only rules that matter are the ones that serve your script and your intentions.

No matter how many screenwriting books you read, or how well meaning your teachers may be, when you start to listen to other people’s rules, rather than listening to your own voice as a writer, your writing is going to suffer.

So learn the rules. And then forget them. Listen to your script. Listen to your characters. And listen to the mentors who guide you toward your own rules.

That way, the rules you really can reveal themselves to you.

Se7en: How To Avoid A Dud Ending

Check out this new video I recently recorded for Scriptmag.com and learn how to discover a great ending for your screenplay.

100 Rules and How To Break Them

Rule #4 THE INCITING INCIDENT

This installment of the 100 Rules series grows directly out of a question from a former student:

I have a question and thought I needed a fresh perspective from someone outside UCLA… I’m sort of getting in a fight with the teacher of my workshop about my inciting event. In my naturally rebellious style, I don’t think there is a rule that the inciting event has to nail us early in the script. I think it can actually be before anything is ever done on screen.  I’m being told that [an event that happens before the movie starts] can’t be my inciting incident... I’m just wondering your opinion.  – Dom C.

Opening The Door To Change

The inciting incident is just a fancy name writing teachers like to give to the moment that opens the door for change for a character.  And you’re absolutely right.  It’s often the case in movies that inciting incidents happen before the movie starts.

For example, in Thelma and Louise, the main characters have already decided to go on their road trip before the movie begins (though Thelma still hasn’t told her hubby).  Or, in Little Miss Sunshine, Uncle Frank has already decided to kill himself before the movie starts.

Getting Your Movie Moving

Having an inciting incident happen before your movie begins can often be a good thing, because it keeps the “normal world” of your script from becoming a “boring world” by starting the movie moving and your characters changing from page 1.

When this happens though, there’s usually a second inciting incident on page 10 – 12, that shocks us out of the “new normal” world set up by that original inciting incident, and opens the door to change.

For Thelma and Louise, it’s the moment Thelma flirts with the creepy guy at the truck stop who will later try to rape her.  In Little Miss Sunshine it’s the moment Olive hears the voicemail saying that she’s going to get to compete in the beauty pageant.

Is This A Rule You Can Break?

You are absolutely right that there are no rules in screenwriting.  God did not come down and proclaim that the inciting incident must happen by page 12 (that was Syd Field).

Many screenplays have pushed the inciting incident pretty deep down into the story and still worked brilliantly.  But if you have commercial aspirations for your script, it’s also worth noting that having a strong inciting incident early in your script will help lock an audience into your story, and help get you past the coverage readers that guard the kingdom.

Besides, if you don’t have an inciting incident where producers are expecting it, almost certainly at some point, some producer is going to create one for you.

You’re not going to like what they create.  So usually you’re better off giving them one yourself.

No Rigid Formulas

If your professor doesn’t believe an inciting incident can happen late in a movie, tell him to watch There Will Be Blood.  PT Anderson starts the movie with about 20 minutes of silent filmmaking before we ever get to the inciting incident.

However, when you read the script for There Will Be Blood, there’s the inciting incident, right where it’s supposed to be.  By page 6, Daniel’s friend has died, and Daniel is already stuck with the boy.  And just in case anyone was concerned that this was too early, there’s another inciting incident right where Syd Field says it should appear: on page 12, when Paul Sunday shows up to tell Daniel about the oil.

Anderson knows he’s not going to shoot it that way.  But he also knows if he doesn’t write it that way, executives are going to get nervous.

Similarly, Michael Clayton moves the end of the movie to the beginning, to create the sense of an exciting inciting incident before one has actually occurred.

Great writers know that that inciting incident is not a rule to which we must conform.  It’s a game we play in later drafts, in order to help us capture the attention of our audiences.

Discovering Your Inciting Incident

There are very few things more damaging to a young writer than obsessing over page count.  Great scripts come from stepping into a character, and taking them on a profound journey.  And it’s impossible to do this if you’re looking in on your script from the outside, and editing every word before your story even makes it onto the page.

The page 12 inciting incident is not where you start as a writer.  It’s where you end up.

It might take you 50 pages of writing to discover the amazing moment that ultimately becomes your inciting incident.  And if you’re so worried about hitting some magic number that you don’t allow yourself those 50 pages, you’re never going to discover the good stuff.

In which case, it’s not going to matter where your inciting incident happens, because nobody’s going to want to watch your movie.

Almost every scene has an inciting incident.

Though inciting incident is usually used as structural concept to discuss the moment that starts the engine on the entire film, the truth of the matter is that almost every scene in your movie is going to contain an inciting incident.

Another way to think of inciting incident is simply as the moment where things shift for your character:  the event that happens– within the scene, the act, or the entire movie– that interrupts whatever has become the normal world for the character, and changes your character or the world around him so that things can no longer be exactly the same as they were before.

This is why it’s often the little inciting incidents within each scene that are actually most important for you as a writer.  It’s these moments that keep your movie moving, and propel the force of your character’s journey.

If you are driving your story forward and forcing your character to change in little ways in each scene that you write, it’s inevitable that your character is going to go on a profound journey, and you’re going to discover those big turning points that producers are always so worried about.

Once you’ve allowed your character’s journey to play out to the greatest extent of your imagination and discovered those powerful scenes around which your movie turns, you can slice, dice, compress, revise or (if you’re like PT Anderson) downright cheat to make that moment feel producer friendly.

But until then, keep your focus where it belongs.  On your character.

100 RULES AND HOW TO BREAK THEM:

Rule #3: Be Careful Who You Pitch To

It’s a constant fear among young writers: finally coming up with that million dollar idea, only to have it stolen by some mustache twirling producer, some back-stabbing friend, or even worse, some untalented hack of a writer.

For this reason, scores of writers hide away their best ideas, terrified to share them with anyone for fear of losing them.

So, let me reassure you.

You don’t have to worry about anybody stealing your idea. Because somewhere out there in the wild world of screenwriting, somebody already has.

No, they didn’t sneak into your laptop while you were away and spirit off your precious Final Draft files. In fact, most likely, they’ve never even met you, or talked about your idea with you or anyone you know.

But if you’ve got an idea, there’s a good chance that there are at least 50 scripts with the same idea already circulating around Hollywood.

Who Invented Darwinism?

You probably haven’t heard of him, but during the same 20 years that Darwin was scribbling away on his revolutionary (and as-yet unpublished) Origin of Species, a guy named Alfred Russell Wallace was coming to the exact same conclusion.

Never imagining that he and the great Charles Darwin could be working on the exact same project, Wallace sent his short paper on the subject to Darwin, whom he’d never met, begging the famous scientist for some feedback before he sent it to the publisher!

Imagine Darwin’s horror at receiving Wallace’s paper—and you’ll understand why producers ask you to sign such insane legal contracts before they agree to read your work. There’s a good chance that somewhere out there, somebody else is already working on exactly the same project you are.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. But a great script is not.

When Darwin rushed his Origin of Species to the presses after reading Wallace’s paper, Wallace could easily have imagined that Darwin had stolen his idea. But Wallace had the exact opposite reaction. He and Darwin became good friends, and ultimately, Wallace would claim that his greatest scientific achievement had been prompting Darwin to finally publish his groundbreaking manuscript.

Wallace understood that it wasn’t the idea of Origin of Species that changed the course of science forever. It was the execution of that idea in a way that captured the attention of everyone who read it.

Similarly, it’s not the idea of your screenplay that’s going to make it sell. It’s the execution of that idea in a way that captures the essence of that idea, and translates it in a way that captures the audience’s attention.

All Writers Steal. And You Should Too.

Darwin and Wallace were not the first scientists to muse about evolution, nor was Shakespeare the completely original inventor of all his plays.

Romeo and Juliet was stolen from the Roman myth of Pyramus and Thisbe. Hamlet is just an update of an older play called The Ur-Hamlet.

The Big Lebowski steals unabashedly from The Big Sleep. And its main characters are not so loosely based on a couple of real life guys who were friends with the Coen Brothers.

And remember that great truck chase scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark? It’s stolen from an old movie called Stagecoach.

Great writers steal liberally from everyone and everything around them: people, places, history, events, novels, plays, poems, songs, art, and yes, even other screenplays.

They take these elements, draw upon them for inspiration, change, adapt, and repurpose them for their own writing, and in this way build upon the work of all the great writers who have gone before them.

Though they may have been inspired by the same sources, Romeo and Juliet is not Pyramus and Thisbe. Hamlet is not The Ur-Hamlet. The Big Lebowski is nothing like The Big Sleep. And Raiders of the Lost Ark could never be confused for Stagecoach.

That’s because no matter how similar the ideas they start with may be, it’s almost impossible for two writers to write the exact same script.

No One Can Write Your Script But You.

Translating an idea into screenplay form is intensely personal work, requiring thousands of intuitive creative decisions at every turn. And no two writers will ever make those decisions in the same way.

Even if another writer were to steal, stumble upon, or be gifted by the screenwriting gods with the exact same “million-dollar idea” that you are currently working on, the chances of them writing a script that’s anything like the one you’ve created are extraordinarily slim.

So stop protecting your writing. If someone thinks they can write your movie better than you can, tell them to go for it! And then go out and steal some good inspiration for yourself.

Why Darwin Almost Got Scooped.

Despite his 20 years of work on the subject, his fame and his reputation in the industry, Darwin was so afraid to go out and pitch his revolutionary idea that he almost got beaten to the punch.

This is the same mistake that so many young writers make, clinging so tenaciously to their ideas that they never have a chance to share them with anyone.

If you’re going to sell your idea, you’re going to have to pitch it. And if you want to figure out your script, you’re going to have to share your writing and see how other people respond.  Take a class.  Talk to your friends.  Share your writing.  Get the feedback you need.

My father used to tell me, you can’t catch a fish if your hook isn’t in the water. And the same thing is true for pitching. If you’ve got a great idea, then write the script, and start shouting about it to the world. Because that’s the only way you’re going to sell it.

The Difference Between Stealing and Stealing.

There’s a big difference between “stealing” someone’s idea and repurposing it for your own writing, and literally stealing somebody else’s script.

It’s rare that an experienced producer will actually steal a script from a writer. Anyone who’s ever produced a movie knows it’s much cheaper and easier to pay you for your screenplay than to defend a plagiarism lawsuit.

Nevertheless, the bad kind of stealing does happen occasionally, so there are steps you should take to protect yourself.

(please note that I am not a lawyer and the following does not constitute legal advice).

1. Always register your script with the US Copyright Office before you send it to anyone.
2. There is no such thing as a poor man’s copyright. You spent months or maybe years of your life writing the script. It’s worth paying the fee.
3. Keep clear records of everyone you send your script to, so you can prove they had access. Email is great, because it provides an automatic record.
4. Don’t send your script to the shady guy you met on Craigslist. Send it to real producers with established credits who know better than to rip you off.
5. Remember that WGA registration does not protect your copyright. It only helps in case of a credit arbitration.
6. Write the darn script!  You can’t copyright your idea, but you can copyright the execution.  So go out there and execute it in the way only you can.  Start today!

Here’s a question I recently received from a student:

The Question:

Given that I have very few connections to the industry, how would you best recommend moving forward if I have a novel in mind I’d like to adapt?… Is it necessary to have a literary agent? Is it best to go through the publishers to find out about the rights? What would help me to get my foot in the door?

My Answer:

Most likely, novels by major authors will have already been snapped up
by people with much deeper pockets than you have. However, older or lesser known novels and non-fiction books by less famous authors may very well be available. And some very old novels even exist in the public domain, which means you can use them without optioning anything!

Contacting The Subsidiary Rights Department

The way to start is by contacting the Subsidiary Rights Department at the book or novel’s publisher. You can usually find the contact information for the Subsidiary Rights Department down in the fine print at the bottom the publisher’s website, or by calling the publisher directly.

Break Out Your 1990′s Technology

Believe it or not, many Subsidiary Rights Departments still require contact via fax, so unless your publisher accepts email requests, go ahead and crank back the calendar to 1994, break out your old fax machine, and get ready to rock.

The fax (or email) you send should include the following:

• Your Name
• Your Company Name (if Applicable)
• Your Address
• Your Fax Number
• Title of The Novel
• Author’s Name
• Publisher
• Publication Date
• ISBN Number
• A Request To Know Who Controls The Film Rights For The Novel
• A Blank Space For Them To Write That Person Or Company’s Contact Info

Make sure your return fax number is printed clearly on the form, so they know who to send it back to! If you’d like, feel free to use this sample fax form.

Contacting The Rights Holder

Once you have the name of the person, company, or agent that controls the film rights, you can go ahead and reach out to them (usually by phone or email) about optioning the novel or book.

What The Heck is An Option?

Essentially an option is a legal agreement that gives you the right to buy or sell the film rights for a book or novel at an agreed upon price. Most options last for a year, and give you an option to extend for a second year for a fixed additional payment. Depending on the perceived value of the book or novel you’re optioning, an option can cost a fortune, or as little as a dollar.

The option is the thing that gives you the right to actually SELL the screenplay you write based on somebody else’s book or novel.

It’s not your job to know the ins and outs of options. When the time comes, you will hire a lawyer to walk you through the option agreement. For right now, just concentrate on contacting the rights holder, finding out if the film rights are available, and asking if he or she would be willing to work out a “free” (technically $1) or inexpensive option with you so that you can adapt the book or novel into screenplay form.

Your Pitch

If you’re like most writers, you probably don’t have a ton of money to spend on an option. If the novel’s been sitting on the shelf for years, the rights holder may simply be delighted to know that someone is interested. But the chances are, you’re going to have to do a little bit of selling of yourself in order to convince the rights holder that it’s in their best interest to put their project in your hands.

So that means before you pick up the phone, you want to have a clear take on the material, and an exciting pitch for how you’d transform it into a marketable screenplay, and maybe some ideas for big stars who could play the lead role once your screenplay is finished, and how your version of the adaptation would be perfect for those actors.

Remember, You Are Bringing Real Value To The Project

Generally, if the film rights for a book or novel are still available, it means the rights holder has already done everything in their power to sell the project as a film and failed. That means your script could give them a second chance to show someone how this story really could make a great movie and turn it from another project sitting in their files into a hot commodity that can bring them lots of money.

If you’re going to risk a year of your life writing that script for them with no upfront compensation, it’s reasonable to expect them to give you a year long option and the rights to extend for a second year for a reasonable amount of money.

What If They Want You To “Audition”

If the rights holder asks you for a short treatment or a writing sample, it’s probably worth your while go ahead and send it. But don’t under any circumstances start writing a screenplay until you legally control the option on the material.

I can’t tell you how many writers I’ve known who have “auditioned” by writing a script with the hopes that a rights holder would like it, only to have the rights holder sell the book or novel out from under them– often for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the script.

Why You Need A Lawyer

Remember that you only control the rights as long as you control the option, which means that once the option expires, you can’t sell your script without the author’s approval. That means you want a real entertainment lawyer to draw up your option agreement for you (even if you’re optioning the story for a dollar).

Think about the time you’re going to invest in this project. Do you really want to stake everything on an option agreement you pulled off the internet? You need an expert to protect your investment, and make sure you can do something with it when it’s finished.

Public Domain Books And Novels

As you can tell, when rights holders are involved, optioning a book or novel can be a challenging process for a young writer. However, if the book you’re interested in adapting was published in the United States prior to 1923, most likely you don’t have to go through ANY of this! Because most likely that book is in the public domain.

For this reason, if you’re interested in adaptation, one of the best places to start is with old books that you can use as you like without any option agreement.

The rules of public domain can be complex, so make sure to double check that the book is in the public domain before you start writing. Here’s a handy website that covers many of the public domain rules.

Writing Your Adaptation

Of course, optioning the book or novel, or discovering the public domain book you want to adapt is just the beginning. The process of making your adaptation is an art in itself. If you’d like to learn more about the creative side of adaptation, I invite you to join my upcoming screenwriting workshops.

Legal Disclaimer: I am a screenwriter and not a lawyer. Though I hope that this information will be useful to you, please be aware that no part of this article should be considered legal advice. For such advice please consult an entertainment attorney.

Recently a student asked me the following question:

Can I write a synopsis/storyline, complete with time era, scenery and plot for a movie, and have someone else develop the characters and dialogue?

This is essentially what producers do in Hollywood.  But it’s very, very hard for young writers to sell movies this way.  And it’s even harder to actually develop a script that captures the spirit of your idea in the way you imagined it unless you’re writing it yourself.

The Long Road To Development Hell

As much as we all dream of the magical writer who can sweep in from the sky and make our ideas come to life, if you know much about the development process in Hollywood, you know this hardly ever works.

Hollywood is full of great ideas.  And producers spend millions of dollars paying professional writers to turn these ideas into scripts.

But no matter how glowing the writer’s past track-record, scripts that are generated this way are rarely successful.

Projects end up being written and re-written by dozens of writers, and seem to get worse with every re-draft.  These scripts end up languishing in what producers like to call  “development hell,” that eternal purgatory of screenplays that will never be made.

Create The Script You Really Want

It’s a safe bet that if writing someone else’s script is this challenging for a million-dollar-a-script writer in Hollywood, it’s certainly going to be even harder for the young writers you can afford to hire as a young producer.

Most writers do their best work when they are writing from the heart, exploring themes that are resonant for them, and discovering their character’s journey as they write it.  Not when they are “painting by numbers” and filling in the gaps of someone else’s story.

So most likely, if you want to see your project come to fruition, you’re going to have to write it yourself.

Take a class.  Grab a pen.  Sit down, and start searching for your character.

Tell the story you wanted to tell, as only you can tell it.

You’ll be happy that you did.

Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat! just might be the most dangerous book out there for writers.

And you should read it.

But first, you need to recognize how to harness what’s valuable in Save The Cat!, while understanding the principles that make it so potentially destructive.

Blake Snyder isn’t dangerous because he is wrong. He’s not. He’s not dangerous because his ideas about how to build a script around a great premise aren’t brilliant. They are.

Blake Snyder is dangerous because he doesn’t teach you how to be a writer. He teaches you how to be a salesperson.

What’s Right About Save the Cat!?

You’re going to need a lot of money to turn your script into a movie. That’s true whether you are writing a tiny independent film that you are going to shoot in your backyard. Or the next incarnation of Avatar.

Unless you are ridiculously wealthy, or have a generous uncle waiting with a check in his hand, making your movie is probably going to take more money than you have. And that means you’re going to need to convince people that they should put their own hard earned money behind your production.

We call these people producers. They tend to make writers pretty darn angry. That’s because they couldn’t care less about your artistic vision, the integrity of your writing, or how your script is going to change the world.

When a producer invests in your movie, he or she is investing in one thing: the chance that your movie is going to put butts in seats.

Without butts in seats, your movie is going to lose money. And no matter how brilliant your artistic vision, it’s not going to change the world, make anybody laugh, cry or buy an overpriced barrel of popcorn. Because no one is ever going to see it.

And that’s where Blake Snyder is right. No one is going to go see your movie unless the producer knows how to sell it. That means you need a great premise, that grabs the audience’s attention and makes them want to see your movie. And once they’re in the theater, you’ve got to out-do the promise you’ve made to your audience, so that they can go and talk to their friends about how cool your movie was and drive even more butts to the theatre.

The Save The Cat! approach is to basically turn your script into a giant sales pitch. A living, breathing advertising device that looks so irresistible that audiences can’t help but see it, and producers can’t help but buy it, whether it’s any good or not.

Sounds like a pretty good idea, right?

Except that it’s not going to work for you.

That’s because, unless you happen to be born into a Hollywood family (Snyder’s father was producer Kenneth Snyder) or already have a multi-million dollar hit in your back pocket, nobody who is anybody is going to take a chance on your crappy script. No matter how good the premise is.

Selling Out Is For Professionals

It’s true. Hollywood is filled with writers who sell bad screenplays with great premises, and make a lot of money doing it.

And you can too.

That is, if you already happen to be a big time writer.

The problem is, if you’re like most writers, it probably means that you don’t have a multi-million dollar hit in your back pocket. And in that case nobody who is anybody is going to take a chance on your bad script.

This may seem like an unfair double standard. But it’s not. And if you don’t believe me, just answer this question:

Whose next script is more likely to make you money on your investment: Quentin Tarantino’s or Joe Smith’s?

You don’t even know what the script is about, but you already know the answer. Tarantino has a whole track record to point to. Joe just has his script.

If Joe is going to convince anyone to take a chance on him, that script had better be good. Real good. It had better make them believe in it so strongly that they’d put their own reputation, and their own hard earned money, on the line to make it.

The truth is, “great ideas” in Hollywood are a dime a dozen. And so are writers with impressive track records.

But genuinely good scripts are incredibly rare.

A good script is gold in Hollywood. And you can write one.

Blake Snyder Can Show You How To Sell It. But He Can’t Show You How To Write It.

There’s a reason Blake Snyder’s magnum opus was Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot.

Whether the movie you’re writing is a deeply moving drama, a popcorn munching action flick, or a teen sex comedy, there’s no short cut around the writing process. At least not if you want to write a good movie.

The Four Phases of Writing

In my classes, I break down the writing process into four phases. I’ll be detailing them further in future newsletters, but for now, here’s a brief overview:

1. The ME Draft
2. The AUDIENCE Draft
3. The PRODUCER Draft
4. The READER Draft

What Blake Snyder is describing in Save The Cat! is actually simply the PRODUCER phase of this process: the stage of adaptation and revision that focuses on amplifying the most marketable elements in your screenplay to turn it into candy for producers.

It’s a great place to end up. But it’s a lousy place to start.

Don’t Spend Your Writing Life Feeling Like A Used Car Salesman

No offense to any used-car dealers out there, but you’re not going to break into an industry as competitive as the film industry by peddling a broken down jalopy with a fancy paint job.

You may fool your Aunt Ida. But a real producer can tell when an engine isn’t running.

Open Yourself To The Process

If you let yourself be seduced into thinking about the pitch before you even have anything worth selling, you’re not going to get where you want to go.

Just like the kid who talks the most smack on the basketball court is probably not going to the NBA. At least not until he learns to shoot.

Learning to shoot in the world of screenwriting begins with discovering your character, and taking him or her on a profound journey.

It means getting in touch with your subconscious creative mind, which could care less about marketability, and sales-pitches, and creating a story that exceeds your own plans and expectations.

Then, when you decide to “Save The Cat”, you’ll be doing it for the right reasons: to amplify and focus what already makes your screenplay great, and to shape it into a form that the producer can salivate over.

Don’t worry, you’re going to have plenty of time to sell out later. But you have to become a writer first.

Learn To Understand The Four Phases of Writing

Curious about learning a more effective way to “Save the Cat” in your own writing? Come check out my upcoming screenwriting workshops.

Rather than imposing a cheesy sales pitch from the outside, you’ll learn to identify the underlying hook that already exists in your work, and focus your writing to bring it to the surface, intensify your character’s journey, and shape a story that grabs your audience and won’t let them go.

A question from a student:

Question for you: I wrote a short script that this guy wants to film and possibly enter into some festivals. I just want the writing credit, no money- do you think a contract is necessary in a case like this? Or is a gentleman’s agreement usually good? Luke S.

Jake’s Answer:

Glad to hear about the upcoming move and even more exciting– the good news about this guy making your script.

Although I’m not a lawyer myself and can’t give legal advice, my suggestion, for both of your protection, never ever ever ever ever do a deal without a contract.

Get a standard, boiler plate contract (you can probably find one online or ask a lawyer or agent friend to find one for you). Have a lawyer friend make any modifications necessary, and make sure your lawyer friend looks it over before you sign anything.

Do not negotiate a deal yourself. Do not make up your own contract. Most likely neither of you know enough about the law or standard practices in the industry to make a deal that will actually protect you.

Written contracts clarify what both of your expectations are– and without them, many of the best partnerships can end up being destroyed– not only when things go badly, but also when they go well.

For example: Your movie ends up becoming the all time biggest festival hit ever. Hollywood decides they want to turn it into a feature… they’re offering a ton of money.

If you have a contract: You know in advance how much of that money you get, and your buddy knows how much he gets. You’re both happy and delighted and get to go have a drink and celebrate your success together.

If you don’t– you and your buddy now have to fight over how much of that money you deserve. He argues you would have had nothing without his producing. You argue he would have nothing without your script. Before long, you hate each other, and possibly even end up killing the deal because you can’t work out your side of the bargain and neither of you can move ahead without the other’s consent.

I can tell you from experience that fight will happen no matter how good a guy your friend may be– because people do crazy things when that much money is on the table.

Another example: The studio wants to make the movie, but they want to hire a bigger name writer. If you have a contract, your buddy tells them “sorry guys, I’ve got a contract with this guy– I can’t do it”.  If he doesn’t– he now has to make a choice between taking a stand for you, and possibly blowing not only the deal but his relationship with the studio, or saying yes to their demands and destroying his friendship with you. Not a fun situation to be in.

Use a lawyer. It won’t cost you nearly as much as the pain you suffer later if you don’t. Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts may even help you for free. And it may very well save your relationship.