You're not trying to sell your first script

you're trying to start a career -- and those are different things

There's this assumed narrative out there in screenwriting guru land that if you just craft a perfectly structured screenplay you'll sell it and then, like a slot machine: presto change-o, you're a screenwriter. Just from what I've seen, I don't really think the industry works like that.

As an outsider, your goal shouldn't be to sell your breaking-in script. Of course, selling that first script would be really fucking nice. No argument there. But I don't think that should be your goal.

First of all, there's the issue of actually selling it. Especially as an outsider. Here's the bad news: there just isn't a real market for original screenplays. Right now, it seems every studio and producer wants a preexisting intellectual property to control, even if it's just an obscure news article or an out of print book or a half-forgotten, unloved film from the 1980s.

Last year, according to Go Into the Story, Hollywood studios bought just twenty-five spec scripts. Twenty-five! All year long, including streaming studios. Of course, that's probably much lower than the actual number, but it's still far from inspiring. If you glance at the list of spec sales, you won't see many first timers on there. Mostly, those twenty-five spec scripts are written by the sorts of folks who've written Fast & Furious movies, Disney movies, Marvel superhero movies. These aren't outsiders or people just breaking into the industry. These are people who have established reputations and relationships. These are insiders.

So, is all hope lost? Not necessarily. But, if you're an outsider hoping to launch your career by selling your script, you might want to take a moment to rethink things. Because getting paid to write multiple scripts over a series of years — aka having a screenwriting career — doesn't really happen in 2021 by making one magical sale in a mythical market that doesn't actually exist. Having a screenwriting career happens by being a writer who has meaningful industry relationships and an established reputation and a marketable skill set. It happens by becoming an insider.

That's why I think your main goal with your breaking-in script isn't to make a sale, but to get into conversations with agents and executives and producers and directors and actors and actresses and any other person who legitimately works in the entertainment industry.

If you start doing that, then you might start finding those fortuitous accidental encounters where you just happen to be exactly the right beginning writer with the right writing sample and/or the right life experiences that some company or studio or producer is looking to (cheaply) bring onto some project they already control. (I'll share thoughts in future posts about how to approach conceiving and writing your breaking-in script with these tangible goals in mind.)

Here are the first gigs that let me quit my new professor job in Tacoma, Washington ten years ago and become a full-time screenwriter:

1) I got hired as a freelancer to write two episodes for a new TV show

2) I got hired by a TV studio to write a pilot based on an actor's idea

3) I got hired by a different TV studio to create an original TV show based on my own idea

4) I got hired by a producing team with an overall deal at a different TV studio to adapt a series of foreign crime books into a TV show

I got these gigs all in quick succession, based on a week and a half of industry meetings that got set-up based on my breaking-in script TANGLE EYE and my slightly unusual biography (trailer park type dude who became an award-winning poet with a Ph.D.).

It would take two more years after getting the above gigs until I felt comfortable moving myself and my family to LA. And one of the above gigs actually fell through when a rights issue torpedoed the project. None of the three pilots got made.

Looking back, I think I got these first jobs for three reasons:

1) The people involved liked my breaking-in script enough to meet with me

2) After meeting with me, they thought I was a good match for their project

3) I was cheap

And more or less, I still think the most realistic entry points to a screenwriting career is pretty similar to my entry points: becoming a cheap original voice who someone hires to either staff a TV show or to adapt a property that they already control.

At the start of your career, I think those are the gigs you should be aiming at. And your breaking-in script should be your calling card for initiating the conversations and getting the meetings that might lead to those sorta gigs.

I never sold my breaking-in script TANGLE EYE. But after a writer friend of mine shared that script, it did catch the eye of a pair of lit agents at a small boutique agency, who are still my agents (now at a big four talent agency). And after those agents shared my script, it also caught the eye of a manager at a pretty big management company, who is still my manager.

Then with those reps' connections and reputations, TANGLE EYE got me a week and a half of industry meetings. And those meetings led to my first paying jobs. And all of this led to more and more meetings. And that led to a wider network of fans within the industry, some of whom have become my collaborators.

I've been working pretty steadily for ten years now. I've never had a big flashy sale. Instead, my career has been quietly built by creating and maintaining and expanding a series of mutually beneficial working relationships. And those relationships all started with one of four different spec scripts that I've written on my own, for free, in my own voice, at different stages of my career, with each serving as the bridge to the next phase of my career. (More on this in a later post as well.)

I don't really know how other writers start and maintain their careers. I don't tend to mingle that much and I don't attend WGA functions. So I'm just speaking from my own experience. But looking back at, say, my last ten jobs or job opportunities, here's what led to them:

1) A producer became a fan of mine after she read my spec feature THE OLYMPIAN. We'd met and hit it off and stayed in touch. A year or two later, I sent her an original script I'd written because I was hoping we could work together.

2) A producer who I met and hit it off with after they read THE OLYMPIAN reached out a couple years later to see if I'd be interested in adapting a book into a TV show. We developed, pitched, and sold the show to a pair of studio executives who I'd worked with on a previous project.

3) A producer who I met and hit it off with after they read THE OLYMPIAN reached out to see if I'd be interested in adapting a foreign film.

4) After the experience of project #3, the same producer reached out to see if I'd be interested in adapting a short story into a film.

5) A cable executive who I'd worked with previously reached out to see if I'd be interested in adapting a book into a TV show.

6) My manager reached out to see if I'd be interested in helping out a younger writer creating an original TV show.

7) My manager paired up with a producing team who were fans of my TV work and they reached out to see if I'd be interested in adapting a foreign film.

8) A producer who I met and hit it off with after they read THE OLYMPIAN reached out to see if I'd be interested in adapting a true life story into a feature.

9) A couple of cable network executives who I'd worked with previously reached out to see if I'd be interested in helping make a TV show that my manager was also a producer on.

10) A producer who I'd pitched a TV show to years earlier when he was an executive reached out to see if I'd be interested in taking over a TV project in development.

That's my last couple of years. These jobs and these opportunities were just about always initiated by the other parties. That is, I wasn't going out blindly chasing them as open writing assignments. At this point of my career, that’s a definite advantage that I have over, say, a beginning outsider. But also, in just about every case, I still had to go in and win the gig. Often while competing against other writers. (I'm a working screenwriter but not a name one, so I still have to sing for my supper.)

Perhaps also notable: only one of these ten projects has gotten made. So far.

But most importantly, basically all of these jobs and opportunities arose out of preexisting relationships. Someone had read my script and liked it enough to meet with me. Then we connected enough in one form or another upon meeting to pursue a working relationship, sometimes years down the line.

Or, someone found our previous working relationship enjoyable or productive enough to reach out again when they had another property they thought I might be a good match for.

You can call it networking, but it doesn't feel like that to me. To me, it feels like meeting with people in good faith and occasionally finding those individuals who you genuinely dig and get on a nice wavelength with. And then hoping that either you or them finds the project that you can work on together.

However sustainable my career manages to be going forward, it won't be based on me making a huge splashy sale. Maybe that's simply because I'm not a big idea type of writer. (My story brain thinks it's working in Hollywood circa 1973.) Rather, my career will continue or not based on how well I maintain and refresh and expand and deepen a series of genuine working relationships that both myself and my collaborators find worthwhile.

I think trying to start your career by selling your script is counterproductive. It's not just that the market for original scripts is pretty much nonexistent. It's that a big sale won't help you two or five or ten years down the road, when you're looking for the jobs that'll help you pay that year's bills. Because you have to keep getting these jobs, over and over again, in order to have a career. Building a healthy network of meaningful, genuine, mutually-beneficial working relationships is probably the best bet for getting these jobs.

But before you build these relationships, you have to meet with industry people. And if you’re an outsider, you’ll only get industry people interested in meeting with you if they think you can help their careers. And that's what you want your breaking-in script to do. So don’t think of your breaking-in script as some potential sale. Think of your breaking-script as your passport into Hollywood rooms.

By the first 5 to 10 pages, your breaking-in script should be making living, breathing industry people think, “I’ve got to meet this writer.” That’s a very different goal than trying to write a perfectly structured screenplay that gets a good score from a reading service. Or trying to write a script that’ll sell. Or even trying to write a script that’ll make a good, you know, movie.

If you’re an outsider, try to write a breaking-in script that makes industry people want to meet with you. Easier said than done, of course. But if you manage to do it, that kind of script might actually help you start a career in a way that making a sale in a make-believe market simply won’t.