Here's a pertinent article I wrote a while back:
'The first time someone rejects your work it really hurts. You can't
believe it. You think you were stupid to even try to be a writer.
But, because you have that obsessive thing inside you which drove
you to finish a script in the first place, eventually, whether it's
in the next hour, day, or month, you send something else out.
Unless you're incredibly lucky that gets rejected too. But it
doesn't hurt quite so much. The next few times it hurts less and
less until, when your skin is tougher, you'll send off a bit of
writing you really believe in.
When that gets rejected you won't be hurt, you'll be incredulous.
You know you're not being over emotional, because you've learned
rejection doesn't matter. You are incredulous because you know that
was good writing - how could they reject it?
Well, that feeling is a great sign. You are getting closer to the
truth.
Which is this: People bounce bad writing, of course they do - but
they also bounce good writing. And, really really truthfully,
people bounce GREAT writing. I've seen it happen over and over
again.
This can be because of one or a combination of any of the following
factors:
- The company isn't looking for that type of script at the moment;
- They know of a similar project in development elsewhere;
- You are hooked up with a producer or a director they don't want to
work with;
- Your script landed on the desk of a person who absolutely loved
it, but they have no power within the company;
- Your script ended up being read by someone with executive power
but no taste;
- On and on and on.
Just because your screenplay got bounced 50 times doesn't prove
it's a bad screenplay. It may be bad, of course it may - but it may
just not have found its home yet. Different people like very, very
different scripts, and very different writers.
In general, and this is wider advice, you must learn not to rely on
other people for assessing your writing. I'm deadly serious here.
If you rely on other people to tell you whether you have done
well you will never develop your own weather vane.
You have to be able to trust your own sensibility. You develop this
by reading, and watching. That is the other full time aspect of
this job that they never tell you about.
Watch a lot of movies, a lot of TV. If you've never been a big
reader, it's not too late - start now. Get onto
www.script-o-rama.com and check out what's there. See what you
think is good, what you think is bad. Notice the amazing diversity
of the form - and try to work out what the scripts of the movies
you like all have in common. (But I wouldn't spend so much
time reading scripts by your friends or your writing group or
writers who have never had anything made - sorry if that sounds
harsh, but you can learn some very bad habits that way.)
Read some of the classic novels - the Victorian novels that have
survived and made it into classics are written by brilliant story
tellers. You can learn a lot there about texture, narrative, and
how to hook an audience.
The other aspect of your weather vane is your own assessment of
your own writing. When I want to know if a script is any good, I
make sure I haven't read it, even glanced at it, for a month or so.
Then I sit down and read it through in one go. If I get to the end
and it lights me up just the same as it did when I had just
finished it, I know the writing is at least OK. If I find myself
looking out the window, or getting up and making lots of cups of
coffee, I know I have a problem. I scribble a line across the
script at the point where I got distracted. Whatever the problem
is, it happened just before there.
If you can develop your own writing weather vane it will sustain you
through the dark days, when you are being rewritten, or cut about
by script editors (which happens to everyone at some stage).
All you have in this business is your own taste and sensibility.
That's what makes your writing your own. It's what people hire you
for, and in the end it's what audiences respond to.
Never take rejection personally. You can't afford to take it
personally. A lot, lot worse will happen to you in the industry
than simple rejection!'
Hope it helps.
Phil
