Spec Screenwriter

jonpiper said:

Who among us are writing a portfolio of scripts in order to showcase their skills so they can be hired by a production company as opposed to those who are writing spec scripts they intend to sell?

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I'm kind of aiming for both. I'm trying to write a commercial script or two that I wouldn't mind having my name on if it got produced.

Selling a spec increases your chances of landing assignments. Selling a spec that gets made increases your chances even more.

The writer doesn't actually get to decide which scripts are samples and which scripts are sellable specs. The market does that. All the writer can do is write the best script he can write.

If you decide to write a horror script to show that you can write horror, you want to write it so you have a shot at selling it. If you're thinking, This is a great writing sample, but no one will ever want to buy it or make it, you're headed in the wrong direction.

I believe that breaking in is very hard so I'm going at it in as many routes as possible.

icerose said:

I believe that breaking in is very hard so I'm going at it in as many routes as possible.

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same here.

jonpiper said:

Who among us are writing a portfolio of scripts in order to showcase their skills so they can be hired by a production company as opposed to those who are writing spec scripts they intend to sell?

I'm advanced in age and don't see myself beginning a career as a screenwriter for hire. I want to sell a spec script . . . or two. I'm honing my screenwriting skills so I may write that one-in- a-million newcomer's script that sells and gets produced.

Am I crazy?

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There's no difference.

In TV, one explicitly writes "sample episodes" -- and the advice (although it's gone back and forth in recent years) was that you *didn't* specifically write an episode for the show you wanted to sell for -- and when they were staffing up, your agent would send the sample episode to the producers and they might or might not hire you, based on that writing sample.

It doesn't work that way in features. A feature is a feature. Unless you do something unforgiveable wacky like write a spec for "Spiderman 4" -- every spec you write is obviously for sale.

And every script you write and which gets sent around, likewise, whether it gets bought or not, is a sample of your work.

Either way -- selling or optioning a spec -- or getting an assignment from a spec as a work sample -- is tough.

That's because in both cases you're in competition with more experienced writers with more impressive track records who also are trying to sell specs and get those assignments.

There's a kind of inertia -- a tendency for producers to hire writers that they know -- or at least whose work they know of -- it represents a kind of comfort zone in which they feel they can more easily operate.

A new writer, an unsold writer -- even if they like the script -- is always going to be a question mark.

NMS

jonpiper said:

I'm advanced in age and don't see myself beginning a career as a screenwriter for hire.

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I'm in the same situation.

I think the stages of my screenwriting are:

1. Denial: "My scripts aren't that bad"
2. Anger: "It's not fair that bad movies get made, but no-one wants to produce MY work"
3. Bargaining: "OK - Romcoms are hot. I'll just do one of those to get made"
4. Depression: "I'm getting too old to succeed. Why bother trying?"
5. Acceptance: "It's OK - Screenwriting is just a hobby"

I call this the 'Kübler-Ross model' of screenwriting.

Mac

jonpiper said:

Who among us are writing a portfolio of scripts in order to showcase their skills so they can be hired by a production company as opposed to those who are writing spec scripts they intend to sell?

I'm advanced in age and don't see myself beginning a career as a screenwriter for hire. I want to sell a spec script . . . or two. I'm honing my screenwriting skills so I may write that one-in- a-million newcomer's script that sells and gets produced.

Am I crazy?

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Yep.

jonpiper said:

Am I crazy?

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Yes - like the rest of us.

odocoileus said:

Selling a spec increases your chances of landing assignments. Selling a spec that gets made increases your chances even more.

The writer doesn't actually get to decide which scripts are samples and which scripts are sellable specs. The market does that. All the writer can do is write the best script he can write.

If you decide to write a horror script to show that you can write horror, you want to write it so you have a shot at selling it. If you're thinking, This is a great writing sample, but no one will ever want to buy it or make it, you're headed in the wrong direction.

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Ditto. The point of writing a script is to sell it, and hopefully you'll find a willing market. However, say your script is dated by that market's standards but they like your style, well now you've just opened a bunch of new doors for yourself. I think it's good to want to sell your scripts, but I think it's bad if you're limiting yourself to just spec work. There has to be some flexibility on the part of the writer in that sense. But, if spec work is all that you want to do, be prepared for a lot of rejection. Hope for the best, but expect the worse as they say.

And NMS is right too. There really isn't a difference between spec material and sample material, they are one and the same. However, it's your decision how you use them.

jonpiper said:

Kristy and NMS, good points
I started this thread because I love to write in this form and because of the age issue. I just sold a small business I'd had for many years and am, to tell the truth, too old to begin a career as a screenwriter for hire.

Just want to get a feel for how many of us are pursuing screenwriting in order to make it a full time paying job, how many are doing it as a part time hobby while they earn a living elsewhere, and how many are in my boat.

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The point is -- I was writing screenplays *seriously* for years -- through high school and college and graduate school and afterward.

When I was in college, I sold a treatment for 250 dollars - it never got made. After college, I worked at various jobs -- still writing screenplays, for something like eight years -- during that time, I had two screenplays optioned -- for a grand total of something like 2500 dollars -- neither of them got made -- before I sold my first teleplay -- that was a half-hour that brought me in something like three grand (with residuals it added up to significantly more).

After that, I went to work for the company that bought that first teleplay, doing story consulting work and some additional script-writing.

But even with all of the teleplays that I wrote for them, I didn't actually earn my living *just* writing for another six years -- until after they'd shut their doors and I was on my own.

But it wasn't as if screenwriting was a "hobby" during all of those years. I was working very hard at it -- but I also had to make a living. I'd gotten married. I had a family.

But screenwriting was never like collecting baseball cards for me -- my goal was always to sell my work and to make it my profession.

NMS

jonpiper said:

I wonder how many of us are treating this as more than a hobby but less than a full time job?

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I write for a living, web content, ad copy, whatever will pay the bills. I write enough to support myself. But that is not my passion.

Passion=storytelling. At least to me. Which is why I write short stories and screenplays. When one sells, I'm elated even if it is for little more than a pittance.

But, is my passion for storytelling strong enough to get me to move to Hollywood (or LA) just so I can write stories that are not my own. No.

I haven't sold a screenplay yet, yet hope springs eternal always. But, like you I'm way to old to leave my side of the mountain and all the things I have built here that I call life to move into an unknown.

So like you, I'll keep writing them. I'll keep submitting them. I'll keep hoping that I get lucky and someone wants one or more of them.

Yes, much more than a hobby, but less of a career move on my part.

Kat

jonpiper said:

Just want to get a feel for how many of us are pursuing screenwriting in order to make it a full time paying job, how many are doing it as a part time hobby while they earn a living elsewhere, and how many are in my boat.

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I'm doing this as a hobby. I wrote my first screenplay somewhere between 2000 and 2003. I started again in 2005. I began to try writing a novel throughout 2006. Started various stories (along with notes and outlines) in 2007 that will be completed later.

And I'm currently writing a screenplay as of now, '08.

I plan to write both screenplays and novels. My hopes are to eventually have a sale in either one. This would be a wonderful accomplishment I could be proud of.

I take my screenwriting seriously. I am trying to be a professional. Would Ilike to move to L.A.? Sure. I think it is realistically the only way to do what I really want to do. Do I have a way in? Not yet. I will move when I feel I have a realistic chance to succeed in it. Then I have the problem of immigration. I live in Canada and I am a Canadian citizen. It's not like I can just walk across the border and start working. Even if they loved my script and decided to hire me to write a spec script, I could't just take the job because I don't have a green card. So what do I do in the meantime? I take the script that I placed in the top 10% at Nicholl's last year and I re-write it to get it into a least the 1/4 finals. Then I think I have a realistic chance.

ricetalks said:

I take my screenwriting seriously. I am trying to be a professional....I live in Canada and I am a Canadian citizen.

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Why are you targeting the US film industry rather than the Canadian film industry? It seems like there might be some real advantages to the latter.

Because when I look at the Canadian industry there seems to be a complete lack of opportunity and when I see what gets funding in the Canadian industry it makes no sense to me. I really don't understand how the system is suppose to work and how they decide what they are going to fund seems to be almost entirely arbitrary. The films the government funding bodies decide to fund rarely make their money back, if ever, have almost no audience at home or abroad and, it seems, that if you have your foot in the door of the government funding agencies you fail upwardly. It's like living with Alice through the looking glass. Our biggest and supposedly best known filmmakers are almost entirely unknown to the general population. In private conversations people will admit how terrible they think these filmmakers are (and they all write their own scripts anyway) but nobody will say it publicly. The king has no clothes. Anad this state of affairs in Canada has exsisted for a long time. (At least 20 years.) Anyone who ever made any substantial mark on the film industry certainly didn't do it by staying in Canada. They have always left and headed to the U.S.

ricetalks said:

Because when I look at the Canadian industry there seems to be a complete lack of opportunity.... Anyone who ever made any substantial mark on the film industry certainly didn't do it by staying in Canada. They have always left and headed to the U.S.

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Fair enough--I don't see a lot of Canadian movies myself. I just thought it might be easier because a) your currency is so much stronger than ours right now, and b) there are actual grant-supported programs there, unlike here where there are none.

Just wondering what your take on this was. Thanks for the details.

Presently, our currency isn't sstronger. It was there for a little while, worth about 2 or 3 cents on the dollar more. Presently, it is worth about .98 on an American dollar. However, it has risen from being worth about .76 ccents on the dollar about three or four years ago to what it is now, which is a sharp increase in three years. However, oddly enough, this hurts the Canadian Film Industry because the vast majority of the activity in the Canadian Film business is a "service industry". What this means is the vast majority of work in the industry is from American producers who bring American films with American money to Canada to shoot thier films and take advanatge of cheaper Canadian labour by way of their money being worth much more here when they exchange it. When our dollar is at .75, an American dollar exchanges for a premium of about 1.32. Well, you can see where that advantage goes as soon as the Canadian dollar rises to par. Pretty much out of the window. Insofar as being a Canadian screenwriter, films that come here to shoot have already created their projects, cut their deals and sold the pre-rights before they ever come up here, so it does nothing for guys like me. If you want to drive a truck or haul a cable and carry a sand bag, you're in good company.

ricetalks said:

Presently, our currency isn't stronger. It was there for a little while, worth about 2 or 3 cents on the dollar more. Presently, it is worth about .98 on an American dollar.

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Weirdly, the Canadian dollar is slightly stronger against the Euro than the US dollar despite this. I will never understand currency exchange.

Thanks for all this good info. The ironic thing is that many people in the US think that it must be so much easier and better to be in the creative side of the film business in Canada...

Today, the Canadian dollar is worth .9916 U.S. That means it takes $1.60 Can. to buy 1 Euro dollar. It takes $1.5891 Amer. to buyone Euro dollar. That means the American dollar is stronger than the Canadian against the Euro because it takes less of them to buy a Euro.

'...and am, to tell the truth, too old to begin a career as a screenwriter for hire.' ~ a guy i work with just got his pilot's license. he's 70.

'I wonder how many of us are treating this as more than a hobby but less than a full time job?' ~ i have a day job (i build humvee engines) and a business (convenience store and trophy/engraving shop). my normal work day drags on for 14 hours (6 a.m. to 8 p.m.). it's very rare that i even get to sit down and post between customers let alone sit down to, you know, do that writing thing i'm supposedly here to do.

yet i find a little bit of time to do it. so, yeah, right now it's in a hobby phase, but not for a lack of desire. if i could make a viable career doing it i would. and maybe someday i'll be in that position. maybe not.

and you hear all the time about how some script has been floating around for ten or fifteen years. none of us may even be around next week let alone *that* far down the road. but, you can write a lot of stuff and if it ever sells let your estate reap the rewards.

i'd relocate to the land of Gwar if i knew i could turn a buck somewhat consistently. but, no, i'm not going to pack for an extended stay just because i happened to sell a screenplay. i'd gladly write someone else's idea, but i don't know if it's absolutely imperative that i live in l.a. to do something like that, not in this day in age. obviously it's better to hop in your ride and scoot down to the office and have lunch with the guys... unless you're some anti-social crank.

in the end, i'd be perfectly happy writing specs and doing work-for-hire. and were it just me i'd probably be there right now. clearly if you were doing teleplays then you'd have to live there, but that's not my goal. still, i have no qualm with jetting out there and meeting with people as long as it doesn't take a month to do so.

jon, i'm probably crazy, too ~ i believe, for some odd reason, that if you write a great script then someone's going to notice.