Tag Archives: Screenwriting

One of the most frustrating things about screenwriting is the time it takes for anything to happen. Anything. It takes time to figure out what to write. It takes time to research it. It takes time to write it, always longer than you think. Then come your rewrites. Time. More time.

Now you want someone to read it. It takes time to build a network of writers and trusted people in the industry to vet your work before you try to get it out to be optioned or sold. And then it takes time for them to read it and get back to you because they’re busy, too. This is if you want to do it right.

This doesn’t take in the time you need to write a bunch of scripts to get good enough to be able to maybe sell one. That’s a long time, too.

Now… You can write a script in two days and be done, have no one but your friends and family read it and then try to send it out. The chances it will not be complete crap are infinitesimally low, but you still have to sell it. And that’s where time really slows down.

And here we get to the most frustrating thing about dealing with new writers. Most expect instant gratification. They have no idea about the reality of film and TV production or they think their script is so good, that even knowing how long might take, they will be the exception to the rule. Nope. Not going to happen. Not. Going. To. Happen. Either way, their thought is: I will write this script. It will sell. I will be on the red carpet at the premiere in six months. Ok, three months.

Sounds like an exaggeration, right? Yeah. Ok. It’s a pretty harsh assessment. But it's what I hear. All the time. It's the expectation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard writers complain they haven’t heard anything from a reader and it’s been a WHOLE WEEK. Or the manager who requested it hasn't gotten back to them in a month. Or why can’t they get anyone to read their script right now? Why do I have to wait? Why is it so unfair that you can’t send an unsolicited script to anyone you want and have them read it the next day? Ok… I’m exaggerating again… but not by much.

The system is set up the way it is so that producers, production companies, agents, and managers are not so overwhelmed with product that they can’t read anything. There are hundreds of thousands of scripts out there looking for a home. And every writer of each of these believes they have the next hit film. That includes me. You should believe in your work. It’s essential to success. But the industry doesn’t believe you. Thus all the checks and balances and brick walls put up by the people in the film and TV business. It’s self protection from the avalanche of scripts that would engulf them.

And… getting through those checks and balances and brick walls takes time. A lot of time.

Want to know how long? It’s not weeks or months. It’s years. Mostly years and years. Yeah. That much time.

As a new writer who’s trying to get read by a manager or agent, if you're lucky enough to get a request based on your query, you need to know it could take weeks or months to get to the top of their pile. If you get read sooner, it’s a bonus. Once you have a manager or agent and they send your work out, it can still take weeks or months to get read. And longer after all the passes, because you have to do it all over again. I heard hundreds of no’s. Still do. You have to be patient. It hurts, but you have to.

Yes, there are fabulous sites like the Blacklist that may speed up the process, but nothing is guaranteed and it's a tough process to get through them, too. Still, I wish they'd been around when I started, but hey… c’est la vie.

But now, you hear yes. And you’ve optioned a script. Congrats.

Once you option something, even if it’s shortcutting time on the Blacklist?  Time? TIme slows to a crawl. You have no idea.

Someone has finally said, “YES”. Well, it’s not a real yes. It’s a qualified yes. They have notes and you need to rewrite your script to satisfy those. Whoops. Nice try. We need a second rewrite. More notes. Now another year has passed, good thing you gave them a renewal for another year. We might get Denzel, you need to rewrite it for him. More notes. Another three months. We didn’t get Denzel. But we have more notes. Another six months.

We have a director. He has notes and is going to do the rewrite himself. You sit and hear nothing for another six months. You email and call and they tell you to be patient. If you email and call too much, they’ll shut you out completely so you have to be careful. Then they hire another writer to rewrite it. And then they renew for the last yearly option. You’re in your third year. They tell you that they’re close to having financing. And another year passes and they say, “Sorry, we tried”. You get the rights back. To your original script. They still own all the changes you made based on their notes. You can sell the original again. And process starts once more.

This is the norm. A small percentage of scripts optioned actually get made. I optioned multiple scripts multiple times to Studios and BIG and small production companies for eighteen years and never got one film made. Made some good money, but never had an original script of mine made.

That changes this year, but that’s another blog. And yes, I have a bunch of credited films to my name. By the end of this year, I’ll have eight. Most of them are films where I rewrote the original writers so drastically that I got credited as a writer with them.

Getting a green light on a film is an amazing experience. You don’t believe it when it happens, even if it’s a script you rewrote. Seeing your storyline and characters and dialogue on screen is surreal. Why is it surreal? Lots of reasons, not the least of which is all the time it took.

There is NO instant gratification. There are no overnight successes. Everyone spent time becoming an overnight success. More time than you think.

Notes.

For the people who aren’t writers and read this, NOTES are the sometimes mandatory changes to a script you get from producers, directors, development execs, the guy who waters the plants at the production office, other writers, your friends, your ex-friends, actors, and anyone else you can think of that might have some fleeting interest in the film and TV business. Notes you can get at every stage of production. Notes you can get up to and including the day they get shot.

They can be as small as a change of a word in a sentence to changing the entire story. And all you can think of in between.

Yep. THOSE notes.

I’ve been on both sides of them. Getting them on my scripts and giving them on scripts I didn’t write, but would like to rewrite and get paid for. The giving part usually happens when a production company contacts me and wants me to read a script they’ve bought or optioned and then wants me to give them my opinion on it. This also happens, most of the time, after the original writer has been given a chance to do it but can’t or won’t change it the way they want.

For some writers this is a hard thing to do. Change their baby. Take something they slaved over to create and then have to throw out or change huge portions of it to fit what the people PAYING for it want. These writers think that their work is sacrosanct. And when I was first starting out I felt the same way. It’s perfect the way it is and shouldn’t be TOUCHED. I learned fast you can't think like that.

The only way it will stay the way you wrote it is if you put up the money to produce it yourself or lock it in a drawer and never have it see the light of day. Every script gets changed. Every one of them. And they all get changed in significant ways.

Which brings me back to notes.

When I get a script to rewrite, I get notes from the development execs and the producers to start. They’re usually very general and sweeping, otherwise they wouldn’t be hiring me. I do, mostly, what are called “page one rewrites” where I usually take the original author’s script and change it so much it's unrecognizable to them.

I don’t do this lightly and I always feel badly for the original author, but… they again, most of the time, have had their chance to do this and wouldn’t or couldn’t. Plus they’re still going to get a screen credit and paid. Often more than me.

So how do I do this?

I take their general notes, combined with the notes I gave on the script which the producers liked, and I write a draft. Then I write another one based on more notes after they read the first draft. Then another draft with more notes. And then if they don’t give it to another writer to rewrite again, I do a polish. Or rewrite it again.

Then the director might do his own draft or give me more notes to change it again to fit his vision. Then maybe another polish. Then a production draft… then… you get the drift. Any remote resemblance to the original script is a miracle.

This happens with almost every single script. Even most writer/director ones. Don’t worry about the exceptions because you know already if you’re one of them and you aren’t reading my blog.

I’ve been on the other side, too. I’ve had to rewrite my original scripts. Some more than others. A couple of times making them unrecognizable to me and I did the rewrite. Did these notes make my scripts better? In most cases I have to be honest and say they did. The notes made a few of them MUCH better. In one case, they made the script so much better I’m grateful to have worked with this director to get it to this point. And we’re on something like draft 31, I think.

And then there are the notes that make you wonder why the hell they even bought your script in the first place.

Yep. You can get notes that may turn your script into an award winner. And notes that may make you throw up in your mouth.

Again, a fact. If you option or sell a script YOU WILL GET NOTES. How you respond to them will have a great deal of influence on your career and maybe if you’ll even have one at all.

So you need to mentally set yourself before you get notes. KNOW they are not going to be what you want to hear. You have to be open minded and not instantly reactive. Give yourself time to think about them. I know when I do that, after some serious thought, I can often see how to use them to make the script better. Even when I hated them on first take.

And then if you truly hate some of them, fight for them not to be used. But don’t do it emotionally. If you do that, you lose.

One way to do this is to know your script and story and characters so well that you can intelligently and CALMLY explain why some notes will not work if they want to keep the story you wrote. How one change they want can have a ripple effect on the whole script, changing things they may not want changed. Or that the characters just wouldn’t do that and how it would affect the story. But you really do have to know your script inside and out so you can rationally explain why. This does work because I do it all the time and, more often than not, win those arguments.

BUT… if they want the changes, it’s up to you to implement them to the best of your ability, even if it hurts. And it does sometimes. You, as the writer, are one cog in a huge machine that is film and TV. You cooperate to your best ability and do the best job you can making the script the way they’ve asked for it to be and they will expand the way they use you. They will learn to trust you and might ask you for your opinion on things that may not even have to do with the script. It’s happened to me. It’s happening to me now on the script I have shooting in May.

As a screenwriter, the sooner you realize that script notes are an integral part of your job, whether pointed at you or coming from you, and realize it’s up to YOU to be cooperative and innovative in seeing those notes through, the sooner you are going to be recognized as a pro.

Welcome to my inaugural Blog. Why am I blogging? I love to write. And while I do write for a living, thanks to the kindness of the film and TV industry (and some miraculous help from God), sometimes when I’m stuck on a project or between projects, like I am now, this will give my writing psyche an outlet.

Luckily, something great happened to coincide with the timing of this first blog. Something to talk about.

As a screenwriter, besides writing a good script (which is the single hardest thing to do), the next hardest thing to do is to get your scripts out to be seen. Not just seen by people who would read them, but by people who would buy them and make them.

So let’s start with the understanding that you already have a great script (hard to do) and it’s ready to be exposed to the world. Now you want to sell it. How do you do that? (For all you experienced writers out there rolling your eyes because I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, I have a lot of non-industry friends who will read this.)

The standard ways:

Query: You put pen to paper (or nowadays fingers to keyboard) and write a compelling two paragraph note to producers, production companies, or potential agents and managers explaining why they should read your masterpiece. This does work, but you better be one damn outstanding letter writer. I’m not. I’ve never written one, but would if I had to.

Networking: This is where you ACTUALLY MEET PEOPLE IN THE INDUSTRY AND CULTIVATE RELATIONSHIPS. The CAPS were there because a lot of writers think networking is meeting someone in the industry for the first time and expecting them to do anything you want to make you successful and rich. Nope. Not it. Doesn’t work that way. Networking takes time and effort and developing genuine friendships with the people you’re networking with. Anything other than that is taking advantage of people. And the people in the industry know this and don’t like it. They don’t like it a lot.

Manager and Agent: To get one see: Query & Networking.

The non-standard ways:

Contests: Tough one. There used to be only a few of these and they meant something. Now there are too many to count and they don’t. If you win The Nicholl it still means something, but again… I think at last count there were 7000+ entries last year and one person won.

Websites:

And this is where we get to my good news.

For a long while in Hollywood there has been a short list of the best unproduced screenplays, for that year, published every December. Writers kill to be on it. It means instant legitimacy. It’s called “The Black List”. (More experienced writer eye rolling allowed here).

Well, with all this goodwill in the industry and only being a yearly thing, the man who runs the Black List, Franklin Leonard, came up with a way for writers to get their scripts out to the industry all year long. The Black List 3.0. A paid service where you can get your script hosted on the site and then, if you want, get paid reviews by professional readers employed by the Black List. And if your reviews are rated 8 to 10 (on a 10 scale), you make their published “Top List” and your script goes on a weekly Email blast to industry professionals. And sometimes those scripts get picked up (optioned) by those companies. A good thing.

I have a great manager, John McGalliard of Chaotik Management, a man who I got through networking. (Thank you Jay Lowi) He’s the man who got my work out to production companies and how I got my first credited produced film (hell, he got me four credited produced films) and all my wonderful rewrite and write for hire jobs. He’s my friend and very good at what he does. The only thing wrong with him is that he’s in too good physical shape. No one should be that fit.

So, after reading about this service and reading other writers discussions, pro and con, about it, I decided to see what it was all about myself with what I call “My Black List Experiment”.

Like most writers, I want to see what people think of my work and at the same time I’m scared to see what people think of my work. What makes the Black List different is that this is a place to find that out and maybe sell something at the same time. So, I placed one of my original scripts, a very big broad commercial comedy, on the Black List... and, to my relief, the readers rated it with 8's and one 9. (I like these readers)

I hovered near the top of their “Top List” and was included in the email blast a few weeks in a row. More than a few downloads by industry pros later and… Holy Smokes… got an email and a call from a production company that has made and distributed eight films in the last three years, some of them very successful. Not some fly by night wannabes, but real industry players. They wanted to option the script with every intention of putting it on their film slate and making it in the next couple of years. (Movies take a long time)

They sent a contract. Time to call John. I did. He handled the option negotiations with his usual care, toughness, and fairness, which ended up being a more than a month long. And now… thanks to his due diligence, the contracts are signed.

(fireworks go here)

My two foot tall stack of original scripts now has one less script on it. Yay. It also means I have to write more.

The Black List Works. It worked for me. It’s not going to work for everyone every time. It can’t. But it’s a viable new way to get your work out there. And real honest to goodness moviemakers are using it to find content. Thank you Franklin. I owe you a drink next time I’m in LA.

Writing Outside of LA, My Interview with Bob Saenz

Screen shot 2I had the pleasure of discussing screenwriting with Bob Saenz, a Bay Area local, actor, screenwriter, and all around great guy. In my quest to capture the screenwriting activities of folks in the Bay Area and prove that it can be done without living in Los Angeles, I interviewed Bob about his experience and advice for those of us trying to make our first sell. I am sure you will find his comments useful!
Justin: You have proven that you don’t have to live in Los Angeles to write screenplays. Do you feel this can be attributed to any one aspect of your career/one choice?
Bob: Yes. I don’t want to live there. Easy as that. I love the Bay Area. It’s my home and with skype and email and conference calls and Southwest Airlines at my beck and call, I’ve never had anyone blink twice that I live here instead of LA. Doesn’t mean it will always be that way, but so far so good. I’ve only had to be in LA the next day once and I made the meeting. Oh… I also wrote good scripts that people wanted and where I lived didn’t matter as long as I had those. 

Justin: That is great you have been able to make it work. Like you said, the good script is key! I understand you have acted as well. How much do you feel your acting has helped with your craft as a writer? How much has it helped with the networking to establish yourself as a writer? Did you act only in the Bay area, or did you live in Los Angeles at some point?

Bob: Yes, I started out as an actor. I’m a 20 year SAG/Aftra member. Being on sets has helped me as a writer more than being an actor (I’m not that great an actor anyway), and I’ve been lucky to have been on sets, both film and TV,  with some iconic

directors and actors and kept my mouth shut, for the most part, and my eyes open and gotten an amazing education on how film and TV operate. And yes, the networking I did on set was crucial to my writing getting seen by the right people. I’ve been fortunate to have never sent a query letter to anyone. Most of my acting jobs were here in the Bay Area, but I have been hired to act in LA films and gone there to do it. Fortunately, for the viewing public, I’m not acting much anymore. Too busy with writing jobs, thank you God.

Justin: Haha, I am sure the viewing public misses you! But as someone who has acted and now writes, I completely agree that sometimes writing can be more fulfilling. I understand you have adapted fiction and non-fiction works for the screen. What is the biggest challenge of doing this? I have considered approaching one of my published friends about such an endeavor. Would you advise aspiring writers try this as another way to get their foot in the door?

Bob: It’s a fabulous experience and one that any writer hoping to do this should try at some point. I’ve adapted a non-fiction book, working with the author to make sure I did it justice and adapted a novel without the author’s help. Both times I had to learn to combine events and plot points and characters, add scenes and characters, delete subplots, you name it…. all to make a book fit a two hour viewing window and try to not lose the original material. And if you have the rights to a great book and can turn out a great script based on it, YES… it can be another way through the door. I just optioned the rights to a story that was in the newspapers all over the world last year.

Help_for_the_Holidays_-_Poster

Justin: I look forward to discussing this further, as I have some ideas in mind for books I would like to option from an author I know. It certainly seems a smart way to go. IMDB shows your movie “Help for the Holidays” came out in 2012 and “Extracurricular Activities” is in production. That is very exciting! How many scripts did you write to get to this point? Are you willing to share any particularly interesting adventures you have had along the way?

Bob: Help for the Holidays was a Hallmark Channel Christmas film in 2012. It was the number one rated original film on Hallmark in 2012 and the number 10 rated Hallmark film of all time. It did help that Summer Glau starred in it, but it was an unqualified hit for them. And didn’t hurt me much with them either.

And I just got a director’s cut last week of Cupid’s Bed & Breakfast, the next film I wrote for them. A romantic comedy/drama that’s not as cutesy as the title might make you think. It’s not even on IMDb yet, but will be soon. I am unbelievably happy with the way the film turned out.

I sold them another original script, “The Right Girl”, a romantic comedy that I wrote with my good friend (and great writer) Jeff Willis. We’re doing paid rewrites on it as we speak. It will shoot sometime in the fall. And Extracurricular Activities is scheduled to shoot about the same time. It’s a theatrical film. One that will be released to theaters. Hopefully, a lot of theaters. I’m really happy with the well-known (Oscar nominated) actors involved but can’t say anything public yet about it. It’s being packaged by CAA.

All I can say is that it wasn’t an overnight thing. It’s taken close to 20 years. Lots of rejection and lots of incredible heartbreaking moments when something almost got made but didn’t and lots of fakes and charlatans along the way who prey on new writers (luckily I got good really fast at spotting them),  and through it all I never gave up. I have a couple of dozen scripts and four original pilots all ready to go and ideas on my white board for many more scripts, including two true stories.

And this week, signed a contract to write an episode of a new hour long cable network series for the fall… can’t tell you what it is yet, but will be able to in the near future I think. And… a couple of really good and successful directors who say they have ideas for me when I come up for air.

Justin: That is wonderful! You have accomplished a great amount and I can’t wait to hear more about this cable network series. Congrats! You seem to have a talent for writing movies that are contained, meaning there are no alien’s blowing up the world or massive car chases. Is this part of your strategy? Do you have any words of wisdom to share with aspiring screenwriters regarding this?

Bob: There’s a very good reason for this. Big movies can only be sold to four or five people in the industry. Small films can be sold to a whole lot more. I’ve chosen to go after the better opportunity. I always have a budget in mind before I even start a script, so I know I have to write a great script within those numbers.  It works for me.  Producers can always make something bigger as they develop a script. I’ve found they don’t buy something with the idea of cutting it back. It’s easier to sell a lower budget film. It’s a fact. Oh… I do have a very funny massive car chase in one of my scripts, but then it’s one where I said, “To hell with the budget”. But it’s the only one of my originals with that kind of budget…. all the other ones are a lot smaller.

Justin: Finally, do you have any other advice to other screenwriters in the Bay are that want to get established here without relocating?

Bob: Keep at it. Write. Write. Write. Read good scripts and see how it’s done. Read awful scripts and see how it’s not done. Write. Write. And write. Don’t give up. And when you think you have that one great script… get a manager. Query them with it. My manager, who I got on a referral from a director, has made a world of difference to my career. And it all came from one script I wrote that everyone loves in Hollywood, “Extracurricular Activities”. And I never told people I lived in Northern California before they read it. They never asked and I never told them. Afterward, it didn’t matter. Oh and you need to have money to get back and forth to LA. I go every other month or so for a week at a time. It can be expensive.SONY DSC

There you have it, words of wisdom we can all learn from. I plan on meeting up with Bob in the near future and getting to know him better. He seems like a great guy and even plays in a band called The BSides – check them out if you get a chance, and watch some of his films! It is comforting to know we have folks working outside of Los Angeles.

 

This interview appeared word for word on Justin’s site, http://www.bayareascreenwriters.org/writing-outside-of-la-my-interview-with-bob-saenz/