Where Can I Send My Screenplay Part 2 Electric Boogaloo

A long time ago I posted an entry on Where Can I Send My Screenplay, and I still get hits on it pretty regularly. Periodically I'll even get a comment from someone telling me how wrong I am.

My advice is simple, and echoes the advice of many other writers before me: DO NOT send out your first screenplay.

To me, that's just common sense. My first short story sucked. My first poem sucked. I was learning the craft. Why would I think my first screenplay was any different?

You have got to learn the craft, people. You have got to know what you're doing if you want to become a professional screenwriter. Imagine the incredible ego you have to have to think you can do something one time and suddenly be an expert at it, but with screenwriting that happens all the time.

I don't know how many screenplays I've written because I didn't count and I didn't do more than a first draft on several, but it's at least 8. Then finally, after several experiments with what works and what doesn't, I wrote something worth reading. Then I wrote a second script worth reading. Now I think I know what I'm doing enough not to suck. But it takes practice.

The reason I give this advice is not to sabotage people - quite the opposite. I'm a teacher and I give advice for a living. I hate seeing people waste their time or their opportunities. I'm not the only one who has a story about a manager or agent or producer getting a copy of one of my early scripts, completely ready to give me a chance to prove myself, only to realize later that what I gave them was total crap. Years later I tried to give one of my contacts a second script, a good one that has gotten good reviews, but the guy wasn't interested. He saw what I could do years ago and it was terrible. Why would he want to read anything else I wrote?

I get why people are resistant to this advice. Screenplays take a lot of work and a lot of time we could be doing things like hiking or staring at things, and to think that was nothing more than practice is tough to take, but there it is. This is not a business for the faint of heart.

Think about it - there are probably thousands of people trying to break into the industry, plus all the people who've already broken in, and you're competing with all of them for a spot. Why would you think you have a snowball's chance in hell if you just threw your first effort at them when all of these other people have been at this for years, working to improve? It makes no sense.

But sure, send it out if you want to. Waste your time writing queries when you could be writing your second script. It's no skin off my back if you want to learn the hard way.

Here is part 3 of this discussion.

Thoughts on the documentary: Tales From The Script

Last night I attended a screening of a new documentary called Tales from the Script, about the screenwriting industry. It was essentially two hours of talking heads mixed with scenes from movies about movies.

Not that it's necessarily a bad thing, but after two hours of talking heads followed by and hour Q and A of talking heads, I was longing for a fist fight. Zack Penn seemed pretty combative, but he never got out of his chair and punched anybody, so I nearly fell asleep.

I wish the director, Peter Hanson, had set some of these interviews outside or at a coffee shop or SOMETHING. They were almost all upper torsos of writers at their desks.

Despite that, I recommend - nay, INSIST - that every new writer watch this film. It will be out sometime, someday, and then I'll tell everybody to go get it. If you are just now considering writing a screenplay or you just wrote your first and want to know how to make money off it, you MUST watch this film. It will answer many of your questions and erode your delusions about what you're getting into.

The movie was funny as hell in places. I don't think people outside the Industry will really get it, but for those of us in the trenches, jokes abound, and some sobering stories too.

I learned a few things. First, ALWAYS send in your best work. I don't care if it's a first draft, it should be as good a story as you can make it. Guenevere Turner sent her first draft of Bloodrayne to Uwe Boll, prepared for endless notes and rewrites, and he decided to shoot the draft she sent him. Granted, he's Uwe Boll, so he sucks, but still. Every draft should be a shooting draft.

Second, writers are a whiny people. Yes, the studio craps on you, but Jesus, it's all anybody talked about for half the movie. Guenevere, who is one of my new favorite people despite having written Bloodrayne, finally observed toward the end of the film that she gets to wake up at 10, spend all day writing, party every night, and gets paid a substantial amount to do so.

Yes, thank you. Those of us with day jobs would like the full time paid professional writers out there to kindly shut the fuck up about how hard your job is. You can complain some - we all complain some, and you certainly have your fair share of shit to deal with - but then please remember how lucky you are that somebody pays you to do what you love all day. Larry Cohen actually made a good point about that in the Q and A. He reminded us all to write because we like writing, not to please anyone else. If you do that, he said, you'll be happy.

Seeing this film also made me think for a second about how tiny I am. I was sitting there with my writer friends in a theater packed with writers, most of whom have never sold a screenplay, all of whom made the jaunt to Los Angeles because they think they have what it takes. Larry Cohen also told us that most people can learn to write a screenplay, but few people have the natural talent to write a good one.

And I thought Yeah, all these people think he's not talking about them. And then I thought, I don't think he's talking about me either.

Then I thought, oh man, each person here is just like me. They think they're good. They think they'll make it. Most of them are wrong. What the fuck makes me so special?

Then I shrugged and thought, fuck it. I am special.

Because here's the big lesson to come out of Tales from the Script. You have to be convinced that there is nothing else in your life you were meant to do. Screenwriting is frustrating and disappointing as hell - William Goldman is the most miserable writer in this thing - but it's fun if it's your calling. Only the most determined will make it. So you do it for the love.