You want to become a screenwriter? You need to be able to do more than simply write a good script. If your script is ever going to become a movie, you are going to have to work with other people. The sooner you learn how to accommodate their needs, the greater your chance of making a success of your screenwriting career.
Writing a Script is Only One Part of a Process
Let's start at the beginning by stating the obvious. A screenplay is not a novel. A novelist's words arrive in the hands of the person who reads them, often with very little interference from other people. With the growing popularity of E-books not even editors or publishers, or bookstores need to get in the way. The novel can go from author to reader at the click of a download button.
Screenwriters, on the other hand, need to learn to work with other people all along the difficult path to production.
If you want to be a successful scriptwriter, you will need to acquire the skills involved to...
- Get your script past the reader
- Sell yourself to the producer
- Work with the producer
- Work with the director
- Survive script meetings
- Work with other writers and script advisors
- Accommodate the actors
- Accommodate the demands of financiers
- Accommodate the demands of distributors
Essentials for Screenwriters
The hard fact is that part of the job of being a scriptwriter means working out how to to get along successfully with other people while still remaining true to your own creative ambition. If you can't work with other people, or are determined that your work reaches your audience without being subjected to or corrupted by the demands of other people, then maybe you should consider writing novels and self-publishing them as E-books right now.
Screenwriters needs reserves of three things in order to succeed:
- Confidence
- Concessions
- Creativity
Confidence
Always trust in your own judgment, don't let other people undermine your belief in your own ability, but don't let that confidence turn into arrogance where you refuse to listen to other people's points of view. Try to keep an open mind and listen to other people's arguments. If possible, try to analyse and get to the root of their problems in order to better understand their viewpoint and offer them a solution - a solution that suits both of you.
Concessions
It will benefit you enormously to learn what issues are big enough to fight over and when it really doesn't do the script any harm to concede a point and give in to someone else's demands. Sometimes producers make suggestions, which completely change the direction or point of a script, and writers have no option other than to fight for their script or be forced to walk away from the project. However, often there are small changes that producers ask for that are easy to accommodate without damaging the script. Whenever possible, the writer should make these concessions. It's better to save the big battles for the big things.
Creativity
Screenwriters normally have creativity in abundance, but very often, once they have written a script, they can become irrationally attached to every word on the page. Suddenly they behave as if the words have been carved in stone, and adapting to the idea of change becomes a difficult concept. Successful screenwriters know how to stay creative through the production process: being flexible when other people have problems with the script, getting creative and proposing compromises and solutions that satisfy everyone's needs.
Talented screenwriters understand the viewpoints of all the characters in their scripts.
Successful screenwriters understand the viewpoints of all the characters they encounter along the road to the production of the screenplay.
Get to know what motivates the producers, directors, actors, financiers and distributors and you'll be better equipped to give them what they want without compromising your own aims and ambitions.
Learn more about writing for stage and screen.
Janice Hally - Janice Hally has written more than 300 broadcast hours of prime-time TV drama in the UK, as well as fiction and non-fiction books.
