This is a series of articles I've written about writing, specifically about the problems faced by (a) the new writer who isn't selling enough work yet to make a living or (b) the older writer who isn't selling as much as they used to. To read other installments, click here.
Here's another column about writing on spec and why you shouldn't do that very often. Hey, what do you say we start with an excerpt from a message I received from a young writer who has very few credits, at least of the kind he hopes to amass? You may understand why he asked me to omit his name…
Your story about being asked to write a Popeye script on spec struck a note with me. Most of what I write these days is fan-oriented reporting for websites that as you might imagine do not pay well or at all and even if they did, that is not the kind of writing I hope to do. About eighteen months ago, I interviewed a producer of low-budget horror films and he happened to mention that he was securing the right to adapt a very famous horror novel into a movie. I was very familiar with the novel and couldn't resist hinting strongly to him that he ought to give me a crack at doing the screenplay.
He said that once he closed the deal for the book, the people financing this project would give him the money to hire a top screenwriter and he had several in mind. He told me it might be a month or two before that happened and told me that if I wanted to take a crack at a screenplay (on spec), he would certainly read it and if it was good enough, he would push for it to be used for the movie. This struck me as a great opportunity and I rushed home and went to work on it.
You would probably tell me I was crazy to do this but I figured it was my only chance to get a gig like this. If I'm going to break in to what I want to do, I'm going to have to take some gambles, right? If I waited until the contracts were all signed, one of those top screenwriters would be hired and I would be completely out of the running.
I spent the next month or so writing the screenplay and when I turned it in to him, he read it, told me he liked it and then you can probably guess what happened next. A few days later, he called to tell me he hadn't been able to make a deal for the rights to the novel so the whole thing was off.
Since I had this script I'd written, I tried contacting the agent for the novelist who wrote the book to see if there was anything there. I wrote to him several times at two different addresses and finally got back a note saying that they had not sold the book for a movie yet and if they did, the novelist was going to insist on doing the screenplay himself. He emphasized that they had not and would not read my script and he sort of threatened me that I should not be circulating it since I did not own the plot or characters.
I felt foolish but I do not think it was a total waste of my time for three reasons. One reason is that it was a good learning experience for me. I think I learned a lot about how to condense scenes and add action and especially how to cut a very long novel down to size for a screenplay. The other reason I don't think it was a total waste of my time is that —
Okay, this is m.e. again and I'm going to interrupt here and comment on the story so far. I won't tell you you're crazy but I will suggest you're kidding yourself if you thought you had a real shot at writing a movie this way. A tiny shot, maybe…and yes, I can understand that when you have no prospects, you may want to seize on a remote chance as better than nothing.
But this is probably a matter of wrongly assessing the odds. If it was like a one-in-four chance of getting hired, maybe it was a good gamble. I would tend to be more suspicious that the producer was likely to get the rights; not if it was going to take him a month or two to close the deal with sufficient finality that a "top screenwriter" (i.e., someone getting way more than Writers Guild scale) could be hired.
Not knowing the producer or much about him, I'm guesstimating from afar here but low-budget producers don't usually hire top screenwriters. Many low-budget producers are not even Writers Guild signatories and their access to top screenwriters is limited. So maybe all he told you was just talk and not much more. Or maybe he thought that if had a decent screenplay adapting the book, he could use that to help him get the rights, either by showing it to some financier who'd put up the necessary bucks or to whoever controlled the rights to the book.
By coaxing you to write a whole screenplay on spec, he was getting a lot of work for no money and zero risk. If he somehow did get the rights, he was off to a good start with no investment and no commitment to you. One of the reasons spec work is bad is because you're dealing with people who have nothing to lose when you spend weeks or months writing something for them.
They don't lose anything if they drop or lose the project. You were told, "Sorry, I couldn't get the rights" but you could also have been told, "Sorry, but I have another project that I've decided is better for me so I've dropped this one." Projects fall through or are abandoned all the time for all sorts of reasons but if you're guaranteed money, at least you're guaranteed money.
This also might have ended with him telling you, "I got the rights but the novelist is going to do the screenplay." There are just so many ways a situation like this can go wrong for the spec writer. Again, I'm guessing here but this one sure sounds to me like way worse than a hundred-to-one shot.
Your first reason — writing the script was a good learning experience — isn't totally wrong but it also would have been a good learning experience to take that time and write an original screenplay…something you could now show around more freely, something you might even be able to sell. And as a sample script to show agents or producers, an original would be way more impressive because it would show you could invent characters and situations, rather than merely repurpose someone else's.
Okay — enough about the first reason. Let's move on to the second…
The second reason I don't think it was a total waste of my time is that it gave me something to tell people I was doing. Instead of saying I'm writing articles for $35 for a website they never heard of, I could tell my friends and family I was writing a screenplay for a producer, based on a book they may have heard of. That was true for a month there. I didn't tell them the spec part but what I said was the absolute truth and I felt better because I didn't have to say I had no prospects to get an actual writing job.
Okay, m.e. again. I don't think this is a very good reason to waste weeks of your time. It may make you feel good now but what happens six months from now when all those folks ask you, "Hey, whatever happened to that screenplay you were hired to write based on that book?" You're probably going to have to fib a little and that won't feel great. At least, it shouldn't.
What will make you feel real good in a legit way is when you can tell them truthfully that you have a real writing job. Wasting time on a project that was never going to happen is just a way of delaying the moment you get a real writing job. Which brings us to your third and final reason…
My third and final reason is that the producer said he was going to read the script I wrote and he did and he liked it. Even if he never makes a movie of that book, he is going to produce other films and now he knows I am a good writer. I figure that can't hurt me.
No, but it may not help you. Again, I may be wrong about this producer I've never met but I would think most people in his position would tell you that what you gave them was wonderful, regardless of how they actually felt about it. What would he gain by telling you he thought it was lousy? You've already proven a willingness to do a lot of writing for no money and if he's a low-budget producer, he could probably use a writer like that…and I mean "use" in the negative sense.
Yeah, I'm being cynical here. He might have thought it showed real talent and the next time he needs to hire and actually pay a writer, he might think of you. This is not sarcasm because I recognize that a lot of things occur in Show Business that are neither logical nor predictable. Thousand-to-one shots do occur. That's one of the fun things about the industry. Good advice in this field is like playing Blackjack and being told never to split fives. That's the right thing to do most of the time but every so often, you do go against the odds and it works out for you.
And I could be wrong because you know this producer and I don't, and maybe you had a good feeling about him. But the guy encouraged you to spend weeks writing something for him which he knew he might not be able to use and for which you would not be paid. So color me skeptical.
As I've been saying here, one of the skills a writer needs to develop is the ability to know which "offers" might be real and which ones have little chance of actually happening. I did not have a lot of that skill when I was first starting out and while I'm certainly not infallible now, I'm better than I used to be. Part of that comes with some actual, paying experience as a writer. I am no longer desperate to make some sales (to establish that I get paid for what I write) or to get some credits (to establish that I am indeed a professional writer) and I've also been burned enough to know some of the warning signs.
When you're starting out, it's easy to yearn so mightily for success that you can convince yourself that almost any opportunity is the gateway. I can now look back on a number of things I wrote way back when and think, "You know, that had no chance of going anyplace, no matter how good a job I did on it." In some cases, the person who convinced me to write on spec was a grand, smooth talker who really believed that if he got a good script and talked enough other people into gambling, he could put it all together. But of course, we all had to work for no guaranteed pay because he either didn't have any money or if he did, he wasn't about to risk it on his own "sure thing."
You're absolutely right that a new writer has to gamble. So, at times, does an experienced one…but hopefully, the experienced one has learned something about how to separate the good gambles from the bad ones. If you'd written an original screenplay, you could shop it around to many places and many producers. By writing that adaptation, you pretty much put all your chips on one producer being able to make one deal…and then if he got the rights and got some financing, you'd then be gambling that he could get the other folks who'd then be involved to go with your script.
I'm not saying that never pays off. It sometimes does…but so does splitting fives in Blackjack. That doesn't make it the smart thing to do.