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.
Something to keep in mind when you seek any kind of job is whether there's really a job there and if so, if there's a chance it'll be open. A lot of people waste a lot of time applying for jobs that are in no way available.
Back in the eighties, I was writing the Blackhawk comic book for DC Comics, a job I enjoyed tremendously. I wrote it and a wonderful artist named Dan Spiegle drew it and we worked so well together that no one at DC found much of a need to do anything. I wrote a script. I sent it to Dan. He drew it and sent the finished pages to me. I did lettering and art corrections where necessary…and sometimes those I deemed necessary weren't a matter of Dan or the letterer doing anything wrong. Sometimes, Dan had drawn a panel that said what it had to say so perfectly that I decided the word balloon I'd written was superfluous and should be changed or eliminated.
I used to be a pretty good letterer so I could reletter a balloon or fix a spelling error and I also used to be competent enough to do a little minor drawing here. The "used to be"s are because working on a computer, lo these past few decades, has considerably weakened my abilities as a calligrapher or artist. I am now hideously outta practice. But back then, if Dan drew one of the Blackhawks wearing a cap in some panels but not all of them, I could cap the character where necessary.
One time, when I needed a "fix" that was beyond my ability, I got lucky. A fine artist named Carol Lay dropped by my house at the perfect time and she owed me a favor. (The "fix," by the way, was again not because Dan had drawn anything wrong. Dan never really drew anything wrong except to leave off the occasional cap. But seeing his finished art had made me realize I'd done something wrong in my script.)
Anyway, at first Someone Else was the editor of Blackhawk and then Someone Else was the editor of Blackhawk and then Someone Else. When the third guy left, there was a meeting to discuss who'd get the job and all three Someone Elses went to the publisher and said, "Evanier's already doing most of the job. Just give him the title." So they gave me the title and a little more money and I went on working exactly the same way I had before with two added tasks.
One was that I was more involved with the design of the covers. The other was that once it was announced I was the editor now of Blackhawk, I had to deal with writers who thought I might be interested in firing myself and hiring them.
I do not understand the thinking there. I mean, even if they didn't know that the writing was the part of the job I liked and also the part that paid better, what were they thinking? That I was writing the comic under duress and now that I was the editor, I was muttering, "I can't wait to find someone else to take this horrible writing assignment…and even though I know darn near every writer in the business, I don't know one who doesn't have enough work. So I'm praying that someone will submit a sample!"?
Still, for some reason, several writers sent me pitches for Blackhawk stories they wanted to write and at least three wrote out long scripts. I didn't read them but I did read the cover letters. One told me, "I think you'll see that I have perfectly captured your approach to the feature." I wrote back to him, "Thanks…but I already have a writer who writes the comic exactly the way I do."
Those people did spec work that had no chance of selling. They were applying for a job that was already filled and I'm amazed how many people do this. A few years later when I was producing Garfield and Friends for CBS, we had a recurring character whose voice was done by the great character actor, Pat Buttram. An aspiring voice actor sent me a tape of his Pat Buttram impression — because obviously, there was a good chance I'd fire Pat Buttram and hire a Pat Buttram imitator in his place.
Actually, the animation field seems to lend itself to a lot of applications for jobs that don't exist or need filling. As you oughta know if you yearn to work in the field, animation has a long lead time since it takes a while for each episode to make its way down the assembly line. If a new series in doing thirteen episodes, there's a good chance that the thirteenth episode is, if not done then at least well on its way down that conveyor belt before you see Show #1. Still, people have been known to see a new show, then start submitting story ideas for it, unaware it is already out of production.
When I was hired to story-edit the Richie Rich cartoon show for Hanna-Barbera, I briefly shared an office with the fellow who'd story-edited a series for the studio called Drak Pack. Each week, he'd receive one or two scripts that writers had cobbled up on spec to submit to the show. Why was that a bad idea? Well, for one thing, the series had been canceled…and that was not a secret. It had been announced months earlier in Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and other places.
Now, one might argue that it wasn't a waste of time for those writers to write and submit Drak Pack scripts. After all, couldn't those be viewed as samples of the writers' talents? Couldn't someone at the studio read one and decide to give that person a shot at writing some other show? Theoretically, yes. But consider these two points…
Point One: No one was buying Drak Pack scripts which meant no one was reading Drak Pack scripts. My office mate was no longer being paid to spend one moment of his day on Drak Pack.
Point Two: If someone for some reason did read one…well, that was a show that was viewed as a flop. There's an old saying on Broadway that no one looks good in a flop.
So that maybe wasn't the best way to impress the people at H-B. On the other hand, there was a guy down the hall from us who was being paid to find good scripts for Scooby Doo. I don't know if the policy then was not to read unsolicited scripts. There were periods when it was, usually right after someone who'd submitted something had seen something similar on the air and sued. I'm just saying the right Scooby Doo script had a better chance of doing something for its author. Better than zero, anyway.
And I guess I'm also saying that you need to keep up on the marketplace; to have some idea of what buyers are buying and when they're buying it. You aren't expected to know everything that's going on with the buyers but a little common sense and following the news in your chosen field can help you zero in on where the openings are…and where they aren't.
You also need to have at least some sense of what the rules are if you're going to fill that opening…and as I was typing that, I mentally heard a certain friend of mine say, "I don't play by the rules." Okay, fine. But you have to understand the rules in order to not play by them.
I used to read books advising wanna-be writers and they'd say, "Write whatever your heart tells you to write." Well, no. That may be great advice if you don't care about selling the work and seeing it published or produced. To get published or produced, it has to in some way fit into the needs of some publisher or producer. That's if you don't want to be the publisher or producer yourself, in which case why are you even reading an article about how to get others to hire you?
Almost as futile as applying for a job that doesn't exist is applying for one that does when you don't bother to find out what it involves…and can't you just sense that I have an anecdote coming?
Here it is. In the early seventies, I was writing comic books for Gold Key, and the office for which I working had a lot in the "funny animal" category. There were the Disney books (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Chip n' Dale, etc.). There were the Warner Brothers comics (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc.). There were one or two comics featuring the characters from the Walter Lantz cartoon studio (Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda) and Hanna-Barbera (Scooby Doo, Harlem Globetrotters, etc.) and DePatie Freleng (Pink Panther, The Inspector) and others.
At the time, there was a writer who lived in New Mexico. He had never sold anything to Gold Key comics but he wanted to so he began bombarding the editor there with scripts. By "bombarding," I mean he sent at least one a week, sometimes two or three. The scripts looked professional but there was one thing seriously wrong with them, something I'm sure you would have noticed if they came across your desk.
This writer liked to mix characters between copyright holders.
He would send in a script with Mickey Mouse and Elmer Fudd. Or the Pink Panther and the Road Runner. Or Donald Duck and Woody Woodpecker. He also sometimes included characters that Gold Key did not license and had no right to use. One time, he wrote a story in which the Scooby Doo ghost hunters went after Casper the Friendly Ghost.
The editors at Gold Key read a few of these scripts, first to see if maybe they were great and could be used if, say, they turned the Bugs Bunny and Captain Hook one into, say, Bugs and Yosemite Sam. That didn't seem workable…but the stories weren't bad and based on the volume in which they arrived, it was obvious the fellow in New Mexico was a hard worker and really, really wanted to write Gold Key comics.
One of the editors sent him a letter explaining that they couldn't mix characters between companies. The Disney characters could only interact with Disney characters, the Warner Brothers characters with Warner Brothers characters and so forth. An exchange of mail ensued and one day, they showed the pile to me. I don't have them here to quote but they went something like this. Each line is from a different letter…
EDITOR: As I told you in my last note, we can't have Disney characters in the same story as another company's characters so we can't use your "Goofy Meets the Pink Panther" story.
NEW MEXICO: But it's a real good story and those characters work so well together. Can't you get permission from the companies?
EDITOR: No. If you want to write for us, you need to just use one company's characters in a story.
Then, a few weeks later…
EDITOR: I have just received your story with Scooby Doo and Top Cat. We do not have the rights to use Top Cat in a comic book.
NEW MEXICO: Yes you do! You have the rights to do comic books of Hanna-Barbera characters and Scooby Doo and Top Cat are both Hanna-Barbera characters.
EDITOR: I'm afraid our contract with Hanna-Barbera limits us to certain characters and Top Cat is not one of them. I believe they have sold the exclusive right to do Top Cat comics to another publishing company.
NEW MEXICO: But they work so well together. Can't you contact the publishing company and get permission to use Top Cat in one of your books, just this once?
EDITOR: No.
I asked the editor why he was wasting time with this guy. The editor said, "Well, his ideas aren't bad. If he could just stick to one company's characters at a time, we might have something here." Sure enough, not long after, the gent in New Mexico sent in a short story with Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig. True, there was a brief two-panel cameo in the story by Donald Duck but the editor was able to rewrite Donald into Daffy and so he bought the script.
The writer was elated at his first sale to Gold Key. As it turned out, it was his last sale to Gold Key because they never heard from him again. When I asked the editor why he thought that was, he said, "Who knows? Maybe he was upset I changed Donald to Daffy!"
Years later, comic book companies did begin doing inter-copyright crossovers like Superman meeting Spider-Man and you had movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit where characters from different proprietors intermingled. So maybe you could say the guy was ahead of his time. Or maybe you could say he just didn't understand the needs of the folks he hoped would buy his work. I think I'm going with the second one.
