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.
Portions of this column are cribbed from earlier articles I've posted here. So if you feel some déjà vu, that's the reason.
As I've probably mentioned more than once in past installments of this series, I'm not a big fan of a piece of advice that is often dispensed to wanna-be writers and actors and musicians and all sorts of folks who aspire to the careers that many covet. It's the old "Never give up, keep at it, don't let anyone discourage you and you'll eventually get your dream" advice. I don't think that's true.
When you hear that, you're almost certainly hearing it from someone who did achieve their dream. If people don't, they don't tell you that. So in a way, it's like someone who won the lottery telling you, "Hey, if I won, so can you! Spend every cent you can on lottery tickets." That may be good advice for two or three people per lottery but not for most. The odds of winning one recent PowerBall were one in 292 million and they rarely get much better than that.
The odds of you or anyone attaining a dream in the creative arts will, of course, depend a lot on what that dream is, how suited you are for the position and what kind of access you may be able to get to those who hire. Included in the "what that dream is" factor is the question of specificity. If you say "I want to be a working actor," you stand a better shot than if you say "I want to be a working actor who takes over playing James Bond, wins many Academy Awards and earns $20 million per movie."
And sometimes, the dream can be so narrow that nobody can see it happen. At the Baltimore Comic-Con last year, I had a brief conversation with a reader of this series who wants to write Marvel Comics…but not just any Marvel Comics. He wants to write all the Marvel Comics. This is approximately what he told me — and remember, this is a person who has never written even one comic book of any note. Nothing for Marvel, nothing for DC, nothing for Dark Horse or IDW or Boom or any of those…
"I want to do a run on Fantastic Four. I've read it for years and I have great ideas about how it should be done. This will be the definitive series, the one everyone will point to and say, 'That's how F.F. should be handled!' And then I'll do a run on Spider-Man and show everyone how that book should be done, a run on Thor, a run on The Avengers and so on…"
This is not going to happen. And even if it could happen, it's a pretty unhealthy way to approach a new career. This guy's goal should be to get to write one issue of one comic for anyone. If he can achieve that, he can aspire to writing a second something somewhere.
All writers, even the lousy ones, are real good at fantasizing. Often, we're too good at it. Dreams are great but making a dream into a reality requires dealing with that reality.
You can have an idea for the greatest movie ever and, hey, maybe it really is that. But it still has to be written and marketed and even if some big, legitimate producer says he wants to make it, you're still only about 15% of the way to the start of principal photography and light years from opening at the IMAX. I've known writers who didn't have their breakthrough screenplay finished but they'd done eight drafts of the Oscar acceptance speech to go with it.
There's nothing wrong with aiming high as long as you remember that high targets are harder to hit…and when you aim for them and miss, you're not aiming for the ones you might be able to hit.
A story. I've been fortunate to meet and work with a number of my Show Biz heroes — folks whose work I loved when I was a kid. It's great when you can become pals with someone like that but it had its downsides. There have been a few — just a few — I wish I'd gotten to know a little less. For one thing, it's hard to say no to those people.
One called me one day and said he has a friend who'd written a screenplay and would I please read it and give its author some advice? Pretty please? As I've probably mentioned here, I don't like doing this. The writers who ask you to do this aren't really asking for your advice. I mean, they'll be okay if you say, "I think the scene in the bar could stand to lose a page or so" but that's only if you say everything else is perfect and (big "and" here) you know someone they can send it to who'll quickly arrange a six-figure contract for it.
But I was stuck so the writer sent his script over. This was the guy's first attempt at writing a script and, I suspect, darn near his first attempt at writing anything in a professional arena. It arrived with one of those amateurish, paranoid attitudes: The script was registered with every agency in the world, I was expected to sign a confidentiality form with the assurance that he could sue and take my house away from me if I plagiarized him, etc. Don't you just love it when you agree to do someone a favor and they respond with threats?
When I opened the package, I glanced at the accompanying warnings and then noticed something about the script itself. It was sealed in plastic with a warning label that said something like, "By breaking this seal, you agree to abide by the terms of the enclosed form," etc. And the script itself was huge. It had to be over 300 pages. In which case, I would not be reading it so there was no point in breaking that seal.
I called the guy and asked him how long it was. I don't remember the precise number but let's say it was 325. It was around that.
I told him I had my first comment: Cut it by two-thirds. "There are very few people in this business who will read a script that's over around 120 pages," I said and I added, "I am not one of them."
He said, "I'm not cutting a word of it. Not now, not ever. I have a copy here of the screenplay to Apocalypse Now and it's 325 pages." (I'm not sure it is but that's what the man said.)
I said, "Maybe it is but this is not Apocalypse Now and you are not Francis Ford Coppola and John Milius."
He said, "What difference does that make? This script is just as important."
I said, "I doubt that…but the script you have of theirs is not a script they wrote to try and impress a producer into taking on the project. Everything was probably committed well before they wrote that draft, maybe before they wrote any draft. What you have there is a shooting script. You need to produce a selling script. Do you understand the difference?"
He said, "Sure…but a perfect shooting script can be a selling script. All a producer has to do is read this and he'll see it's perfect and ready to go. All my friends who've read it agree."
That was pretty much the end of that conversation. Oh, sure…I went on and told him that had never happened in the history of Hollywood and he told me he'd be the first and I told him his fantasy was predicated on producers reading the script at all and they wouldn't and he told me he'd be the first and you can see why this script was never made. It was probably also never read by anyone besides his closest friends. It certainly wasn't by me.
Could this guy have succeeded if he'd aimed lower? I dunno. I never read a word he wrote…but I'm also guessing that his main problem was attitude. It's hard enough finding a way to fit into Show Business the way it is. If you're going to expect them to remodel the industry so it works the way you want it to work, you're going to wait a long time.