![]() If it has real success as a novel, your chances of selling it as a film are much higher.Īndy Weir published The Martian as a novel in serial form on his own website. If the book gets a following, you can build it. You begin the process of managing and selling your brand. You begin the process of getting your original voice heard in the world. And even if you don’t get an established publisher, the internet allows you to publish it yourself. It’s a lot easier to get a novel published than it is to get a script sold and made. So what is the #1 screenwriting strategy today? Write your original story as a novel first. And that means above all that you have to get your voice out there, get it heard, to prove to the studios that people want it.Īs we’ve seen, that won’t happen if you write your original story as a script. It’s your unique brand as an original storyteller that the studios can’t get from anyone else but you. The currency in this business isn’t money. The reason that writing a script to sell to Hollywood is a big mistake is that you are using the wrong currency. Star Wars had become a brand, and a great one at that. But Disney bought it only after that original voice proved to be a massive success at the box office. Star Wars began as an original voice in the mind of its writer, George Lucas. That’s why Disney bought Marvel, with its well-known stable of characters. King of branding is the top Hollywood studio, Disney. The strategy is known as branding, and all the top studios use it. And that’s why far more adaptations are bought and made than originals. That has to do with the business strategy by which the studios operate. It must be a damn good script, right? Sure, but that probably won’t matter, and it’s not because executives hate reading scripts (they do). ![]() Let’s say your script miraculously gets past the reader to a story executive. Day after day, week after week, year after year. ![]() This means that the reader is programmed to say NO. This is mind-numbing, depressing work, because only one out of a hundred scripts is even good enough for a “consider.” And those are just scripts with agents. Even if a professional reader is properly trained, and many aren’t, he or she has to read and evaluate five to ten scripts per week. Third is that all-powerful creature known as a reader. The big studios won’t even open your script, much less send it out to a reader, without an agent, and the vast majority of screenwriters don’t have one. Imagine any other profession in the world where you can be successful just by reading a couple of books or taking a few of courses.Ī second reason for such terrible odds is lack of representation. But storytelling, in whatever medium, is the most complex craft in the world. Sure, they’ve read a couple of screenwriting books, probably taken a few courses. Why?įirst, the vast majority of screenwriters don’t have sufficient training to create a professional-level script. Your odds of selling that script are something like. If you’re writing a script to sell to Hollywood, you’re already making a fundamental strategic mistake. ![]()
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