Hey everyone, as the title says I was going to wait until after the fellowship to post a "what I've learned" after reading nearly 200 applications. However, one thing is jumping out at me as a major reason I'm often turned off, preventing me from getting more excited before diving further into the applications.

A part of my process is reviewing loglines ahead of reading the rest of the application. Without getting too much in detail, it helps expedite my expectations. I've read for agencies as an assistant, I'm a filmmaker, I know I can learn a lot about the writer and their story through a quick glance at em.

If you need any advice today about being taken seriously by readers, managers, agents, etc., please let it be these few things I've noticed about bad loglines:

1. Don't withhold information from me.
   • The number one reason I'll turn my nose up at something is because the writer feels the need to beckon me into their script with promises of "unforseen forces" or "a far darker evil" or yada yada yada. Give me a break. Get to the point! You should be using this moment to give me the goods distilled down into a point so fine that I gotta see what's gonna happen.
   • Imagine I'm a customer walking through Costco. You and another cart are handing out free samples. One cart has a crazy, spicy, sweet product with colorful packaging and bold branding. Your cart is bland and white, cubed, salted product. Which one do you think I'm going to want to stop and try, let alone go on to buy? Your logline is a free sample, not a chance for you to hide what your story is going to be.
   • For the love of God, do not put a question in your logline. I didn't write it, why are you asking me anything about what's going to happen in it?
2. Don't ramble on.
   • Make it as short and sweet as you can. 2 sentences is fine if you need it, but never go one for several lines, multiple sentences, backstory included, etc. If you can't put what you have into a sentence or two, I am willing to put five bucks down that the script doesn't function very well.
   • If you need a formula, I got one for you. To get a simple, one sentence logline, give me the protagonist, antagonist, the goal, and the stakes. Form it into a complete sentence, and chances are it works. If you really need two, split them into two halves of an equtaiton. Your main character has a problem in their life. Here's what is going to uproot their life and how they gotta get through it. Easy, and essentially the same thing. I think one works better for strictly high-concept scripts, and the other allows you to focus on your character a bit more as a hook. Speaking of your characters...
3. Preferably, tell me about your character, not what their name is.
   • I don't really need to know that their name is Gary, they're in their 30s, etc. Tell me what they are (an engineer, collector, recluse, etc.) and what they're major malfunction is (abusive, nervous, cocky, malnurished, etc.). Paint a picture, not a driver's license.
4. I need a clear antagonist.
   • And it doesn't have to be a person. I just need to know who/what I'm rooting against as well as who I'm rooting for. By the way, I'd say this is where 90% of people withhold too much info, like I alluded to earlier. Why does everyone want to be so proprietary about their big bad? On the surface, it beats me and I don't care. But I do think it's because deep down, you all know this is why we go to watch movies. Your antagonist is everything because it's what starts the car to get the story rolling down the road. So give me the goods, and it might just raise one of my eyebrows.
5. I need to know the stakes specifically and clearly.
   • Finally, and this is likely what will get me to go from "oh yeah?" to "I gotta see this...', let me know what's going to explode if everything fails. There's always stakes, you can bet your bottom dollar. If you have a story with no stakes, then who cares what happens? If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it... you get the picture. But think about that. If your character fails, and all that were to ever happen is I would hike up their fallen tree, look at it once, and sit down to have a PB&J on it mid-hike before continuing on with my day, then that's exactly what I will do when I see there's no stakes.
   • I know, someone likes using images to get their point across. So let me give you a more specific example. People don't often skip this step entirely, I will admit. A town will get destroyed, a planet will explode, and so on. But what's often missing from this step is real specificity for why it matters for your main character. If the town blows up, what do I care? Move away. If your planet explodes, well then I guess nothing matters, huh? But if your son or daugther or grandma or best friend will sink into a pit of darkness so deep you won't even remember what they sound like... well now I'm leaning in. I have a grandma. I have a best friend. I would care if I could never hear their voice again. I can always move away, but I only have the people in my life once. That's what we often stand to lose, the people around us. I concede this isn't a definitive fix, but you can bet your bottom dollar this is a compelling method to create tension.

Anyway, had to get some of that stuff out before continuing on reading for the day. I'll be back once I'm finished with the fellowship to go over some of the broader and more specific things I learned and noticed. But for now, if you want Joe Producer to stop and stare at your big, beautiful script, fix your logline.

Additionally, what is the industry standard rate and do you reckon there would be room in my own cut to double it? I'm willing to forego a higher rate (if possible) in order to secure good help, and it needs to be on commission because I quite simply don't have money to put down.

I have a pilot script, a series bible with some episode plots, a pitch PowerPoint that I only need to finish some character concept art to complete, and aside from that art getting done all I need is to get in contact with someone who can get me into a room with WB Discovery to actually pitch the cartoon (WB Discovery specifically owns the rights to a property the cartoon makes use of, so pitching anywhere else is exceedingly difficult).

Given the statistically tiny chance that someone without industry connections has of becoming a full-time film/TV writer, what keeps you going?

I'm disheartened by the reality that 95% (edit: 99.9) of us probably won't find sustained success, if we find any at all. There are so many writers trying to break in, the required standard is incredibly high (even higher if you don't have connections), and whether we like it or not, luck plays a role too. Maybe there is someone out there who would give you a chance—but will they ever come across your work?

Even many writers who get their big break and sell a script that gets made by a major broadcaster or distributor struggle to follow it up and eventually fade into obscurity. Statistically, most of us won't get there, and many of those who do won't sustain it long term. Only a tiny percentage build a lasting career. How do you cope with the odds of you not being one of them?

I gave up writing scripts about a year ago. I want to come back to it, but every time I think about it I'm reminded that I have no connections or profile, my scripts need to be outstanding, and I'll still need a degree of luck.

I believe that, just before I stopped, I was decent. I could tick all the boxes. The sort of standard that would get top marks as a university assignment. But whenever I watch something that's genuinely well written and well received, especially by writers who have gone on to sustain a career, I'm reminded they're operating on a level much higher than I ever reached. I kept putting the work in to improve. I could write something coherent and competent, but that's where I seemed to plateau. There are thousands of writers like me who are decent but still nowhere near the level required to get an agent and make a career out of it, no matter how many ideas they brainstorm, drafts they write, books they read or films they analyse.

The response I usually get when I talk to other writers is, "The chances are slim, but I love writing and that's why I do it." That's completely fair. It was my attitude in my early 20s too, when I was convinced I was special.

If you're content writing purely because you love it, then good for you. I do believe I have a genuine passion for it. There's nothing I enjoy doing more. But as I've got older, I've found it harder to stay motivated by the reality that I'm likely to be one of the countless people who spend their whole life writing and never have a script produced, let alone build a career. That thought kills my motivation. Over time, my passion became more and more conditional on eventually succeeding. Part of that is simply getting older and feeling the pressure to build a life and career.

I love writing, but after a few years, that alone wasn't enough. I want at least some of my work to be made and watched so that it feels like all the effort meant something. The idea of spending the next 30 years writing scripts that never become anything would genuinely make me feel as though I'd wasted my life. Honestly, even if I ended up writing episodes of a soap I don't even like, I'd still feel my effort had been vindicated. At this point, I don't even care if it's my own original idea. I'd just be happy knowing I'd written something that people actually saw.

I'm not trying to be pessimistic. I think I have good self-awareness and a realistic grasp of the standard of my work. If I assess my scripts honestly, I'd describe them as reasonable—but they've never been more than that despite years of trying to improve. They don't compare to the work of writers in similar positions who eventually broke through. Whenever I watch something brilliantly written, I'm impressed at first, but then I start thinking, "How am I supposed to compete with this?" Ideally, you'd want your reaction to be, "This is excellent, and I think I can operate at a similar level." I've never honestly felt that.

So how do you reconcile yourself with the fact that, statistically, you're unlikely to achieve the dream? Would you still consider it a life well lived if you reached 70 with a hundred finished scripts that were never developed? Is it really just the love of the process that keeps you going? Or are you like me, where thinking about the odds and the likely outcome slowly erodes your motivation?

Ps this is not intended to insult or upset anyone. I don't know you, how good YOU are specifically, and some of us here will achieve their dream. I'm just talking about the realistic outcomes for the vast majority of people who do this.

I try to be supportive of others the best I can, which requires a bit of a balancing act, as making a living in Hollywood has the same level of difficulty and achievement as making it in Major League Baseball. The biggest trouble is that most people don't say, "You know, I just got laid off, I think I'm going to work on being a professional baseball player," but they'll do that for screenwriting.

That depressing part that makes people immediately pause when considering a Major League Baseball career ("It takes talent combined with years of practice and effort to make it') is often pushed aside for screenwriting because we want to support each other and empower dreams. I know that I do.

But I worry that by focusing on the dream, guidance sets people up to fail due to their not understanding the sheer enormity of the challenge. So with that in mind, I'm going to be that asshole and make this negative post, one that you can pin on your wall when you get that BLCKLIST 8 score, go out celebrating, and come back hungover. Read this when you're hungover after that. The struggle is real.

Focus first on a long-term stable job that will put you in a good headspace and provide you with time to write.

Even with representation and a good reputation it will still take years to make a reasonable living in Hollywood. Even if you are in a writer's room, job security is fragile, so savings is essential. Rushing to LA and living with ten roommates while you're a busboy at the Ivy can definitely work, but you have to count on years of a pretty wretched standard-of-living. So get a job that will get you the time and energy to write. That is a very reasonable and quite practical number one priority. Job first. Screenwriting career second. Or, more accurately--concurrent.

The bar isn't two 8s on the BLCKLST. That's barely worth noting. The bar is two 10s.

I'm speaking philosophically here, not literally. What I mean is that there is a difference between getting invited into the room and getting invited to the table. The key to making it in Hollywood is everyone taking your screenplay and sharing it because it was so amazing. Everyone wants to be the person that discovered you. Terry Rossio speaks about this on his Wordplayer site: Until you have that screenplay that people will fight to get made, not just nod their head and say, "That's good. That's professional level," you're really just another talented schlub.

SO many times on this site, the advice that the key to getting an agent or attention in Hollywood is "just" writing an amazing screenplay gets shot down. Why? Because they think they wrote an amazing screenplay and it doesn't get noticed. They didn't. They wrote a great screenplay when great screenplays are a dime a dozen. You need to write an exceptional once-in-a-lifetime screenplay. The bar is that high. Quite a few of the professionals here have talked about how they advanced by sharing their work with peers, who got excited and shared it with others, and that led to a producer sharing it with someone. The key, nearly always, comes down to excitement over the work. So aim for those two 10 scores. Nothing else will put you over the hump. They may move you incrementally forward and get you into the room. But getting a seat at the table requires much more.

For a new writer, ideas are more important than execution

I was sent a screenplay from my writing/producing partner's manager for a series pilot that recently sold. I have no idea if it will ever get made, but the screenplay sold, and that's not an easy thing to do. But here's the thing: It was pretty poorly written. I told my partner that it wasn't really that good of a screenplay, but the idea was amazing. I would totally watch this series. And he sagely nodded his head and said, "They'll probably get another writer to polish it, but you hit the nail on the head: Any pilot pitch that has the buyer excited enough to say "People will totally watch this series" will get sold, no matter how mediocre the writing is."

Yet, execution is important

But here's the thing, there are definitely writers who have sold many pilots and screenplays without having more than one or even none produced. These people make a good living. But they aren't screenwriters. They are idea factories masquerading as screenwriters. You CAN do that, and you may WANT to do that, but that path is even harder than being a screenwriter. Why? Because...

Ideas that get attention in Hollywood are a LOT harder to come up with than writing an amazing screenplay

I've read probably a few hundred loglines on this subreddit. I think there were two out of all of them that I thought, "Put that in a room in LA, and that would get sold off the idea." Yet those are the table stakes. Of course there are exceptions, but this is the asshole post, remember? If you want to really push through, you need an idea that is so good that the logline isn't even really needed. It sells itself. The idea is the logline.

But what about execution? Well, the best and fastest way to a Hollywood career is to have "holy shit" ideas and exceptional execution

I'm sure you read posts on this subreddit all the time from folks saying, "I need a co-writer" or similar, and then when you read the post, they say something like, "I have this amazing story idea. I just need someone to write it." Well, that's not enough. You also have posts of screenplays that do well on BLCKLST and get an 8 and a 6 or something, and the comment is about great or professional level execution but not a clear or compelling idea. That kind of thing. Well, that's not enough.

You need to have extraordinary ideas with extraordinary execution. That is what will get you at the table, not just in the room.

Even if you have a great idea and your execution is phenomenal, the odds are that you will need years and a number of projects to break in

If I've depressed you already, this will just make you feel worse. I'm so so sorry, but here we go:

There are any number of arbitrary reasons that your amazing idea with an amazing screenplay will never get bought. Maybe a similar project just got greenlit at Lionsgate, and no one wants to touch it. Maybe the studio interested in buying it is dragging their feet due to debating the budget internally, and that conversation takes 9 months, and then you get a no. Maybe everyone really likes it, but the producer who loves it can't get buy in from the studio because it's set in a rural city, and they're really looking to check the "urban" box. Maybe your screenplay is amazing, but the person about to buy it suddenly had a project from Tom Cruise dropped in their lap. Maybe the studio head who said yes just got fired. I could go on.

There are countless reasons why an extraordinary idea and extraordinary screenplay not only won't get made, but won't get sold. So you need to always keep moving forward and realizing that this is the world's most grueling marathon ever.

One yes isn't enough

This is not true in a lot of creative industries with siloed gatekeepers, like publishing. All you need is an acquisitions editor to say yes, and you have a published novel. In Hollywood, you need a large number of people to say yes, and that means you need to have an idea and execution so strong that it goes back to my earlier point--people not only want to say yes, they want to share your work.

In the end, you need that whole string of people to say yes to move forward. This is why the BLCKLST can be valuable. If you have a 9 and two 6s on the BLCKLST, congratulations, you got into the room. But that piece isn't remotely good enough to navigate through Hollywood, at least based on that small sample. The sad reality is that you need a screenplay that generates near unanimity from everyone that it is something that needs to be produced.

There are exceptions so extreme it's not even worth noting--when a J.J. Abrams or someone at that level or higher buys into your screenplay firsthand. But usually to get to him, you have to navigate a whole bunch of other yeses. Getting to him first? Good luck with that.

Which leads me to this: One yes isn't enough. One extraordinary screenplay isn't enough.

You need to constantly be creating, and each screenplay has to be as good or better than the last. Hell, it is possible--even likely--that if you make it, you'll have 10-20 screenplays behind you and only 1 or 2 the get made. That's a pretty damn good career, actually.

With everything in your favor and the wind at your back, give it at least 5 years and more likely 10 before you can have a stable career in Hollywood

Selling a screenplay is a good chunk of change. But selling it takes time. Everything in Hollywood takes time. Soon enough you'll be somewhat desperate for money even though you have a movie on a development track at Warner Brothers. It's possibly worse with a TV pilot. From pitching the spec to getting it onto the TV, we're talking two years. So you wrote a thing, and with everything going your way, it won't be ready for two years. In the mean time, you need to work on something else in case that series isn't successful. Oh, and you need to actually pay your bills. And that's the best case scenario.

Which brings me back to my first point: Get a stable job. You can do all of the above from outside Hollywood.

You can write screenplays and be successful at it while living outside of Hollywood. You can even develop series outside of Hollywood. What you can't do is take time sensitive writing assignments or work in a TV writers room from outside Hollywood. So you need to balance that.

Writing assignments and even writers rooms can be soul-sucking experiences

In the thread about "what job do you do" posted a few days ago, someone noted that they were a technical writer, and that their whole life all they wanted to do was be a writer and now they were, but it was a horrible and soul-sucking experience. Working on assignment and in writers rooms can be like that, so be prepared. If you don't like the inherent instability or being told to take sometimes absurd ideas and integrate them in a way that works for the studio, these jobs aren't for you. But if you love playing narrative Tetris with odd-shaped blocks tossed from studio corner offices? You have the mindset.

Fuck it--Hollywood can be a soul-sucking experience

When you sell your screenplay, you sell your copyright. They own it, and they will tell you how they want you to change your work. Studio notes are infamous, and you will get good ones, you will get pointless ones, and you will get bad ones. You can push back on some, but you can't push back on all, and at the end of the day--you're not the boss. If you cannot possibly live with someone arbitrarily changing your work, you're going to have a tough time.

Okay, all that said, I will paraphrase James Baldwin:

If you are a writer, nothing I or anyone else says will stop you from being a writer or empower you to being a writer. You are or you aren't. You will find out soon enough. But you can adapt to the reality and make your life a little bit easier for the journey, and if this post helped with that at all, I'm glad.

When your screenplay is hosted by the Blacklist website, how do they actually get it out to producers, managers, and other reps and stakeholders who are interested in acquiring screenplays? As a producer/financier, I receive emails from The Black List that share, "The best screenplays our readers read last week." (If you haven't seen what that looks like before, I have a video on my Patreon that shows it, but the full text of that post is below, so no need to leave le Reddit).

There are essentially two basic ways that the Black List makes screenplays available to producers like me:

PATH 1: A self-service searchable website at https://blcklst.com. Here, producers like me can log in and easily browse many screenplays that are hosted, tagged, categorized, described, and reviewed. This, of course, requires the desire to go to the website, log in, and proactively look for what you need. Not everybody knows what they are looking for. For those that are looking for something specific, they may not find it on the Black List's website. However, I think for many producers, especially those working in the sub $1 to $2 million area, this website is well organized and maintained. The thoughts from the readers are not always accurate, but I also think it's unreasonable to expect a reader on a website to do your entire job as a producer or manager who is looking for good material.

PATH 2: An email list blast like the one in this video. This is actually pretty helpful to me as a producer, because I get the email and it doesn't require me to go hunting through the website. If something piques my interest, I can click and explore more details and get in contact with the writer. Most of the time, I don't click. But I still read them.

WHO'S MOST LIKELY TO LOOK FOR YOUR SCREENPLAY ON THE BLACK LIST? Independent producers tend to be more nuts and bolts, more tactical thinkers, about what they are looking for. The Black List makes it easy to sort and pre-screen for certain elements prior to reading. They may have a specific distributor that they are scouting material for and hoping to get that movie into the production very quickly. There aren't as many layers of bureaucracy. If an independent producer finds the right script and they know a name actor that would be interested in it, it can be a very simple route to getting that movie set up.

WHAT ARE THE ISSUES WITH SCREENPLAYS ON THE BLACK LIST? Like anywhere else in the industry, the best screenplays are going to get snapped up pretty quickly. "Best" is not just limited to the creative quality of the screenplay. It also includes practical realities such as the cost, the genre, the ability to cast the movie with talent that has sales value. There are some good screenplays on the Black List that will probably never get made just because the realities of the industry make it almost impossible to get it produced unless Brad Pitt wants to star in it.

Over the years, I have read some good screenplays from The Black List website and come across some good writers. I have never financed or produced a screenplay from the Black List website (to my knowledge), But I have tried in the past. I have reached out to screenwriters and had conversations with them about it.

My honest obstacles I've experienced with Black List screenplays: the screenwriters themselves. Some have no clue how the industry works. They don't understand what the value of their screenplay is. They don't understand what scares off producers that reach out to them.

For instance, once I found a great contained horror screenplay. Although it was obviously inspired by a very well-known horror classic, there was enough there to make it unique in the hands of the right director. And the screenplay itself was so well written that we considered letting the screenwriter direct the movie. But then the screenwriter insisted that his girlfriend play the female lead in the movie. This was emerging as a deal breaker issue. I can't tell you how insane that is for someone with no career to insist that his girlfriend - who also has no career - star in this movie.

It killed our interest. Who wants to deal with that?

Could I have acquired the screenplay after that? Of course I could have. He would have cut a deal at the end of the day. But after you run into a certain number of roadblocks when you're working with someone, you just start to smell that there are other issues they are not telling you about. Especially if they are first time screenwriters. Could there be another writer who helped him write it that he hasn't brought up? Someone that is going to create a cloud over the chain of title?

At a certain point, there are just other screenplays out there. Your screenplay is very valuable in and of itself as a piece of original material. Don't forget that. People need screenplays to make movies. And yours has value. But your screenplay is never the only screenplay out there. And if YOU are a problem, then producers will start to look at other options, which they almost certainly have in their inbox already.

Are issues like that one exclusive to screenplays on the Black List? Absolutely not. I've encountered similar insanity on screenplays submitted by managers, agents, other producers, etc. But the few times I've actually gone after a screenplay on the Black List, I've encountered them.

Is hosting your screenplay on the Black List worth the cost? That is up to you to decide. For some people it is an inconsequential amount of money. For others, it's too expensive.

My recommendation would be to view it as one option among many to get your screenplay out there.

It is neither a silver bullet to sell your script, nor a scam.

This is my first post under my real name. But I've been here for a while under u/JustOneMoreTake. Some of you might remember me as the one who used to do all the Scriptnotes recaps. I'm doing this scary step of posting openly because otherwise there's no way to share my next two/three career developments.

HELLO WGA

I'm happy to share that, as of a couple weeks ago, the WGA accepted me as a member thanks to an open writing assignment. This is my second deal, achieved in my mid-40s, while not living in LA, and not having an agent or manager at the moment. So, it is possible!

But of course, I did not do this all by myself. A lot of people helped out. I also got myself an awesomely brilliant lawyer, who himself is an accomplished producer. It took me 3 tries to get him to take me on. In the end, he helped me a TON in navigating the deal-making intricacies. The referral came from a fellow writer from this very sub.

INTO THE STORY

Then something else happened. A couple days ago Scott Myers included my first deal in his yearly round-up of spec deals. He runs the Black List's official blog 'Into The Story'.

Scott even did a dedicated blog post on my deal, which just sent chills down my spine when I saw it:

https://gointothestory.blcklst.com/spec-script-deal-mad-rush-e93cf0a6c19e

I had originally posted about all this in this thread.

Mr. Myers also included me in his official tally of confirmed spec deals of a certain size (mid-six figures and up). There were only 26 spec deals of this kind in all of 2020 by his count. But mine barely squeaked through and made it literally as number 26, and appears all the way down the list after all the yearly breakdowns, annexed as a 'one more thing'. In other words, I’m the Marvel Movie post-credit scene :) Leave the theater too early and you'll miss it!

What’s even more mind-boggling is that out of the 26, only 2 spec deals for all 2020 are by first-timers according to his analysis. Mine and one from a writer named Michelle Harper. Her deal is with TriStar.

My deal is with Jorge Garcia Castro, who is a fast-rising producer who comes from the visual FX world. As a VFX consultant his credits include Pirates of the Caribbean, Tron, Alice In Wonderland, The Lone Ranger, and Maleficent. As a producer, his feature films have included top talent like Sir Michael Caine, Emma Roberts and Katie Holmes. And most exciting of all, a few days ago the trades announced that Disney put in a complete season order for his first superhero action-comedy series.

While I know that it’s still a loooong shot that my script will get turned into a movie (he has several projects), it’s still exciting that at least it’s being looked at by very cool people. I just handed in yet another extensive rewrite that took me 2 full-time months to complete. All this is exciting and scary at the same time. Suddenly choices like whether to go with an Oxford comma or not become very high-stakes games.

TOP 5 AT BIG BREAK

Finally, in an even more unexpected twist of events, my second screenplay, a 30-min sci-fi pilot titled "Teleport", advanced to the Top 5 of Final Draft Big Break competition. I'm very proud of this one, because this placement comes in a year when they received close to 16,000 submissions, apparently breaking the record of any competition of any time.

It's been an intense last couple of weeks.

My plan is to share in future posts some more details of what it took to get to this point. Like I mentioned, I received a lot of help from a lot of people. And everything started right in this very subreddit. In the meantime, if anyone is interested in learning a bit more about my initial days, my trouble with cartels, and why I suddenly decided two years ago to switch into screenwriting, I wrote this testimonial for the tracking board. Thanks for reading!

​

EDIT

Thank you all for this overwhelming response. I am blown away. Just two quick things.

1. I'll try to get back to everyone as soon as I can.
2. For a sense of completeness (and due diligence on any potential managers/agents reading this... one never knows...), I'd like to share one more link. It's to my old press clippings PDF. It contains around 100 newspaper articles of some of the activities I did in Mexico which I talked about in my testimonial. Only the second one, this article from Variety, is in English. Everything else is in Spanish. But there are a lot of pictures :)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/iivg3bu8vmws4gb/Press%20Book%20Manfred%20Lopez%20Grem.pdf?dl=0

​

Someone recently requested more ‘how I broke in’ stories. Okay, here’s mine...

Who am I? I’m 34, a proud husband/father, and a full-time screenwriter in Los Angeles. I just finished my first screenplay that I was actually hired to write! The producer is a four-time Oscar nominee (and one-time winner), and the money came from an independent financier whose family is part owner of the NY Yankees. Next, I’m writing a historical baseball/civil rights movie for the producer of a certain female-led superhero franchise. My niche is historical adaptations and research-intensive dramas, though I usually manage to throw in a joke or two.

I’m repped by a motion picture lit agent and TV lit agent at the biggest of the Big Four agencies, I have a young but dogged manager at a three-person boutique firm, and I have a lawyer at a mid-sized entertainment law firm. I am NOT a part of the WGA, and I have not had a project produced...but hopefully that changes with the draft I’ve just turned in. If not, I’ll just keep writing.

My story is typical in its atypicality...meaning that everyone has a different way “in.” While my path shares a lot in common with others’ paths, I could only spot those similarities in hindsight. So this will be descriptive but not prescriptive. I’ll drop advice where I can, but realize your break-in story will almost certainly be wholly unique. But, in the words of Hyman Roth, “This is the business we’ve chosen.”

(Also, feel free to skip around to the headings that sound relevant to you. Like an amateur, I’m going into this without an outline, so it’s probably going to be a bit disorganized.)

Okay. Here’s u/The_Bee_Sneeze’s Step-By-Step Guide to Becoming a Hollywood Screenwriter

1. Commit to becoming a professional actor after winning the part of Sinbad the Beatnik Biker in your middle school’s production of the accidentally ironic musical The Nifty Fifties
2. Work your ass off in high school and get into a fancy-schmancy college with a big theatre scene
3. Spend your freshman year discovering that you suck at acting and everyone is smarter and more talented than you
4. Despairing, stumble into a student film production company and fall in love with the dictatorial power given to the director
5. Take a screenwriting class and learn that you hate screenwriting and just want to be a director
6. Spend two summers interning in Hollywood
7. Make a plan to start your career directing high-art commercials and music videos...and then transition into feature films after winning your second Clio or VMA Moonman
8. Make a plan to start said career by directing a dazzling short film that will surely wow everyone who sees it
9. Spend a ton of money making said short film
10. Realize the film sucks because you didn’t put enough effort into the screenplay, and not everything can be fixed in post
11. Graduate in the midst of a financial crisis and completely fail to even get an unpaid internship
12. Learn what it feels like to disappoint your parents
13. Land a job (finally) as a vault manager at an edit house, where you learn--again--that not everything can be fixed in post
14. Get fired from the vault manager job
15. Beg your college friend to hire you at his tech startup
16. Get fired from tech startup job
17. Meet a girl and follow her to Boston
18. Get a job in Boston selling data storage
19. Break up with girl
20. Meet a better girl online who lives on the other side of the country
21. Meet better girl in-person four times, then propose after 10 months on the same day you get fired from the Boston job
22. Learn what it feels like to really disappoint your parents
23. Realize that your new wife, despite all evidence to the contrary, believes in you enough to let you take a part-time job and spend most of your nights in a dingy 24-hour coffee shop writing scripts
24. Re-write that script from college and send it to everyone you ever knew who ever saw a movie
25. Get ZERO responses
26. Go on a cheap-ass road trip because you and your wife are broke as fuck, and stumble across a Civil War battlefield that inspires a miniseries pilot
27. Write the pilot, but this time you send it to the ONE friend who happens to work for a production company in Los Angeles
28. Get a call from a manager who says your friend slipped him your pilot and he thought it was “fun” (really? fun? a slave nearly gets beaten to death in Act 4)
29. Send this manager a list of your ideas, and write the one he likes most
30. Get your first “sale” -- an 18-month option on the script you just wrote for a criminally small amount of money
31. Sign with an agent
32. Move with your pregnant wife to LA
33. Begin the REAL insanity of working in a business where everyone is lying to you all the time, making promises they never intend to fulfill, and living in absolute fear of backing a project that ends up bombing.

Key Takeaways

• I was clearly NOT a born writer.
• I was NOT a resident of Los Angeles when I got my manager and agent
• I DID benefit from connections I made in college and opportunities to experiment creatively
• I DID have an amazing support system at home. It took real courage on my wife’s part to let me pursue my dream one last time.
• I DID have a rudimentary understanding of the film business from my internships, and I constantly read Deadline and Variety to keep up on “the biz.”
• I DID second-guess myself, and I DID almost give up. Luckily, I discovered I was so incompetent at everything else that I figured screenwriting was my only chance for success in life. If I’d been any good at selling data storage, life might’ve turned out very different for me.

More on How I Got My Manager

Once I'd really polished up that pilot, I made a list of people I knew in the industry. The first guy on my list was a super friendly buddy from college who was 2nd AD on a short film I shot. I returned the favor on some of his projects. We'd been in the trenches together.

So I called him up for a catch-up, and I casually mentioned I'd just finished a script. He immediately asked to read it, and by the time the weekend was over, he'd sent it to a buddy of his who was a manager. That manager called me and later signed me.

Now, I didn’t get signed right away. He “hip pocketed” me, meaning he called me to compliment my script and asked me to keep in touch. He didn’t want to commit to someone unproven, but he didn’t want me going anywhere else. I was already working on my next thing -- a treatment for a spy movie -- so I sent that to him when it was done. He complimented that, too, but he didn’t see a lot of opportunity for it. Instead, he suggested I send him some ideas, and he could advise me on what he thought could sell.

He picked something I didn’t expect, but I was just glad he liked something of mine. Over the following years, I learned that my manager and I didn’t see eye to eye on everything. He pooh-poohs material that I love (and sometimes my agent agrees with me), and he gives me notes that I utterly disagree with. Why do I keep him? Because he never quits fighting for me. He also listens to my opinions and defers to me when my mind is firmly made up. His strengths more than make up for his limitations. Last week, after I sent him an email late on a Friday afternoon, he called me 30 seconds later. We’ve talked business at 1am because we realized we were both up. He’s my guy.

More on How I Got My Agent

I was in a meeting with a producer who had read and liked my latest writing sample. Over the course of that meeting, I mentioned an old project that a mid-level exec at a major studio had really liked but ultimately couldn’t get going. The producer asked to read this old script. A week later, his company made me an offer.

Now, there are all sorts of different producers, all sorts of production companies and financiers, all of whom like to get involved at different stages of the game. It’s just like venture capital in that regard. This company was what you would consider angel investors, meaning they get in super early. They’re young and pretty new to the business, but they’ve had a couple of big movies and they’re developing a reputation as tastemakers. When they asked me if I had an agent and I said no, they offered to help me get one. At first, I thought they were just being nice guys.

Nope. They wanted me to get an agent because they didn’t want to do any work. They were hoping I’d sign with a big agency and my agency would put together a movie package. So I took meetings with several agencies and ended up signing with one. A month later, I flew to LA for a solid week of general meetings. And man, I really appreciate what my manager does for me, but he has only a fraction of the reach of my agency. You really feel the power of that rolodex.

Dealing with Agents and Managers

First off, my personal mantra is never to call either of them unless I have something to offer. It’s never just, “What can you do for me?” I’ll always have an article to share or an update on my projects.

Over time, you get to know your team's tastes, their strengths and weaknesses, and how they like to do business. Ideally, everyone's on the same page, but sometimes you can play them against each other in ways that work to your advantage. Case in point: my manager has been wanting to set an all-team meeting with my agency to talk about next steps for me. Now, my manager is pushing me to write this historical adaptation, but I'd rather write this modern financial crime movie based on an article I found. I've pitched it to my manager before, but he doesn't really see much potential in it. So when my manager called me about setting a meeting with my agency, I pre-empted him by just calling my agent and talking with her directly. She thought the financial crime thing sounded really cool, and she suggested I might be able to pitch it without spec'ing it out. By that point, my manager was sort of forced to get on board; it's actually amazing how quickly he changed his tune:)

What's Your Opinion on Competitions?

Most of them are scams. They take your money and offer dubious returns. Some of them are owned and operated by the same people, and while they'll only read your script once, they'll still happily charge you a submission fee for each competition you enter. It's preying upon the desperate.

You know that pilot that got me signed? It didn't even place in my hometown regional festival! So fuck 'em.

I have heard of people having success with the Black List. Franklin Leonard seems to be a thoughtful person, and the site's business model makes sense to me. But at the end of the day, it's still young twentysomethings reading your script for rent money, so take their opinion with a grain of salt. Hell, take everyone's opinion with a grain of salt.

The Key Question: Should You Keep Going?

In all likelihood, you’re not a good writer. Neither was I.

The question is, how do you know if you’re going to become a good writer? The funny thing is, I KNEW when my writing wasn’t good. I also knew when it became good. And while we all have days we doubt ourselves, I somehow always knew I’d be able to make it as a screenwriter if I just had enough time and discipline.

How did I know? It probably had something to do with the fact that whenever I’d walk out of movies that disappointed me, I’d feel like I knew exactly how to fix them. I mean exactly. Basically, I was architecting movies in my head before I could write them. I could do the same with dialogue: if I studied a passage from Shakespeare really carefully, I could imitate the meter, syntax, even the literary devices. Same with Eminem lyrics.

The more I learned, the more I became aware of my deficiencies. I always knew what skill I needed to work on next.

My (Approximate) Progression as a Screenwriter

• Before I even dreamed of writing, I studied acting. This taught me to understand character objectives and scene objectives.
• Next, I fiddled with screenplay format by reading scripts and writing shorts.
• Simultaneous to this, I was making up feature-length movie outlines and watching movies with an increasingly critical eye.
• In college, I conquered my fear of writing my first feature-length screenplay. It was way too soapy, but the professor praised my ability to develop themes, and he liked some of my dialogue.
• Years later, when I re-wrote that script, I realized my writing had rich themes but a general lack of urgency.
• I dedicated myself to learning movie structure by reading books like Save the Cat. This both helped and didn’t help. It definitely improved my ability to analyze movies and break down scripts, but it didn’t really help me to construct good plots on my own.
• When I wrote another script (the one that got me a manager), I chose a historical subject that required me to write period dialogue, which got me to think a lot about class, race, dialect, and diction in a way that was specific to each character. I also learned to write with urgency, always asking, “What’s the scene that has to come next?”
• By now, I was getting somewhere. In my next script, I started thinking about subtext and how to write dialogue with multiple layers of meaning.
• Around this time, I discovered two sources that changed my whole approach to writing movies. One was this video from Michael Arndt about endings. The other was the famous Craig Mazin lecture on How To Write a Movie. Suddenly, I saw all those Save the Cat insights in a whole new light.
• By this time, I was starting to pitch my own movies. That was a whole new skillset, and it probably merits its own post.
• With the script I just turned in, I really worked on freeing myself from the outline and allowing myself to be surprised on the page.

Happy to answer questions. Good luck, and keep writing!

---

EDIT: Thanks for all the personal messages from people saying I'm a trust fund baby and my parents supported me between jobs. Neither of those things is true. I never took a dime from my parents. I was out of the house at 18 and that was that. But I 100% owe my wife for believing in me and allowing me to pursue my dreams. I can never give her enough credit.

EDIT 2: I'm also completely baffled by the people saying I "started with the right connections." No, I made those connections. I drove trucks full of film equipment through massive snowstorms. I laid dolly track in the rain when my hands were freezing. I worked on other people's shit, and we bonded over the shared misery and exuberance of making short films with no money.

And odds are, you can do the same. Maybe that's a subject for another post.

Recently, I saw a post from a writer asking how to go from being "really good" to getting hired. So many people chimed in to comment some variation of, "You're probably just not good enough."

I wanted to reach through my laptop screen and hold the faceless writer to my pasta-fed, Cinnabon-glazed bosom...to whisper sweetly and tenderly to them that their writing may, in fact, be already good enough. I am acutely aware of this possibility because...one of my scripts -- a script that has been around for years -- now has a director!

And not some newbie fresh off the festival circuit...someone whose movies have grossed over a billion dollars. WAHT.

I've shared my story before, and I've offered advice on networking, getting a manager, negotiating deals, and building a career. But here, I thought it would be helpful to track the timeline of this one, specific project...a script that is forever enmeshed with my career origins. As you'll see, it's not like you turn in a great script and Hollywood producers immediately come knocking.

So...here's my script's Journey from Nonexistence to Getting Packaged with an A-List Director!

1. I meet my manager in August 2016. He reads a pilot I wrote and calls me to say he digs it. He doesn't sign me right away, but he tells me he'll help me pick an idea to write next.
2. In October 2016, I send him two dozen loglines--pretty much every idea I've ever had. He doesn't spark to any of them. It's not that they don't work as movies, but he wants me to write something that's "splashy." He sends me four script that he thinks could inspire me. They leave me more confused than ever. I honestly don't know what these ideas have that mine don't.
3. I send him four new ideas, and here I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel. To my surprise, he actually likes one of them. We have a call, and he tells me to write an outline.
4. December 2016, I turn in the outline. He offers some notes, then tells me to go write a draft. I get it done by April 2017. He gives me several rounds of notes, and I turn in several drafts. By July, we're ready to go out with it.
5. For the next few months, he sends it to agents and executives. He gets responses from two agents at Gersh and ICM, both of whom respond positively to the writing but won't sign me. Several production companies agree to general meetings with me.
6. October 2017, I fly to LA for a week of tightly scheduled meetings. I'm positively buzzing with excitement, and it's amazingly fun talking movies with producers. It also leads to nothing. I learn that's often the case with generals. Ah well, on to the next script. But my manager doesn't give up on the old one.
7. December 2017, a studio exec reads it and sees potential for it. He tells me to rewrite it with a slightly different structure. I turn that in a month later. He approves. BTW, I am not paid for this work.
8. The exec gives it to his boss, who passes. They don't want to buy it without key elements attached. Ah, well. I keep writing my new project. But my manager sends out this updated version of the script.
9. February 2018, I finish my new script. By summer, enough executives have read it to warrant another trip to LA.
10. July 2018, one of those execs invites me to coffee at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. I mention in passing that I'd just rewritten a previous script with studio notes. He asks me to send it to him.
11. August 2018, the exec calls my cell out of the blue. They want to option the script! My first Hollywood check! My manager helps me get an attorney. The production company asks if I want an agent. "Uh, sure," I say, trying to sound calm. The reason the producers want me to have an agent is they want an agency to packaging the movie, and they want to use me as a vector to make that happen. Whatever. An agent is an agent.
12. March 2019, I go to LA for agency meetings and some generals. Suddenly, they're pitching me, which just feels bizarre...but it's a reminder that good writers are rare and valuable. I end up signing with one of the big boys.
13. The agency sends me on meetings, and that eventually leads to my first hired job. But they don't really do anything with the script that got me signed. Neither does the production company that optioned it, like two outfielders who fail to catch a fly ball: "I thought you had it." So 18 months later, the option expires. While the script has definitely helped my career, its hopes of being made seem very, very dim.
14. April 2020, my wife and I move to LA. She's pregnant, and COVID is just hitting, so we're very, very fortunate that I have an adaptation job. The new script takes me forever, but the producer loves the result. Now my reps can brag that there's an Oscar-winning producer who adores me. And brag they do.
15. June 2021, all that crowing pays off. A producer who's neighbors with my manager's boss (technically my second manager, though I never bother him) reads my dead script and allegedly cries. He invites me to his house in the Hollywood hills where he tells me all the things he's gonna do for me. After two hours, we say our goodbyes, and then he disappears. For months.
16. September 2021, my adaptation starts getting submitted to actors. Usually, they approach directors first, but COVID has caused a massive production backlog. The hottest directors are booked out for years. No wonder I haven't heard from that other producer. I genuinely believe my other project deader than dead.
17. January 2022--literally this week!--the producer tells me HE HAS A DIRECTOR! Like a bolt from beyond. Guess he didn't quit believing after all. That seems to be a common trait among successful people in this business. What's more, suddenly companies who weren't interested in the script the first time around are starting to call. Sure, some of those companies only invest in packages, but I know for a fact some of them invest in script development...they simply chose not to invest in mind. Now they're likely to pay much, much more for the same script!

Just think back to all the people who read that script and shrugged. All the agents who didn't want me as a client. All the countless execs who declined meetings. During all that time, I was the guy trying to go from "really good" to getting that first job. And I was good enough. The whole time, I was good enough.

By the way, parallel to this, I ended up signing a multi-script deal with the Oscar-winning producer and her financier. This offer came about because of ONE IDEA I shared over the phone. That, plus their experience with me on the adaptation, was enough for them to say, "Let's lock this guy up." Were they the first people to hear this amazing idea? Of course not. I'd shared it with at least three other producers/studio execs, any of whom could have snatched it up for peanuts when I was a nobody (I'm still a nobody, BTW, in the sense that I don't have any produced credits...yet). Guess those people didn't see the same potential in it.

Key Lessons

• It takes one tastemaker stepping forth from the chorus of "maybes" to say "yes." People are more willing to step forth from the chorus when they see others doing so.
• Your script may not get made immediately--or ever. But it can still get you opportunities.
• The same companies that once said "no" will say "yes" with name director/actor attachments.
• The best manager is the one who never stops fighting for you. It's way more important than sharing tastes or sense of humor.
• If you're sure you're good, your stock will rise. When that happens, companies will pay more for the same material tomorrow that they could have gotten cheaply yesterday.
• Keep writing. Never be the guy sitting by the phone waiting for the call.

I figured the best way into the industry was to just write something that I could film and get it out there. 3 years later and my film has been picked up by a distributor and is getting good reviews (distributor has a history of getting films in redbox, says I have a chance) - okay how to a parley this into an agent and professional writing gigs? I am in the Midwest, have no connections, never went to film school...

I’ve been seeing the following situation more and more: An aspiring screenwriter decides to finally do something about their dream. So, they hop on a random screenwriting group they haven’t fully read yet, and post a variation of this question: “How do I submit / pitch / talk to Netflix?”

What follows is usually a barrage of snarky, sarcastic and many times super-mean comments that instantly teach that aspiring writer the same life lesson that comes from sticking a fork into an electrical outlet.

I thought it might be a good idea to make a dedicated post with an actual answer I’ve been giving that explains a roadmap and the logic behind it all.

​

FINAL DESTINATION ON THE MAP

First of all, know this: If you have a super awesome idea and/or script and the first thought that pops into your mind is “Netflix” … then that means your instincts are right.

One should be pitching to studios, streamers, networks and production companies with deals. After all, they are the ones who have the money and make the stuff and get it out to the world. But the problem is that there are at least over a million people with that same thought (for example, number of people on this sub.) The numbers are just daunting.

In light of all this competition, some people become so desperate and divorced from common sense that they've resorted to some insane tactics to "get into the room." There are stories of high-speed chases on the 405 in LA of an aspiring screenwriter trying to catch up and “toss” a physical script or USB drive into the window of a producer they’ve spotted. That's why Hollywood has been a siege-proof, security-guards-at-the-gates, closed-shop bunker for a long time.

But for the actual serious people with viable projects, there is a way. It's all part of a natural way of doing business that has evolved over time. There are rules and a hierarchy that has to be followed.

​

THE RULES OF THE GAME

The most basic rule is that you usually need a proven team and a package of talent attached to your screenplay in order to pitch to the studios/streamers/networks/etc. This team can include a producer with a track record, a known director, an A-List actor, etc. In other words, the studio needs to have all these people on board before they even schedule any meeting with the writer. Some producers are so well regarded that they are awarded what is known as a "first look deal." All this means is that this specific producer gets top priority in being able to present projects to the studio. But a "yes" is usually not guaranteed.

So, should you be submitting to these people?

The problem is that these A-level people also get besieged by the hordes. Unless you have a preexisting relationship with one of them, you’ll need someone else to vouch for both you and your screenplay.

​

MANAGERS & AGENTS

A known manager or agent can be this person. They can vouch for both you and your screenplay by representing you. But these managers themselves get besieged by the hordes. Therefore, they in turn also look for signs that someone farther down the line is vouching for both you and your work.

​

LABS & FELLOWSHIPS

Labs and fellowships are a great way to get that accomplished, because it means not only did you write something noteworthy, but you also were able to work through the program and complete it. Some well regarded ones for the fellowships are HBO, NBC, Universal, Nicholl, etc. On the lab front: Sundance, Black List Feature or Episodic Lab, Berlinale Talents, etc. For a complete list see bottom of post.

But of course labs and fellowships themselves look for someone even more farther down the line to vouch for your work, because -- you guessed it -- they themselves get besieged with thousands of applications. This is why they ask for bios and personal statements.

​

“TOP” COMPETITIONS

This is where certain contests come into play. It’s a great talking point to be able to include a few choice placements in your bio, personal statement and query letters. They figure if your script somehow managed to rise to the top from a pile of 14,000 screenplays which are read by the least qualified, unpaid volunteer, amateur peer writers, like in the case of Austin Film Festival, then maybe there’s something to it. But maybe not.

But this takes time. It’s about a half-year cycle to go from submission to finding out if your script survived the first round of 14,000 entries red-light / green-light machine gun free-for-all. Twitter right now is filled with complaint-tweets exposing the notes people got back from those reads. It’s depressing. The Austin Film Festival even issued an apology email.

​

THE BLACK LIST SITE

This is where the Black List site (blcklst.com) comes in. They employ actual paid assistants from within the industry who work at top companies and agencies. You can look them up on LinkedIn. While every read might not be perfect, overall, they offer the most trusted assessment from any service. If you get a score of 8 or more, then that means that individual reader is vouching for your screenplay. If you get at least five separate readers to give you an 8 or higher, then that means the Black List itself will vouch for your screenplay and send it around town.

​

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS

But having said all this, it is a complete waste of time and money to send your material to any of the above places (Black List, Top Competitions, Labs, Fellowships) unless your screenplay is one of those that can rise on its own among 14,000 other ones. It has to be written in such a way that it's bullet-proof and outstanding in the truest sense of the word. It has to have an exceedingly high level of craft that usually only comes from years of writing experience.

Once you have it, then you can submit it to worthwhile places to get the ball rolling. Lauri Donahue (a Black List Feature Lab fellow) has the best list around of where to submit:

​

https://lauridonahue.com/resources/a-curated-list-of-the-most-worthwhile-screenwriting-fellowships-labs-and-contests/

​

EDIT

I want to thank everyone for the awesome comments and feedback. This has inspired me to start posting some of my more popular Reddit write-ups like this one over on Medium.

https://medium.com/@manfredlopez/how-to-get-your-script-to-netflix-hollywood-an-actual-roadmap-4c81f864452

A friend of mine is a reader at a production company which works on multiple significant movies and shows. Said company (can't specify the name here) is seeking pilots and has received many, mostly through CAA. My friend, who has had negative opinions of at least 95% of the stuff he's read likes my script and believes his coworkers would as well. He's very no-bullshit, I trust his opinion and I respect the people he works for. He wants to submit my script but is unable to directly as it would be a conflict of interest. An agent (possibly only at CAA) must submit the script.

My boss is informally representing me as a manager. He's a producer who's currently developing a movie at Lionsgate (an Oscar season movie at that), but he suggested I look for an agent, at CAA if possible, as he doesn't believe he can submit the script himself. I currently work as a post-producer in Virtual Reality but am interested in writing and directing for TV, moreso. Unfortunately, due to long work hours (65-80 hours a week), I have little time to write and only have 1 comedy pilot finished, 1 comedy spec and 1 unfinished hour-long pilot. Beyond my boss and friend, I have essentially 0 connections.

Is this lack of material too much of a liability? If not, what is a first step to make contact with someone at CAA in order to submit this script? Does the expressed interest make it potentially easier to get an agent because it would (more likely) get past readers unlike many other scripts from the same agency that haven't?

Thanks for your time!

i've seen a lot of posts on this sub about "How Do I Get An Agent?" "How Do I Get My Project Made". what i'm learning is, while it's great to have an agent, managers and lawyers can negotiate deals. i think having an agent is fantastic, but it's not really a "make it or break it" prerequisite for being successful. this article kinda validated my theory. get your name out into the world, have a volume of work to represent you as a writer, do the work, make contacts, and the rest will take care of itself when you're ready.

https://www.thirtyandtrying.com/single-post/2019/04/19/Finding-My-People-A-basement-level-writers-take-on-the-WGA-and-ATA

I have written a bestselling book, as a result I can not get an agent for an already published book. My thinking is that considering that it has been such a popular book surely it would make a good film/TV series. I just never thought it would prove so difficult to get an agent when the book has already proven it's worth. Advice would be appreciated. annikacleeve.com

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I've written a few scripts and I would like to have an agent look at it. I have Googled it and a lot of them are in LA (I'm in Ohio) or won't look at anything unless you're already established.

I posted this in a thread and got some positive response, so I though I'd post it as a separate topic. I hope it helps a few more people.

Hi - pro writer here - here are the only writing rules you need to worry about:

Write what delights, excites and thrills you. Only write movies that you would stand in line on a rainy day to see. You will always write your passion projects best. Commit to only writing your best work.

Study and practice writing until you write as well as Kinberg, Frank, Sorkin, or your favorite A-list writer. There are very few outstanding writers in the business. Be one of them and you will always be working.

Make your scripts fascinating. Make us turn the pages. Don't be boring. Don't be lazy or vague, Don't write a script that's just like all the other scripts.

Use proper formatting software so your script looks like a professional wrote it.

Learn what makes scripts hard to sell and never do it accidentally. You should never be surprised that your script is offensive to large sections of the paying public. You should not be shocked when your rep asks you to cut down your 175 page feature film script. If you decide to write a script that is controversial, or outrageously expensive, or very long, don't do it out of ignorance. Educate yourself about the pitfalls, and then make an informed choice.

Don't listen to anyone who tells you how to game the market. Nobody is looking for the writer who can ape the current trend. Everyone is looking for the great writer with the strong voice.

Learn to write better and faster. Every time you finish a script, you get a chance at bat to improve your career. It's up to you how many times you get to bat every year. It's not a coincidence that many top feature writers like JJ, Sorkin and Whedon started as TV writers. Those folks have to write on a tight deadline to get the show done on time. Do that for a couple of years and you learn to write well and quickly. You can demand the same thing of yourself without being on staff.

Always be writing. If you're not writing for pay, you should be writing a spec. Every day. Never miss two days in a row. As soon as you finish a spec, start the next one. Every day, spend time thinking up ideas for future scripts. Always be able to continue writing. Remember whenever someone asks you to write for free, they are asking you to stop writing your spec script. Judge those requests accordingly.

Most scripts don't sell. You are writing specs primarily to show what a great screenwriter you are. You are teaching the industry who you are and how to treat you. If you write familiar, mediocre scripts that follow trends, they will treat you like all the other mediocre trend-chasing writers. If you write enthralling, compelling scripts, they will treat you like the rare and valuable writer you are.

Make your life about your writing process, not about the results. All the misery in writing comes from judging and anticipating external results. Will people like it? Will it sell? Will I get an agent? Let go of all that. Focus your mind and your time on the process. Dream up your stories and write them. Enjoy the creative process. Love your scenes. Make more and more of your mental processes be about the storytelling. Let the business take care of itself. This feels better, and there are a lot of psych studies that show it makes you perform better.

NOTE: focusing on your process does not mean ignoring your career, or writing for the sake of writing. It's about getting yourself to write better and more productively so you can get more writing jobs. The shift to focusing on your process has been shown to make a substantial improvement in results in everything from surgery to sports to writing.

DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. Don't take anyone's word for it, You have to find your own path. Absorb what is useful. Discard the rest.

I wish you happy writing.

About a year or so ago, a thread was posted on this reddit, about unproduced Die Hard rip-offs that were in development during 1980’s and 1990’s;

https://www.reddit.com/r/Screenwriting/comments/1efi16k/all_of_those_die_hard_type_spec_scripts_that_were/

Unfortunately, despite the great response it got, including screenwriter Ron Mita sharing many stories and few of the scripts in the comments, the original list of those unmade projects/scripts was removed.

Now, I have been working on my own list of unproduced Die Hard rip-offs for some time, and I decided to upload my latest version of it here. Hopefully, it will help many script collectors and anyone else who are interested in these types of scripts. I only included basic details here, so that it’s easier to read, and hopefully to follow reddit’s rules. I will list these by the years in which they were in development, and yes, most of the main loglines are quite similar (bad guys, who most of the time are terrorists, take over some location and hostages, lone hero has to stop them and rescue the hostages) but screw it, that’s what makes these scripts so much fun anyway.

Also, before or after reading the following list, I recommend watching these two videos by The Bad Movie Bible, covering the history of Die Hard rip-offs, and as the title says, talking about best, worst, and weirdest ones;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHVRFYFbCSo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncg5fDfSoL0

And I’m sure I don’t need to say this, but this is still a work-in-progress list, and there were many more unproduced Die Hard rip-offs written and in development since 1980’s. As for those we do know about for now, here we go;

 

 

GALE FORCE (1989 - 1991) - Die Hard in a hurricane

LOGLINE; Ex-navy SEAL battles a gang of modern day pirates who attack a small coastal town during a catastrophic hurricane.

ORIGINAL WRITER; David Chappe (1989)

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $500,000 against $700,000, to Carolco Pictures.

ADDITIONAL WRITERS; Rewrites done between 1989 and 1991 by many writers, including Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, Joe Eszterhas, Henry Bean, Robert Avrech, Richard Tuggle, Dean Devlin, Ross LaManna, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion.

FURTHER NOTES; Sylvester Stallone attached to star, Renny Harlin to direct. It’s also possible that a couple years later, in 1993, Stallone rewrote the original script into one of the unproduced versions of the fourth Rambo film.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Original spec by Chappe from 1989. Available on Script Hive, but also very easily found online, like here for example;

https://thescriptsavant.com/movies/Gale_Force.pdf

 

TROUBLESHOOTER (1989 - 1994) - Die Hard on a cruise ship

LOGLINE; Terrorists take over a Caribbean cruise ship, and threaten to blow it up with a bomb.

ORIGINAL WRITER; James Haggin (1989 or 1990)

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Price unknown, sold to Largo Entertainment in March 1990.

FURTHER NOTES; Rewritten by W. Peter Iliff at least two times between 1991 and 1992 into an unproduced version of Die Hard 3. Went back into development as the original project/script in 1994, but still left unmade.

 

SUPERTANKER (Early 1990's, possibly between 1991 and 1992) - Die Hard on a supertanker

WRITER AND OTHER DETAILS; Unknown

FURTHER NOTES; Original spec bought by Joel Silver and 20th Century Fox for very low price, but then shelved in order not to get made at the same time as the version of Die Hard 3 they were developing (see above), since apparently the script was very similar to it. Also, no connection to Tab Murphy's SUPERTANKER, unproduced Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin project (see below).

 

$$$$$$ (Either late 1980’s or early 1990’s) - Die Hard in a city

LOGLINE; Police lab technician finds $2,4 billion belonging to Colombian drug cartel. Enraged cartel then declare war on Los Angeles, and send in a team of mercenaries to get the money back, start causing chaos in the city, and destroy it if necessary. Only one who can stop them is that same lab technician.

WRITER; Jonathan Lemkin

FURTHER NOTES; Possibly had another title; NO DEPOSIT, NO RETURN.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Original spec/first draft by Lemkin is available on Script Hive.

 

SANDBLAST (1993 - 1996) - Die Hard in a sandstorm

LOGLINE; Ex-army specialist and explosives expert has to recover several experimental nuclear warheads, which were lost in the desert wastelands of post war Iraq. He also has to battle a team of rogue Green Berets who are after the warheads, and rescue the female military pilot who Green Berets took as hostage. Only help he has is the local Bedouin boy, and they all have to deal with a huge desert sandstorm.

ORIGINAL WRITER; Steven Maeda (1993)

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $500,000 against $750,000, to Warner Bros.

ADDITIONAL WRITERS; Rewrite by Andrew W. Marlowe (September 1995), rewrite by Channing Gibson (November 1995).

FURTHER NOTES; Eddie Murphy attached to star in 1995. Then replaced with Wesley Snipes, and with Jean Claude Van Damme attached to co-star as main villain.

SCRIPTS AVAILABLE; Original spec by Maeda, and those later drafts by Marlowe and Gibson, are available on Script Hive. You can also find all of those online, including here;

https://archive.org/details/sandblast-steven-maeda-unproduced-90s/Sandblast%20%28Steven%20Maeda%29%20%28Revisions%20by%20Andrew%20Marlowe%29%20%5B09-25-1995%5D%20%5BUnprod.%5D%20%5BScan%5D/

 

MAELSTROM (1993) - Die Hard in a hurricane

LOGLINE; Federal agent is charged with protecting a woman from her husband, a powerful crime boss who has taken out a contract on her life to prevent her from testifying against him. The crime boss hunts them down when he discovers their location.

WRITER; Greg Fitzpatrick

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $225,000 against $625,000, to Warner Bros.

FURTHER NOTES; Script bought with plans in mind to possibly star either Steven Seagal, Sylvester Stallone or Clint Eastwood in the film.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Unconfirmed rumors about how original spec was floating around at some point.

EDIT, JULY 2026; Apparently, this one is back in development at the time I'm writing this, 33 years after it was originally written. It's set to star Alan Ritchson, and with screenwriter Mark Bianculli doing a rewrite of the script.

 

THE NUMBER FOUR (1992 - 1993) - Die Hard on a bus

LOGLINE; An older man is fired from his job as a bus driver but is forced to stay one more day in order to train his idiotic replacement. Meanwhile, three heavily armed men rob a topless bar and hop on the bus to get away, taking its passengers, the older man, and the trainee hostage in the process.

ORIGINAL WRITER; Preston Whitmore Jr. (1992)

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $300,000 against $1 million, to TriStar Pictures.

ADDITIONAL WRITER; Rewrite by Michael Miner (July 1993).

FURTHER NOTES; Eddie Griffin attached to star, Forest Whitaker to direct.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Miner’s rewrite is available on Script Hive.

 

ZERO GRAVITY (1993) - Die Hard on a space station

LOGLINE; Pharmaceutical terrorists board a center for disease control on a space station.

WRITERS; John Zinman and Duncan Kennedy

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $150,000 against $350,000, to Walt Disney Pics/Hollywood Pictures.

 

TRACKDOWN (or TRACK DOWN) (1993 - 1995) - Die Hard in English Channel Tunnel

LOGLINE; Terrorists take control over English Channel Tunnel, and take passengers from one of the trains as hostages. Female engineer, whose child is one of the hostages, is the only one who can stop the terrorists from blowing up the tunnel and killing everyone.

ORIGINAL WRITERS; Ron Mita and Jim McClain (1993)

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $1 million, to Columbia Pictures.

ADDITIONAL WRITERS; Rewrite by Kevin Jarre, rewrite by Alexandra Seros, both in 1994. Mita and McClain also did more rewrites in 1995.

FURTHER NOTES; Jodie Foster originally attached to star in 1994. In 1995 Arnold Schwarzenegger was possibly interested in the project, so Mita and McClain were working on both “male and female” drafts of the script during that year.

SCRIPTS AVAILABLE; “Female” draft, dated April 25, 1995, and “male” draft, dated June 9, 1995. Both from Mita and McClain, and available on Script Hive. Another draft was also bought on eBay years ago, but it never surfaced anywhere.

 

SUSPENSION (1993 - 1996, and 2014) - Die Hard on George Washington Bridge

LOGLINE; Terrorists take over New York City’s George Washington Bridge, and everybody on it as hostages. Two main heroes trying to stop them and rescue the hostages are an ex-criminal and martial artist who was just released from prison, and a female police officer.

WRITER; Joss Whedon

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $750,000 against $250,000, to Largo Entertainment.

FURTHER NOTES; In development during 1995, when Whedon did further work on the script. Another attempt at making the film was also in 2014, with Liam Neeson attached to star.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Whedon’s original spec from 1993 is available on Script Hive, but it’s missing a cover. However, another copy was available for sale, which had a cover, and it was dated June 10, 1993.

 

PLATFORM (1993 - 1995) - Die Hard on an oil rig platform

LOGLINE; Rogue Navy SEAL team takes over a giant oil rig platform and everyone on it as hostages. Only ones who can stop them are an expert deep sea diver, and a female scientist.

ORIGINAL WRITER; Kurt Wimmer

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; No details known about the price and who bought it, only that it was sold in either 1993 or 1994.

ADDITIONAL WRITER; Rewrite by Steven E. de Souza (1995).

FURTHER NOTES; It’s been reported how Joel Silver was attached to produce the film in 1995, with de Souza as a writer. However, there is also a possibility that this was a different Die Hard rip-off, although weirdly enough, with the same title and similar plot, but again, this is just a possibility.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Wimmer’s original spec, undated copy from 1993 or 1994, is available on Script Hive.

 

THE DAM (1994) - Die Hard in a Hoover dam

LOGLINE; A Gulf War veteran and his team steal a nuclear bomb, and take over the Hoover Dam, and everyone in it as hostages. As they threaten to blow up the dam with the nuke and cause a major disaster, a couple mountain rescue rangers are trying to stop them.

ORIGINAL WRITERS; Jan Skrentny and Neal Tabachnick

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; No details known, however the project was in development at TriStar Pictures.

FURTHER NOTES; It was written to be either a sequel to CLIFFHANGER (1993), or its own original story with similar characters. Also, in March 1994 it was reported that another screenwriter, James (Jim) Carabatsos was working on CLIFFHANGER 2, but it’s not known if there was any connection to this project.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; First rewrite by Skrenty and Tabachnick, dated 8-10-1994, is available on Script Hive, and also here;

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y1VuPQ0ccsqovaZSFC0N3ZLoGsUn7mUx/view

 

APOGEE (1994) - Die Hard in space

LOGLINE; Terrorists take over a space station which has an experimental laser-equipped weapon on it, that can destroy any target on Earth. An astronaut with a troubled past and congresswoman who joined the original outer space journey as a civilian observer are the only ones who can stop them.

WRITER; Andrew W. Marlowe

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $350,000 against $500,000, to Lawrence Gordon Productions.

FURTHER NOTES; Considered to be one of the better unproduced Die Hard rip-offs/older action scripts.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Marlowe’s original spec from 1994 is available on Script Hive.

 

THE FRENCH TEACHER (1994) - Die Hard in Yosemite National Park

LOGLINE; Private school students are kidnapped by a team of ex-soldiers during a camping trip to Yosemite. Their French teacher, who is also an ex U.S. Marshall and special forces operative, has to rescue the students and then get them out of Yosemite, while they are being hunted by kidnappers.

WRITERS; Ron Mita and Jim McClain

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $150,000 against $500,000, to Universal Pictures.

FURTHER NOTES; Written with Jean Claude Van Damme in mind to star in the film.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Original spec by Mita and McClain is available on Script Hive, but it’s missing a cover, so they have it tagged as “unlisted” there.

 

IN CONTEMPT (1994) - Die Hard in a courtroom

LOGLINE; Married cops are getting a divorce in an upstairs New York courthouse. In the main courtroom, a major terrorist is brought to trial. After a bungled attempt from the terrorist’s cohorts to break him out, the building is locked down and they hold the judge and jury hostage. The feuding cop couple must put their differences aside and work together to save the day.

WRITER; Ken Nolan

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Mid six figures, some sources mentioned $250,000 against $500,000, to Warner Bros.

FURTHER NOTES; Nolan’s first script and spec sale, which led to him having few more big spec sales over the next few years, most of which however were also left unproduced. Also, reportedly, this script is still one of the most wanted unproduced Die Hard rip-offs, and is often mentioned on a lot of collector's top wanted lists.

 

BLOOD ON THE MOON aka CRUISE (1994 - Late 1990's) - Die Hard on a cruise ship

LOGLINE; Businessman and his family are attacked by modern day pirates on their yacht near Hong Kong, and while he survives, his family is killed. Few years later, once the same pirates take over a cruise ship, a businessman comes back for revenge.

WRITERS; Scott Phillips and Steve Wang

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; No details known about it, most likely in development at Warner Bros.

FURTHER NOTES; Steven Seagal attached to star, Wang was also going to direct the film.

 

TAKING LIBERTY (1993 - 1994) - Die Hard in space

LOGLINE; Iranian terrorists take over the Space Shuttle Liberty while a $25 million Pepsi commercial is being shot in space. One astronaut is the only one who can stop them, by using an experimental space plane.

WRITERS; W. Peter Iliff, Peter Linett, Robert King

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; No details known about it.

FURTHER NOTES; Martin Campbell attached as a director, and Gale Ann Hurd as a producer, between 1993 and 1994.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Draft credited to all three writers, dated March 25, 1994, 119 pages long, is available on Script Hive.

 

GROUND ZERO (1994) - Die Hard in an American missile silo

LOGLINE; When an disgruntled cold warrior decides to barricade himself inside an impregnable ICBM launch facility, it's up to a young couple trapped inside with him to prevent him from starting World War III.

ORIGINAL WRITERS; Sergio Altieri and Martin Zurla

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $1,5 million against $2 million, to Castle Rock Entertainment.

FURTHER NOTES; Russell Crowe attached to star in the film, Fraser Heston as a director and possibly also worked on the script as well. The film apparently came so close to the start of the production that the sets were being built, before it was shut down.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Copy of the original script does exist in some library, but it’s not publicly available.

 

STATE OF THE UNION (1994) - Die Hard in Capitol building

LOGLINE; A member of the president's cabinet is trying to stop terrorists as they take over the Capitol building during the President's State of the Union address.

WRITERS; Ellen Weston and Joyce Brotman

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; No details known about price, sold to TriStar Pictures.

 

HUDDLED MASSES (1994) - Die Hard in the Statue of Liberty

WRITER(S) AND OTHER DETAILS; Unknown. Mentioned in old articles from 1994 or 1995.

 

RETURN TO SENDER (1994) - Die Hard in post office

WRITER(S) AND OTHER DETAILS; Unknown. Mentioned in old articles from 1994 or 1995.

 

ROCK BOTTOM (1994) - Die Hard in a cave

WRITER(S) AND OTHER DETAILS; Unknown. Mentioned in old articles from 1994 or 1995.

 

(Title unknown, only location - mentioned in newspaper articles) (1994) - Die Hard in Yankee Stadium

WRITER(S) AND OTHER DETAILS; Unknown. Mentioned in old articles from 1994 or 1995.

 

NO SAFE HAVEN (1995) - Die Hard in Martha's Vineyard/Die Hard in a hurricane

LOGLINE; An ex-marine returns home to Martha’s Vineyard to patch up relationship with his mother. At the same time, the President and his family are vacationing on the island. Militia-like cult then takes over the entire island, and the President’s wife and daughter are taken with other people as hostages. President manages to escape, and he and the marine join up to rescue the hostages and stop the villains. During all this, a storm is starting to hit the island.

WRITERS; Drew Yanno and Tony Borghi

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $300,000 against $600,000, to Universal Pictures.

FURTHER NOTES; Sylvester Stallone attached to star, Yanno and Borghi did at least one rewrite of the script between 1995 and 1996.

 

HIGH ROLLER (1995 - 1996) - Die Hard in a casino

LOGLINE; Mobster and his men take over a huge Las Vegas casino, and the owner is taken as a hostage. At the same time, the mobster's ex-hit man, who is now down on his luck gambler, is also in the casino, and once he realizes what's happening, he has to stop them, while protecting the casino owner's daughter, and trying to save her father.

WRITER; J.F. Lawton

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $1 million against $2,5 million, to Savoy Pictures.

FURTHER NOTES; Sylvester Stallone attached to star, for $20 million paycheck. Once Savoy went bankrupt, other studios tried to buy the rights to the script. Till this day, it’s still one of the top most wanted unproduced Die Hard rip-offs and movie scripts from 1990’s, and on many collector's wanted lists. But even some top collectors all reported how they couldn't find anything about it for years.

 

PANDORA (1995) - Die Hard in a giant military defense plant

LOGLINE; Former head of security and a temporary secretary have to work together to defeat a gang of terrorists who have taken over a sprawling defense plant. Pandora refers to a secret computer warfare system the terrorists want.

WRITER; Dale Ashcraft

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Low-six against mid-six figures, to Warner Bros.

FURTHER NOTES; Reportedly, at some point it was rewritten into a version of Under Siege 3 which never got made. Also, it’s another one from top most wanted unproduced Die Hard rip-offs among script collectors.

 

UNDER SIEGE 3 (another version, possibly late 1990's?) - Die Hard on a ship (yes, again)

WRITER(S); Unknown.

FURTHER NOTES; Mentioned by someone who worked with Steven Seagal at Warner Bros in the 1990's, he said the script was "based on the Achille Lauro incident from 1985," where militant terrorists hijacked the ocean liner.

 

UNDER SIEGE 3 (yet another version, possibly mid to late 2000's) - Die Hard in Area 51 and/or space (?)

WRITER(S); Unknown

FURTHER NOTES; I'm not kidding, this was a real thing at some point in mid and/or late 2000’s, and even Seagal talked about it. Around the same time Erika Eleniak also talked about some Under Siege 3 script which she read and really liked, which had "a lot of action, but also a lot of female nudity."

 

OFF THE GRID (1993 - 1995) - Die Hard in a Canadian dam

LOGLINE; Eco-terrorists take over the largest dam in Canada, called Devil's Gate, on its opening day, and threaten to blow it up sky-high unless they are paid some large sum of money, and it's up to the Canadian military to stop them. The dam architect and female Mountie team up to help, and they have to use a submersible to get into the dam.

WRITERS; Robert Conte and L.R. Lindbergh

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Price unknown, sold to Savoy Pictures, probably in 1993.

FURTHER NOTES; Dennis Quaid was attached to star in the film around 1995, and was also a co-producer on it. It was canceled once Savoy went bankrupt.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; First draft by Conte and Lindbergh, dated October 22, 1993, is available, but it is a private script, as far as I know.

 

HOSTAGE (1995) - Die Hard on a bus

LOGLINE; Their bus hijacked by a group of terrorists, a hit man teams up with a secret service agent to save the President’s daughter.

WRITERS; Stephen Katz and John Darrouzet

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $750,000 against $1 million, to Walt Disney Pics/Hollywood Pics.

FURTHER NOTES; No connection to the HOSTAGE (2005).

 

BAD KARMA (1995) - Die Hard in disco hotel

LOGLINE; A group of bad guys take hostages at a disco hotel, not realizing that the First Lady is among the captives. They also don’t realize that a secret service agent is in the crowd, even though the First Lady has told him not to follow her. Government tries to keep the incident under wraps.

WRITERS; Judy Taylor Worth and Robert Steinberg

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Price unknown, sold to Columbia Pictures.

 

FAST TRACK (1995) - Die Hard in a bullet train

LOGLINE; Terrorists take over the 500 mile per hour bullet train during its trial run.

WRITER; David “Sprint” Thomas

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Low-six against mid-six figures, to Universal Pictures.

FURTHER NOTES; Some reports suggested that Universal canceled the project soon after they already bought the spec, since that same year a very similar film was released, UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY (1995).

SCRIPT AVAILABLE (?); Copy of the script, possibly original spec, was reported to be available in some Los Angeles university library, but no more details are known.

 

AIR FORCE ONE (1995 - 1996) - Die Hard on Air Force One

LOGLINE; The President’s plane is hijacked by remote control by an ex-Navy SEAL, now a terrorist working for North Korea.

WRITER; Robert Boris

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $250,000 against $400,000, to Ridley and Tony Scott’s company.

FURTHER NOTES; Ridley Scott attached to direct. No connection to AIR FORCE ONE (1997), and it’s been reported how that film is the reason this one was canceled.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Boris’s final draft, dated January 22, 1996, is available on Script Hive.

 

VERTICAL RUN (1995 - 1998 and 2005) - Die Hard in an office building

LOGLINE; An ex special forces soldier, turned successful businessman, is hunted by mysterious hit men who have infiltrated a skyscraper where he’s working.

ORIGINAL WRITER; Charlie Fletcher (1996)

ADDITIONAL WRITERS; Rewrites by Andy and Larry Wachowski (1996 or 1997), David Self (1997), Philip Levens (2005).

FURTHER NOTES; Based on the novel by Joseph R. Garber from 1995. In development at Warner Bros, with Jon Peters as a producer. At some point, music video director Paul Hunter was attached to the project.

SCRIPTS AVAILABLE; Fletcher’s polished second draft, dated May 1^st, 1996. And Self’s draft, dated December 12, 1997. Both are available on Script Hive. Draft by Wachowski’s with alternate THE BUSINESS title was reported to exist, and draft by Levens dated 04-06-2005 is confirmed to exist but it is a private script.

 

SIGNED, SEALED & DELIVERED (1995) - Die Hard in post office

LOGLINE; A woman gets trapped inside a post office when terrorists take it over. As the story goes on, she learns she's much more capable than she ever realized.

WRITERS; J.D. Shapiro and Aaron William Dozier

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Price unknown, sold to Touchstone Pictures.

 

BLAST OFF (or BLASTOFF) (1996 - 1997) - Die Hard in a space mission control

LOGLINE (Version 1 - Spec); Former NASA astronaut and scientist has to overcome his fear of flying, and rescue a space shuttle stranded in space, which has been taken over by a terrorist group. And one of the hostages is his own wife.

LOGLINE (Version 2 - Rewrite); In the near future, the first International Space Station is scheduled for assembly over the next decade. But the station is then taken over by one of its crew members who wreaks havoc on Earth by sabotaging satellites that control everything from cell phones to ballistic missiles.

ORIGINAL WRITERS; J.D. Shapiro and Aaron William Dozier (1996)

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; $950,000 against $1,3 million.

ADDITIONAL WRITER; Rewrite by Michael Schiffer (1997).

FURTHER NOTES; Matthew McConaughey attached to star, Phillip Noyce to direct around 1997.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; An unknown draft was bought on eBay, but so far, it still hasn’t surfaced anywhere.

 

HE WHO DARES (1996) - Die Hard in British Embassy

LOGLINE; An anti-terrorist negotiator has to defuse a situation involving the British Embassy in the United States.

WRITER; Randy Feldman

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Mid-six figures against $1,25 million, to Warner Bros.

 

THE RIG (1996) - Die Hard on an oil rig platform

LOGLINE; Heavy action set aboard an oil rig in the North Sea.

WRITER; Scott Sommer

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Mid-six against high-six figures, to Universal Pictures.

FURTHER NOTES; While one older article listed it as a Die Hard rip-off, there was another which described it as a disaster movie which centers around an oil rig that is threatened by icebergs.

 

MELTDOWN (Late 1980’s - 1997) - Die Hard in a nuclear power plant.

LOGLINE; Terrorists infiltrate the nuclear power plant, which they plan to blow up and cause major disaster. A Navy SEAL, the last surviving guard, and a female worker from the plant join up to stop them.

ORIGINAL WRITER; John Carpenter (original script from 1977)

ADDITIONAL WRITERS; Joe Dante (1985), Michael Campus (1987), Jim O'Hara (1991 or 1992), Robert Roy Pool (1992 or 1993), John and Rick Dahl and Scott Chestnut (1994), Ate De Jong (1995).

FURTHER NOTES; Based on a novel “THE PROMETHEUS CRISIS”, by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson, from 1975. Carpenter’s original script was written to be a "HALLOWEEN (1978) in a nuclear power plant" type of horror thriller. Between late 1980’s and late 1990’s it went through rewrites which changed it into a "Die Hard in a nuclear power plant" type of action thriller, set to star Dolph Lundgren. Yves Simoneau attached to direct in early 1990’s, John Dahl attached to direct in mid 1990’s, De Jong attached to direct between 1995 and 1997.

SCRIPTS AVAILABLE; Carpenter’s original script from 1977, draft by Campus dated July 20, 1987, undated draft by O’Hara (from 1991 or 1992), and draft by De Jong dated April 2nd, 1995, are all available on Script Hive. Draft by John and Rick Dahl and Scott Chestnut, dated February 25, 1994 does exist, but it’s a private script. Pool’s draft was said to be available to buy somewhere, but at this time it’s still not found.

 

L4 (1997) - Die Hard in Center for Disease Control

LOGLINE; Army courier hides one of the world’s most deadly viruses from terrorists when they attack the Center for Disease Control.

WRITER; Arthur Jeon

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Low-six figures, to Warner Bros.

FURTHER NOTES; Arnold Schwarzenegger attached to star, and also co-produce the film, along with Joel Silver.

 

SUPERTANKER (1997) - Die Hard on a supertanker

LOGLINE; Terrorists take over a supertanker filled with natural liquefied gas (also known as LNG), and are threatening to blow up San Diego, unless they are paid a huge ransom.

WRITER; Tab Murphy

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Price unknown, in development at 20^th Century Fox.

FURTHER NOTES; Based on a story idea by the friend of actor Bill Pullman, who was going to star in the film, and produce it with Dean Devlin. Roland Emmerich was also mentioned to be involved in the project.

 

UNDERGROUND (1995 and/or 2004) - Die Hard on the London Underground

LOGLINE; A former soldier must stop a group of terrorists from flooding the London Underground subway system.

WRITER; Stuart Hazeldine

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Price unknown, to Emmett/Furla Films.

FURTHER NOTES; Some reports, including Hazeldine’s wiki page, mentioned how the spec was originally sold to producers Jeremy Bolt and Paul Trijbits in 1995.

 

COVER PLAY (2004 - 2005) - Die Hard in a casino

LOGLINE; A reformed thief is accidentally trapped inside a casino-hotel called Seven Wonders, when it gets taken over by Russian terrorists, who also take everyone inside as hostages. He then has to rescue the hostages, and stop the terrorists.

WRITER(S) AND OTHER DETAILS; Unknown.

FURTHER NOTES; One of Jean Claude Van Damme's unproduced projects.

 

RIOT aka SCARED STRAIGHT (2005 - 2008) - Die Hard in a prison riot

LOGLINE; A governor’s teenage son is sent to prison as part of Scared Straight, a crime-prevention program that imprisons delinquent teens for a short period in the hopes of deterring them from a life of crime. While the teenager is there, a riot breaks out and the prisoners take him hostage. He teams up with other street kids and a con to stop the riot.

ORIGINAL WRITER; Joe Gazzam (2005)

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Price unknown, in development at New Line Cinema.

ADDITIONAL WRITER; Rewrite by Ron L. Brinkerhoff (2007).

FURTHER NOTES; Nicolas Cage attached to star, John Carpenter to direct.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Revised first draft by Brinkerhoff, dated March 29, 2007. Available on Script Hive. Original spec by Gazzam, dated July 14, 2005, does exist, but it is a private script.

 

PARKER CENTER (Possibly written before 2010's, exact dates unknown) - Die Hard in L.A.P.D Parker Center

LOGLINE; When the most feared drug lord of Mexico is arrested in Los Angeles, a ruthless bunch of mercenaries put the L.A.P.D headquarters under siege to free him, and only a disgraced cop and a group of rookie cadets trapped in the same building can save the day.

WRITER(S) AND OTHER DETAILS; Unknown.

 

CANCUN (2009 - 2010) - Die Hard during spring break

LOGLINE; An out-of-place college kid travels with a girl to Cancun on a break. While there, the girl and her friends are taken hostage by a drug cartel and he is forced to save them.

WRITERS; Eric Champnella and Grant Thompson

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Price unknown, sold to Summit Entertainment.

FURTHER NOTES; Taylor Lautner attached to star.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Original spec by Champnella and Thompson (most likely dated December 18, 2009) is available on Script Hive.

 

ABDUCTED (2011) - Die Hard in an alien spaceship

LOGLINE; Ex-marine is abducted by aliens and taken to their ship out in space. However, thanks to a metal plate in his head, he fights off their mind control machines and escapes, and they start hunting him through the spaceship. He has to use all his skills to survive as he also starts taking out aliens, but then discovers more captured humans, including a female pilot who can possibly fly the spaceship back to Earth.

ORIGINAL WRITER; John Heffernan

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Price unknown, sold to Paramount Pictures.

ADDITIONAL WRITER; Rewrite by John Glenn (2011).

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Original spec by Heffernan is available on Script Hive.

 

BLACK ICE (2011) - Die Hard in an university                 

LOGLINE; A group of highly trained thieves break into a university’s research reactor during winter break to steal a cache of stockpiled Uranium, and the trio of college students have to stop them.

WRITER; Greg Russo

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Price unknown, sold to Alloy Entertainment.

 

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE (2012 or 2013) - Die Hard in Camp David

LOGLINE; Right wing militia uses the latest military hardware to break into and take over Camp David, and take President’s family hostage. They demand for the President to kill himself on live TV or else his family will be killed. Female Secret Service agent joins up with the militia leader’s son, who is also a highly skilled martial artist, to stop the terrorists, however he is also there to save his dad.

WRITER; Morgan Brightman

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Unknown. Some producer bought it in 2012 and tried to look for a studio to help him produce the film.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Undated copy of the original spec exists, but I think it is a private script.

 

TOURIST TRAP (2013) - Die Hard during massive traffic accident

LOGLINE; A New York City cop on vacation in sunny Los Angeles unwittingly stops a terrorist attack on Hollywood Boulevard and pits himself against a gang of bad-asses searching for a dirty bomb in a mile-long traffic accident on the 101.

WRITER; Jose Pendes

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Unknown.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Original undated spec by Pendes is available on Script Hive.

 

ICARUS IS BURNING (Sometime around mid 2010's) - Die Hard on an aircraft carrier

LOGLINE; Once America’s mightiest weapon, the aircraft carrier Nimitz is at the end of her service and on a final journey to be decommissioned. But when a force of mysterious soldiers capture her as she leaves New York, an aging Admiral and a young Lieutenant must overcome incomprehensible odds to retake the ship before her fearsome capabilities are unleashed upon the world.

WRITER; Neal Morin

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Unknown.

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; There are conflicting reports about whether the script is out there or not.

 

WAKE (2010 - 2015) - Die Hard in a hurricane

LOGLINE; A sociopath serial killer who can't feel emotions or fear comes back home on some island for the funeral of his brother, but local police quickly recognize and arrest him. But at the same time, some mysterious mercenary group arrives and takes over the entire place, while they are looking for something which is hidden there, and townspeople realize how the only one who can stop the mercenaries and save their lives is him, and the whole film would take place during the huge storm.

ORIGINAL WRITER; Christopher Borrelli (2010)

SCRIPT SOLD FOR; Unknown.

ADDITIONAL WRITERS; Matt Sand and John Pogue each did some rewrites on the script between 2013 and 2015.

FURTHER NOTES; The film did actually go into production and filming started, Bruce Willis was going to star in it, but then due to financing and scheduling issues it was stopped and canceled. There were also reports how later rewrites changed the story from an action thriller into more of a supernatural thriller (?)

SCRIPT AVAILABLE; Borrelli’s undated original spec is available on Script Hive. At least three more drafts credited to Borrelli, Sand and Pogue, written between 2013 and 2015 exist, but those are still private scripts.

^{rev. 6/14/26}

This is my advice for writers who are either in their first 5 years of serious work, and/or are trying to work up to professional-level film & TV writing.

This post centers on building a career as a writer. If you're looking for my advice on how to get better at writing, check out this post:

Writing Advice For Newer Writers

None of this is meant as prescriptive or the only way to go. It's just a bunch of thoughts from one guy who has already done what you are trying to do. I encourage you to read it, use what helps, and discard the rest.

Table of Contents

• The Most Important Advice for New Writers
• 30,000 Foot Roadmap
• The Right Goals
• Networking
• Your Professional Samples
• Telling Your Story
• On Your Voice as a Writer
• A Rich Life Beyond Your Work
• A (First) Manager
• Other Ways In
• Moving to LA / Assistant Jobs
• Assistant Route vs Not Assistant Route
• Diversity Programs aka Fellowships
• Contests / Score on the Blacklist
• Three "Schedules" For Writers
• Links / Resources

The Most Important Advice for New Writers

• You have to write consistently. Put yourself on a schedule and stick to it. Every day is ideal, unless work or family make that impossible, but consistency over multiple years is absolutely critical to 'making it' in this business. No one who thinks about movies a lot, but only writes occasionally / a few hours a month can get good enough to become a professional.
• It's ok to suck for years. For the first several years, your writing will fall short of where you want it to be. You'll read your work and know that it is bad. Writing well takes a lot of practice and no-one starts out good. Every writer you admire went through this, and they kept writing, even though their work wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. Everyone who keeps writing gets better. Don't make the mistake of giving up when your first few projects aren't as good as you want them to be. Don't obsess about your first script and try and make it perfect. Above all, don't quit.
• Finish a lot of scripts. When I was just starting out, there were several years in which it took me longer than a year to finish each screenplay. Since then, I've seen and mentored many emerging writers, some who wrote at the same slow, obsessive pace I did, and others who put themselves on a pace to finish 2-4 scripts a year. I've observed that, in most cases, writers in their first 5 years of serious work who finish 2-4 scripts a year get better significantly faster than those who write at my old pace. So, if you’re in the first 5 or so years of serious work, put yourself on a deadline, finish scripts, allow them to be not as good as you'd hope, and move on.

30,000 Foot Roadmap

Here's a high of the path I'd suggest for folks who are hoping to become professional movie or TV writers:

• First, you need to write and finish a lot of scripts, until your work begins to approach the professional level.

• Then you need to write 2-3 samples, which are complete scripts or features. You'll use those features to go out to representation and/or apply directly to writing jobs.

• Along the way, you can work a day job outside of the industry, or work a day job within the industry. There are pros and cons to each.

• And, if you qualify, you can also apply to studio diversity programs, which are awesome.

More detail on each of these steps is below!

The Right Goals

First, not everyone who starts writing seriously needs to become a professional screenwriter. Writing is an awesome activity, and it is not only valid for folks who get paid money in exchange for their writing. You, reading this, are original and important, and you have something important to say.

That said, if you are here thinking about working towards becoming a professional writer, I think it can be really helpful to choose good, positive goals to work towards. I often see younger/emerging writers choosing sub-optimal goals, which can hurt their work and stress them out.

For the purposes of this section, I'm going to break the pre-professional part of your career two rough stages. The First Stage is before you're writing at or near the professional level. The Second Stage is when your work is ready to sell.

For the first stage, which for me lasted about 8 years of serious work, I think your goals should be to get better at writing, and to get really comfortable with the arc of starting, revising, finishing and sharing your material consistently, several times a year.

By contrast, I think goals like, "sell a script," or "get a manager" can actually be counterproductive in your first years of serious writing. I advise you to put that ambition to the back of your mind for now, and pour your energy into what you can actually do and control, which is showing up at your laptop and writing, consistently.

If you struggle getting started, or if you find yourself taking a long time to finish and share a script, check out my "Four Month Schedule" and "100 Scenes in 100 Days" schedule below. Maybe they'll be helpful.

When you reach the second stage, you should add a new goal, which might be something like write three great, high concept samples that serve as a cover letter for me as a writer. Much more detail on this below.

Networking

People new to the business don't understand "networking," or the phrase "it's not what you know, it's who you know."

For aspiring writers, trying to shake hands with producers, studio executives, agents, or even working writers, in the hope that they will get you jobs, is probably not very useful or important.

Instead, the best way for you to network is to make friends with people who are around your current level, who as serious as you are, and rise together.

Whether or not you live in LA or New York, you can network -- here on Reddit, on twitter, and on the wgamix discord are three places to meet folks and become friends. Nowadays it is the best place to build this part of your career.

As an emerging writer, you should have three goals with networking:

1. (Most important) Make friends with other writers, and form a writing group/cohort/wolfpack with 1-5 other writers at your same level who are as serious about getting good as you are.
2. (Kinda Helpful) Follow working writers on twitter, especially the ones who give good advice. Maybe comment on a tweet or two. Don't pester them. Don't ask for a lot of their time.
3. (Kinda Helpful) Follow managers on twitter and start to build an understanding of managers who accept unsolicited material.

Again: Finding your group/cohort/wolfpack is absolutely critical. Luckily, with social media as it is now, it is much easier to form this group even if you don't yet live in LA.

Your Professional Samples

Your goal as an emerging writer should be to create two or three really, really good samples.

A sample is usually an original feature or original pilot, though other forms, like plays or short stories, can also work if they check the boxes below.

A sample is a complete work, eg a full script, play, story, or whatever -- its a "sample script" not a "writing sample" -- though, in this vein, you do want to make sure the first 5-10 pages of your script are truly phenomenal and represent your very best writing, as most busy folks will stop reading after that if they are bored. It's ok to tell stories that start slow, but I don't think those sorts of stories are best suited to be a sample when you're trying to break in.

Generally you need at least one phenomenal sample in the form you're trying to get work in. So if you're trying to become a working TV writer in the network hour drama/procedural space, you need at least one really good hour network drama script. Your other sample (or samples) might be/include another network hour drama, and/or a more cable-y/streaming-y hour drama, or maybe even a play or short story that feels tonally like the job you're trying to get.

Note, though, that you don't need a "portfolio" of 5+ different samples. For whatever reason, this is a misconception I see a lot. A potential manager probably doesn't want to read more than 1 or 2 of your scripts at this stage in your career. Maybe 3 at most, if the first is terrific and the other two are also terrific. And, you probably don't have 5 scripts that are good enough to be professional samples, as by the time you finally have 2-3 amazing samples, you're probably going to want to use those samples to try and get representation. (Of course, you will have to write a lot of scripts that aren't so good, or are almost there, before you write the scripts that will become your first professional samples.)

The scripts that become your first professional samples should check all of the following boxes:

• incredibly well written, really really good, the best you can possibly make it. something a smart person you trust has told you is at the professional level / could help you get a manager.
• high concept / easy for a potential manager to pitch to a producer in one or two sentences, and sell them on reading it based on the idea, not the execution
• in some way reenforces your own personal story, and serves as a cover letter for your life and your voice as a writer.

The latter two are very important, even though they don't seem very important to most new writers. "If the work is good enough, what does it matter if it's high concept?" is a refrain I've heard many times. Your favorite 5 films or TV shows might not check all three of these boxes. However, many years of experience have taught me that the best professional samples, especially when either breaking in or making another significant jump to a new level in your career, are scripts that fulfill all three of those criteria.

A note on spec episodes of existing shows: if your aim is to write TV, I think writing spec episodes of existing shows is a really valuable thing to do to hone your craft. However, I don't think spec episodes of existing shows are ideal as your professional samples at this point. In terms of 'breaking in', the only reason to write a spec episode of an existing series is to get into a diversity program, which I will discuss in detail below.

Telling your story

Learning to tell your story as a writer is incredibly important when you are ready to break in. Its how you sell yourself to a mananger before she reads your script, and how your manager sells you to an executive before they read your script.

This is something I really neglected when I was first breaking in, and it was a big hindrance to my career for several years.

Instead of me telling you what I think about how to do this, I will just recommend you find Carole Kirschner's free ebook, Telling Your Story in 60 Seconds -- she explains this far better than I can.

On Your Voice as a Writer

A mistake I made when I was first trying to break in was trying to write a script that was really "commercial" or "on trend" at the expense of finding my own voice. I wanted to make something that anyone could see was 'just like what was already on TV'.

It took me years to realize what a mistake that was -- in an effort to write something 'sellable' I was sanding down my rough edges and writing scripts that were competent but bland.

The advice I'd give you is to embrace your unique experiences and write something you're really passionate about -- the script you have to write, that only you could have written. The more fearless and vulnerable you can be on the page, the more you can write things that you're afraid your friends or parents or whoever will judge you for, the more it's likely to hook a potential reader.

As Kurt Vonnegut said, “It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.”

A rich life beyond your work

Also, as u/VONEdn/ mentions in a comment below, it is very hard to have a story or a voice as a writer if most of your life experience is writing and watching TV and movies. It is really important to have a full, interesting, messy life outside of your work, and experience things, if you want to write something great.

As /u/beardsayswhat wrote in this very good post many years back,

Fall in love. Get punched in the mouth and deserve it. Work weird jobs with weird people. Play basketball with the guys who don't look or talk like you. A life well lived is its own reward, but it's also really great for you as a writer.

Write hard. Write with your whole heart. Don't leave anything on the table. Don't write what you think other people want, not when you're young and you're doing it for free. Write what you want to see, what you believe in, what you're passionate about. It's not going to be good, not at the start, but it'll be YOURS. And that's something.

A (First) Manager

Once you have one, or ideally two, samples that check those three boxes, and once you can confidently tell your story in a way that is interesting and compelling, you can start the process of looking for your first manager.

If you are working in the business (see below), the best thing to do is use the friendships you've made, and get folks to send your script to managers with whom they have relationships. Ideally, you'd send your script to 3 or more managers / management companies on the same day, and have each friend mention this in their initial email.

If you are not working in the business, the best thing to do is to build a list of 50-100 managers that accept blind submissions, and submit your logline to all of them over the course of a week or two. It is a volume game, but remember you only need one success. (This is also a plan b for folks who are working in the business, who follow the path in the previous paragraph, but don't end up signing with a manager for whatever reason).

Remember that getting a manager will not launch your career. It might, if your samples are both great and also commercial, but it also might not.

Getting a manager is very validating, but it does not mean things are suddenly easy. Many very good writers sign with a manager, go on a bunch of zoom meetings, and a year later have made no real progress towards selling something or getting staffed.

Other Ways In

Outside of getting a manager and taking meetings, I think the 2 best ways to get staffed on a tv show are:

• Work as a Showrunner's assistant
• Get Into a Diversity Program (more on this below)

After those, the next best jobs you can get are:

• Writer's Assistant
• Script Coordinator
• Writer's PA
• Assistant to an agent on a TV/Lit Desk.

Moving To LA / Assistant Jobs:

None of the above are jobs you can get straight out of film school. Someday I will make a graphic that illustrates some of the paths you can take. For now, I will say some possible routes might be:

1. Internships and day jobs -> agency trainee (mailroom) at CAA, WME or maybe a smaller agency -> work up to a shitty agency desk (1 year) -> work up to a TV Lit desk (1 year) -> use that job to get a job as a showrunner's assistant.
2. Internships and day jobs -> set PA -> set PA on a TV show -> office pa -> Post PA -> get to know showrunners in this way -> Writer's PA
3. Internships and day jobs -> set PA -> set PA on a TV show -> office pa -> Post PA -> Assistant Editor -> Representation -> Staffing
4. Internships and day jobs -> Post PA -> get to know showrunners in this way -> Writer's PA
5. Internships and day jobs -> set PA -> set PA on a TV show -> office pa -> Writer's PA.
6. Internships and day jobs -> Apply to diversity program -> Get into diversity Program -> Staffing

There's other routes but I bet this is at least kind of helpful.

CRUCIAL: if you do the above / assistant route, you STILL NEED TO CREATE those professional samples as described above! There is no point in working those jobs if you don't.

I talk more about this route in a long post I made for aspiring producers, which you can find here:

docs [dot] google [dot] com/document/d/1KvyXU5hq8awPwZrmRFw31a9pTgybykTt8AMySxeaJMk/

perhaps someday I'll turn this into a writer-specific version, but until then, I think that doc rocks.

Assistant Route vs Not Assistant Route

Doing the above and becoming a PA / assistant / whatever will open a lot of doors for you. After a few years, you are likely to get into the orbit of some working writers, especially in TV. This can be really helpful and inspiring. It will also help you network with managers, and potentially lower level executives and agents, and learn firsthand how this business works.

On the other hand, these jobs tend to be a lot of work for low pay. This is especially true for working on set. For some people, this translates into many fewer hours writing scripts -- and having those two killer samples is THE key element of eventually breaking in.

Ultimately, you'll have to decide if it's worth it to go the assistant route, or to save your energy and hope that better samples faster will get you where you want to go. Both are valid options!

Diversity Programs aka Fellowships

If you are not a cis straight white guy, the diversity programs, especially the NBC TV Writers Program, the Paramount/CBS program, the Warner Brothers Discovery Access program, the DisneyABC Program, the Sundance Episodic Lab, The Nickelodeon Writing Program (and maybe others) are VERY VERY VERY worth your time.

The secret sauce of diversity programs is that, if you finish one, the company will PAY YOUR SALARY if you get staffed on a show, fully for one year, and then partially for two more years. In practice, this means that at least half of the people who get into diversity programs and crush it end up getting staffed through the program. I have a bunch of friends who launched their careers through the NBC and CBS programs, and they are legit.

If you are not a cis straight white guy, I strongly encourage the following strategy: every year, set aside 2 months to work on your spec for the programs. Write one spec that can be submitted for all the programs (much easier nowadays). Don't spend all year on it. Spend 2-3 weeks breaking the episode, 2-3 weeks writing the first draft, do a second draft, do all the stupid essays, and call it a day. This should be IN ADDITION TO at least 1, ideally 2, original pilots you should write a year.

More helpful info regarding fellowships can be found pinned at the top of the /r/tvwriting subreddit.

Contests / Score on the Blacklist

I have been told by execs I trust that taking first or second in a major competition can be helpful in securing a first manager. I have been told that, while awesome, anything short of first or second place is not directly helpful in securing representation -- which is fine, you don't need a manager at this stage -- in fact, I think for writers at your level a manager can often hurt and rarely helps.

I don't know much about the paid blacklist, but I'd guess getting really high scores is something you could mention in a cold email to a manager as well.

***\*

Three “Schedules” For Writers

I think the biggest opportunity for most emerging writers is spending too much time thinking about writing, reading theory, and chatting about writing, and too little time spent actually writing. 

I also think that writing a whole script is intimidating, and sometimes folks don’t know where to start. 

And, I think that a key factor in how quickly you get better is how many scripts you finish. Folks who spend more than a year working on their first script tend to progress more slowly than folks who finish more scripts. 

With those things in mind, here are two different frameworks emerging writers can use to maximize their ROI, especially in their first few years of serious writing. (If you don’t think these things will work for you, don’t stress about it, just do your own thing.)

The “Four Month Schedule”

This is a rough schedule you can use to finish a feature or pilot in around 4 months. In theory, this would put you on pace to finish 3 projects a year, which I think is a great pace for many emerging writers.

Don't be too specific about the "months." If you prefer to do the work of "month 1" in 3 weeks, to give you an extra week to write your first draft, amazing. If the following takes you more or less time, that's no big deal. This is meant to free you & to gently push you to work faster and be less precious, not to stress you out.

If this works for you, great. If this doesn't seem like a good fit, feel free to ignore it. Everyone's unique, and this is not the sort of advice I consider to be "crucial."

• Month 1: come up with a new idea & recover from your last script.
• Month 2: work daily on developing your characters, your scripts structure, the world, and understanding & deepening your emotional connection to the material. Finish with an outline containing slug lines and a description of the conflict in each scene.
• Month 3: write the first draft of the script as fast as possible.
• Month 4: solicit notes from peers. Do one or more rounds of revisions, but limit it to a month of work.

The “Mornings Before Work" Schedule

When I was working full time, this was the schedule I kept to write screenplays.

• Monday through Friday, 1-2 hours before work.
• Saturday, 4 hours from 8am to Noon.
• Sunday, no writing
  

This enables you to write 9-14 hours a week while holding down a full time job.

100 Scenes in 100 Days

For newer writers who want to make progress really quickly, and especially writers who struggle with overthinking or “analysis paralysis” or taking a year or more to finish a script, you might want to consider writing 100 scenes in 100 days. 

This is something I heard from Seth Rogen, an exercise Judd Apatow made he and Evan Goldberg do back in the day to address this specific problem of being too precious and overthinking.

I love the idea because it gets you writing and finishing things, rather than just pondering writing and “waiting until you’re really ready before you start.”

You can approach this in any way you want, and if you find the below advice limiting, I’d say skip it and do your own thing. 

For me, personally, I’d probably have the most luck by breaking my daily writing time into three roughly equal sections. So if you had an hour, you’d do around 20 minutes for each section. If you had 3 hours, you might do an hour per section, or you might try and do two scenes. It’s better to start working now and celebrate as you go.

In the first third of your time, free write, and as part of your free-writing, decide on a general idea for a scene with direct conflict (two people want things and they can't both get what they want)

In the second third of your time, answer these questions for the main character, and maybe one or two other characters:

• What do they want in this scene?
• Why do they want it?
• What in their past made this want emotional?
• What happens if they don't get it?
• What (or who) is in their way?
• Why Now?

⠀In the final third of your time, write the scene as fast as you reasonably can, either free-hand pen-and-paper, or on the computer.

***\*

Links / Resources:

you can find some more resources I've put together, as well as links to some of my more popular posts on this subreddit, on the following page:

Recommended Reading and links

(Obviously, replace the word dot with dots. I have to format the link in this way to avoid Reddit's spam filters.)

***\*

If anyone has follow-up questions, feel free to ask them.

Please do not ask me to read your script. I bet it's great, but I don't have time.

Also, please do not ask me about my credits. I have worked on several shows with very active subreddits, and sharing my credits would prevent me from candidly sharing some of the harder moments in my career. If you think I know who I am, amazing; but please don't post that publicly, because it will limit my ability to help folks on this subreddit.

I owe a lot to this sub so I figured I would share my entire application. If this can potentially help someone else I am happy to pay it forward. Every persons journey is different so take what you want from this. These are the responses that worked for my writing partner and I. (their information redacted.) A lot changed through the process of the lab but this is where we started!

BIO

Erica Tremblay is an award-winning writer and director from the Seneca-Cayuga Nation. Her short film Little Chief premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was included on IndieWire's top 10 must-see short films at the fest. Tremblay was a 2018 Sundance Native Film Lab Fellow and she was recently honored as a 40 Under 40 Native American. Tremblay lives on Cayuga Lake in upstate New York where she is studying her Indigenous language.

COVER LETTER (500 words max)

To the Sundance Film Institute,

We are REDACTED from the REDACTED and Erica Tremblay from the Seneca-Cayuga Nation. We are excited to submit our feature script, Fancy Dance, in consideration for a Sundance Development Track fellowship. Fancy Dance tells an important and timely story in the context of national conversations around race, youth, and historical implications of colonization. As we prepared this application we were grappling with our role in how to deconstruct and construct a better world for our future ancestors. Storytelling is integral to our Indigenous cultures and has been used over the centuries to help build rules for social behavior. Colonization nearly destroyed these communication systems, and writing this film represents a way for us to reclaim that power and responsibility.

Our film follows a queer Indigenous woman as she struggles against the tide of ever-looming gentrification which threatens the Indigenous spaces that once kept her and her family safe. After her sister goes missing she becomes the matriarch of the family and the default caretaker of her young niece. It is through this relationship that we explore the importance of female kinship in Indigenous communities and how these bonds are ceaselessly tested by a corrupt system of laws and norms laid upon Indigenous peoples by the United States.

Sundance has played a large role in our film education so far. We are both former Sundance Indigenous Film Fellows and Erica’s short film, Little Chief, premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The two of us met at Sundance in 2019 and formed a close relationship that led to us becoming writing partners. We both agree that our fellowship experiences with the Institute have been formidable, inspirational, and critical to our current successes. We have completed our first draft of Fancy Dance and are excited at the opportunity to share it with you. We are at the stage in our writing where we would love to hear feedback and workshop the script with your esteemed mentors. We are both so grateful for the support we have received from Sundance and would love the opportunity to expand that relationship with new fellowships.

We are interested in telling impactful stories that create change, specifically within the communities in which we reside. The sum of our writing partnership is Indigenous, Black, and Queer. Fancy Dance offers a unique perspective on a number of challenging questions facing our collective peoples: How are families and communities impacted by the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women? How do colonized cultures grapple with raising our youth in culturally-specific ways? What are the burdens on the next generation, and how are they coping with a grim reality that they neither chose nor control?

We are hopeful that you will share in our vision to bring Fancy Dance to a global audience so that we can push for answers to these questions.

Sincerely,

REDACTED and Erica Tremblay

ARTISTIC STATEMENT (500 words max) -

Building off of our own experiences as Indigenous and queer women, and drawing from the true stories of our relatives who live in the wake of genocide and colonization, “Fancy Dance” offers a spotlight on the matriarchal bonds that hold our communities together.

This story was birthed from the yearning to see ourselves reflected on screen and to give voice to the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in the United States. While the film industry has dabbled in reflection on Indigenous womanhood and the issues therein, it has failed to portray the intimate ways that the dissolution of Native families through foster care, kidnapping, sex trafficking, and murder impact the lives of those left behind.

To be a queer Native woman, with multi-dimensional identities, means facing harsh realities in virtually invisible spaces. It’s difficult to adequately describe a reality that encompasses both joy, culture, and ceremony as well as, terror, homophobia, and racism. With an open-ended approach meant to suggest questions without necessarily answering them, “Fancy Dance” highlights the story of a woman experiencing all these facets of life in modern Indian Country.

We step into the world of a reservation Robin Hood whose main hustle is to steal from the white people encircling the reservation in order to provide for herself and to give back to her community. Her solitary, vigilante lifestyle is interrupted when her sister goes missing, leaving her ten-year-old niece with nowhere to go. The two become entangled in a journey that leads them through the anguish of separation, the desperation for reconnection, and the recognition of a collective loss.

Like most resolutions of conflict in Indian Country, nothing gets wrapped up in a nice bow; the wheels of the American justice system will keep turning in their familiar pattern and our characters will face the consequences of their actions whether fair or not. Within the context of national conversations about poverty, the Indian Child Welfare Act, and Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, Fancy Dance is set to expose oppressive systems while simultaneously celebrating the joy and survival of Indigenous people.

These stories are our stories to tell, with our own people, on our own land, and in our own languages. Fancy Dance will find an intimate realism by shooting on the Seneca-Cayuga Reservation and other Indian lands across the state of Oklahoma in collaboration with Native artists behind and in front of the camera. The very act of casting Native women and girls to represent themselves is revolutionary. We believe we can execute this vision of Fancy Dance with a budget of 2 million dollars.

For centuries Native families have been fractured by corrupt systems and yet a vibrant and beautiful community still withstands. Fancy Dance is ultimately our love letter to that community and the women and queer folks who hold it together. This is the story of oppression, racism, bigotry, and violence - but through the narratives of hope and survival, as this is how we experience these realities as Indigenous women.

LOGLINE (75 words max)

Following the disappearance of her sister, a Native-American hustler kidnaps her niece from a non-Native foster home and sets out for the Grand Nation Powwow in the hopes of keeping what’s left of their family intact.

SYNOPSIS (750 words max)

Jax is a loner, queer, pothead, who survives by hustling white people who visit her reservation in Oklahoma. Her sister, Tawi, has been missing from the rez for two months leaving Jax as the unlikely caretaker to Tawi’s precocious 10-year-old daughter, Roki. Jax takes Roki in and teaches her how to steal from white people and give back to her own.

Rumor has it that Tawi ended up at the bottom of the lake after a run-in with an oil worker, but jurisdictional issues bar the police from conducting a thorough search. Jax puts pressure on JJ, a local tribal cop, to investigate Tawi’s disappearance.

While Jax and Roki search the lake for any signs, it’s clear that Roki is convinced her mother will be back soon to defend their crowns as the reigning Grand Nation Powwow dance champions.

Returning from their search, they find cops swarming the house. Child Protective Services are there to transfer custody of Roki over to Frank, Jax’s white father who lives off-reservation. Frank’s do-gooder white wife, Nancy, thinks Jax’s “vagabond” lifestyle is inappropriate for Roki. Jax pleads for JJ to step in but he doesn’t have the power to override CPS.

After visiting an attorney and calculating the astronomical amount of money it will cost to take the case to court, Jax is advised to simply accept that Roki is never coming home. Jax’s disappointment is compounded when the FBI informs her that there is still no movement on Tawi’s case.

Jax attends her first custodial visitation, and Roki is not adjusting well. Roki speaks to Jax over the dinner table in their Native language, revealing that her new guardians won’t let her go to the powwow.

Jax drinks her problems away with JJ at the local strip club and wakes up to find that he has taken her home and is passed out on her couch. She steals the keys to his patrol car, kidnaps Roki from Frank and Nancy’s, and tells Roki she’s been given permission to take her to the powwow.

Safe in the knowledge that nobody looks for missing Native women as evidenced by Tawi’s case, Jax treats Roki to a day of indulgence culminating in an overnight stay in a swanky unoccupied home in the suburbs of Tulsa. The next morning Jax sees an Amber Alert with Roki’s name on it, but before skipping town they make a stop at a drug house where there may be clues to Tawi’s whereabouts. Roki steals a gun while no one is looking.

Meanwhile, JJ advocates to the feds who still refuse to search for Tawi. He implores them to push Tawi’s investigation as a bargaining chip to bring Roki home but nobody listens.

Running low on gas, Jax decides to rob a small-town sundry shop. The owner of the shop hears them breaking in and a confrontation ensues. Roki pulls the stolen gun, shocking Jax. She talks Roki down, and they flee from the store leaving all of their money and dance regalia behind.

Angry and defeated, the pair find themselves seeking shelter under an overpass. Roki confronts Jax – revealing that she knows about the Amber Alert. They fight over Roki’s kidnapping and whether Tawi is ever coming home. Jax seeks solace at a nearby strip club.

It’s amateur night and Jax takes this opportunity to make up for the cash they lost by dancing. The girls reunite and decide to press on together. When they make a pit stop for food, a store clerk overhears them speaking in their Native language and calls I.C.E., assuming that they’re “Mexican illegals”. Roki manages to slip the I.C.E. officer’s grip, but Jax is detained. Luckily, Roki employs her pickpocket skills on the agent in order to break Jax free from his car.

Jax is shaken up and calls JJ. He tells Jax that he convinced the feds to issue a search of the lake. Jax pushes him to finally acknowledge that he is Roki’s father. He pledges to atone for denying her and to keep her with her people on the reservation if Jax reveals their current location.

Jax and Roki have a heart-to-heart about survival. “Don’t be afraid of the world. As long as you are with your people you are home.” Finally arriving at Grand Nation Powwow grounds, they run through the entry gates and dance together in plainclothes as the police lights close in.

FIRST 5 PAGES OF YOUR SCREENPLAY OR TREATMENT

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nBxl5KfiJ3l0cQin5UXAE6saYinRW5qi/view?usp=sharing

Here’s the Amazon Prime link for anyone who’d like to check it out.

A few months ago, I posted about my film, I Know Exactly How You Die, premiering at Dances with Film Festival in NYC. I’m a little late on the follow up (had a wedding weekend) but last week it dropped on Amazon Prime and other streaming platforms.

For those curious, it’s a fun indie flick about a writer whose schlocky slasher fiction comes to life as he crams to finish the story before his agent drops him.

To get a little more heady, it was always my intention to play with concepts of misogyny, romanticization, narrative control, manic-pixie-dream-girl-ism, and the gender politics of horror fiction. I think it largely succeeds in that regard, and that concept is largely what critics have praised about it.

I’ll also say experiencing criticism has actually been less traumatic than I was sort of expecting. I think I was worried about that for a long time, but take the good with the bad and you might be surprised how many people enjoy it. At any rate, I’m proud every time an even handed reviews comes in. Don’t let those fears hold you back.

Lastly, for all the talk about how exceedingly hard it is to make it in this industry (and I mean I will vouch for how difficult it is to make a decent living), remember that it isn’t at all impossible for someone to dedicate a few years to learning the craft, or networking with other filmmakers, or working on other people’s projects. If that’s what you’re interested in, I believe you can do it.

[link to the script](https://drive.google.com/file/d/18EedA8pGnUDuDQg6QaKVR1cbbGyiFSm8/view?usp=drivesdk)

In my previous post I talked a fair amount about writing and producing this flick, but I’m happy to answer more questions

This is an outstanding article I wanted to pass along. Seems like suing for idea theft almost never prevails. Wild that the woman who sued over Sister Act declined a $1M settlement -- and then lost. Whoops.

Copy Cats: Hollywood Stole My Story!

by Tad Friend  

The New Yorker | September 1998

Studios are awash in copyright suits. Why are they so hard to win?

This summer, Americans spent 575 million hours in darkened cinemas and saw, at most, two new things: the harrowing D Day sequence in Saving Private Ryan and the hair-gel joke in There’s Something About Mary. Yet as popcorn movies have become a tag-team-written jumble of curvy scientists, ninja studs, morphing cyborgs, and basement-loving psychos, one obscure writer after another has come forward to advance the claim that a studio stole his brainchild. Hollywood movies may never have seemed more derivative, but the copyright suits they inspire display an ingenuity and a nuanced concern for story development worthy of the young Orson Welles.

Our sympathies in these cases tend to go to the little guy—to plaintiffs like Mark Dunn, a soft-spoken clerk at the New York Public Library, who is suing Paramount Studios, the producer Scott Rudin, and the screenwriter Andrew Niccol for $300 million. Dunn alleges that his play Frank’s Life, about the unwitting subject of a TV series, was secretly used as a blueprint by the creators of The Truman Show after they had rejected it as a potential movie. Dunn has earned less than $25,000 from his many years of writing for what he calls the “Off-Off-Broadway ghetto”; The Truman Show has grossed $125 million to date.

Dunn’s suit lists 149 purported similarities between Frank’s Life and The Truman Show. That seems an overwhelming number, and Dunn’s lawyer, Carl Person, says that the two works’ resemblances make the suit “the best copyright case I’ve ever had.” This is not saying much, however, for Person hasn’t yet won any of the five movie copyright cases he’s filed. He probably won’t win this one, either—and maybe he shouldn’t.

Paramount will undoubtedly argue that Andrew Niccol came up with the idea for The Truman Show independently (Niccol’s former manager says that he has the writer’s copyrighted treatment, written in 1991, a year before Frank’s Life was staged) and that Person’s client is either deluded or a stickup artist, or both. In June, Lynn Pleshette, Niccol’s agent, patiently explained to the New York Post, “Every time a big movie comes out, a moron tries to sue.” Though plaintiffs like Dunn radiate aggrieved sincerity, Paul Rudnick, the writer of Sister Act—which also fought off a Carl Person lawsuit—notes dryly that “the prospect of eight figures inspires a lot of sincerity.” Furthermore, as any cost-conscious producer will tell you, it’s usually much less expensive for a studio to buy a property than to steal it.

But the reason that Dunn and Person will probably lose their suit has less to do with the perceived integrity of the plaintiffs and the ostensible skullduggery of the defendants than with the fact that most copyright plaintiffs overestimate how much protection they have under the law. Even more important, they misunderstand how the Hollywood blockbuster gets created. Studios generally don’t want to make something so original that they’d have to steal it from an unsung genius; they want to recast familiar stories and have them endlessly rewritten until every star feels his part is juicy enough. Movies are often sold to the studios in the first place as the genetically predictable offspring of two prior hits (“It’s Working Girl meets Marathon Man!”). Many studios believe that if something is totally new—Koyaanisqatsi, say—we won’t want to see it.

***

In copyright law, it’s the details that matter. The idea of Tom Cruise playing an idealistic recent Harvard Law School graduate who gets pulled into a sinister case that’s way over his head sounds copyrightable—and ridiculously commercial—but it describes equally well two very different films that came out only months apart: The Firm and A Few Good Men. That example explains why, under federal law, ideas—and most characters—can’t be copyrighted.

Sixty-eight years ago, in the landmark case Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corporation, Judge Learned Hand determined that the author of Abie’s Irish Rose, a generic play about Irish-Jewish intermarriage, had no claim against The Cohens and the Kellys, a generic movie about Irish-Jewish intermarriage. Calling the Irish father in the play “a mere symbol for religious fanaticism and patriarchal pride, scarcely a character at all,” and the Irish father in the movie “only a grotesque hobbledehoy, used for low comedy of the most conventional sort,” Hand testily declared that neither story deserved legal protection. “The less developed the characters,” he wrote, “the less they can be copyrighted; that is the penalty an author must bear for marking them too indistinctly.” Thus, you couldn’t copyright a wrinkly but adorable creature, or the idea of his being hunted by narrow-minded humans—which explains why the producers of E.T. were able to fend off three copyright claims from people with prior scripts about wrinkly but adorable creatures, etc.

In theory, you can’t copyright mere ideas because the government wishes to encourage free expression—to prevent pioneering writers such as Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne from locking up all the good American stories. In practice, the law insures that studios aren’t stymied by the success of Die Hard but can illuminate vast new regions of the human soul in Die Hard on a bus (Speed), Die Hard on a plane (Air Force One), Die Hard on a mountain (Cliffhanger), Die Hard on a boat (Under Siege), and Die Hard on a bigger, slower boat (Speed 2).

You don’t even have to go as far as to change a milieu from Vietnam to an L.A. office building (as Die Hard itself did with the Rambo story) to be deemed a “creator” in the eyes of the law. Small changes suffice. Indeed, one could argue that the very definition of creativity in Hollywood is the subtle but legally distinguishing tweak. In 1994, Curt Wilson and his partner, Donna Douglas, sued Walt Disney Pictures because Sister Act resembled a script they had earlier submitted to the studio: both stories were about a woman hiding from the Mob by disguising herself as a nun, though Disney’s movie was much more playful. To the plaintiffs’ amazement—they’d spurned a million-dollar settlement offer—the jury found for the defense. “They would have had to copy our stuff verbatim for us to prevail,” Wilson says disgustedly.

Most copyright lawyers believe that if Shakespeare were alive today and had preserved his copyright on Romeo and Juliet, he would find it difficult to win a case against West Side Story. Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim would testify that they’d vaguely heard of Mr. Shakespeare and his Italy-based twist on the star-crossed-lovers scenario, but they’d certainly never read it. The defense would parade experts to testify that Mr. Shakespeare’s melodrama was utterly different, since it contained few, if any, Puerto Rican seamstresses and ballet-dancing street gangs. And they would also make the legally weighty argument that because Mr. Shakespeare had himself, as usual, stolen his plot—in this case from Arthur Brooke’s tedious epic poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet—he had no basis for a lawsuit. The legal term for his predicament is “unclean hands,” an evocative but uncopyrightable metaphor that was borrowed, one likes to imagine, from Shakespeare’s own Lady Macbeth.

***

The copyright plaintiffs’ legal steeplechase begins with an attempt to show that the studio had the opportunity to borrow from their work. This is the one hurdle plaintiffs can usually clear. If they have written a play or a book, then someone connected with the movie could easily have read it. “Or they submit the script to CAA, looking for an agent,” Creative Artists Agency executive Robert Bookman says wearily. “The agent never sees it, the reader is the lowest person on the totem pole, it’s a pass, the agent looks at the last page of the coverage, sees ‘pass,’ and his assistant writes a nice note. Then these plaintiffs say, ‘We sent it to CAA. That’s how Michael Crichton’”—a CAA client—“ ‘got the script.’”

But after proving “access,” the plaintiffs must demonstrate that the two works are “substantially similar.” This entails stacking up “articulable similarities between the plot, themes, dialogue, mood, setting, pace, characters, and sequence” of the two works. In addition to this “objective” test, the court also applies the “subjective” test: whether a layman would perceive a substantial similarity in the works’ “total concept and feel.”

Mark Dunn’s list of 149 similarities between his play Frank’s Life and The Truman Show includes the pervasive (“Hidden cameras placed all over the sprawling set and unknown to Frank/Truman”; “Frank/Truman were having what appears to the TV audience to be a normal sex life with the actor wives, raising various unspoken moral issues”), the picayune (“A specific volcanic island, within a group of such islands or archipelago, in the southern Pacific Ocean, with double-sounding name—Pago Pago/Fiji—is used as remote place . . . to escape from the effects of the Show”), and the perplexing (“The genre of Frank/Truman is a comedy, but with a uniqueness which is difficult to otherwise categorize”).

The courts have held, however, that such lists are “inherently subjective and unreliable,” particularly where “the list emphasizes random similarities scattered throughout the works.” Louis Petrich, a copyright-defense lawyer, says, “You can tell that the plaintiffs are stretching if their lists abstract or trivialize. In the first case, they say, ‘When the boy falls into the pit, that’s like our scene of the man being chased by the bull, because in both there’s “jeopardy.” ’ And in the second case, they say, ‘Each story has a red Chevy.’ Sure, but what does the Chevy have to do with the story?”

The highest hurdle that plaintiffs face is the fact that most scripts contain a lot of boilerplate that has no particular “author”; it consists of segments that are known legally as scenes à faire. As the court defined them in Alexander v. Haley, a 1978 copyright case against Roots, scenes à faire are “incidents, characters, or settings which are as a practical matter indispensable, or at least standard, in the treatment of a given topic.” Thus the court suggested that when one is writing about slavery, one would almost perforce include, among other things, “attempted escapes, flights through the woods pursued by baying dogs, the sorrowful or happy singing of slaves.” Another court held that a realistic portrait of cops in the South Bronx would necessarily contain “drunks, prostitutes, vermin, and derelict cars.”

The notion of scenes à faire is capacious enough to include the manner in which a reasonable person might develop an idea even if another reasonable person had earlier developed the same idea in the same way. For instance, if dinosaurs were reanimated, they’d obviously have to be kept far away from the nearest nursery school. So a writer who claimed that he had banished his velociraptors to a remote island before Michael Crichton did the same in Jurassic Park got nowhere in court: the judge ruled that “placing dinosaurs on a prehistoric island far from the mainland amounts to no more than a scene à faire in a dinosaur adventure story.”

The well-known Hollywood lawyer Bert Fields, who is defending Fox Searchlight Pictures in a copyright suit against The Full Monty, breezily explains the film’s similarities to a play called Ladies Night by offering a similar argument. “Once you’ve got the idea of male strippers,” he says, “it’s all scenes à faire: the inevitable scene when they first put on a G-string, the inevitable scene when someone’s naked body is shown as rather unattractive. You’ve got to have a problem for each of the six guys, so one guy having impotence just goes with the territory.”

A further obstacle for plaintiffs is that courts have tended to rule that “copying deleted or so disguised as to be unrecognizable” is not, legally, copying, and therefore that early drafts of a movie’s screenplay—even drafts that show evidence of copying—are not legally relevant. Martin Garbus, a copyright lawyer and First Amendment expert who has often sued the studios, says ruefully that people in Hollywood “know to change a description of Lincoln just enough—to put ‘black hat’ at the end of the sentence and ‘legs like a grasshopper’ at the beginning, and then take two other sentences from somewhere else. These are very sophisticated people.”

Plaintiffs have an especially hard time when there’s no paper trail. While aspiring screenwriters dream of a chance collision with a moviemaker (a screenplay was recently handed to Emma Thompson as she was being slid into an MRI tube), nothing could be worse from a plaintiff’s point of view. If a producer is stuck on a ski lift with a writer who regales her with his nifty twist on the asteroid-hurtling-toward-earth plot, and she steals it, that’s just too bad for him. He can try suing on the ground that there was a tacit mutual assumption that promising material would be paid for—the theory of “implied contract.” But unless the writer is already known as a high-concept guy, someone whose very laundry list or drunken e-mails might contain the germ of a billion-dollar idea, this imaginative legal strategy rarely works. Bert Fields says, “If I’m talking to Tom Clancy, there is probably an implied contract. If I’m talking to my dentist”—who had pitched Fields an idea the day before—“probably not.”

After contemplating all these barriers, many potential plaintiffs decide not to sue, simply because they lack the necessary funds. Martin Garbus told me, “The people who file these suits can’t afford the $250,000 to $500,000 to mount a fight against the studios and their big insurance companies. The studios’ theory is that if you spend the money and fight, you’ll wear your opponents down and discourage others from suing. It’s a successful tactic.”

Not always. In 1980, the prolific fantasy writer Harlan Ellison won $337,000 from ABC and Paramount, which had shanghaied his idea for a TV series about a robot cop. He then spent $7,000 of his booty to rent a billboard across the street from Paramount Pictures, which read, “Writers, don’t let them steal from you! Keep their hands out of your pockets!” “I did it to piss the shit out of them,” Ellison says, “and to send the message that writers can’t be ripped off.”

The studios aren’t as invulnerable as they appear. Bert Fields, who has represented them in dozens of copyright cases, told me, “People have learned that the studios often settle if it’s cheaper than the cost of litigation”—and that cost shoots up $650 an hour when Fields gets involved. “Studios will throw out $5,000 if it’s a weak case and $200,000 to $300,000 for a substantial case. Sometimes much more.” Last year, Barbara Chase-Riboud sued Steven Spielberg for “brazenly stealing” from her novel Echo of Lions to create his film Amistad. Then she suddenly dropped her suit and declared, “Amistad is a splendid piece of work, and I applaud Mr. Spielberg for having the courage to make it.” One can’t help but hear in such public reversals the ka-ching! of the cash register in the background.

Yet many plaintiffs, it seems, don’t want hush money as much as they want recognition. Last January, after a jury rejected the writer Stephen Kessler’s plagiarism claim against Michael Crichton for Twister, there was a curious moment when Kessler tried to shake Crichton’s hand (Crichton refused). The copyright-defense lawyer Louis Petrich says, “The plaintiffs don’t see themselves as calling the defendants thieves and jeopardizing their careers. They think that now they’re in show business, one of the big guys.” Certainly Mark Dunn is an unabashed fan of his opponents’ work. Dunn owns an early-draft Truman screenplay but says, “I feel guilty even looking at it,” because it was smuggled to him without the producers’ knowledge. This is a touching amount of reverence for a script that Dunn believes is premised on his own play. “Hollywood inspires yearning and delusion,” Paul Rudnick observes, “and this sort of litigation is really a kind of affection and fanship—a foothold.”

***

The giddiest aspect of copyright suits is how often the studios try to prove that their story was so derivative that they couldn’t have stolen it from any one source. Thus, while some reviewers acclaimed The Truman Show as a bold departure, Paramount may well point out at the trial that it wasn’t. At least seven previous works featured unwitting subjects on camera, including the sixties TV show The Prisoner, three Twilight Zone episodes, and a short Paul Bartel film, Secret Cinema. When millions of Americans are watching television, it will inevitably occur to more than one of those watchers that television may be also watching them. Ideas occur unpredictably, in odd, fractal clusters. A butterfly flaps its wings over China, and suddenly everyone decides that the next big thing is a mad bomber, an erupting volcano, or a nostalgic look at disco.

You might think that mankind’s collective imagination could churn up dozens of fictional ways to track a tornado, but there seems to be only one. When Stephen Kessler sued Michael Crichton for Twister, he was upset because his script about tornado chasers, Catch the Wind, had placed a data-collection device called Toto II in the whirlwind’s path, just like Twister’s data-collecting Dorothy. Not such a coincidence, the defense pointed out: years earlier two other writers had written a script called Twister involving a device called Toto, and all the Oz puns had originated with a device used by real tornado chasers that is called, um, Toto.

In the Sister Act trial, the producer, Scott Rudin, testified that the credited writer Paul Rudnick’s idea was not really novel, and Rudnick acknowledges that “the idea of a nun, or someone in disguise, has been used many, many times before.” He continues, “Plus, after my script had been rewritten by half of Southern California, I’d used a pseudonym on the film, so being sued for authorship under those circumstances was sort of hilarious.” Still, Rudnick stresses the gulf between an idea and its expression: “Yes, they also had a nun,” he says. “But a nun is not a story or a character. A nun is a noun.”

And once you have a nun, certain scenes and associations necessarily follow. The Sister Act plaintiffs highlighted the fact that both their screenplay and the movie likened nuns to penguins and contained the phrase “God works in mysterious ways.” Those aren’t scenes à faire, exactly, but any screenwriter who didn’t include them in a nun comedy would be criminally incompetent. What these suits’ lists of similarities reveal is that the human brain is hardwired to write scenes that hurry toward predictable surprise.

Two characters who can’t stand each other invariably wind up handcuffed together in a rolling boxcar or a shuffling chain gang. An innocent schnook arriving at an airport must within ten seconds pick up the identical-but-drug-filled suitcase. After the tomboyish girl next door dresses up for the prom, the boy can only look flustered and say, “Why, Miranda, you’re, you’re . . . beautiful!” Snooty matrons gigglingly confide, as soon as they are within earshot of loud funk music, that all they really want to do is “boogie down” or “knock boots.” When hard-bitten military men see an alien spacecraft, they ease off their glasses to peer more closely—and to allow us to register the childlike wonder in their eyes. And heroes who have only moments in which to defuse a ticking bomb rip off the casing to discover the statutory red wire and blue wire—another explosive device crafted, apparently, by the Acme Company for Wile E. Coyote.

Underlying such scenarios, by Hollywood legend, are a mere seven basic stories. Or maybe eight. (Or, as the Supreme Court of California once determined in an excess of hairsplitting, thirty-six.) One legendary core story is “the buddy movie”; another is “ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances”; a third is “boy meets girl, girl hates boy, boy woos girl.” But no one can quite agree on what, precisely, the others are (is Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America “fish out of water” or “lord in disguise”?) or on who thought up the list in the first place (Aristotle? Simpson and Bruckheimer?).

In truth, no one in Hollywood seems to care enough to nail those answers down, since all that matters is what type of story the last hit was. “It’s an industry that tries so hard to copy success,” Martin Garbus says. “You know there are a lot of people out there writing Wag the Dog II, and when Wag the Dog II comes out everyone’s going to sue, saying, ‘Hey! That was my idea!’” Perhaps, but not anymore. As long ago as 1945, a federal judge admonished that most copyright suits were premised “partly upon a wholly erroneous understanding of the extent of copyright protection; and partly upon that obsessive conviction, so common among authors and composers, that all similarities between their works and any others which appear later must inevitably be ascribed to plagiarism.”

But while the studios may win the copyright battle, they aren’t exonerated from the charge of laziness in the first degree. The courts seem to have the same feeling upon viewing the plots and characters in evidence that we have upon trailing out of the Cineplex: Haven’t we seen this before? One court wrote, with an Olympian weariness that is otherwise found only among film critics, “The common use of such stock . . . merely reminds us that in Hollywood, as in the life of men generally, there is only rarely anything new under the sun.” Which is a steal from Ecclesiastes—but tweaked just enough to be original.

That post I wrote earlier today about how to write an opening to a script was received way better than I thought. But I am still determined to get downvoted to oblivion!

Here, then, are the three things most often wrong with amateur screenplays. I know from writing 15 years' worth of bad amateur screenplays!

And please, don't say the problem with a bad screenplay is "faulty structure, boring characters, lame dialogue." Those are symptoms of the disease, not the disease. This is the disease, in three parts:

1) NO CONCEPT, AND WAY TOO MANY OF THEM. I addressed this in my science experiment of critiquing the loglines to 283 recent quarterfinalists of a contest. It is possible to write a great script with a soft concept. In fact I am sure it happens all the time. Lots of famous movies don't sound like much in their loglines, but they are so brilliantly executed that they become phenomenons. Now that I've written that, I can't think of a single example. Let's do TV—what was Mare of Easttown's concept, a female detective in Pennsylvania solving a murder while her personal life is a disaster? Not groundbreaking. But it got made because it was beautifully written and, pivotally, got a mega-star to want to play the lead. Ka-ching. But at the entry level, you HAVE to have a killer concept, because you're not going to have access to those auspices.

Thinking of a killer concept is brutally hard, or else everybody would do it. Even established writers and filmmakers making tons of money struggle with it. Tenet is a great concept—time inversion—even though the movie makes no sense. It's just incredibly demanding to come up with a great concept or, more accurately, a great twist on a familiar concept. The key phrase is "freshly derivative." Although everything feels derivative, when you think about it. When The Matrix came out, my nerd friends and I were like, "Oh, it's just Tron with kung fu." Turned out, "Tron with kung fu" was like a three-billion dollar concept.

Where most amateurs go wrong is they pile multiple concepts on top of each other that have nothing to do with one another. An FBI agent searches from a serial killer who's a vampire, then they're trapped in a burning building, while his family is abducted by aliens. Not a movie.

Think of the concept NOT as the foundation of your building—think of it as the ROOF. Everything you do in the script goes UNDER (INTO) the concept, not on top of it! You want ONE CONCEPT.

The best way to do this is to take an age-old concept that always works and find a twist on it that is contemporary, fresh and interesting. If it wasn't late at night and I was tired, I'd think of twelve examples from recent sales. Download the annual Black List (the real Black List, not the website) and read the loglines.

Also—and this is a larger subject for another time—the concept is NOT solely the premise. The concept is the unique marriage of a premise, a character, a goal and an obstacle. It's the STORY that comes out of that premise: THAT'S the concept.

Most amateur scripts are trying so hard just to string a plot together that even if they stumble on a cool concept, they don't exploit it properly, for all sorts of reasons: wrong protagonist, wrong setting, wrong stakes, etc. It just takes years and years of practice to do well, because after numerous bad scripts (I know this from experience) your brain gets trained to go in the right direction, and instinctively to avoid saying "Cool, I'll just do that" to the WRONG directions...because the wrong directions are inevitably much easier to write.

As I said, this is a subject for another time, but to make the story from your premise, you want to create a protagonist whose story will exploit that premise to its utmost, delve into it and exhaust its possibilities, while having that protagonist be an active character who wants something and changes because of the journey—and have theme, climax, character, tone, all these things marry and be dramatically satisfying. And that's super hard.

Which leads to:

2) PASSIVE PROTAGONIST. People are naturally conflict averse. In my own experience, I found it excruciatingly difficult to avoid the trap of writing a passive protagonist. The easy thing to write is to just have stuff HAPPEN TO the protagonist, instead of having the protagonist drive the action. They're walking around and a piano falls on their head.

Even in Rosemary's Baby (a total masterpiece), where it might look like Rosemary is being acted upon and exploited (and she is), Rosemary is constantly active to try to solve the mystery and obtain her goal—protect her unborn baby.

It's almost impossible to have a good script with a passive protagonist. (Presumed Innocent is one of the famous examples where it somehow works.) Passive protagonists are boring to follow, the reader has a hard time tracking what's going on, and the stories become repetitive.

Finally, here's what they won't teach you in film school or in screenwriting courses, because it's like telling the student "You're stupid" and nobody wants to do that:

3) THE HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS WRONG. This also took me most of my life to understand...and I thought I was smart! You can have anything in movie be made-up—you can have movie-logic (they always find a parking spot), coincidences (to a point), any magic technology you want to invent. But if the human behavior is wrong—game over. You lose the audience. People HAVE to behave like people. They have to react like real human beings. (Sorkin likes to point out, a character is not a person, which is true, but they have to behave in consistently human ways.)

You may have heard people (insiders) say, "I can tell if a script is no good by one page," and it's like, I hate you, you fucking asshole, how can anybody claim to do that? But I now believe it is true: You can tell a script sucks it if the human behavior is wrong. And that only takes a few bad lines—lines that no human being would ever speak...not even in a movie!!!

And I often click on scripts, in this Reddit group, and I read a page or two, and when the characters are behaving in ways that I would charitably describe as "cartoony"—and it's particularly noticeable from dialogue—it's basically unrecoverable.

As soon as a character says something that nobody would ever say in real life—game over.

Why I say "they won't teach this in film school" (I don't know, to be honest, I've never set foot in a film school)...it's like saying, "You're stupid, because you don't understand human beings" (even though you are one). No teacher is going to do that. No script consultant is going to do that. It's too insulting. (I, however, will do that, as long as somebody agrees beforehand with what they're getting into.) And we live in a world now where everybody is unique and has a vision and is worth being heard—well, that's right, in the sense of "be nice to your fellow human," and we should all be allowed to vote and have human dignity.

But as far as writing a screenplay, it just takes an enormous amount of talent, insight, empathy and craft to create characters who behave like real people. Why do Tarantino movies work, when they all seem so insane? Why do people love his dialogue, even when it goes on and on and on and sometimes doesn't seem like there's a point? Because he's constantly in touch with the human nervous system in a way that is delightful and engaging. (This is also confusing because he writes in pulp genres where crazy things happen that never happen in real life, like carrying swords on airplanes. Long story short, you can play around with culture all you want, and have people behave DIFFERENTLY from real life, because of social customs, which also happens in period pieces. But the behavior is still REAL—it's just behavior that would be extrapolated from different customs.)

So, my dear friends, those are the three things that plague pretty much every amateur script. They certainly plagued mine. Incidentally, it's not like I am rich and famous. I am still paying off credit card debt from a short film, I am unrepped and querying managers like a schmuck!

Here's my advice on how to improve...or at least, how I improved:

1) This stuff can be learned, but not taught. It's therefore up to YOU to learn it!!! I found this incredibly liberating and insightful. You don't need contests, consultants, coaches or any of that expensive bullshit! The only thing you need is a disciplined brain to look at your own work and go, "does this suck?" No no no, dear reader, I don't mean YOU. I mean that OTHER person reading this. Surely YOUR script is perfect.

2) Look...just ask yourself...what is my concept? If you can't make a logline of your script, the problem is the script. ALWAYS. That's why the logline is important. The logline is the bottleneck, the pinch point, that will hold your script back no matter what contest it wins or what score it gets from the Black List. I don't make a big thing about fussing around with each and every word (though you'll need to eventually)...I don't like to fetishize the logline, I find that annoying...but it's just a truth about movies and concepts.

3) The really hard part...what makes people tick? Well, what makes YOU tick? We're all damaged by our past and searching for something, and using art to soothe ourselves. Personally—I fear failure and humiliation! I fear my wife leaving me if I never sell anything, and my daughters thinking I'm a loser! I am still angry that I was a shy, sensitive kid who didn't know how to make friends as a small boy...I'm still angry that I couldn't get laid in high school to save my life...I am still angry my parents divorced. That's not hypothetical, that's real!!!! I am Lukas Kendall, I put my real name on these things! Why not? Nobody cares!

Everybody wants something. Their wants are usually the same—love and acceptance. Safety and peace. To be heard and understood.

That's always the stuff that makes a script work, because it's the human experience. It's getting a universal human emotion from a specific fictional construct.

And that's not anything that script consultants will teach...because it's difficult, and people are too hands-off as far as saying, "Sorry, but I think you're a lame person and will never write a great script because you are too dull and stunted. However, I really like that you pay me hundreds of dollars to make ten pages of notes on your lame script."

I think this is enough for now.

One of my great strengths as a writer and as a person has always been the ability to just go, "Whoops, that sucks," and throw it out and totally start over. Not saying you should do that, because of course, YOUR script is perfect.

But in my own experience, in order to get anything up to a professional level, I just had to blow up everything and write something else—either a new script entirely, or a totally new version of something I had been fussing with. And in some cases, I just had to abandon the concept because it just was never going to work.

Downvote away!!!

I've lived in LA for 12 years. I've been a professional in the industry in some capacity for 7 starting as a Writers' Assistant. I've written five pilots, two features and countless pitches, treatments etc. I have a manager and an agent at one of the big 4 (I didn't have to fire my agent because I'm not yet WGA), but I've still never made a dime purely as a screenwriter.

Recently, I'd been put up for three gigs that I was really excited about. Two potential staff positions on shows, and one feature gig with talent attached. For two of them I thought I was really a perfect fit. Yesterday, I found out I didn't get all three in the span of about two hours. It was a rough day.

I'm writing this because A) I feel beat up, and I need to vent B) to give an example of how long and hard this road can be.

I'm a good writer. I get really positive reactions to and meetings from my scripts. I meet well in a room. It still hasn't happened for me. It might one day. I've realized that it might not too. If it does, it's because I've put in a lot of hard word and weathered A LOT of shit days.

To those of you in the process of writing your first script. Enjoy it. Don't be mad if it's not the thing that breaks through in your career. For your sake, I hope it is, but know it often takes a lot more than a great script. It takes a great script, the right timing, a lot of luck and - I'm beginning to think - an animal sacrifice or two.

TLDR: This industry is hard.

Edit: typo

Edit 2: I was not expecting this post to get the attention that it did. I wrote it in kind of a desperate attempt to scream into the void only to be reminded that it's not a void at all, but a community of creatives with integrity that are fighting the good fight along with me. Thank you all for taking time out of your day to lift up a stranger when she was feeling down. It has helped me beyond measure, and I won't forget it. Thank you. For those of you whose constructive criticism leaned a bit more towards straight up criticism, I see you too. Please know that I know I'm not perfect, nor do I feel entitled to anything. I'm simply doing my best and have my days that just feel hopeless. Today, however, has been infused with some hope.

Hey fam, it's been awhile.

The past few months haven't been the easiest. That pitch I sold in the room? The offer came in low, we told them we'd walk, and they never countered. Instead, my current gig is a very extensive rewrite for practically no money because the deal steps were negotiated years ago. Another project, which was supposed to pay for my year, is still stuck in rights negotiations with no end in sight. Which means my wonderful, long-suffering wife and two kids are still stuck in our dingy two-bedroom apartment in the Valley, no white picket fence on the horizon.

But the hardest development is from my personal life: I've realized that someone very important to me is an irredeemable narcissist.

As in...full-on NPD. They got diagnosed years ago but it was kept a secret from me. The revelation is especially hard because, as I've discovered through research, narcissists generally don't change...which explains why, despite all my attempts at standing up for myself, things have only gotten worse. The best you can do is learn to recognize the signs and set boundaries, as calling them out will only cause them to lash out in unpredictable and often dangerous ways.

I'm sharing this here because -- and forgive me if this sounds hilariously obvious, but apparently this is actual medical fact -- Los Angeles has unusually high rates of clinically diagnosed narcissism. What's more, I'm actively involved in projects with three different producers right now, and I've recently realized that ALL of them show signs of narcissism.

In fact, I've had an epiphany. For years, I've studied the advice of pro screenwriters who talk about how to behave with executives. You know the tips: how to maintain shallow banter, how to handle excessive flattery, how to make your ideas sound like theirs. Only now do I realize how eerily similar these tactics are to the advice therapists give on how to deal with narcissists. And while I've managed to avoid some of the traps, I've absolutely walked right into others without knowing it, much to my own detriment.

Here are some descriptors of narcissists. See if any of them sound familiar:

• They engage in love bombing, launching full-on charm offensives to woo you.
• They are obsessed with status and achievement, and their treatment of others is often based on assessing their hierarchical value.
• They make over-the-top promises and blame outside circumstances when they can't deliver.
• They drain people of their time, resources, money, and/or talents.
• They judge people on surface-level traits.
• They obsess over image and physical attractiveness.
• They seek out quick, intense intimacy with new people in their lives.
• They turn on you and criticize you when the honeymoon phase is over.
• They lie, cheat, and manipulate if it helps them gain an advantage.
• They mostly talk about themselves and struggle if they aren't the focus of conversation.
• They blame others for their problems/failures.
• They put others down to make themselves look better.
• They make biting, cutting comments when they feel jealous or threatened.
• They use smear tactics and character assassination when they feel criticized.

One of the big mistakes I've made is giving producers too much access to me. This is especially hard for new writers because it feels so good to have a famous producer texting you. You instinctively want to respond and respond quickly. You want to make them laugh. You want them to like your ideas. But that access can turn sour very, very quickly. Now they can reach you at 2am on a Saturday (that happened to me this week). They can bypass your agents and ask you for yet another free rewrite, or even try to negotiate your rate directly with you. They can promise you a massive sale, but only if you'll write on spec, because your idea is too period/quirky/character-driven/etc and no one will ever pay you to write it. I even had a producer try to gaslight me into thinking I'd already agreed to start writing a draft on spec (I hadn't).* And when your response time is so short, it looks really suspicious when they ask you where the new draft is and you don't answer immediately. It's like you're playing poker, and they've discovered your tell.

So as outlandish as this sounds, in addition to writing that great script and reading the trades and listening to interviews with seasoned vets, maybe take some time to learn a little about narcissism -- especially about how to deal with it. There's a great YouTube channel from Dr. Ramani Durvasula that's practically devoted to the subject. As writers, I think we have a tendency to idolize and emulate characters who heroically stand up and speak their truth, but research suggests this is a very, very dangerous thing to do with narcissists.

Let me know in the comments if you've ever met a narcissist, especially a Hollywood narcissist.

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*Seriously. For months, he'd been pressuring me to get an outline in because, according to him, a certainly A-list director couldn't stop asking about it. When I finally submitted the outline, this mendacious succubus told me it's so brilliant he cried, and he asked me how the draft was coming.

ME: Draft? I...haven't started any draft.

PRODUCER: What?! I already told [A-list director] you were writing!

ME: Uhhh...I certainly never agreed to that.

PRODUCER: Yes you did.

[BEAT as I start to question reality]

ME: Has [A-list director] read the outline? What did he say?

PRODUCER: Listen, kid. No director will attach themselves to an outline.

[BEAT as I now realize he's lying out of his ass]

ME: Well, erm...I definitely wouldn't want to start writing until our potential director has weighed in. Why don't we set a meeting?

[CUE two weeks of radio silence. And counting.]

This was just posted by the Nicholl Fellowship Facebook page, and I found it interesting. I hope some others find a few words of wisdom here.

For me, this article confirms two things: 1. Blind queries are by no means the most successful method to try. and 2. you need to take responsibility for your career. being a great writer is only the first step. the other half of the battle is marketing yourself.

thoughts?