Carson here. Okay, a little background. I have this friend who recently broke into that oh-so exclusive “Hollywood Screenwriting Club.” In other words, people actually started paying him for his work. It was exciting to watch him finally get that recognition, go to meetings, officially tell people that he had representation. But as the months rolled by, I saw that he’d gotten a little down. So I asked, “Yo, Good Friend. What’s wrong?” And he assured me that while there wasn’t a day he didn’t wake up pinching himself for the opportunity to write for a living, he was a little crushed by some of the realities that go into the profession. As he started explaining them, I said, “You know what? Why don’t you write this all out and I’ll post it on the site? It’ll be like, a way for you to exorcise your demons.” He agreed that’d be a wonderful idea. So why am I posting this? To remind everyone that getting to the “spec sale” finish line is really just the start of a new race, a much longer and tougher race. Because now, instead of trying to be the king of the amateurs, you’re competing shoulder to shoulder with the heavyweights, writers who can all tell a good story (something you didn’t have to worry about in the amateur camp). You gotta work your way up. You gotta take jobs you may not necessarily like to pay the bills. It’s not easy. This is what he wrote…
Necessary dance for when you sell your first script.
When you sell your first script, you will cry.
I know that seems dramatic. It might be. But you’ve worked for this moment. Whether it’s for two years or twenty, writing is hard work—it’s impossible work. Squeezing your brain till it’s dry like brittle, staring at a glowing screen for hours until your eyes sting red, forgetting what it’s like to shower (or interact with other human beings). Writing is hard. Which is exactly what makes opening that email from your agent or manager and reading the words, ‘We got an offer’ so much sweeter.
So when you sell your first script, you will cry.
Because it feels amazing. This thing that you’ve been slaving over—outlining, emailing to trusted friends, fixing the outline, sending out again, fixing it one more time, scene-writing, banging your head against the keyboard, character work, act one is done (hurray!) oh wait it’s shit (boo!), rewriting, sending out, head-banging, writing, writing, writing, napping, read a professional script that makes yours look like a Hallmark Channel D-movie, writing, writing, almost there, final scene, DONE, sending out, rewrite rewrite rewrite, ignore these notes, apply those notes, rewrite rewrite, send to manager or agent and wait a million years until—someone actually LIKES it.
Liked it enough to, um, pay you for it.
And not just pay you. They want to make it. Into a movie. That people will watch. You IMDb the interested party immediately. Good resume, a few films under their belt, a couple you’ve heard of but have never seen. Netflix them—not too shabby, your script is better so you’re not worried because the movie’s getting made. The dream is here. In a year’s time you’ll be on a red carpet, smiling awkwardly for the cameras, right? Friends come out of the woodwork to ask about free screening passes, can you read their work, who is your manager—the uphill battle is over. You’ve made it, you’ve sold a script. Your bank account will go from $1.17 (checking AND savings combined) to some number that allows you to shop for actual groceries instead of driving thru Taco Bell for the 9th time this week. You’re gonna be sitting pretty in a dark theater with strangers laughing (or screaming, or crying, or ooh-ing and ahh-ing) at words YOU WROTE, watching actors saying things YOU MADE UP. Life. Is. Grand.
Except that doesn’t really happen.
Or maybe it does. Maybe for some people that’s really how it goes. But as far as I know, that’s like Supermoon Rare, an anomaly akin to Ahab’s white whale. That doesn’t mean selling your script isn’t awesome—it is, it’s just not the perfect, smooth sailing, seven-figure life changing event people make it out to be. But here’s what it does change:
It makes you hirable. Or, more hirable than you used to be. So you’ll get meetings. Sometimes generals, where people with a lot of power offer you a free water bottle (always take the free water bottle) and ask questions about the script you sold that they may or may not have skimmed over last week. Sometimes generals with baby producers who talk a big talk and name-drop every other sentence and try to get their talons into you early before a studio notices you. Let me just get this out now: BEWARE OF BABY PRODUCERS.
What’s a baby producer? That rando with one short film IMDb credit who blows up your inbox with questions about the script you sold, where’d it find a home, what are you working on now—that’s a baby producer. And they’re slick because the high of selling your script is just that—a very cool, ego-inflating high, and people will not hesitate to exploit it. You’ll think, Great! People want to hire me and read more of my stuff and having two produced scripts is CLEARLY better than selling one so why not?! I’m gone ride this wave of attention to the Academy and never eat Taco Bell again!! It’s easy to think this. It’s easy to assume that these people just want to make a good film and they read your work and loved it and trust your voice. It’s so, so easy.
It’s also incredibly stupid.
Baby producers are the worst. They’re dangerous. Because they’re inexperienced and because they’re inexperienced they’ve had to learn how to talk to get into rooms they have no business being in. So they’ll talk to you. But you’ll be naïve (well, you won’t because you read this article but anyways). So you’ll work. On insane timetables, too, because you’re riding that momentum from your script sale and don’t plan on losing steam anytime soon. You’ll work on their terms, with their ideas, and always with the understanding that you should be grateful for this opportunity to be writing for pay. You will write the first draft in less than a week. And the pay will be shit.
Meanwhile, you’re in rewriting hell from your own spec. There’s that saying, “Writing is rewriting.” That’s never truer than when you sell your script—because the studio or producer or independent prodco owns you. And they want a quality product. Oh, they liked your script, your ideas. But they like theirs better. So you’ll rewrite your precious baby into Kingdom Come to get their stamp of approval. After all, they are the gatekeepers here—they don’t like what you do, you get paid out and a shared credit with whomever they bring in. Which, as a new writer with an original spec, is not good news.
And you’ll learn that the feature world is harsh. That the writer is not the revered king but the lowly fool. That staying afloat in this pool requires some serious stamina—this is a marathon, not a sprint (and how many metaphors was that? yeesh!). You’ll learn that the producers are really the writers and most of the time they really aren’t writers but just think they are and they’ll tell you what darlings to kill. You’ll kill your darlings. You’ll do it reluctantly but you’ll do it.
You will question your own sanity. Notes will start to look circular—isn’t that how I had it in the original draft? why are we circling back??—and this script that you’ve lived with for months, years, will begin to haunt you. And you will despise it. It’s important, though, to realize exactly why this happens, why you might hate your own work so much at this point in the process: This is your baby. It’s been your baby since its conception. You know it inside and out, forwards and backwards and upside down. You saw it take its first steps, lose its first tooth. Then you sell it and someone else joins the family. Except they haven’t been living with the script for months or years—it’s new to them. This is both a blessing and a curse. Their perspective is fresher than your own, but it’s also not your own. Some ideas these new eyes have will be great, like Why didn’t I think of that?! ideas. Others will be awful, like, There’s a reason I didn’t think of that. Whatever the case, you’ll spend hours slogging through producer notes and draft after draft after draft until your eyes bleed from reading notes that tear your precious script apart piece by piece, slugline by slugline. And maybe, if you’re lucky, if you’re working with a producer who maybe kinda sorta knows that they’re doing, it won’t be so bad.
Maybe it’ll be good. Great, even. Awesome.
Because you sold your first script—the key word being “first.” I cannot stress this enough: This is a snapshot, not the whole picture. The trailer, not the movie. Somewhere along the way, this becomes clearer. You might complain about how hard the work is, how harsh and pointless the notes seem, how ridiculous and unprofessional the baby producers are, but you’ll realize that many people have this dream, and for you it’s now a reality. So you will shut up with the negativity and start to tell people when all that gratitude and excitement finally sinks in. And their reactions will be priceless. You’ll spend a lot of time answering questions from friends and family about when your movie is coming out (this will never stop until, I’m guessing, your movie actually comes out). And then you’ll smile—because that’s actually a very likely outcome to all of this. Your movie will come out.
Unless it doesn’t. In which case, it’s time to sell your second script.
