1) You’re not writing enough – There are two reasons writers don’t write. One, we don’t have enough time. Two, we construct a false reality to make us believe we don’t have enough time. In my experience, the majority of writers fall into the second category. You need to be writing – AT MINIMUM – 2 hours a day if you want to compete with the big dogs. A lot of professional writers tell me that 3 hours a day is the magic number. And then you get the workhorses who can go 4, 5, and 6 hours. Wherever you’re at, sit down and find a way to carve out more time during the week to write. Oh, and get the Self-Control App! It will block you out of Reddit, Pornhub, ESPN and all the other sites for a defined period of time so you can focus on writing!
2) You still haven’t gotten your fundamentals down yet – Throwing caution to the wind and seeing where your story takes you is a fun endeavor, but until you learn the 3-act structure, what character flaws are, how to arc characters, how to build suspense, how to avoid on-the-nose dialogue, and all the other basics, you’re basically kidding yourself. Your scripts may feel great to you and your undiscerning eye. But to the people in this business who read hundreds of scripts, these glorified writing exercises feel like practice runs. Even if we see the potential in you, we know you have a long way to go. Read all the books and all the blogs on how to write a screenplay. You can’t choose to ignore a rule unless you know it. Trust me. We know when you don’t know it.
3) You don’t read enough screenplays or watch enough movies/TV shows – Guys, you have to read scripts. One of the things I’m most embarrassed about is how many bad screenplays I wrote before reading a single script. Had I just read, say, 50 scripts, I would’ve avoided the dozens of mistakes I made time and time again in each script. Reading is one of the quickest ways to learn the craft. Also, make sure you’re watching all the latest films and TV shows. Not just as entertainment, but with a critical eye. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a screenwriter say, “I don’t even go to the movies,” as if it’s a badge of honor. Um, THIS IS YOUR JOB. You need to watch and study as many movies as you can.
4) You’re not sharing your work enough – I was doing a consultation with a writer the other day and we were discussing his script. He wanted to kill a certain character off. I explained to him that doing so would be a cataclysmic mistake. That character was the heart and soul of the movie and if he killed him, the audience would never forgive him. The writer took a minute and replied, “You know what? You’re right. I never realized how important this character was to the story.” Staying in your own head only gets you so far. To unlock the potential of your script, you need feedback. You need to talk about it to other people. If you can afford me, hire me. If you can’t, find people on this board to share your work with. Or join one of many writers’ groups. Or start your own. I promise you that if you don’t bounce your script off others, it’s never going to become great.
5) You’re not exploring every avenue – Tell me if this story sounds familiar. A writer scores a lucky connection to a producer in LA. The two chat over e-mail and the producer says, “Sure, send me your script when it’s ready.” The writer pours every ounce of his soul into his script for months, putting everything on this one singular connection with this one producer. He finally sends it to the producer, who reads it, and then reports back. “It was okay. But not quite what we’re looking for.” The devastated writer heads to the liquor store, blows their paycheck on an obscure Japanese bottle of whiskey, gets drunk, goes into a three month tailspin where they question their purpose on this planet, and ultimately decide that Hollywood is a place for hacks where nepotism reins supreme and therefore they’re done with screenwriting. — I want to make something clear to you guys: HOLLYWOOD IS THE CAPITAL OF ‘NO.’ “No” is normal. The biggest screenwriting names in the game get told “no” all the time. The only way to thrive in this business is to blanket it – is to create so many opportunities that, sooner or later, amongst that sea of nos, a yes arrives. And you do that by, yes, taking advantage of that producer contact, but also entering as many contests as you can afford, sending your scripts to the Black List site, trying to get featured on this site, engaging in as many writers’ groups as you can. Since “no” is the norm, you need to endure a lot of them to find your “yes.”
6) You’re not using every screenplay to improve – Every screenplay is an opportunity for you to improve as a screenwriter. While some of that will happen naturally, the bulk of it should come via a plan. Try and nail a certain part of the craft in every script. It might be learning how to write sympathetic characters. It might be integrating conflict into every scene. It might be showing and not telling. It might be arcing characters. If you’re just mindlessly bumbling through every screenplay, you’re not improving as a screenwriter.
7) You believe either concept or execution is the end-all-be-all – It’s true: Hollywood is a concept-driven business. But if you think you can come up with a slick idea and paint-by-numbers your way through the execution, think again. Especially in this day and age, where scripts need to blow people out of the water to put writers on the map. Conversely, if you think the concept doesn’t matter and only focus on characters and execution, nobody will read it. To get noticed, YOU MUST DO BOTH.
8) You’re writing outside one of the six Hollywood-friendly genres – Say it with me now. Thriller. Sci-fi. Horror. Action. Adventure. Comedy. These are the genres Hollywood best knows how to market. Therefore, these are the bags they’ll be choosing their treats from. That doesn’t mean you can’t play with these genres, push them, explore fresh avenues within them. But you’d rather be writing in these genres than westerns and dramas and period pieces, as it’s much harder to get those movies off the ground.
9) You’re writing writer-director fare even though you’re not a director – Swiss Army Man. Amazing movie. Inglorious Basterds. Lost in Translation. Mud. Tree of Life. If you’re writing structure-less character pieces with vague plots that focus on feelings and music – that’s fine. But don’t expect anyone to buy those scripts. Why? Because those scripts only work if the writer is also the director. When it comes to the screenwriting side of things, Hollywood wants to see that you can craft a story with compelling characters inside of a fresh marketable concept. That’s the skill Hollywood pays money for.
10) You’re not taking enough chances in your writing – Someone pointed out the other day in the comments section that the writers of Swiss Army Man throw a bunch of bad ideas onto a bulletin board then select the bad ideas that can actually work and mix them together. I’m not sure I’d go that far. But you should develop your own process for taking chances in your writing. As I said above, I want you to learn the proper way to write a screenplay. But once you do, make sure to bend it and twist it and test it in unique ways. If you follow everything to a “T” so that it’s “perfectly executed,” it will almost always end up boring.
