Screenwriters need time to fail and write bad screenplays…

Yes, you read that correctly — time to fail and write bad screenplays. The road to excellence is paved with rejection, failure, criticism, and poorly written screenplays. You can only grow by moving through this period. Screenwriters need time to get those early messy screenplays out of their system and move on to the business of writing well. Avoid becoming a defensive writer who bristles at every note or criticism. Do not be combative, but be collaborative and open to opinions. Listen to the constructive feedback and eventually you will know the changes to make and the ones to ignore. If you continue to learn and master your craft, you will always be at the top of your game and ready for any opportunity that comes your way.

Regarding failure, embrace it because you can’t escape failure on your screenwriting journey. Any failure becomes a test to see if you really have what it takes to weather the long slog of establishing a career. If you can look at the bigger picture of your career goals, you will use the failures as learning experiences and not become defensive or lay blame elsewhere. Failure and success become the Yin and Yang of any artistic journey. We can only cherish the highs of our success because we have tasted the bitter sting of our failures.

If you listen to any successful artist’s story, they will discuss the many failures and perhaps years of failure to achieve the success you find them enjoying today. Stare failure down and do not be afraid of it. When it does come, and it will, prepare for the blows and start the process all over again. You will come back stronger and be more effective with your next script.

Failure loves to scare off screenwriters by knocking them down, but it hates those who get up before a “ten count” and start screenwriting again. As we know, the overnight success can be ten years in the making. It’s rare for any screenwriters to sell their first script. Often you read the industry trades with stories of first-time screenwriters selling their first spec, but you never find out the full behind the scenes story — and there is always more to it than just a lucky break. Usually, other factors can be involved that facilitated the sale and not mentioned to make the story appear more sensational. It’s a simple publicity tactic. Many times, the writers toiled around for years and finally sold their “first” spec. Similarly, in my case, it wasn’t until six years after film school graduation that my screenwriting career finally took off with my fifth spec “I’ll Remember April” that was my “first spec sale.”

Your dreams keep you going, but make sure they’re realistic dreams in a competitive marketplace filled with tens of thousands of projects being created every year. Do not worry about the odds or the competition but focus instead on what is within your control — becoming a better screenwriter. As you find your unique voice, also learn your strengths and weaknesses. Be confident about what you know, but always remain humble about what you don’t know because it can hurt you. 

Screenwriting experience takes an incredible amount of work, time, and sacrifice. I recently calculated the volume of material that I’ve written over the years — from my forty-two feature scripts to my twenty-four assignment jobs, nine TV pilots, and script rewrite work, and it’s easily over 15,000 pages of writing for TV and feature films. When I was just starting out, if someone told me the mountain of writing that would be necessary to achieve any success, I might have been too overwhelmed to even attempt a career as a screenwriter.

As I have mentioned before, you must learn patience on your journey and look at the bigger picture of your career. I find many aspiring writers too anxious to find an agent to sell their first script for a million dollars. They appear more interested in overnight fame and fortune than becoming an excellent working screenwriter who makes a living from the craft. They do not appear to respect the incredibly long slog that lies ahead on their journey. When you relax and visualize the long road ahead of you, it puts your career dreams in perspective and humbles you. There will be busy periods and dry periods, so never take anything on this journey for granted.  

As a screenwriter, maybe structure comes easy for you, but you need to work more on your dialogue and character development. Maybe you can easily come up with ideas, but they might not be solid enough stories to write into a movie. Maybe the mastery of writing does remain elusive no matter how long we practice the craft. Do you have a newfound respect for the work now? If not, Hollywood will humble you the longer you pursue a career.

I believe a mysterious synchronicity exists that knows when a writer becomes ready for success and delivers opportunities at the right time. When you go out with a screenplay, you need to be ready by having a solid body of work to back it up. Your journey will surely involve your own Mount Everest to climb as you continue to create new projects. When you reach the top, you will fight to stay there for as long as you can, but no one stays there forever.

Aspiring screenwriters should always strive to become great screenwriters first. Without a solid foundation of the craft, you will just be wasting time and wonder why your career keeps hitting a wall. Carve out the time to nurture your craft, find your unique voice, screenwriting style, and genre that you love to write. You need to fire on all cylinders with every script that you create. If you desire to work as a professional in Hollywood, every aspect of your script must be at the highest levels of quality. If your screenplay becomes produced, other people’s money will be on the line, so treat your projects like precious treasures to be respected, savored, valued, protected, and cultivated over time.

If you have only written one draft of a screenplay, please know that you have a tremendous amount of work ahead of you — years of work and possibly a decade of slogging it out in the trenches until you become capable of working at the level necessary to score assignment jobs and work professionally. Early on during your climb to success, do not be afraid of failure, rejection, or your first poorly written screenplays. You will need to work through this period so you can move on to the place of writing well. The most important part of your early journey will be surviving this process and learning from your failures and successes. The great F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best, “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” Only when you learn and grow from your experiences can you become the screenwriter you were meant to be.

Keep the faith and keep filling your blank pages.

Scriptcat out!

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It’s a long haul journey to reach any level of screenwriting success. If your passion drives you to embark on this crazy adventure of a  screenwriting career, you’ll need to prepare for survival in Hollywood’s  trenches. Talent is important, but so is your professionalism and  ability to endure criticism, rejection, and failure over the long haul.  The odds may be stacked against you, but the way to standout in this  very competitive business is to create a solid body of work and build a  reputation as a team player and collaborator. The rest is just luck — a  prepared screenwriter who meets with an opportunity and delivers the  goods. “A Screenwriter’s Journey to Success” (2024 updated edition) will help you prepare for  your own journey with the necessary, tips, tricks and tactics that I’ve  developed over the past twenty years of working in the film industry.  It’s time to start living your dream as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

Enjoy some quotes for today… taken from my blog page QUOTE OF THE DAY…

Subscribe to my screenwriting YouTube channel for 80 videos about the journey with tips, tricks, and tactics. Click on the photo below for the link.

“This is, if not a lifetime process, it’s awfully close to it. The writer broadens, becomes deeper, becomes more observant, becomes more tempered, becomes much wiser over a period time passing. It is not something that is injected into him by a needle. It is not something that comes on a wave of flashing, explosive light one night and say, ‘Huzzah! Eureka! I’ve got it!’ and then proceeds to write the great American novel in eleven days. It doesn’t work that way. It’s a long, tedious, tough, frustrating process, but never, ever be put aside by the fact that it’s hard.”—Rod Serling

Starting tonight, every night in your life before you go to sleep, read at least one poem by anyone you choose. Poetry and motion pictures are twins.”—Ray Bradbury

“You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love. If it is all the same to you I would rather not expound on that.”—Ernest Hemingway

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.  The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.” — Joseph Campbell

“There are two kinds of scenes: Pet the Dog Scene & Kick the Dog scene. The studio always wants a “Pet the Dog” scene so everybody can tell who the hero is.”—Paddy Chaydfsky

What’s your idea of “making it” in Hollywood?

I’ve known people who would only consider themselves a success if they became an A-list talent. It wasn’t worth the tremendous effort to them to end up only making a living at their craft and not being on top. They only wanted to be superstars and nothing less. The longer you pursue this profession you will learn there is hardly any fame, fortune, or glory in the screenwriting game. It’s just years of writing. When I was pre-teen kid and making films with my friends, I only ever wanted to make a living getting paid to do what I loved to do — to make movies for my job. I’m happy waking up in the morning and getting paid to be creative. That’s my dream come true.

And the longer you’re in the film business with its ups and downs and busy and slow periods, you may change your opinion as to what “making it” means to you. Very few achieve the very top of any field. Shoot for the moon, but it’s not such a bad thing to get paid to do what you love for a living too.

Don’t take any successful step forward for granted because what might appear to be a tiny step forward can actually be a huge successful step in disguise. If you can get your material to assistants for consideration, it’s a new opportunity for you to plant your flag and hold new ground if they like your writing. If they pass on your script but like your writing it might feel like a failure now, but it’s something that will pay off down the road. It’s a little success and positive step forward to celebrate. Even a tiny step like meeting an assistant and keeping in touch as a new contact is a successful step.

Back in the day when I was shopping my spec around Hollywood and getting rejected at every turn, I met an assistant through a mutual contact and that assistant got his boss interested in my spec enough to option and later buy it and produce it into a movie. The assistant went on to become the president of the production company and hired me to write movies for them. He later became an independent producer and hired me again for more assignment work. You never know where the tiny successes will lead, but they do add up and help you establish your experience and eventually a career.

Before I was blessed to be a working screenwriter, I entered my fifth spec script in various screenwriting contests and it ended up being a semi-finalist in the Nicholl Fellowship that year. It placed in the top 1% of all entries worldwide and was in the top twenty scripts overall, but did not end up as one of the eight finalists. I could have looked upon this as a complete failure, but I used my script’s advanced placement as a successful step forward and convinced producers to read it because of my achievement. I eventually found a producer who saw my script’s potential and his new production company bought my project and produced it into a movie. Did I finally “make it?” No. One script sale doesn’t make a career. Hopefully it can open the doors to more work as mine did, but you will have to write your next project and either sell it or secure an assignment job. My spec sale lead to a long series of assignment jobs with the same company and did I finally “make it?” I don’t think you ever make it. If you find your next screenwriting job — you have made it.

If you’re working as a staff writer on a TV series, the show will end and you will have to find your next job. If you sell a screenplay and make it through the development process into production, you will need to sell another screenplay or land an assignment job. That being said, be aware of your negative thoughts about your self-worth as it relates to your screenwriting success or failure and where you find yourself in the business. Will you be unhappy or ungrateful if you do not work at the studio level? The more negative thoughts you have, the more it becomes an emotion and then it’s hard to separate your thoughts from your emotions. You can actually start to believe a reality that isn’t true. Many times it’s not always about the sale or the immediate final result of a project. A rejection or “pass” now can actually be an open door later and another project because they like your writing and want to see more of your material. What seemed like a failure at first might really be a successful step because you started a new relationship with a producer or executive and now their door is open to you.

This is why you must work on your next project because the key to a successful career is building these relationships with a solid body of material. Don’t be depressed when your script doesn’t sell the first time out because most aspiring screenwriters rarely sell their first screenplay or their fifth screenplay. This is a long haul journey to reach any level of success as a filmmaker. If your desire and goal is to be on Hollywood’s A-list, it might take a decade or it may never happen. What do you do then? It may help if you realign your desires and take into account the realities and unreliability of the business, and that most writers will never end up working at the top levels of the business. Approximately 50,000 scripts/treatments, pitches and loglines and books are registered with the Writers Guild yearly while only 5,900 of the 11,500 WGA members reported any income last year in all mediums. When you also consider that only 34 specs sold in Hollywood in 2021, you have to be writing at a professional level to beat the incredible odds.

What happens when you’re offered your first writing job for little money, something that you may not what to do, but you know if you take it you can build vital relationships, be paid, and receive a highly coveted screen credit. What then? Will you take the job or hold out for something better? What if that better never happens? Your goals will be constantly tested and you may have to adjust them the longer you pursue a screenwriting career in Hollywood. Making it could be waking up in the morning and feeling grateful that you have found a creative passion in your life and have the courage and faith to stay in the game by writing.

Keep the faith and keep filling your blank pages on your road to success.

Scriptcat out!

Copyright ©2023 by Mark Sanderson on My Blank Page. All rights reserved.

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Need help navigating Hollywood’s trenches as you pursue your screenwriting career? Consider checking out my book on Amazon with 56 five star reviews. Click on this LINK to see more information.