It’s official. I’ve been a screenwriter for a year, now.

(Gasp!)

I know, I know. Obviously I haven’t learned enough about this business if I’m willing to step up and announce what a mere beginner I am. But there it is. And the reality is that in a year, I went from typing FADE IN for the very first time to having my script considered by major producers.

It seems like an opportune time to step back for a moment. For twelve months I’ve been putting in fifty and sixty hour weeks, learning to write screenplays. So this column is a chance for me to examine the events of the past year, and see what I’ve learned.

My first screenplay was written simply as practice- a chance to make the mistakes I didn’t want to make on my second screenplay, which was the one I really wanted to write. So I pounded it out, learned how to format, how to condense a story into a specific series of scenes and shots. It wasn’t horrible.

Then I moved on.

-and the birth of The Sword and the Rose.

This was the story I’d been waiting to write- an epic, based on the life of an incredibly vital, passionate woman. There were swordfights, there were lovers, there was the rich history and rolling hillsides of Ireland and a face-off with none less than the Virgin Queen of England. It’s a story to make any writer’s mouth water. But before I began writing, I searched- www.4filmakers, www.imdb.com, every site I could find that had any information on projects in development. And I couldn’t believe it. Not a single project, anywhere, despite the fact that Morgan Llewellyn had written a best-selling book on the woman a decade or so earlier. I wrote the first draft in five essentially sleepless days and priority-mailed a copy to the WGA for registration.

In fact I’m already well ahead of my own story, here.

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Before that first script, before the words ‘FADE IN’, there was a decision. All appearances to the contrary, I tend to be a relatively methodical person, and when I finally made the decision to write The Sword and The Rose (originally titled Grania), I did what any thinking person does when embarking on a completely new venture- I went to the library. There were six books on screenwriting, and I devoured them all. (Might be part of why that first script didn’t completely bite rocks.) And I found Wordplay. (www.wordplayer.com -if you’re an aspiring screenwriter and you haven’t been to that site yet, GO THERE NOW. I can guarantee you’ll learn more than you will from this column.) And that’s quite enough parentheticals for one paragraph.

If you have an idea or subject in mind, do some research. Make sure that your brilliantly re-imagined biography of Alexander the Great isn’t already in development (it is). I would have been heartbroken to discover that the film I wanted to write was already in production. I would have been a lot more heartbroken to find it out after I’d written the script.

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I would also have been delighted. Which brings us to-

Seems simple enough, doesn’t it? There’s more to that statement that appears on the surface, though. When I finished the first draft of The Sword and the Rose- oh, innocence!- I entered it in a few competitions. It placed third in two smaller ones, and made the top 10% at the Nicholl. It also earned me an invitation to join the Screenplayers. I put it through a rewrite, and started thinking about marketing it. I queried a manager, who gave me some notes, some of which I took, others of which I didn’t. When it became apparent we were enthralled with substantially different takes on the story, I moved on.

Good decision? Who knows?

I do know this. Films are horribly, horribly expensive to make. And many of them don’t even make back cost- which makes the production of any movie a risky financial proposition. If you, yourself, are not absolutely committed to your material, especially as a new writer, how can you possibly expect anyone else to be? You’re investing six months or more of your life, just in the writing. And then there’s rewrites, marketing, the frustration of trying to find representation… If this isn’t a movie you’re absolutely dying to plunk down eight bucks at your local cineplex to see, for God’s sake, don’t waste your time.

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Another part of the story that I’ve left out so far-

Back with that very first screenplay, I joined American Zoetrope (www.zoetrope.com), a site sponsored by Francis Ford Coppola’s production company of the same name. The majority of the members range from novices like myself, to writers I would describe as journeymen, with a few options or indie sales uder their belt. Along with the manager’s feedback, I also got reviews on The Sword and the Rose from AZ members. And at Done Deal (www.scriptsales.com), I met and prevailed upon a former industry reader, who prodded me to bring the script up one more notch. (Thanks again, SL!)

The result? A vastly improved script, and the source of :

and

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Now, of course, working on The Sword and the Rose wasn’t all I had been doing. I churned out two other scripts, one of which made the quarter-finals at Scriptapalooza, and the other of which was (may I say it) dreck. At this point, I was beginning to panic- was that it? Was The Sword and the Rose just a fluke? Maybe I just couldn’t write. Maybe I was a completely talentless hack who was pounding her head against a wall, sleeping four hours a night, and giving up any semblance of a real life- for nothing.

Well.

Luckily by now I’d joined the Screenplayers, and corresponded regularly with other writers online. They assured me this was a common occurrence. Unpleasant, uncomfortable, but a normal part of the process. That was comforting, but it didn’t help much.

It was also about this time that I decided to post The Sword and the Rose on Writer’s Script Network (www.writersscriptnetwork.com), a listing service that makes scripts available to industry professionals and doesn’t charge an insane fee. If nothing came of it, I was only out thirty bucks.

But something did.

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I think it’s natural to have doubts, to wonder, "Is it any good?" Part of the process, of course, is learning when to tell if it’s good. The idea, the execution, all of it. One thing I’ve noticed, reading a lot of professional scripts (check out Drew's Script-o-rama), is that by page three I’ve stopped paying attention to style, or format, or construction. I am completely engrossed by the story. I want to know what comes next. Once I get to the end I can go back and look at it again, examine how they’ve assembled their story, where the scenes are cut, when and how the reveals and reversals kick in. But first I have to find out what happens.

When that occurs, when you’ve managed to tap that magic on the page, you don’t have to ask. People will tell you. And the one thing I knew was that readers were responding to the script. So when Brian Overland e-mailed me to ask for a copy (I had taken it down from Writer’s Script Network at the time while making yet another round of changes), I was pleased but not unduly surprised when he called the next day.

Remembering Lesson #1 (you do remember Lesson #1, don’t you?), I did my research. I talked to his other clients. I searched Done Deal and Hollywood Lit Sales (www.hollywoodlitsales.com). I talked with Brian at length, and, impressed by his energy and enthusiasm (and of course his fantastic taste in screenplays), eventually signed with him.

That’s it! Yes! The pinnacle of every novice screenwriter’s aspirations!

Not quite.

You see, I still hadn’t written anything else as good. That terror was still gnawing at my gut. My first reaction was panic. In six weeks, I had three scripts in process, two partly outlined, one first-drafted, I was writing ten and fifteen pages a day. In other words, I was drowning. And the more you flail, the faster you sink.

September was the oddest month. One the one hand, Brian was (is) everything I could have hoped for, and more. A fearless advocate with a reputation for having a good eye for material and the ability to get creative executives, vice presidents, and development people to take the script. Suddenly I was being read all over town, by companies and individuals whose names made my jaw hang open.

And on the other hand, my writing was going nowhere. In fact, the first result of getting representation was to increase my panic, and hence my writing. We got our first bite on the script, so I wrote more. That company passed, but two others were excited about it. So I wrote more. Can we see where this is heading?

I did. Which was even more terrifying. Now I was in free-fall.

It was time to retrace my steps. I started reading again. Chris Vogler’s ‘The Writer’s Journey’, Richard McKee’s ‘Story’, every book I could get my hands on, and tons of produced screenplays. I was paying more and more attention to the craft of screenwriting, and starting to ingrain some of the basics. I re-read The Sword and the Rose, noting how well I knew every character, how alive they were for me. Instead of starting something new, I returned to that very first script I’d written. And to my surprise I found, buried under the poorly-designed plot and the bad thematic choices, a very real, very vital world, peopled with characters I knew and cared about.

I don’t like debating process. Every writer works a bit differently, and I imagine it varies even from script to script. But I have learned the value of outlining. At this point, I’ll do a quck pass, maybe three to fives pages, to see if the story is something I want to pursue. I wrote pass after pass this way, each one getting closer and closer to the heart of the story. So I started to write.

And then the phone rang.

No, not a sale. Dangitall. But this was heady enough- a read. By a producer. Not his director of development, not his VP. Not only a producer, but a producer who’d done three of my favorite films. Both the DoD and the VP loved it, and the producer was going to read it that weekend.

Ahem.

Lessons #7, #8, and #9, in very short order-

Keep writing? But I’ve got a producer, a REAL LIVE PRODUCER, reading my script. Maybe right now, this very second. Maybe he’s on page 32, the storm scene. Maybe he’s in the middle of the climactic battle. Maybe…

Maybe he’s got any number of other things he needs to do this weekend, including oversee the final wrap of a film. Or maybe, for a change, he’d like to actually take half a day off. Either way, time spent waiting for the phone to ring is time wasted. And when the phone did ring, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

All along the way, I’d been reading everything I could about the industry, looking at what scripts sold, and why. There is another lesson here, and one that’s hard to hear. Sales is sales, no matter what the property being sold, whether it’s soap or soda or screenplays. There are five things I’ve been able to identify so far that sell a screenplay, and only two of them exist between FADE IN and FADE OUT- the story and the writing.

If you have the most fantastic idea in the world, but you can’t build a coherent plot to save your life, the odds of your script selling are, um… If you’ve done an outstanding job writing a so-so story, well, at least you’ve exercised your craft. But if both the story and the writing are there, then we get to the other three elements; heat (or hype), timing, and fear.

Hype is an art form all its own, and I don’t know much about it. All I will say is that’s one reason the big agencies have such appeal. They have the know-how and the clout to create hype. Timing is, well, timing. What the market wants, or thinks it wants. Your spec script about killer warthogs just hit the streets, but unfortunately Warner just put their much-touted killer warthog project on the fast track. Not much you can do expect mutter Lesson #1 to yourself again, over and over- do your homework!

The last factor is fear. There’s a reason why studios will snatch up a property that no-one there has ever actually read. And it works in reverse, too- concepts that, in retrospect, were just fantastically good will sometimes get passed on by every place in town. And for the same reasons. We’re talking about an industry like no other, which invests tens of millions of dollars into a product with no track record- unless it’s a sequel. And writers wonder why sequels get greenlighted over new scripts! Huge amounts of money, enormous risk factors, job instability. Fear. If a company has no compelling reason to make a decision right then, well, why should they?

Which explains the number of companies that are on a ‘keep us posted’ status on this column’s guinea pig script. The Sword and the Rose is still on the market, still getting read (in fact there’s yet another ‘head honcho’ read going on- maybe right this second. Maybe at this very moment he’s reading the scene where Richard sacrifices himself to save Grania, and it’s only as he goes to his death that she realizes she loves him…).

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When you’ve given the script everything you possibly can, when you’ve either polished it to the point that it’s ready to be poked, prodded, and evaluated by people who have the option instead to buy Lawrence Kasdan's next script, when you’ve gotten it the best advocate you can to shepherd it to market, or conversely when you’ve looked at it up, down, sideways and inside out and come to the sorrowful conclusion that it is just never going to make a good film, let it go. Put it aside, say a fond farewell, tell it to drop you a tacky tourist postcard from Hollywood, and move on.

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So here we are. Twelve months from the first FADE IN to being on ‘keep us notified’ at assorted prodcos with affiliations to most of the major studios in town, along with a few pointers. Maybe The Sword and the Rose will sell, in which case this will be a far merrier Christmas than anticipated. Maybe it won’t.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a screenplay to work on!