A Career In Screen Writing

“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”

Do you think George Lucas had any idea what was in store when he first put pen to paper?

Not only has it been quoted by children, teenagers and adults since 1977, but in a couple of generations from now, they will still be talking about it.

This leads me to the art of screen writing. 

The beauty of this profession is you really don’t need an education to become a screenwriter, just possess an abundance of imagination and the ability to spin a good story.

Now you might be reading this and thinking to yourself, “Great, I can flick the maths book and my notes on animal biology”.

Back up the truck just a little. There is an army of would-be screenwriters who have toiled for years trying to enter the film industry and many of them have failed.

Is it because they can’t write to save themselves? Probably not.  In fact, many people who try their hand at screenwriting are generally good writers. The problem is that screenwriting can be a very different beast compared to general writing.

So who gets the gig?

Robert McKee, the award-winning film and television writer who has presented for over 25 years his popular “Story Seminar”, puts it down to defining substance, structure and style of the narrative.

While Akiva Goldsman, who went on to win an Academy Award for his screenplay of “A Beautiful Mind”, stated his challenge as a screenwriter,

”We are definitely in competition with everyone's imagination. It's a hard battle to win.” 

The well-worn path to screenwriting often takes years of trial-and-error, failure, and gritty persistence to achieve success.

So why are there literally thousands of people daily, chasing that ever elusive sign- on deal with a Hollywood studio?

Consider Terry Rossio and Bill Marsilii’s script for the motion picture “Déjà vu” which netted them $5 million or Shane Black who was paid $4.5 million by New Line for “The Long Kiss Goodnight” after a bidding war, and you have your answer.

Not to mention the possibility of securing a golden statuette who goes by the name of Oscar around February each year, which if you do get to take one home, increases your marketability and asking price about 200%.

 Found some more incentive? 

Here are a couple of tips to get you moving forward to your goal.

1. Write an outline first. Have an idea where your beginning, middle and end should go before beginning your script. Think about your characters, what they look like, what do they do.

2. Finish your first draft. What this means is finish your story to the end. Don’t get ¾ through before saying to yourself, “Jimmy was going to become a heavyweight boxer originally, but maybe he could be a chauffeur instead”. Just finish the first draft, write another script altogether if a better story idea comes to mind.

3. Get reading real screenplays, in screenplay format.  An excellent website is www.dailyscript.com where you can read movie scripts for free. Find scripts that are in your genre and study them.

4. Rewrite. Can’t say it much simpler than that. 

5. Don’t give up and keep at it!