Okay, I admit it. I daydream about being a successful screenwriter. Who doesn’t?
“That mega-hit blockbuster? Yeah. I wrote that.”
It’s nice to think about, but again, it’s still just a daydream. I’m not counting on it. I’d be happy just to make a decent living at it, and that’s what I’m working towards.
I try to be realistic about this, learning from my mistakes and missteps. I’ve been extremely fortunate to be able to ask advice of writers with more experience than me, and I have heeded that advice to the best of my ability.
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen a lot of activity online involving writers (usually in the early (read: uninformed) phase of their careers) asking questions regarding a wide variety of topics.
A majority of the time, they get quality answers from seasoned (read: informed) writers. In theory, the original askers respond with “Thanks! That really helps!”, or “So glad you told me!”, or even “Great to know!”. These do happen. On occasion.
And then there’s the other response.
“You’re just trying to kill my/their dreams!”
“What do you know? You only have X credits on IMDB!”
“You just don’t want the competition!”
“I’ve never heard of you, so your advice is worthless!”
“What makes you so important?”
Sigh.
People are going to believe what they want to believe, or are more likely to believe advice that works in their favor, rather than the cold, hard truth. And if that cold, hard truth runs counter to the answers they want (despite them claiming to “seek” them), the harder they’ll reject it.
You may not like the fact that there’s not a snowcone’s chance in hell a major studio/agency/prodco will look at your script, let alone greenlight it for production, even with your without-a-doubt absolutely certain belief they’d grab it in a second if they’d only read it to see how totally awesome it is, but getting angry (and even berating) at somebody who tells you “that’s how it is” makes you look foolish and amateurish. And you’re also setting yourself up for continuous disappointment.
One of the things a screenwriter needs to accept early on is that there are certain truths about the industry and how things work within it. Unless people are completely blown away by the sheer genius of the writing in your first or second draft, (which they will not be. Trust me on this one.), you and your script are not going to be the ones that “change all of that”.
Learn the way things work. Ask questions of those who know better (and more) than you. Accept the answers and adapt. You need to. The industry has no interest in and will not be adapting to you.
No matter how many tantrums you throw.
**Shameless self-promotion! I had the good fortune to be interviewed by my pal Justin Sloan, who hosts The Creative Writing Career podcast, which covers a wide variety of fields and types of writing careers. We had a great time discussing trying to make it as a screenwriter. You can listen to it here, or subscribe to it on iTunes. Thanks for listening!
Maximum Z 
Good post, I like reality check posts, although I am a book writer rather than a screenwriter. In many ways getting a script taken up in Hollywood is way tougher than getting published by a big publisher.
I gave up on selling a script about eight years ago when I saw the process to pitch etc.
Risk rules the movie business; they’re all looking for zero-risk projects and going nuts as a result. A professor at LMU told me that novels are currently the best path to film. I know several screenwriters who’ve abandoned scripts entirely and taken up novel writing.
Yeah that doesn’t surprise me, some 75% of films are based on books or adapted from some source or another.
As for zero-risk, I feel that’s killing the film mainstream industry. Hollywood output has become so predictable there are only a handful I’d want to watch any given year in the last 15 years or so.
BTW, I like your handle. I put a lion on the cover of my new book.
Some of the best-known teachers in the industry or in academia have extremely thin imdb credits. Their students have the fat listings.