Many of us have tried to write a screenplay and hoped to sell it. Yet most of us haven’t sold one. Why?
The answer is simple.
Writing a screenplay is easy. Writing a bad screenplay is even easier. The easiest thing of all is writing the first 30 pages of a bad screenplay and then giving up on it because it’s not going anywhere.
Most of us do the easy thing. Very few of us can consistently muster the discipline to do the hard thing.
Writing a good screenplay is hard. However, writing the first 30 pages of a good screenplay is still pretty easy.
But the hardest thing of all is taking those first 30 pages of a good screenplay and writing the remaining 90 or so pages only to realize the completed screenplay is now bad.
Almost nobody has the stomach for that.
And that’s the fix. That’s what you have to do. You have to finish a screenplay even though you know it’s bad.
The good new is, that’s easy. All it takes is a mindset shift. Hammer it out, understand it’s part of the process, and don’t be so precious about it.
Nobody sells their first screenplay, no matter how good they think it is. It’s like the jump program in The Matrix. Everybody falls the first time.
Good screenplays are rare. They almost always sell. At the very least, they generate interest in the business and lead to other opportunities.
The reason you haven’t sold your screenplay is because you haven’t written enough of them to get good at writing them.
People who sell screenplays typically sell (or option) their 13th screenplay, roughly speaking. And that’s only after writing 13 screenplays using the best practices: completing each one, writing each one quickly, getting feedback and learning more each time.
Keep writin’! Just get to 13.
The hardest thing about writing a screenplay is doing it without knowing anything about camera set-ups, acting, editing, music and sound dubbing etc. The worst produced screenplays in the world look like they were written without any plan for that stuff.
Hello Scott! I hope you are doing well and in good health! I’m wondering if you can recommend some books or other resources to help a beginner like me write screenplays? Good basics, advice and what to avoid. Thank you for your posts! Really appreciate them. David