![]() Especially if you are working for producers who pay you to deliver the script they need. Once you find your own voice, continually work on your craft to get better with each screenplay. Be an honest writer and find the truth in your stories. As you live and experience, you enhance your observation of life and hopefully it translates into your writing. I love hearing an old jazz musician, a master of his instrument, saying that he is still learning. Hemingway said, “We are all masters of a craft where no one ever becomes a master.” Wow. Mastering your craft takes years of study and execution. You pat yourself on the back for completing your new script-don’t expect anyone else to do it. You’ll survive in the trenches longer if you can get into a Zen mindset where the only validation you seek is your own satisfaction from finishing the best script you’ve ever written to date. ![]() If you are searching for validation from Hollywood, you are going to come up empty most of the time. ![]() Unfortunately, it’s a numbers game at best and unfortunately, no one really cares who wrote the movie. Others may seek fame, fortune and a desire for attention from selling a script for a huge amount of money. Mostly they discovered what they purchased was over priced and when they actually read the script, it was a lemon. I remember when you would read that a studio just spent a cool million dollars to buy a “hot” property, only to read later that it’s shelved due to particular circumstances. Mostly those days are over where Hollywood throws money at scripts just to take them off the market. Buy a ticket at a chance for millions - write a script for a chance at millions. I believe some screenwriters write scripts because they consider it like playing the lottery. If your answer is “yes” then you truly love the craft of screenwriting, even against all odds. So, I always ask aspiring screenwriters, does their passion to write still burn inside even after hearing these numbers? If you are going to pursue writing as a career in Hollywood, I think you must honestly ask yourself the difficult questions. It opened the door to fifteen screenwriting assignments and 9 produced films. It’s humbling for sure, but you can sell a spec… hell, I did it once. Crazy odds! This is what we’re up against brave screenwriters, but use these statistics as a reality check and not to derail your dreams. Three-quarters of the employed writers work in television and the rest in features. They may have written specs or taken other jobs, but not in their career field. Last fiscal year for 2016 (ending June 2017) in the WGAw, only 5,227 screenwriters reported any income, the rest did not find gainful work as a professional screenwriter. Those figures are staggering with reports of 30,000 – 50,000 screenplays. Don’t even get me started on the number of scripts registered with the Writer’s Guild every year. Here are the spec sales broken into genres…Īs you can see, “Drama and Thriller” comprise nearly half of the spec script deals for 2017. I read the sobering statistics from the ’s 2017 spec script market analysis.
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