If you’re writing a script to sell to Hollywood, you’re already making a fundamental strategic mistake. Your odds of selling that script are something like .001%. Why?
First, the vast majority of screenwriters don’t have sufficient training to create a professional-level script. Sure, they’ve read a couple of screenwriting books, probably taken a few courses. But storytelling, in whatever medium, is the most complex craft in the world. Imagine any other profession in the world where you can be successful just by reading a couple of books or taking a few of courses.
A second reason for such terrible odds is lack of representation. The big studios won’t even open your script, much less send it out to a reader, without an agent, and the vast majority of screenwriters don’t have one. Nor do they know how to get one.
Third is that all-powerful creature known as a reader. Even if a professional reader is properly trained, and many aren’t, he or she has to read and evaluate five to ten scripts per week. This is mind-numbing, depressing work, because only one out of a hundred scripts is even good enough for a “consider.” And those are just scripts with agents. This means that the reader is programmed to say NO. Day after day, week after week, year after year.
Let’s say your script miraculously gets past the reader to a story executive. It must be a damn good script, right? Sure, but that probably won’t matter, and it’s not because executives hate reading scripts (they do). They don’t like original material. That has to do with the business strategy by which the studios operate. And that’s why far more adaptations are bought and made than originals.
The strategy is known as branding, and all the top studios use it. King of branding is the top Hollywood studio, Disney. That’s why Disney bought Marvel, with its well-known stable of characters. That’s why Disney bought Star Wars. Star Wars began as an original voice in the mind of its writer, George Lucas. But Disney bought it only after that original voice proved to be a massive success at the box office. Star Wars had become a brand, and a great one at that.
The reason that writing a script to sell to Hollywood is a big mistake is that you are using the wrong currency. The currency in this business isn’t money. It’s voice. It’s your unique brand as an original storyteller that the studios can’t get from anyone else but you. And that means above all that you have to get your voice out there, get it heard, to prove to the studios that people want it.
As we’ve seen, that won’t happen if you write your original story as a script.
So what is the #1 screenwriting strategy today? Write your original story as a novel first. It’s a lot easier to get a novel published than it is to get a script sold and made. And even if you don’t get an established publisher, the internet allows you to publish it yourself. You begin the process of getting your original voice heard in the world. You begin the process of managing and selling your brand.
If the book gets a following, you can build it. If it has real success as a novel, your chances of selling it as a film are much higher.
Andy Weir published The Martian as a novel in serial form on his own website. Then he put out an Amazon Kindle version for 99 cents. It sold 35,000 copies in three months and that got him a publishing deal with Crown Books (Random House). 20th Century Fox optioned the film rights and it’s now a blockbuster movie with Oscar potential.
An example of a writer who is managing her brand is Leslie Lehr, award-winning novelist and novel consultant at Truby’s Writers Studio. She just got back the rights to her novel, 66 Laps, which won the Pirates Alley Faulkner Society Gold Medal. She’s republished it through Amazon for its initial release, with other formats soon, and through her own imprint, GoodPressBooks, at www.leslielehr.com/66-laps. The book is now getting a whole new life, and more importantly Leslie is extending her brand of powerful, original storytelling into the world.
66 Laps is the story of a wife and mother of a toddler who comes to suspect her husband is having an affair. But is he really? And if he is, what should she do about it? I guarantee you will not figure out what happens. And the ending will hit you hard.
This book is beautifully written at every level of the storytelling process, from character to plot to dazzling prose. Only Leslie Lehr could have written it. Had she written it first as a script it would never have seen the light of day. Now it will live on forever, read by thousands, and it’s something she can point to and proudly say, “I did that.”
The reason Leslie and I recently taught our Story for Novelists class is that we believe so strongly that for the vast majority of screenwriters out there, the novel is the ticket to breakthrough. If you want to start creating and building your brand as a storyteller, write a novel. Don’t let the powerful, unseen forces of the Hollywood entertainment business control your creativity ever again.
I must say, this came as a shock. Valuable as always, but still a shock. I feel a flush of dejection and my finger raising itself to say ‘hang on, what about…’.
Having spent innumerable hours guzzling this site’s products, boiling my brain dry for inspiration, and sweating my ideas onto the page, I now read here that even the master of master scripts isn’t enough. So you’re saying that even an award-winning idea which has been channelled through the maximally-secure 22 step structure, with its various genre beats twisted and popped for originality, even more is now needed? Now we must add a huge bulk to the load: an entire novelist skillset. This surely means mastering prose, building a library-like vocabulary, and undoubtedly becoming adept at a whole bunch of other craft elements not mentioned.
I get that this is a useful strategy to bypass the maze of industry guards, but are you absolutely sure it’s necessary? I’m sure I’ll buy this class anyway for its information, which has consistently been useful, but surely there are alternate routes, risks factored in? What about writer/directors?
What about Alejandro Amenabar, who wrote The Others (and directed and composed it, the talented so and so)? This script, a commercial success, stood out to me as particularly sparse, using simple dialogue and a distinct shortage of description. I acknowledge he was already something of a brand by that point, having gained recognition for Open Your Eyes (later made into ‘Vanilla Sky’), but my point is that, given the simplicity of ‘The Others’ script, I suspect he may not have had the skills to write it in novel form.
Surely there are other routes. I understand the chain of reasoning proposed in this article, but it just seems like such a big jump to go from script-writing to novel-writing. If I have my eyes set on writing and directing a low-budget hit indie, surely I can grow my brand name that way?
Hmm, how to ever get a response on this matter…
Toby, Graphic Novels might be closer to scripts. Work with an artist.
Interesting suggestion, Kit. I’d briefly played with that idea, but film is the ideal medium for my story ideas. I shall pursue that first.
Toby, please believe me when I say I understand your frustration, dejection and shock. But let me also say a few things that might make you feel better.
First and foremost, this jump from screenwriting to novel writing is not nearly as big as you think. I’m not going to say it’s easy, because that wouldn’t be the truth.
But the fact is, a well-trained, accomplished screenwriter is already about 80% there. Why? Because a good screenwriter knows it’s all about the story. Screenplays are the closest medium to pure story there is. By far the single most important element to a successful popular novel is not the quality of the prose. It’s narrative drive, just as it is in a script.
Those 22 structure steps that you’ve worked hard to master, along with those genre beats that you’ve twisted and popped, they’re not just applicable to screenplays. They work just as well in novels. That’s why my Anatomy of Story book and masterclass are not called Anatomy of a Screenplay. True, in the class I show a lot of film clips. That’s just because movie clips are the quickest and most powerful way to exemplify a story technique. But it’s all about telling a great story, no matter what medium you use.
Clearly there are some important differences between the various media forms, and we talk about the key ones between novel and screenplay in the Novel class. But there has been a tremendous blending between film and novel in the last thirty years. Popular novels especially are now highly cinematic.
Yes, there are a lot of prose techniques to learn if you’re going to write a novel. But even here, your experience as a screenwriter is a big help. You already know how to write lean prose with an eye toward what the audience sees. There are more prose techniques to learn than that, but they can be learned. And let’s be honest here. We’re not talking the style mastery of a Flaubert. The novelists at the top of the bestseller list are rarely masters of prose. But they tell a helluva story.
One last thing. You say, surely there are other routes. Absolutely. Writing and directing your own indie film is still a great approach. I’ve done it myself. The problem is that even low- or no-budget filmmaking requires a lot of money, far more than you need to write a novel. And the big bottleneck you face with this approach is in distribution. I’ve been saying for years that making a short film and posting it on the Internet has much greater potential to get you noticed than trying to send a spec script into the studios.
This article isn’t about despair in the crushing power of the studio system. It’s about the real hope that comes from taking control of your creativity through the novel form. The combination of the novel story form and the Internet is huge for writers. Finally, we have a way to get our work, all of our work, out to the world.
Have faith, my friend. You can do this.
Thank you, John, for taking the time to respond, clarify, and offer words of encouragement. I do feel greatly reassured by what you said, but can (now!) take on board the merit of your advice.
Although I have full faith in my story ideas, I’m keen not to rush the crafting process, and am currently not in a position to see the industry clearly. To hear you clarify that there’s sufficient hope in the writing & directing route has prodded me forward in pursuit. This was the source of my doubt – I hadn’t heard as much emphasis on the value of directing as a way in, so I suddenly felt unsure about how viable it was. My ears have generally been open, but perhaps I’d missed you saying it. The novelist route will be kept as an alternate route, but at the same time I won’t be underestimating how difficult the whole thing may still be! I know a few people here in the London industry, so there’s a start.
The tools provided by your classes have been consistently handy, because even when I’m not using them, I know what they are and how to use them. For example, I’m not working in every genre, but all of the genre classes have helped build both an overall picture of storytelling and how each genre’s rhythms add to the whole ensemble of human experience. This also helps me spot the stories that haven’t been told. Purely out of curiosity, I had already looked into a variety of novel-writing resources, but I know your novelist class will build off the 22-step method and I trust it will be as informative as the other classes. I look forward to hearing it shortly.
Thank you again for your encouragement, it means a lot to me.
P.s. On a side note, I couldn’t bear the thought of not sharing an observation about your method, having been intrigued by it. One particular analogy keeps coming back to me.
Your method seems to play the same role in storytelling as structural engineering does in architecture.
Writing stories that resemble the simpler structures of, say, a primitive hut can be achieved intuitively (although formal training could potentially tighten them). But for stories that begin to resemble more complex and elaborate palaces, there’s an increasing need for technique and understanding of design in order to create them well. You once gave an example regarding the paradoxical difficulty of writing good plot, that it must be reverse-engineered skilfully enough to give the feel of growing organically. Needless to say, both simple and complex structures are always grounded in core underlying principles, the 7 steps.
Furthermore, if a structural engineer must be continuously aware of how the law of gravity might affect their design, a writer’s continuous priority is to track a similar ‘law of audience attention’. For an audience experiencing the structure-in-flow of story, this could be considered their moving centre of gravity. To me, storytelling appears to be a kind of flowing architecture, an almost exact reversal to the idea that architecture is ‘frozen music’.
As for the genres, you’ve said that they evolve. This corresponds to architecture’s evolving period styles, each combining and popping beats for originality. There’s probably more to say here about the forces and pressures that each genre brings. And ultimately, no matter how beautiful the texturing of a building may be, it’s all in the larger context of the building’s structure. No structural engineer, no Sistine Chapel ceiling.
I often think to myself what the next great architectural work might look like, but I also wonder what the next great visionary story might be.
Hi, My stepfather was a famous scriptwriter and author (now in Guinness book of records), so know how the two story forms inter-relate, and have struggled with this new popular studio story form and whether to go this route. So, hope this thought might assist another Truby fan and screenwriter to put doubt and anxiety to rest. Writing requires positive emotions.
Mr. Truby’s brief article on the current (new tech system vis-a-vis book to studio market) shows how a book/’The Story” can, through astute internet ‘vanity’ publishing of commercial, salable content, can execute both a studio and web sales. Moreover, a great, salable script and visual characters equally translates into a book, if one has a good manager or manager-agent. Truby also covers the very helpful link between agent-manager and script sales, but contests and writer group recommendations go a long way to getting a mgr./agent as well. Truby’s two examples (sci-fi and modern romance, female lead) are two of the most popular current genres that can benefit from internet publishing, presentation methods. Comic Books provide major studios with character driven story, then rewritten by major writer teams. While clever Videos as story teasers also gain impressive online and story fair traction and producer/agent attention.
One must hone one’s writer arsenal to one or all of these online methods, and enjoy the game/strategy of creating the best impact-display for your story’s truth and/or voice for the right contacts/venues for that voice. There are excellent internet script media markets and fairs, which are a great place to meet and promote. So, creating visual teasers work in certain venues. If you feel you have a salable book, then write it; but if it doesn’t feel like one: don’t. Some excel at scripts
I return to Truby. Honing the best presentation methods analysis goes straight to Genres and what is your story/scripts’ genre or hybrid? This is Truby’s forte. Examine the book cover and the title his article presents. I rest my case…. Best wishes and enjoy the process without fear! Ann
Hmm I’m not sure John. They are very different skills, as can be seen from the very average novels written by Gus Van Sant, Pablo Sorrentino, David Cronenberg. And the bad screenplays written by Earnest Hemmingway and F Scott Fitzgerald.
Luis Bunel was fond of saying he was only a filmmaker because he wasn’t bright enough to be a novelist.
You may be able to cross pollinate dramatic structure between the novel and the screenplay, but then again the novel has much less need of the kind of dramatic structure that film and theatre does. If this were not so, then a novel like Catcher in the Rye would have been made into a successful film long ago. Brett Easton Ellis’ Less than Zero is another example: a fine novel but not transferrable to the screen. I could go on with countless other examples.
#2 SCREENWRITING STRATEGY: sleep with someone in the business. Just as practical and no less soulless. John, we are either artists sharing information and insights or fraudsters looking for a backdoor into Oz. As a playwright, I’m beyond weary of how many plays written by wannabe or disillusioned screenwriters pass my way, all of whom see the theatre as a form of half breed, in-bred lesser hillbilly cousin to the screenplay– but at least they are still writing, right? Truly, your article is intelligent, pragmatic advice—but it is something you whisper in the ear of your closest writer friends in the pub, not something you openly admit to saying globally for fear of being called a soulless whore. Confucius: the superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell. You’ll disagree, but you’re getting into Joe Eszterhas: financial success = artistic credibility territory here. Thin ice.
To write a novel that has the potential to gain a public voice is a sound enough premise, so long as the novel is one which can then be realized as the screenplay which is a fair representation of the novel. For that to happen, the writer must consider the length of the movie to be scripted and whether or not the novel is like a Harlan Coben or James Patterson novel which does not have the dramatic quality to carry a scene (beyond those that are of the most gratuitously graphic) yet requires a longer than 2-hour movie simply to play out the necessary number of scenes and plot twists which stand in for well a developed drama. Thus, the premise while sound, has many pitfalls to avoid, to avoid the phenomenon of the effect of Star Wars in 15-minutes 🙂
Along Came a Spider was not a good movie. Tell No One (Ne le dis à personne) was much better, but frenetic. A very good adaptation was the Roman Polanski-Robert Harris adaptation of The Ghost Writer from the novel The Ghost. The adaptation of Harris’ Fatherland, was very unsatisfactory because of the approach which digressed too much from the approach of the novel. A technique that ought to be helpful: After you completely, complete the novel, immediately recreate it in the screenplay form, and see how it looks in terms of form and length, before you publish the novel.
Also, as Harlan Coben discovered to his benefit, the world of cinema does not exclusively revolve around Hollywood.
Aloha all, forgive me for coming late to the party. Back in 1990, after working in television news, decided to learn how to write screenplays. This is way before Mr. Truby hit the scene, back then we were all reading Syd Field’s book and trying to figure out how to solve the problem of the sagging middle. I’d written 7 scripts, one was a quarterfinalist in the Nichol screenwriting contest. Then I came across a book on writing for hollywood that was written by a producer. His advice: maybe you should write a novel. This was long before self publishing was an option, but his point was in a novel, you are the director of the movie that unfolds in the reader’s mind. You have much more control and can fully realize your story than you can even in a very well written screenplay. The novel is a complete story delivery unit, a screenplay is incomplete in that it still requires the script to be shot, edited and distributed.
I took the advice and have now written five novels, none of them great, but all part of the learning process. I have yet to publish any as they don’t meet my own standards of what I want to put out there. I discovered Mr. Truby’s work last October and it’s astonishing. Now I can see why my previous efforts were not up to snuff, as I had not mastered the essential structure elements. Right now, I am applying his techniques to a novel that started out as a screenplay, re-wrote it as a novel and abandoned it. Now the story has taken on new life, I’m thrilled with how it is coming out and will be proud to put this out with my name on it.
And with the advent of self-publishing and social media, I have all the tools available to launch the book on my own terms, in my own time, and own the rights to my work. That is the key in all of this. If you notice in his article he mentions, Ms. Lehr “just got the rights back,” meaning she’d sold it to a publisher, who may have given her a decent advance, but maybe didn’t do enough to really get the book out there. Now, having her rights back, Ms. Lehr is now in control and can publish her book the way she wants to.
None of this is easy, it means becoming a small business owner, and it means working your butt off, but at the end of the day, you make more money on each book sale, and you are still in the driver seat if you want to write the script version and sell it, or sell the movie rights. Mr. Truby is correct when he says, “It’s about the real hope that comes from taking control of your creativity through the novel form.”
I’m a relative newbie to writing in general. I started just last spring because I had story ideas that just sort of came to me and it was fun writing it down. From early on it’s been a blast, but at the same time a reckless race to absorb and understand as much as I can about storytelling. It’s been incredibly rewarding, challenging and fun.
When I first ran across this article it was disheartening. Depressing even. I read it and set it aside. However, within 24 hours I’d started the audio course. Since, I’ve listened through it three times. Like most of Truby’s courses it is laid out very logically with a process, Although his processes are a bit too linear for me, I am typically able to adapt to them to the evolving process of how I do things. Also, like much of Mr Truby’s courses it imparts more than method or technique, it is easy to look below the surface and get a sense of why those techniques and methods make sense. How they work together to create an emotional experience, which is, after all, the purpose of all good art..What I appreciate most about this course is that almost from the start it transforms what seems like a daunting task to something where you say “I get it. I think I could do that.”
Since then I have taken the story I was working on and applied his techniques to expand the basic structure into something that could work in novel form. Where the structure before felt like a pretty decent structure for a screenplay the new structure feels right, more like a novel. It also feels like a more complete story, which I also find rewarding. I’ve even turned the first few scenes into a couple of chapters, that although I continue to work at the rough edges, basically read like a novel. It’s also fun to have the extra space of the novel form to sprawl out in and create a much more complete experience. For me, the biggest shift, was that where action in a screenplay is largely a visual experience with a smattering of sound and character reactions, in a novel, that expands and you can mix in smell, and touch and the thoughts of the main character. It also provides more room to describe the visual world. With a screenplay it’s like your trying to paint a thousand pictures with a handful of words, where a novel tries to paint an entire experience.
Anyway, the point is that some of my initial reaction was simply FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) which rapidly dissipated once I got into the course. It’s since been replaced by an optimism that it doesn’t matter if I get past some reader who may never even really have read my script. The work I put into a good story can go straight to the public and if it’s good, it will get recognized. How much more hopeful is that.
Great advice. A novel is a finished work that does not require production financing to be fully realized and evaluated.
It can be evaluated on its own merits. No studio is interested in an unknown’s screenplay (with the odd one-in-million exception).
I listen to several podcasts on screenwriting, and one in particular (which is quite well known), scriptnotes.com (John August and Craig Mazin, both successful screenwriters who are still working in the business), said something very similar. They said it is very difficult nowadays to get a script sold to Hollywood, as they are interested in something that has already proven its’ success. This is why we have so many Superhero movies.
They also explained that practically it’s easier for Hollywood to make the big budget movies and the small movies; big budget ones because they know those are going to be hits, and small budget ones, because they don’t cost a lot of money. The medium size movies just aren’t financially worth it for them; since instead of doing 3 medium sized movies they can do just one big one with half the hassle of dealing with producers, actors, etc.
This makes it even harder for screenwriters, because the type of genres that used to be done aren’t being done anymore. A small comedy or romantic comedy, a low budget horror movie…those are cheaper to do. But dramatic movies, etc are pretty much out. It’s all myth and action heroes, because that’s what people are willing to pay for.
On the other hand, they did point out that some of the best stuff is on TV. Many of the genres that can’t be found on the big screen have migrated to the major networks. With the advent of Netflix and now Amazon creating their own movies, both John and Craig felt TV/cable now offer the best opportunity for new screenwriters.
The skill set is for TV is a lot closer to film than novel writing…so this would be an easier “in” if you’re an aspiring screenwriter.