A former student emailed me the other day with a big question:
"Where's the money in screenwriting?
He added, "I don't mean just hitting it lucky and selling one script, but in screenwriting as a career."
Let's look at the categories of screenwriters who are coining it.
THE GONZO ACTION WRITERS
The biggest paychecks go to the writers of the big-budget Hollywood productions, which are mostly action and superhero movies.
There is a small group of experienced writers who excel in these genres and get called on again and again. While you can aspire to join that group, it's too much of a long shot to be a career strategy when you're starting out.
THE ADAPTORS
These are screenwriters who are asked to adapt a novel, play, short story, or article. They may also be asked to develop a story idea from producers or directors who don't write their own material.
To get into this group, it helps to have some credits of your own first, to focus on one genre, and to have a feel for the source material. I was once interviewed about adapting the memoirs of a woman who had undergone a harrowing abduction and rape and once I heard what the subject matter was, I knew I was totally wrong for it, both because I'm not a woman and because I didn't like the thought of spending months in the horrible depths of that story.
To do well at this kind of writing you need to be able to put your ego aside to some degree and find the balance between serving the source material and adding your own skill as a dramatist to make it work in the medium of film.
THE SCRIPT DOCTORS
Another group that makes good money are the screenwriters who get called in to do script doctoring. Usually, they have one specialty, such as punching up dialogue or fixing story structure.
Unless what they do changes the story significantly, they are not owed a credit. That's useful because if you may be rewriting the work of, say, a well-known writer/director who may not be eager to have it known that their script needed outside help. I did some of this when I was in Hollywood, on movies starring Eddie Murphy, Walter Matthau, and Michael Caine, among others, and it paid well.
WRITERS WITH AN OUTSTANDING SPEC SCRIPT--BUT NOT FOR THE REASON YOU THINK
Yes, you can get lucky with a spec script that a studio snaps up or, even better, that gets a couple of studios into a bidding war.
As somebody once said about writing plays you hope to get on Broadway, "you can make a killing, but you can't make a living." It happens, but not very often.
It's more likely that an outstanding spec script will lead to work as an adaptor or script doctor, and that's where the more steady money is.
Those two categories constitute a market that is kind of hidden from view and it doesn't give you the same creative satisfaction as writing totally original screenplays, but it's your best bet for paying your bills while still having time to write original spec scripts.
Your spec script has to demonstrate that you have the skill they need. In my case, it was mostly punching up dialogue and fleshing out characters.
You'll need an agent who has good connections to submit you for these assignments. However, once you've done a couple, the word gets around and eventually you'll have people coming to you. How do you get that agent? By writing that outstanding spec script and looking for every opportunity to get someone to read it.
HOW TO GET SOME OF THAT MONEY
I think my former student wasn't just asking where the money is in screenwriting, but also how he could get some of it.
As I said above, you need to write an outstanding script, but what does that really mean? It means your script has to stand out. It's not enough for it to be well-written. That's a start but there are enough well-written scripts around that it also has to have a twist of some kind, some element that is immediately intriguing.
I'll give you an example. Here are two log lines for possible features:
When the students of a beloved long-retired teacher find out she is in the early stages of Alzheimer's, they band together to let her know how she changed their lives for the better.
When an elderly former criminal in the early stages of Alzheimer's blurts out memories of a stash of gold he buried forty years ago, it sends his formerly close family members into a mad scramble to be the first to find it.
Let's assume both are well-written. Which one do you think would get you more attention?
I believe it's the second one. The first could be a beautiful, heart-warming script; I'm just saying of the two, it wouldn't be the best choice for a writer struggling to break in. And even though the second one has elements of comedy that broaden the appeal of the story, I think it could be written in a way that is respectful to people suffering from that horrible condition.
FIND THE OVERLAP
My final bit of advice to my former student was: find the overlap between what you want to write and what will stand out.
That's where the money is.
