First of all, if you have any
aspirations of playing in Hollywood, you have to go by THEIR rules. They are
picky—very picky. I did some research and found that the software most commonly
used was Final Draft (version 8 right now). I ponied up the $$ and bought it,
$250 of download—ouch! Then I played around with it until I felt reasonably
comfortable using it.
Second, you need books—several
books on screen writing. The two best are: Screenplay
by Syd Field, and The Screenwriter's
Bible by David Trottier. I also picked up Making
a Good Script Great by Linda Seger, and How
to Adapt Anything Into a Screenplay by Richard Krevolin. You MUST be armed
and ready to do battle. Hollywood is unforgiving.
Once armed, it was off and
running to write the script. Yeah, that’s not so simple. As I learned more
about adapting novels to screenplays, I realized I may have created a monster.
My novel was only 148 pages printed (8.5 x 11, 1.5 line spacing) but to now
have to take all those words—over 81K, and turn them into a 120 page screenplay
that must be mostly white on the page; that was a challenge.
I like challenges, so after
nearly a year, I had my 120 pages—actually 119—I was very pleased with myself.
I was ready to send it to Hollywood—or was I? Now the lessons really began. I
submitted it to a screenplay contest and didn't even make it to the
quarterfinals. I submitted to another, same thing. And two more competitions
later, I wasn't getting anywhere. Why? I had a darn good story, the length,
format, plot arc, characters, and pretty much everything I could think of was
by the book. So what was I doing wrong?
At one of the competitions, they
offered 100% feedback on every script they got. The cost of the competition was
reasonable, so I entered. I got feedback, all right. Some of it was good, some
of it was bad. I didn't let that stop me. I now realized I had some problems to
correct. Unfortunately it had cost me well over $150 to find this out. It was
recommended that I seek coverage for my script so that I could fine tune it and
hopefully have a chance later on.
Script coverage is a fancy name
for someone who takes the script (normally someone who has experience in the
movie business) and reads over it and makes suggestions on where to fix things.
Is coverage cheap? Nope! I opted for the regular package and then added on some
additional services which brought the total up to $250. Some coverage agencies
will, if they like your script, get it in front of agents and producers—another
plus to consider.
How could I have done this
differently? Well, I'd still have to get the software, since it is industry
standard. I'd write my screenplay, have my editor check for
spelling/grammar/punctuation, and then send it off to a coverage service before
I sent it off to any competitions. I'd have saved myself close to $200 and
would have had a more marketable script to put in front of the judges. Yes,
lesson learned. But, the good thing about coverage services: you can take what
they said and apply it to subsequent screenplays, and hopefully in time, not
require their services anymore.
Writing is an ever evolving, ever
growing art form. If you're smart enough to learn from your mistakes, in time,
you should know success. I am still learning...
Until next time, my creatively obsessed friends,
Kathy
