#screenwriting industry

[scriptwriters-network]

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[writingwithfolklore]

5 Things about working in a (small) publishing house that surprised me

My experiences definitely aren’t true of the entire industry. I work in a very small, very local publishing house as a marketing assistant, and I’m certain that you’d have a much different experience at Penguin Random House, or even another small house on the other side of the country. That being said, here’s five things that really surprised me about what I’ve seen from the industry so far…

1. Very few of the people who work in publishing are writers

Okay this was one of the biggest surprises but also kind of makes sense? Publishing is a lot about the business side of things—numbers and marketing strategies and event planning, etc. People who are talented in design and accounting and other essential pieces to book publishing aren’t necessarily good at or practiced writers, and not all people who love reading also love writing!

I guess this surprised me so much because I’ve never been a reader without being a writer, but we often actually rely on the author’s writing on their own works (summaries, bios, etc.) to populate the backs of books and other marketing. Including me, there are three writers in my entire office.

2. Big booksellers (think Indigo) release yearly cover palettes for book covers

When we’re deciding the colours for a book cover, one thing that goes into that consideration is actually the different palettes Indigo releases! They have different palettes for different sections they update every year. I imagine it’s to fit a certain look for their shelves for new releases, but it’s not something I had ever really thought about, or thought that they would care about!

3. On that topic—publishing houses don’t sell to readers

My first day in marketing, my manager told me, “you’d think we’re selling to readers” I did think that. She said, “we’re actually selling to bookstores and libraries, they sell to readers.” How the money works is booksellers buy our books to put on their shelf. Everything they don’t sell, they’re allowed to trade back for credit, so we want them to buy big upfront, and then sell big to readers. Every book they send back is inventory we can’t get rid of and a “free” book for them down the line, so we don’t want books to come back!

If you want to support authors and your favourite publishing houses, buy from local bookstores who can’t afford to keep underselling books on their shelves for as long as say Indigo. If you really want to support authors, check out their books from libraries (yes really). Libraries are great because they buy books from publishing houses and can use the same one book to get into the hands of several readers, (in Canada) authors get a small amount every time a book is checked out (up to a certain amount so that the library’s entire budget doesn’t go to one book/author). Often, an author’s largest cheque is from libraries.

Unfortunately in the States authors don’t get the same boon, but still supporting your local libraries is just as good as supporting your local indie bookstores!

4. Soo many people look at covers, and soo much goes into creating them

I’m not really a designer, so I’m certain this wouldn’t surprise those of you who actually do graphic design, but they seriously look at every single detail and how it will benefit or hurt the sales. The placement of blurbs, choice of fonts, colours, subtitles, even the placement of raindrops for a rainy background, everything is discussed and tested and tried several different ways. So yes, DO judge a book by its cover, we work so hard on making covers perfect for the audience we’re trying to reach.

5. Publishing houses don’t necessarily have in-house editors, publicity, or other roles

I had always assumed that every publishing house had its own editors and publicists and what not. That’s probably true for the bigger ones, but if you’re being published by a smaller one (which you may be for your debut) you may be working with freelance editors and publicists who work somewhat with your publishing house and also with others as well. We have one in-house publicist, and no editors!

I wouldn’t turn down a publishing house just because they use freelancers (our freelancers are amazing!) but it’s important that they’re upfront about it. Huge red flag if they say they have in-house editors and they don’t actually—I would pass on a publishing house that lies to you.

Any other questions you have about the industry I’ll try to answer!

[poison-into-positivity]

just learned that David Jenkins’ first show, People of Earth, aired for two seasons and was greenlit for a third, and he scripted the entire third season before the network changed its mind and cancelled it. That is fucking maddening actually.

[vcendent]

art vs industry

Sometimes I'm having a good day, but then sometimes I think about how industry is actively killing creative fields and that goes away. People no longer go to woodworkers for tables and chairs and cabinets, but instead pick from one of hundreds of mass-produced designs made out of cheap particle board instead of paying a carpenter for furniture that is both made to last generations and leaves room for customization. With the growth of population and international trade, the convenience and low production costs are beneficial in some aspects, but how many local craftsmen across the world were put out of business? How many people witnessed their craft die before their eyes? There is no heart or identity put into mass produced items; be it furniture, ceramics, metalwork, or home decor; and at the end of the day everybody ends up with the same, carbon copy stuff in their homes.

I'm a big fan of animated movies, and I see this same thing happening too. When was the last time western audiences saw a new 2D animated movie hit theatres? I can't speak for other countries, but, at least in America, I believe The Princess and the Frog was the last major 2D movie released and that was back in 2009. Major studios nowadays are unwilling to spend the time and money that it would take to pay traditional animators who have spent years honing their craft to go frame by frame, and to pay painters to create scene backgrounds. We talk a lot about machines replacing jobs, but when the machines come, artistry professions are some of the first to be axed (in part because industry does not see artistry as "valuable" professions). Art, music, and writing are no longer seen as "real" jobs because they belong to the creative field and there's this inane idea that anyone who goes into those fields will be unsuccessful and starving. I'm not saying that 3D animation is bad, it has its own merits and required skills and can be just as impressive as anything 2D, but it has smothered 2D animation and reduced it largely to studios that cannot afford the tech to animate 3D.

And now we have this whole AI thing to deal with, stealing existing artists' work to "train" it to take over those few professions that, until now, required actual people to do them. Internet artists have already been dealing with people complaining about the price of art for years and now have to face their work being stolen to train AI. With AI technology, anyone who undervalues the work of the artist can now get something generated at little or no cost to them, all at the expense of the artists themselves. Why would studios pay script writers when they could just get an algorithm to do it without pay? Why pay actors to bring characters to life or pay models to pose for ads when CGI has progressed enough we could digitally render humans and cut out having to pay people entirely? Why use practical effects or film on location when green screens and adding in-post is faster and so much cheaper? It's no wonder we had the SAG-AFTRA strike. AI has already been trained to write children's books and produce music, continuing down this road will replace authors and musicians too at the convenience of cost. How much longer until the actual, real-life people behind all forms of artistry become completely obsolete?

Industry is just driving the cost of people-made crafts up and up with every mass produced product and every streamlined shortcut to reduce costs, which only makes it harder and harder for artists of all kinds to make a living, as very few people want to pay for the time and skill of artists when they could just pick something off a shelf or feed AI a prompt and get something satisfactory enough, yet not what they actually wanted, for so much cheaper.

[rythyme]

ok the director of Thame - Po: Heart That Skips A Beat is Mui Aticha Tanthanawigrai, who was one of three screenwriters for Girl From Nowhere, a screenwriter / director on F4 Thailand, AND the lead screenwriter and director for The Shipper. a super interesting track record!!

honestly if anyone was going to try to make a more serious boy band bl romance show, i'm glad it's her

[genericpuff]

Genuinely curious as to if you asked permission to use Rachel’s characters and she said yes or if you just decided Lore Olympus is popular enough to make a fan comic of and are hoping you don’t receive a cease and desist? Can anyone create a remake comic of original content and just change what you don’t like about it and it’s considered legal if you say the characters belong to the original creator? There is plenty of disappointing media out there that could be remade. I understand you cannot use their characters for profit so is just posting it ok?

Yes, anyone can, because it's called fanfiction lmao Obviously in my case the term "fan" is being used loosely here as at this point it's more like "foe"fiction LMAO but the same principles apply. Unless I try to claim LO is my own creation or make a profit off Rekindled, I should be in the clear. If legal action was taken against me then it would set a precedent against all forms of fanfiction, rewrite, redraw, etc. content around LO which are all essentially doing the same thing Rekindled is doing. I think people tend to view Rekindled as somewhat of an "exception" that's vulnerable to legal action because it's an actual weekly comic put into practice in the same playing field as LO (though they're on massively different bases obviously LOL), but there's not much more separating it from the LO redraw accounts or even the genuine fan accounts that have learned how to draw in Rachel's style (and use it to make their own LO self-inserts and whatnot). I had the time and resources and experience to do what I do through Rekindled, but every redraw, rewrite, fanfiction, etc. account are making the exact same statement I am, whether intentionally or not - "I do/don't like the canon, but/so here's what I think it would be like if it went like this".

There is definitely plenty of media out there that could be remade, and a lot of them are by the fanfiction writers out there who are filling that niche within their respective fandoms. LO is the one I want to do because it's the one that interests me and compels me the most to rewrite.

Not to mention, it's already a bold statement in and of itself to say that I'm "using Rachel's characters", a statement that likely wouldn't hold up in court LMAO Her "characters" are literally just stylized self-insert versions of public domain figures. She did not write The Hymn to Demeter. She did not create Hades, or Persephone, or Hecate, or any of the other characters she writes about. She does not own an entire religion or its deities. The only thing that she really "owns" is the licensing rights to the name "Lore Olympus", and while the style of LO is very unique and identifiable, you can't trademark/copyright a style because that uproots the entire foundation of what art is (ironically no one has had an original idea SINCE the Greeks, we all just learn and adapt our styles based on other artists that we get inspired by and learn from).

Shit, there are series completely unrelated to LO that get harassed or otherwise warned that they could cross into "legal territory" with LO just because they're Greek myth comics. Punderworld, Theia Mania, H x P Ficlets, all of these are comics that also tackle the H x P myth, and while they aren't attempting to do the same thing as Rekindled (as they exist on their own terms) it's really disappointing when I see people talk about these comics purely through the scope of Lore Olympus as if LO invented Greek myth. If WT/Rachel tried to pull rank over the story's "characters", they'd be picking a fight with every other Greek myth comic, book, movie, etc. and they oughta know that's not a fight they're gonna win lol

So everything beyond LO's branding is, in and of itself, fanfiction. Rekindled is just another level deeper by being fanfiction of a fanfiction. As long as I'm not profiting off Lore Olympus' namesake or distributing my work with the misconception that I created LO, it's legally fine. Morally, I'm sure it doesn't exactly make me a saint to do it, it definitely took a lot of hubris for me to say "yeah I don't like how you wrote your story enough that I felt the need to rewrite it completely" and I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking doing so is icky. There are certain lines I won't cross - I don't use the general LO hashtags because my content is very critical and my work isn't really for the fans, I don't encourage anyone to "show Rachel" what I do here because none of what I do here is obligated to be seen by her (and I know it wouldn't be in her best interest to see it anyways, she's literally said that she doesn't like criticism so why tf would I wanna show her a comic that exists to criticize her work lol), and I'm not planning on posting it to Webtoons because that's Rachel's territory. I don't want to overstep both in the legal sense and in the moral one. I think it's more than enough for me to just post my stuff here for the people who are seeking it, and not profit off it or directly affiliate it with LO/Rachel beyond crediting.

All that said, in a moral and legal sense, what I'm doing is literally the basis of fanfiction, and I wouldn't be going to such lengths and spending this much time every week putting out episodes every week if I never cared about LO and how it made us all feel, even if some of us don't love it as much as we used to.

[anders-hawke]

most exciting thing about the trailer when i first watched it was the "we are friends, are we not?" / "friends." stuff bc i have been waiting since s1 for them to get on the same page and have a clown car for two situation going on. absolutely spectacular that i seem to be on the same wavelength as the bridgerton writers room. also perfect editing 10/10 no notes bc it's absolutely delicious that they're saving colin's groveling for the actual episode dshfksjd. like WHAT the hell does he say to get pen going from "mr. bridgerton" to "friends" like ?? hmmmmmmmmm

[filmcourage]

5 Entry Level Jobs For TV Writers - Zimran Jacob

Watch the video interview on Youtube here.

[theogonies]

fuck i'm actually getting mad about this. so weird to me that they drummed up so much publicity around henry cavill being a fan of the franchise but hired a behind the scenes team of people who didn't give a shit. hollywood wants to build out these huge cinematic franchises but they're so uninterested in giving opportunities to people who actually have passion about the stories they're telling. the existence of ao3 is proof that it's not hard to find someone who can write a good, creative witcher narrative. or star wars or marvel or middle earth or what have you. the passion is out there and screenplay writing is a skill that can be taught/learned if you're willing to invest but instead production companies keep churning out the same focus grouped garbage scripts from the same nepotism babies wondering why audiences aren't turning out and engaging like they did for the original ips. maybe it's because sapkowski and cdpr actually wanted to, you know, create stories and not *just* cash in on someone else's worldbuilding without doing the work to see what makes it tick. maybe it's because they liked geralt. just a thought.

[scriptwriters-network]

Creative Writing Challenge – Part 2 –   September

This MONTHLY challenge is for those who want to work on writing new ideas and who would like to maintain a continuous creativity flow with your writing.

Creatively writing short films are a great way to get started/or extend the passion in your career as a writer. A good short film can further help you develop your style and vision using story, drama, dialog, and imagery.

Find out more here.

[writingwithfolklore]

5 Ways to Set Yourself Up For Success as an Aspiring Author

While these things don’t guarantee your manuscript will be picked up or that you’ll sell more books (and aren’t necessary to achieve that!) here are five things that publishing houses look for in authors to help make the book as successful as it can be, and you can start working on now.

1. Get an agent

I can’t say this is true across every publishing house, but in my small publishing house that accepts submissions from both agented and non-agented writers, we move the agented writers to the top of the manuscript pile. This is because they already have a professional in the industry who has vouched for the work.

However!! Important to note that a bad agent can tank your chances as much as a good one can raise them. I had a coworker say about a particular agent, “if I was on the fence about a manuscript and saw (the agent) was representing it, I would move it to the pass pile.” The agent was in general difficult to work with and didn’t actually listen to what her writer wanted, demanding for the house to make poor marketing decisions for the book based on her own personal opinion on what looked good. Oh, and she had also worked in publishing for Penguin Random House for over a decade, so what previous experience they have in the publishing world isn’t all you should consider when reaching out to agents. You want people with lots of experience actually—y’know—agenting.

Check out their previous clients and how many they have! Yes, small agents with only a few years of experience can still be amazing—but make sure you do your research no matter how experienced they seem and see if you can’t do a background check. (The agent mentioned above ended up firing her author! I’m sure the author has tales to tell about her).

2. Come up with marketing ideas

Your publicist is going to do so, so much work for you. Seriously, we have some really awesome publicists who are kicking ass submitting to contests and putting on events and sending authors on tour—but they’re also managing several titles at once, so authors who can pull their own weight a bit when it comes to coming up with marketing ideas for their book are highly appreciated.

If you ever have any ideas on how to reach your specific audience, write them down and try to fill them out with as many details as possible (who is involved, where will it happen, how will it happen, how much funding it requires etc.) and share them with your publicist, the marketing team will thank you for it!

3. Form relationships with the industry!

This one is huge! One thing we actually ask of authors right off the bat is if they know any industry contacts such as booksellers, media contacts, or other professionals/authors. If you can, intern/volunteer/or work for a newspaper, magazine, book store, agency, or anything similar. Having a list of people who know and like you to reach out to for writing articles or otherwise supporting your release is going to help a lot with the promotion and selling of the book! People are much more likely to help out or feature the book of someone they know, rather than a stranger, so start collecting your contacts now.

4. Grow some sort of social media following

Definitely not essential, but seen as a boon for sure if writers already have a community that are likely to support their new release. If you can point to a group of people that already like you or are interested in your work, we’re going to see that as an asset! Especially for book launches—there’s no greater publisher’s fear than a tanking book launch, and it’s so much more likely to go well if you have a community of people you know will show up.

5. Trust your publishing house

You’d be surprised how many authors drag their heels and kick and scream when it comes to the marketing decisions our team makes. While yes, a cover you aren’t necessarily thrilled about, or author bio that sounds a little too self-aggrandizing can suck a bit, know that these decisions are coming from people who have decades of experience in the industry and know how to get your book into the hands of readers. If they think a certain cover, title, subtitle, bio, photo, layout, etc. etc. would be best for your book, trust them. They’re the pros.

I’m happy to answer any other questions you have about the publishing world!

[leighlew3]

Sometimes you write things that you know will likely never make it to air, especially in the current anti-wlw TV climate, but... but you write it anyway. 

And then you hope, that perhaps, someday... maybe... 🤷‍♀️

[elliesgaymachete]

Television is so bleak right now, like especially for wlw, but just in general things get pumped out to make some quick money and dropped as soon as they’re no longer profitable and it’s been a problem for YEARS but it feels like it’s been coming to a head this year what with all the wlw shows getting cancelled and the shit show that is the Warner/Discovery merger. Television isn’t given the time and space and pacing to thrive which means stories are rushed & left hanging, and fans & creators are left disappointed. Literally the only people benefitting from this are the rich executives profiting off of it. They’re literally going to wring everything dry until there’s nothing left. I say this with all seriousness but creatives NEED to be in charge of their own stories or the television industry as a whole is going to continue to suffer

[thecandlesticksfromlesmis]

Are you currently a working screenwriter right now? If so what’s that like? And is the salary is enough to live off of, or does one have to get an extra job

I’ve actually ended up as an editor! Editing was the other discipline I was considering going my masters for, but decided my writing skills were the thing I wanted to work on the most. The salary of my editing job is enough to live on and my hours are super flexible!

I’m gonna be real with you—it’s very hard to get a full on job as a tv writer. And I say TV writer because it is actually impossible to get a job as a film writer. You have a little bit of a better chance getting staffed in a writers room for TV, but still it’s a slim chance of that even happening. And then, if you do get staffed, more than likely the show you’d be working on will get cancelled after one or two seasons and then you are completely out of a job. Literally. You have to start from square one again.

It’s a bad time to be a new screenwriter in the industry. Not only do you get treated like shit if you’re a reader or a writers assistant, but they simply to not promote from within anymore. My time getting my masters was super eye opening. I had some pretty shit experiences with professionals who work in the industry. Either they were telling us we’d not make enough to live on for most of our career, or they were super transphobic towards me. I’m not interested in being treated like shit on the off chance my writing might be put on television. Not only that, but the stories I want to write aren’t ones the industry is willing to tell right now.

So anyway, my advice to you is this—

Decide what is the most important thing to you. If you wanna brave the industry on the hope that one day you’ll get to show your work to millions and millions of people, do it. Absolutely go for it. Just know you will have to push through a lot of shit to try and get to that point. When I sat down and had a word with myself about what was the most important thing to me, it was that I had time in my life to create my own projects and stories with people that I love. I was told by some folks who worked in a writers room that by the time they got back home for their crazy work hours, they didn’t want to work on their own stories. That idea honestly broke my heart. I figured out by the time I graduated AFI, that I was not willing to sacrifice my own creative energy for capitalism’s idea of entertainment.

Now just to be clear—I do not regret getting my masters in screenwriting. In fact, I think going to film school is the absolute best way to practice your craft. I am 100x the writer now that I was a few years ago. I got exactly what I needed from school, and that was the confidence to go out and create my own stuff with exactly the people I want to create it with.

[nightmareinfloral]

you ever think about the future for more than 5 minutes and become like ';|

[kraniumet]

every single tony scott movie is queer coded. i don't think every action 80s movie is, and i actually don't think rambo is that gay. commando is pretty gay, that is not a new take. as far as queer coded villains go, mark l. lester, who directed it, has spoken openly on it. the lethal weapons movies were written by shane black, who some people (me, for the first time right now) have described as "only ever making homoerotic christmas movies". beverly hills cop 2 was directed by tony scott. the issue isn't top gun having a normie amount of male gaze mistakenable for gay longing, it's people not drawing gay erotic beverly hills cop fanart. so we agree on that.