A Screenwriter’s Survival Guide To Hollywood - Part One

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For The Unrepped Newcomer

Survival of The Fittest:

Picking up stakes and moving anywhere is never high on the fun list, but when you are following your dreams, sometimes you have to follow them thousands of miles from your comfort zone.

I did just that during the summer of 2007. I had a thought out plan, money in the bank and a job waiting for me in Los Angeles. But it wasn’t enough. It never is.

Since arriving, I rode out a WGA writer’s strike; an “almost strike” by SAG and of course the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression.

What a time to leave the safe haven of my hometown back East, for the dog-eat-dog of Hollywood?

Well, over the next days, you’ll read about what I did in preparation of my move and what I continue to do to this day to successfully market my writing by branching out beyond writing and into the production arena.

And remember, even after you land representation, you will have to continue to make a lot of the connections yourself, as well as a lot of the sales.

About Writing:

I’ve always had an interest in creating stories, but I didn’t consider myself a real writer. I guess I am now.

One day, sometime in 2003, I had the brilliant to convert one of my short stories into a script. It was horrible but served its purpose as being part of the experiment. I followed a few examples, I found online for structure and soon had something that resembled a script.

Around the same time, I had the idea to write a sitcom based on my years as an office worker. The title, “Misery Loves This Company” (MLTC) came to me first. As soon as I made the decision to write it, the story ideas flowed so quickly, I almost couldn’t write them down fast enough.

I soon had a set of characters, A, B, and C stories and then came the daunting task of learning sitcom structure.
The first thing I did was search the Internet for sample scripts, and articles on structure. I soon realized how much conflicting information was out there, and that I needed to settle in on something in order to write my first teleplay. What I quickly found out was that every head writer of a series has their own special way of formatting their show scripts. This was one of the confusing things, I encountered while I was attempting to learn the basics.

After finally settling in on a format to write my teleplay, by taking the best elements from the templates from other shows, I began to “craft” the story. Then I found “The Screenwriters Bible” by David Trottier, which helped me smooth out all of the information, I had gotten from all of my research using this book along with the TV show templates, which came pre-loaded in Final Draft, I soon had my first draft of “MLTC”.

Another great book, which I wish had been written back then is Ellen Sandler’s “The TV Writer’s Workbook” www.sandlerink.com. She was the Co-Executive Producer of “Everybody Loves Raymond” and when you read her book, you can almost hear the voices of some of the characters from that show in her writing voice. It really makes learning TV writing fun, when there’s a book like this around.

As a side note, Ellen is also a great lecturer, I’ve had the pleasure of attending a couple of workshops in Los Angeles, where she was a presenter.

As much as I liked a few shows that were on TV during the 2004-2005 season, I could never bring myself to write a spec script for an existing show. I was tempted to pen a “Gilmore Girls” spec until, I heard that their episodes generally ran 20-30 pages longer than most 1-hour drama’s because of the lengthy-fast paced dialogue and speech patterns of the two lead characters.

Besides, if I were to write a TV spec and live in Florida, how would I ever get a job as a staff writer?

But even so, I put myself through the exercise of watching an episode of an older show and then attempting to find the script from that show to read as soon as I could. I really found it I quickly adapted to the rules after a doing it a few times. An even better way would be to rent a full season of a series and find scripts, so that you can really study them while watching the show.

When searching for teleplays, be sure to use true script formatted episodes not transcripts, or you’ll only waste your time. It’s worth paying a few dollars on them. Just think of the expense as part of your education, while you teach yourself your craft.

So, after I completed my first draft of “MLTC” (which was probably more of a third draft with my numerous tweaks and changes), I recruited four of my friends to read my script and give me feedback. They say you should have other writers, actors, or other industry people read, but I didn’t know any so friends it was.

The feedback was good. I got some questions, which made me go back and reconsider a few choices of dialog and action, but for the most part they liked it. After making corrections, I did one more pass and then I registered my script with the WGA at www.wga.org or www.wgaeast.org.

During this time, I found an online ad for becoming a reader at a production company based in Los Angeles. I thought this would be an excellent way for me to start making some connections in the industry.

They accepted me right away and before I knew it I was receiving at least one screenplay a week to which I had to give two to three pages worth of notes and coverage. The problem with this was that as soon as I sent my work back, which was usually within a day or two, they’d send me another one, which left me less time to work on my own projects. So, after reading around thirty-five scripts, I had to stop, but it was still a great experience.

The biggest thing I realized was that most of the scripts were terrible, but somehow they were getting read, and a lot of the writers already had representation.

Copyright 2018 Linda Andersson/The Grid Zom, LLC