The Secrets to Screenwriting Success: REVEALED!

Forget everything you’ve ever learned about screenwriting up to this point. Plot points, structure, character, action lines, save the whatever, put all of that out of your mind momentarily. Screenwriters rock-bottomly have only one job and that is to be effing entertaining.

What does “entertaining” in this context mean? It means that when your script is being read, regardless of genre, the reader (and ultimately exec) is turning the pages quickly and with a slight smile. Lost in concentration, their eyes move quickly over the pages. They do not hear the phone ring, they do not think about who they are having lunch with. Everything from the action lines to every word the characters say absorbs their attention. The premise is fascinating. The pages of your script are lively, quick, original, remarkable and delightful. Your script is utterly engaging. In other words, your script effing entertains.

Discussion and teaching about the art and craft of screenwriting has (de)evolved into three basic sales pitches: 1) the classic McKee, dry, by-the-book take 2) the ultra-specific DO EXACTLY THIS AND IT WORKS BECAUSE ALL MOVIES FOLLOW THIS TEMPLATE take and 3) the Sure, Anyone Can Be a Screenwriter As Long as You’re a Dreamer! take.

Look, I’ll be honest. The entertainment business is paperclips and glue; it is cue the moon and lower the skyline just so. It is art, it is huge commerce, it is Just Effing Entertain Me. If there is one fundamental principle that guides the business of making movies it is: Keep behinds in seats and put dollars in pockets. If you have any illusions that it is anything more or less than that, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

What everybody really wants is to put behinds in seats, to put money in pockets AND to create something lasting, meaningful, moving and beautiful. To leave a legacy behind, on film, that speaks to the human experience.

But you’ll notice the order I put those goals in. Behinds. Money. Art. Make no mistake, that’s the order in which Hollywood makes all its decisions. Including the decision whether or not to buy (much less produce) your script.

So listen, kiddo, you want to earn a lot of money and see your movie grace the silver screen? You want meetings and an article about you in Variety? You want a WGA membership and to quit your day job? Then keep up your end of the bargain: Write colorful, original, meaningful, universal, entertaining stories. And when you finish a script and it wasn’t good enough to get you over the Citadel wall – do it again. And then do it again. And again. And again. And keep learning. And keep watching movies. And keep writing.

This business is patently unfair. It is not the nicest, smartest, coolest or most well meaning people who become successful in Hollywood, so let all of those fantasies go. Let go of any feelings that you are in some way entitled to a place in Hollywood, because in your own estimation, you rock or because you want it so badly or you have romantic rationalizations like you’re no good at anything else. Sure you’re good at something else. We all are. Don’t bother blaming Hollywood, readers, executives or the economy for excluding you from Hollywood. No, it’s all on you, my friends. There are no crybabies allowed in Hollywood, only dreamers who write obsessively and don’t understand the word “no.” There are no whiners allowed either, only people who are hell bent on expressing through the creation of entertainment and who take rejection as an invitation to do better, try harder, be more honest, more original and more determined than ever.

In Hollywood, nobody owes YOU anything. You have to earn a place here and believe me, it’s tough. There’s no specific way into structure, dialogue, character, pitching, networking or anything else that is a silver bullet. There’s no special uniform you can wear, no secret handshake, no one well-placed relative or ex-lover who can make it happen for you. Nope.

You want the Big Secret to Success in Hollywood? I don’t have it. Nobody does. And if they tell you they do, they’re lying.

There are only three simple things you can TRY and even these promise nothing:

Be effing entertaining in every word on every page of everything you write
Know that nobody owes you anything and nothing is free
Never waver from your love of writing and of film