Memo to Screenwriters: Stop Acting Like It’s 1999 — DIY and Click ‘Follow’

William Goldman got it wrong. The screenwriter’s gospel according to Goldman, “nobody knows anything,” may have been true once upon a time in an analog age, but in an era when screens are pages and stories are being delivered at an accelerated pace, entertainment is instant and constant. If anything, at this point, everybody knows a lot. With sea change comes opportunity. What if the future of storytellers has never been brighter? The hunger for original material is spread wide across a global digital ecosystem. The opportunity for writers to reach readers has never been easier. Anyone with a smart phone can read your work.

Back in “the day” of his iconic book, “Adventures in The Screen Trade,” William Goldman pierced the veil of Hollywood realpolitik by exposing its Achilles heel of arrogant, out-of-touch arbitrary thinking. Traditionally realpolitik informed one giant stakeholder’s self interest by pitting it against another’s. The Hollywood David and Goliath version is played out like clockwork every three years between screenwriters versus their employers, or, “the companies”, as they are termed by the WGA collective bargaining label that lumps together media conglomerates and the individual producers who work for them. Thirty-five years of WGA strikes and strike threats that carried out the same negative result, have financially devastated the modern studio system as well as the bank account of an average WGA member. In this scenario, nobody has won. In that sense, Goldman got it right.

But some storytellers have successfully jettisoned the traditional distribution platform altogether. Consider indie book authors’ increasing reach to connect to an audience, versus decreasing ones for screenwriters. Indie/e-publishing authors know their readers directly through Amazon’s retail label, generate their own appearances at events, manage blogs or tweet, creating an impact equivalent to George Eastman’s portable ‘brownie’ on the studio bound 19th century cameras powered by a gunpowder flash. This revolution, however, hasn’t translated at all to screenwriting. Since the 2007 WGA strike, no matter how many spec scripts they write, screenwriters are more dependent than ever on managers, agents and producers. Never has it been more important for screenwriters to become well versed about their dwindling options in the playing field of Hollywood-generated entertainment. ‘Well versed’ doesn’t refer to writing but to taking active responsibility to accrue strong, genre-driven portfolios, brush aside urban media legends, and visualize Hollywood as a competitive contact sport, with explicit levels, points, and goals. Screenwriters must be engaged players in all effective social media with the same self-taught ferocity expressed by the best self sellers.READ MORE