Empower yourself

The truth is that working in Hollywood is hard! There are endless meetings, and long hours, and lots of reading, not to mention the driving. Endless drama marks the day and it isn't all entertaining. So what are those who have found their fate lies behind a desk in Hollywood to do with the submission of some 50K ideas in any given year? How in the world does the cream rise to the top? How can they bring to order the mass chaos that lands in their in-box every single day?

Agents, the gatekeepers of Hollywood, run the first line of defense against the onslaught. They say, "No, thanks," a lot. Why? Writers want to understand why this elite group of arbiters hasn’t chosen them. I'll tell you the bottom line reason: it is because the writers make it easy to say, "No, thanks." How can that be? They've written the script of their lives, how can this make it easy for an agent to say...? How? I could take the easy way out, lie to you, and say it is all just numbers. They reach their limit. However, that isn't really the how. The how of "it's easy," is that the script is not the only thing that you need to bring to an agent to make it with them or anyone else in Hollywood. The amazing truth is that the script is barely a business card in magnitude as an introduction to Hollywood. It may be the biggest effort of a writer's life, but its impact on the future of a screenwriter is initially negligible. What? Yes, there is a "what" that the writer should be bringing to an agent, producer, manager or anyone else who has the power to say, "Yes!" to them besides a single script. The most important thing you bring to a person in power in Hollywood was never just a story in script format.

It took me years to understand this folks, and the "what" is directly related to "point of view" that I've brought up before on this blog, but it isn't just your point of view. No. There's even more besides a story and a point of view. To get there you really have to invest in your own point of view and I want you to understand why it is so important to have that point of view. Many schools will tell you that you must find a "niche" while at the same time being broad in your strokes and enlisting the lowest common denominator to support your work. This is mumbo-jumbo, folks. It means NOTHING. What you have to do is find your point of view and develop it so that it is indelible, so that it is Teflon. Your point of view is what the people who eventually come to see your screenplay made into film want to know about. Your point of view challenges a film goer, television viewer. Your point of view makes the story that has been told a million and a half times unique in its detail and expression. Because your point of view will find the "what" that you must bring to the table in Hollywood, and that "what" is AUDIENCE.

Why it is so hard to find someone to read and represent our scripts is that we make it easy for agents and producers to say, “No, thanks.”  How we writers make it easy for agents and producers to say, “No, thanks,” is by expecting our stories to be the only thing they are looking for in a client. What is lacking is a clear audience for our point of view. Where do we get that audience? The “where” is known as “credits” in Hollywood, but it is really “credentials” as well.  Our credentials prove that we have followers already and that there is a foundation of work to build upon.

Palm hits forehead. We’re supposed to come to Hollywood with an audience already loyal to our work? Yes. It doesn’t have to be a huge audience (though that is certainly helpful), but we have to show that we have been committed to using our talents out in the world for a good period of time. Whether we just left film graduate school with a school award and a film under our belt, or we have made a hobby of entering our spec scripts into screenplay contests and finally winning one or two of them, these accomplishments show that we are committed to sharing our point of view with an audience.  Right now, there are amazing opportunities to build audience with tools that have never been available before. There are websites dedicated to opening up awareness of your work. There are video sites where you can upload your short films. There are workshops and classes you can take. You can blog about film…grin. In short, there is no excuse left to wait until you are “discovered.” Empower yourself today and tomorrow Hollywood might just come knocking on your door.