Product Description
An indispensable roadmap to success, The Writer Got Screwed is the first book to untangle the legal and business aspects of writing for the entertainment industry. It is for the young TV production assistant waiting for a big break, the executive with a treatment tucked away in a bottom drawer, the techie targeting the new field of cyberspace writing, or anyone who is inspired to write screenplays.Savvy Hollywood entertainment attorney Brooke Wharton decodes legal j… More >>
The Writer Got Screwed : Guide to the Legal and Business Practices of Writing for the Entertainment Industry

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Amazon.com Product Description
Microsoft Creative Writer 2 is a desktop publisher for kids that’s packed with writing and drawing tools. Create your own stories, newsletters, festive cards, and illustrated book reports. Send your creations over e-mail, or turn them into Web pages and post them online. The creative possibilities are endless–and now it’s available in value packaging. Show off your writing by combing your words with illustrations, backgrounds, and musical themes to creat… More >>
Microsoft Creative Writer 2.0

A person who sings is a singer, a person who teaches is a teacher, a person who drives is a driver, etc. What about a person who writes? A writer? Almost everyone would have written one thing or the other in the course of his or her lifetime, even the illiterate ones. Does that make every Tom, Dick and Harry a writer? If not, who then is a writer?

According to the free online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, a writer is anyone who creates a written work, though the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms (“Writing,” 2009). A writer who has a touch of professionalism and makes a living from his writings is considered a professional writer.

Becoming a professional writer needs no special skill or training. Anybody from anywhere can venture into professional writing and succeed in it. The most important thing is the diligence and determination of the person involved. This is essential because to make something out of writing, the person has to be convinced that success is sure. Once this is on ground, all other necessary general skills would be acquired. Another interesting thing is the fact that the person learns while he writes.

In addition, other things that characterize the work of professional writers include ability to write in clear and simple language, and at the same time providing a lucid explanation of the subject matter. The writer, with the chosen writing style, must be able to communicate easily and give a pictorial description of the subject being discussed in such a way that will create a vivid mental image in the minds of the readers.  A good professional writer must be empirical and proficient in the use of rhetoric.

However, a professional writer must avoid copying the works and ideas of others and claiming it as original. This is known as plagiarism. But at times, quoting other people’s words and works may lend credence and authority to the person’s writing. In this case, the quotations have to be used with carefulness. Including too many quotations in a particular document, or quoting a poorly written or confusing article may weaken the overall quality and impact of the writer’s work. In other words, the writer’s work must be unique and original.

Professional writing can be in different forms (including but not limited to) music, prose and poetry. Accordingly, a writer in specialist mode may rank as a poet, novelist, copywriter, composer, lyricist, playwright, journalist, screenwriter for film or television, etc (“Writing,” 2009).

Benefits of professional writing are numerous to mention. Professional writers make money from the sales of their published articles. This is achieved through the use of two major platforms – the print media such as magazines, newspapers, books, etc, or the emerging online media, the internet. Also, writing brings along a sense of pleasure and satisfaction. Writing is a delightful experience that allows the exploration of the writer’s imagination, and, at the same time, development of the writer’s intellectual prowess. In short, writing goes hand-in-hand with reading, and so is good for academic excellence.

A wise man once said, “You can only take a horse to the river, you cannot force it to drink.” Becoming a professional writer is not a one-day job, but with constant practice coupled with persistence, perfection is achieved.  And along with it comes the remunerations attached.

List of References

Writing. (2009). Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. Retrieved July 10, 2009, from http://wikipedia.com

When I was a frustrated, struggling writer, I used to believe there was something wrong with the system. How was anyone with talent supposed to break in, if the people within the system made it virtually impossible to get noticed?

Take this ridiculous idea of LOGLINES.

Am I really supposed to be able to encapsulate my entire kick-ass, finely-detailed, one-hundred-page screenplay in TWO SENTENCES?! That’s got to be the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. Impossible. Stupid. Narrow-minded. No matter WHAT I came up with, it could never truly reflect the richness of my words. Those producers are closing their minds to the more complex and valuable material, I assumed.

And then I started looking for screenplays to produce.

Being the enlightened one, I accepted any and all unsolicited screenplays through the Embryo films website. But a funny thing happened.

We got inundated.

And when I say inundated, I don’t mean we were swamped with hundreds of thousands of screenplays. No. There just aren’t that many people in Australia writing screenplays. We were inundated with about a hundred and fifty.

But, being a writer myself (and knowing how much effort you put into it), I didn’t want to just reject screenplays out of hand. So I made a policy of reading everything that came in — or at least of giving it a genuinely “fair go”.

After about a month, I was so hopelessly behind, that I would never catch up. They were coming in faster than I could keep up. Within six months, I was sure I was being voodoo cursed by a couple hundred writers out there.

See, it takes about an hour and a half to properly read a correctly-formatted screenplay. And even if you’ve got a lot of time on your hands (which I didn’t), you still can’t read more than, say, 10 or 20 scripts in a week. Not if you’re trying to seriously consider them for production. And as soon as you have ANYTHING going on in your life, you’re lucky to get through 5 or 6 of them.

Eventually, I was consumed with guilt. Not getting back to writers who had submitted their screenplays made me just as wicked and evil as every other producer that had never gotten back to me. Skimming scripts to “get a feel for it” was going against what I claimed made me different. The mountain of scripts (okay, call it a “stack”, but emotionally, it was a mountain) became overwhelming.

There had to be a better way.

Ironically, I found it. It’s called a LOGLINE.

Turns out, there’s a reason things are done the way they’ve been done for decades. (Funny that.)

A compelling logline does several things at the same time, and as a writer, you need to understand these points:

1) IT SAVES THE PRODUCER’S TIME.

And let’s face it, if I spend all my time reading screenplays, I don’t spend much time producing. If I make the decision about what to READ merely by looking at the logline, I can spend the time reading only those projects that fit the parameters of what I’m looking for. If you’ve written an amazing fantasy drama, and I’m really looking for a comedy, I helps us quickly determine we’re not a match on this particular project. (It’s a time-management thing, not a judgment on your writing.)

2) IT DEMONSTRATES THE MARKETING ANGLE.

A perpetual problem producers face is that they need to find money in order to make their films. If I can’t imagine how I would sell the film, I’m not going to be very confident when approaching investors or distributors. By sending me a compelling logline, you’re helping make my life easier, which in turns makes me want to work with you.

3) IT PULLS THEM IN.

Let’s face it, which script would YOU rather read — one whose concept is vague, generic, and run-of-the-mill (something you’ve seen a thousand times)? Or one that, upon reading it for the very first time, gets your mind racing, imagining possibilities, and excited about what that film could become? Well, I’m no different. I want life to be as exciting as possible, too.

4) IT LETS THEM KNOW YOU’RE A PROFESSIONAL.

Now this one I didn’t realize until I’d seen enough proof of it. But I discovered something a few years ago — that a professional screenwriter (or at least someone capable of writing professional caliber material) is GOOD WITH WORDS. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. As anyone who’s read more than 30 or 40 unproduced screenplays can tell you, you pretty much know by the end of page 5 whether or not the writer knows what they’re doing. What I’ve discovered is that you REALLY know after just the logline. If you can’t grab me in two sentences, why should I believe you’ll grab me in a few thousand?

So, in short, loglines are NOT the enemy.

In fact, crafting a powerful logline will help you exercise the very same skills that will help you craft a powerful screenplay.

And when you send off that logline, you should KNOW what reaction I’m going to have when I read it. When you can do that, you won’t find every producer requesting your screenplay. But you WILL find the right ones.

Keep on writing!