Screenwriting And Self Belief- How To Keep The Faith

Over in the forum people have been writing up their answers to the questions about how people actually write. Fascinating reading, and some common factors are coming through.

But I want to pick up on the idea that people feel like imposters after a script meeting.

This Imposter Syndrome can be crippling if it’s indulged. (Callous? Moi?)

So what do we do about it?

First thing is to say that you are probably stronger than you think. I believe all of us writers actually have an irreducible, steely core of self belief that we have something to say the world wants to hear. Otherwise, wouldn’t we all have given up long ago? Try to locate that in yourself, and enjoy it.

But the main thing to point out is that the whole mindset is falsely founded.

Saying you feel like an imposter means you believe they are Right, and you are Wrong.

The truth is it’s perfectly possible for these people to be imposters too. And, dare I say it, the lower rungs of development are full of such people.

Over the years I’ve been in many meetings with people who have been deluding themselves they have any influence over a commissioning decision when they have actually been completely out of the loop of power.

This industry employs vast swathes of people in development who have about as much influence over the purse strings as a damp butterfly. They are hired on a ‘throw enough mud at the wall’ basis, but, even if they realise it, they will rarely let you know that they realise it.

And they have a lot of meetings with new writers, and they reject a lot of scripts.

(Who’s the imposter again?)

Even if you are meeting someone who truly does have the power to buy your script, and they literally hold their nose and drop your script in the bin (this genuinely happened to someone I know) you’re still not faking anything.

Some writers produce one genius script every five years, and the rest of the time their writing doesn’t fire up. Does that make them an imposter in the off times? Were they imposters while they were working up to their first genius script?

Or really good writers with years of quality behind them can go off form, have mysterious lapses that last for months. Are they imposters while they’re lapsing?

I always remember Tony Garnett, one of the UK’s best, most respected, producers, talking to the script editor on a new show about one of the people they’d hired: “He’s a Rolls Royce of a writer, but at the moment he’s writing like an old knacker. It’s our job to get him back on form.”

(Incidentally, I believe that commitment to the writer rather than taking the quick fix of sacking him and bringing on someone new, is one of the reason that Tony has made SO many top quality dramas in his career.)

So you could be having a lapse – but how do you know the producer isn’t having an off period? They’re human too. Tony Garnett produced or exec’d Cathy Come Home, Kes, Between The Lines, Cardiac Arrest, This Life – but he was also heavily implicated in Attachments, a memorably unengaging flop, and This Life +10 – one reprise too far.

And dare I mention “Bonekickers”? I genuinely think some of the writers involved in that are fabulous. But, well, we all know how that ended up.

Every day of the week, every week of the year, projects get to screen that stink. Remember, at some point someone in power somewhere thought those scripts were really good. Are you going to base your mental well-being on comments from a system that allows this?

BOTTOM LINE: Just because someone doesn’t like your stuff DOES NOT mean you are an imposter. A producer/director you respect may hate your stuff. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. It just means it’s not to their taste.

The next producer/director, who may have as equally strong a track record, may well snap it up and bulldoze it through to screen.

Same script, totally different assessment.

BOTTOM BOTTOM LINE: This whole industry is a very broad church. There are many many ways of making drama, and many different audiences, who all want and enjoy different things. There is no bottom line, no absolute right and wrong. This is not sappy cultural relativism, it’s a hard truth about the way this whole industry works.

Try to allow that into the way you feel about your writing and things will get a lot easier.

Tagged as: Between The Lines, Bonekickers, Cardiac Arrest, Cathy Come Home, development execs, Kes, Screenwriting, This Life, Tony Garnett, writing mentality, writing psyche