The Working Writer

How To Find If A Book’s Rights Are Free

You’ve read a book, you love it. Or there is a book you’ve loved all your life. You want to write that movie. But before you start, there are things called ‘rights’ to be dealt with. Finding out who owns the rights for any book is often a laborious process – but it can be [...]

Which Is The Best Script Layout?

I don’t think how you lay your script out matters nearly so much as people say it does. It drives me crazy to see all the people out there insisting you have to format your screenplay in such and such a way, on so and so paper, punched here and there, margins specified down to [...]

How Much Do Screenwriters Get Paid?

That really is a very difficult question. It can be anything from $1 to $millions. Seriously. Depends whether you’re being paid by a penniless director just out of film school or someone more established. But there are some factors that do tend to feed in reliably:

How Do You Find An Agent?

I hear this question all the time. Sometimes it’s even harder to answer than ‘How do you write a screenplay?’ Agents are busy people and most of them don’t read new work. All I can do is tell you how I found mine, and give you 8 solid tips to make you irresistible.

Dealing With Rejection Part 1

“I finally got it together and managed to conquer all my demons and sent my screenplay out to an agency/production company/external reader. They said the story was weak/the dialogue was bland/ trashed it completely/ suggested I should give up writing. I’m really hurt by this. I’m not so crazy that I thought my very first [...]

Dealing With Rejection – Part 2

So your script bounced back to you six months late with no comments and a tyre track across the title page. I’m sorry that you are in pain, I really am, but I have to say, it’s your fault. You’re doing one thing very wrong here: YOU ARE SENDING YOUR SCRIPT OUT!!

Selling Your Next Script

Should you write for yourself, or write what you think will sell? There have been big changes in the market recently. Understanding what’s going on may just increase your chance of getting a queue of buyers for your next script.