“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 submission would get bought, but I’m finding the negative criticism really hard to throw off. Now I’m even not sure I have it in me to be a writer. What do I do?”
If you’re in a similar position, well, let me say that I hear what you are saying, and I do know how that feels. (Very, very bad!)
The first time someone rejects your work it really hurts. You can’t believe it. You think you were stupid to even try to be a writer. But, because you have that obsessive thing inside you which drove you to finish a script in the first place, eventually, whether it’s in the next hour, day, or month, you send something else out.
Unless you’re incredibly lucky that gets rejected too. But it doesn’t hurt quite so much. The next few times it hurts less and less until, when your skin is tougher, you’ll send off a bit of writing you really believe in.
When that gets rejected you won’t be hurt, you’ll be incredulous. You know you’re not being over emotional, because you’ve learned rejection doesn’t matter. You are incredulous because you know that was good writing – how could they reject it?
Well, that feeling is a great sign. You are getting closer to the truth.
Everyone Gets Rejected
Which is this: People bounce bad writing, of course they do – but they also bounce good writing. And, really really truthfully, people bounce GREAT writing. I’ve seen it happen over and over again.
This can be because of one or a combination of any of the following factors:
- The company isn’t looking for that type of script at the moment
- They know of a similar project in development elsewhere
- You are hooked up with a producer or a director they don’t want to work with
- Your script landed on the desk of a person who absolutely loved it, but they have no power within the company
- Your script ended up being read by someone with executive power but no taste
- On and on and on.
Just because your screenplay got bounced 10 times doesn’t absolutely prove it’s a bad screenplay. It may be bad, of course it may – but it may just not have found its home yet. Different people like very, very different scripts, and very different writers.
Trust Your Own Weather Vane
In general, and this is wider advice, you must learn not to rely on other people for assessing your writing. I’m deadly serious here. If you rely on other people to tell you whether you have done well you will never develop your own weather vane.
You have to be able to trust your own sensibility. You develop this by reading, and watching. That is the other full time aspect of this job that they never tell you about.
Watch a lot of movies, a lot of TV. If you’ve never been a big reader, it’s not too late – start now. Google free screenplays on the internet heck out what’s there. See what you think is good, what you think is bad. Notice the amazing diversity of the form – and try to work out what the scripts of the movies you like all have in common.
Read some of the classic novels – the Victorian novels that have survived and made it into classics are written by brilliant story tellers. You can learn a lot there about texture, narrative, and how to hook an audience.
Trick For Assessing Your Own Work
The other aspect of your weather vane is your own assessment of your own writing. When I want to know if a script is any good, I make sure I haven’t read it, even glanced at it, for a month or so.
Then I sit down and read it through in one go. If I get to the end and it lights me up just the same as it did when I had just finished it, I know the writing is at least OK. If I find myself looking out the window, or getting up and making lots of cups of coffee, I know I have a problem. I scribble a line across the script at the point where I got distracted. Whatever the problem is, it happened just before there.
If you can develop your own writing weather vane it will sustain you through the dark days, when you are being rewritten, or cut about by script editors (which happens to everyone at some stage).
All you have in this business is your own taste and sensibility. That’s what makes your writing your own. It’s what people hire you for, and in the end it’s what audiences respond to.
Never take rejection personally. You can’t afford to take it personally. A lot, lot worse will happen to you in the industry than simple rejection!
Of course, one way to minimise the amount of rejection you experience is to make sure your screenplay is as good as it can be. in my step-by-step guide to screenwriting to find out how to write a screenplay people are desperate to read. You can download it here.