How Do I Get My Script Read?

"Any advice for getting a script read by some influential people?" A question asked of me recently that's impossible to answer in just a few words. But here's the digest version. 

 My experience is that "influence" is mostly a public illusion of power, and it's no subsitute for the actual ability to get stuff made, whether it's for film or TV. Those who can get stuff made are an ever-changing crowd, its composition determined by the ebb and flow of personal or corporate fortune. 

 Some of the players are obvious. Ridley Scott can get stuff made. Most companies riding high on a hit can get stuff made. For more names - you need to study credits, read the trades. And even Ridley Scott moves in a world where he's juggling with what's possible for him to achieve at any given time. I'm sure there are plenty of projects he'd love to be working on. But the ones he can get off the ground are those that the market wants from him right then. He'll have more choices than most, but you can be sure he doesn't operate by personal whim. 

 So, the good news and bad news. The good news is that the players are always on the lookout for new material to keep them in the game. The bad news - I call it bad news, actually it's just a fact of life - is that they get offered so much that each has to employ a fairly ruthless filtering system to cope with it. 

But it's a filtering system, not an impervious wall. Bear in mind that it's designed to locate exactly the kind of thing the company's currently looking for - business research, not public service. Many companies. All different needs. 

The first stage of the filter is usually an 'agented or solicited submissions only' policy. That's basically saying, "No cold callers". The expectation is that an agent will only submit material that's appropriate and of professional quality. Some agents shake that faith on a daily basis, I'm told. 

A solicited submission is one for which the company has opened the door. A tiny percentage of these come through some privileged contact, giving mind-fuel to the paranoid. But once received, they'll go through the same Darwinian in-house procedure as all the rest, where nepotism or special access count for nothing. I've never seen a better insight into that process than the one given here by mega-producer Gavin Polone. He's writing about the industry in the US and you can scale it down a few notches for the UK, while bearing in mind that the number of outlets is proportionately smaller. (and if you scroll down the comments, it's fairly easy to distinguish the "Hollywood sucks" contributors from the professionally aware.) 

You can get a solicited read for your script even if you don't have an agent. It comes down to this: give them a reason to be interested in you. Then they may have a reason to open the door, and to stand the expense of giving you serious consideration. Make your first mark. A short film, a home-made audio podcast, a bare-stage fringe two-hander with a couple of mates, a few short stories with a respected small press, a YouTube channel with a creditable following. 

Something modest, achieved well, counts for more than something ambitious, achieved badly. 

Then - enquire. The classic query letter. But draw your promise to their attention (and have the wit to research the company so that your material is a match for their needs, and your enquiry goes to the right person). 

99% fail right there, which is a Good Thing because it thins the field for someone like you. More than three short paragraphs, and you've probably blown it. But if you come over as a sensible adult with a professional attitude, and your project is in their ballpark, you may be invited to submit. If not, don't attempt to turn it into a conversation. Move on. And meanwhile be planning your next short, your next fringe piece... maybe get on a Script Factory course, involve yourself in someone else's project. True creativity doesn't wait around for an outlet. Channel yours into growing that starter CV. 

Every produced screenwriter that I know has followed some form of this path. Every one of them. You may hear tales of non-pros getting Hollywood breaks - I recall one about a taxi driver pitching a screenplay to his passenger in the course of a ride - but these are invariably more complex stories that have been shaped by some journalist into fairytale form.

The Silence of the Witness

A shout-out to David Richards and the crew who today begin shooting on my two-part Silent Witness story for series 16. It'll air next year.

I was told, "Don't be afraid to make it your own," and I've taken them at their word. It can be tricky, making a contribution to an established and long-running show; it's not your setup and they're not your characters, but you still have to bring your best game. Many of SW's writers seem to be regulars and it can be hard not to feel like some kind of an intruder.

One of the best things about the work has been the access to the top-level consultants and experts that the show has on standby, all of whom are alert to ways to enhance and advance the narrative. They don't just see it as their role to shoot down science flaws. Some viewers will recognise something of an Eleventh Hour vibe in my episode. Which will hardly be a coincidence.

So while we're at it, another shout-out for the people at Planet Hood, unshakeable in their drive to see a return of that show to US TV in some form. My stance all along has been supportive (well, obviously) while my energies have been directed, as they must be, into keeping up a working profile in a fast-moving business.

My feeling from the start has been that if Eleventh Hour should ever return, its optimum form would be that of CBS's one-off Jesse Stone TV movies. It's a form that could work rather well, I reckon, and it wouldn't be impossible to set up. I still have good relations with the Bruckheimer team - a couple of seasons ago we developed another show together, for a pilot that didn't get picked up. The next season I developed a non-Bruckheimer pilot for Fox while writing another for NBCU. I completed my coverage of the networks by working for ABC and this season I've a show that I'm pitching to cable. So if there's ever an opening for a rebooted version of a cancelled show, I'm in a position to chase it; what I can't do, alas, is force one.

But that's the game. As Lynda Obst wrote in her excellent Hollywood memoir Hello, He Lied, it's a business in which you have to ride the horse in the direction it's going. In other words, pursue what you want to achieve through the opportunities that you get.

Dollhouse Thoughts

Yeah, we're nothing if not timely here.

For me, Joss Whedon's Dollhouse was one of those disappointments that take a few episodes to fully sink in, as my Firefly buzz faded and it became all too clear that this broken show wasn't going to get any better. But in the DVD release (which I borrowed rather than bought) there's an extra feature in the form of Whedon's original uncut pilot, which sets up a very different show.

For me the big problem with the broadcast version was the idea of a heroine wiped clean for every new adventure - it sounds smart (Hey, she can be someone different every week) but in practice there's no character to engage with. There's a poetic angle to it (I'm reminded of Robert Stallman's Orphan trilogy, where the werewolf's alter-egos are decent people with hopes and dreams, unaware that their lives end the moment the beast's cover is blown), but you can't build a symphony on a grace note.

The original pilot addresses the true potential of the concept by setting up a show in which the heroine's personality has been imperfectly erased, and begins a secret struggle to survive and regain control in week-by-week increments. That was the show's real premise, overruled and ignored in the reshooting and recutting, only to emerge in the second season when cancellation was inevitable and Whedon, it would seem, was left to get on with it as he wanted.

I've heard it suggested that the way to get the most reward out of Dollhouse is to watch the unaired pilot and then skip straight to the second season. I haven't done it. But there ain't going to be no more Firefly, so maybe I will.

Bones and Bedlam

Happy to report that The Kingdom of Bones will be published in the UK by Ebury Press in November, with The Bedlam Detective following early next year. More news on this, like covers'n'stuff, when I have it. I met with Gillian Green and Hannah Robinson yesterday and I have to say, it's an exciting development. Kind of like a homecoming.

Although both Crown in New York and London's Ebury Press are part of the Random House group, the deals are unrelated.

Still feels like we're keeping it in the famiy, though.

Stephen Laws

My good friend, fellow-writer, and fearless reprobate Stephen Laws has joined the blogosphere. You can follow him here, or by going to www.stephenlaws.com.

Tell him that I sent you. And that I'd labelled him 'odd stuff'.

#LitChat

Tonight (Friday, March 30th) I'm putting on my grownup's hat to be guest host in a moderated one-hour Twitter conversation about writing in general and The Bedlam Detective in particular. Anyone can join in and I hope you will, or it'll be a pretty lonely hour for me.

You can follow the conversation using the #litchat hashtag, and join in by including the tag in your message or question. I'll be using Tweetchat to sort and filter the tweets. The moderator will be on the lookout for tweets without the hashtag, but even a safety net can sometimes be slipped through. Read more about the event here.

You don't need to follow me to participate. I'm on Twitter as @Brooligan, if you do care to follow, but don't expect to learn the secrets of the Universe. A selection of recent tweets appears below, by way of proof.

The LitChat will take place at 4pm EST, which I think equates to 9pm in the United Kingdom. Which I think makes it 1pm in California? Apparently different parts of the US put their summer clocks forward at different times, which results in a schism between EST and EDT to add to the usual East-West Coast differences. Chuck in last week's hour-forward of the UK's clocks and I'm amazed that life goes on, we all aren't at war, and planes don't fall out of the sky on a regular basis.

Thanks to Carolyn Burns Bass, #litchat founder and moderator, for the invitation.

Those Tweets:

Tried absinthe once. Next time just punch me in the face and blowtorch my tongue.

The Clarke Awards are for SF. The Dave Clark Award is for drumming more enthusiastically when you see your own closeup on the studio monitor

La-Z-Boy and Ladyboy. Sound very similar. Wonder how much trouble that must have caused over the years.

Karl Lagerfeld. To quote my grandma, what the f*** has he come as?

I'm singing along to a Bob Dylan track, and have to concede that he's way the more tuneful of the two of us.

"Doesn't suffer fools gladly" is code for "unpleasant asshole". Unpleasant assholes assume it's a compliment.

I sometimes look back and wonder if I'm the fool that others have suffered without letting me know.

"After viewing this item (The Bedlam Detective) customers buy Sherlock Series 2". WTF? Get back here. @steven_moffat says you smell.

Is it too late to organise an international manhunt for the bloke who told Christopher Lee he could sing?

Been asked to talk about the papers on local radio this Sunday morning. The D-lister rolodex must have come full circle again.

If you get a mommyjacker on Mumsnet, how do you tell?

Now that Terra Nova's been cancelled the field is again clear for my SPARTANS VS DINOSAURS (I'll do it one day. I will.)

Coughs and flu in the Brooligan house. Place has been rattling like the Bronte parsonage for the past week.

Used translation software to put on an article on Prof Challenger from German into English. THE LAND OF MIST came out as COUNTRY OF MUCK.

And finally, the perennial...

By the way, did I ever mention I had a book out..?

Stasio on Crime

The Bedlam Detective reviewed by Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times:

"Gallagher’s detective is a man of fine character and strong principles, but he’s upstaged by the monsters he pursues. Watching Becker track down a pedophile is gratifying, but it can’t beat the sight of 20 overburdened boats hurtling through white-water rapids or Sir Owain, armed to the teeth and blasting away at giant serpents only he can see."

The complete review here.

The Reprisalizer

Anyone familiar with British 70s paperback series, and particularly those from the New English Library, will know exactly what's going on here.

This spoof site is the brainchild of British comedy actor Matthew Holness, whose previous comic creation was horror writer Garth Marenghi, the "self-appointed mastermind author" and writer, producer and director of Garth Mareghi's Darkplace. Imagine if the UK's worst horror hack had been given the sets, cast, and budget of the cheapest 80s daytime soap, and you're probably there.

Holness's new creation is Bob Shuter, "suburban vigilante", riding a "red hot trail of vengeance through the urban hell of Thanet" in such titles as I, The Fury, Stock Car Slaughter, and Riot in Borstal Wing 'B', all supposedly the work of prolific and plainly demented wordsmith Terry Finch.

Apparently there's a Reprisalizer feature in development which plays a line between satire and dark psychology. It's expanded from Holness' 17-minute short A Gun for George.

Personally I'm torn between appreciation of the spoof, and feelings of genuine nostalgia.

The Kindness of Strangers

They don't sign the notices over at Kirkus Reviews so I don't know how better to describe this one...

"Gallagher has been called a horror writer, a fantasy writer, a non-fantasy writer, a writer for big screens and smaller ones, a writer whose considerable talent has enabled him to slip in and out of genres precisely as if those tidy little boxes didn't exist - as indeed they don't for his character-driven books. In this one, Sebastian Becker (The Kingdom of Bones, 2007, etc.), his fast-track career abruptly derailed, contemplates an uncertain future...[snip]

...Gallagher loves character development but respects plotting enough to give it full measure. The result is that rare beast, a literary page-turner."

UPDATE: The full review is now online and you can read it here.

Savage Season Interview

From an interview just posted on the Savage Season Books website:

"I’ve never consciously scheduled my career to the extent that I could say, Oh, yeah, I put this aside and focused on that. If you do this for a living then you’re relentlessly pushing to do all you can all the time in whatever medium. And when you feel a bit of give, see a chink of light, sense the opportunity to get something off your wish list and out into the world, then you pour all of your energies into that."

See me sort out the future of publishing, the impact of the eBook, selling your stuff to America, the role of the small press, and everything short of World Peace here.

(Actually, it's mostly "me, me, me")

And while we're at it, internet, there is no such thing as a "sneak peak".

I got piles

Barnes & Noble, 53rd and 3rd, New York


With thanks to Stephanie.

You can order from B&N online here, where they're also selling the eBook for the Nook and taking pre-orders for the audio version.

Murder Rooms: The Ultimate Collection

If you were planning to order this DVD set, hold off; there's a problem with it.

Instead of the promised widescreen remastering, the discs contain stretched and distorted 'fullscreen' images of very poor quality.

Even at 4:3 the transfer is pretty awful. My set's going back, pronto.

I've emailed the distributor and I'll pass on whatever I find out.

UPDATE:

It's not looking good. The distributor seems to think that the quality's acceptable and calls it a 'multi-aspect ratio transfer' - which means that it's a 4:3 that'll distort itself to fit whatever TV screen you show it on.

Disappointing, perplexing... I have to say, don't touch it. It looks awful.