Dear Friend,

Another Friday, another issue of The Screenwriter's Success Newsletter - jam-packed with tips, tactics, and strategies dedicated to skyrocketing your screenwriting career!

We've got a ton of fantastic material this week, so let's get right into it:

False.Evidence.Appearing.Real: is this week's article by yours truly. This piece is about the fears and doubts you experience as a screenwriter. In fact, the entire entertainment industry is filled with fear and desperation. So what do you do to overcome these feelings? This article will address that issue.

The Box Office Report: gives you the latest feature film releases as well as the opening weekend projections, so you can be on top of this critical information.

High Roller: is this week's article by mc foley. mc is an active writer and regular contributor to this newsletter. The title of her column is "Lessons Learned: One Writer's Journey".

The Video Screenwriting Tip of the Week: is replayed here from earlier in the week, just in case you didn't get to see it. The weekly tip offers simple and immediately useable advice on achieving screenwriting success.

The Scoggins Report: is our bi-weekly spec market analysis. Use this information to see what's selling, who's buying what, and what genre you should be writing for. This information is pure gold...

Best Business Advice for Screenwriters: is dedicated to asking a top executive or successful screenwriter the absolute best advice they could give a screenwriter looking for success. This month's contributors? Million dollar screenwriters Vlas and Charley Parlapanedis!

The Business of Show Institute Recommends: is the weekly screenwriting product or service that our staff has personally reviewed and feel you would benefit from. This week? An in-depth interview with screenwriting legend and teacher, Blake Snyder.

That's it for this issue, but we are dedicated to making this newsletter THE resource for aspiring screenwriters.

If you enjoyed it, and would like to pass it along to friends, please have them go directly to http://www.TheBusinessOfShowInstitute.com and have them sign up there.

May Your Life Be Extraordinary,

Marvin V. Acuna

False.Evidence.Appearing.Real

by Marvin V. Acuna

Each morning I awake at 6am and take Parker, my adopted Jack Russell Chihuahua, on a hike for about an hour. I then head to the gym for a 30min run on the treadmill and swim for 30mins. This has been my ritual for the last 11 months.

My intention was to simply be healthy and more importantly spend some time just caring for me. I firmly believe that if you don’t care for yourself first, you can not care for anyone else properly.

I find it to be meditative and I gain so much joy from watching Parker explore each morning. It is so rewarding and enlightening to see this little dog take the same hike each morning for 11 months and it’s as if he has never hiked it before. Everything is new and exciting. The gift of his consistent life in the now has had a profound effect in my own life. I can truly say that it was he who has recued me, not the other way around.

This month I decided to switch up my ritual. I thought I’d begin to use free weights to begin shaping my physical form and take a break from swimming. In essence, I want to sculpt my physique.

Needless to say I have been in pain. I mean pain. I say PAIN. But, two things keep me focused on my outcome: 1. A great saying, "Pain will make you bitter or better, it’s up to only you" and 2. The photograph of the body type I aspire to emulate.

The pain is enough to frankly cause me to simply slip back into what makes me comfortable and more importantly, doesn’t cause me pain. I hear the constant chatter in my head, driven by my natural instinct of fight or flight, yelling out, "stop!"

But, I remind myself that I will overcome this uncomfortable pain. I am building slowly. And one brick at a time I will build the image I have crystallized in my mind.

There is overwhelming evidence in my life that my dreams and ideas manifest. I simply need to apply the same principles that I have in the past to my new desires.

Embracing your fears of the unknown, of the uncomfortable, and of the potential pain of disappointment and frustration is a key and crucial ingredient to your success as a professional screenwriter. Otherwise, I promise you. Fear will rob you of your dream. It will paralyze you from taking the necessary actions to attain your dream. Don’t let it.

I had dinner with a few friends last week at 25 degrees in Hollywood. As we sipped our wine and dined on our very tasty burgers, a question was posed to the group, "Only 6 months left in ‘09, what have you learned about yourself?" A variety of answers peppered the conversation. One stood out. My friend Tara replied, "I don’t need to be fearful anymore. Fear is not real. So now I take a step forward even if at first I’m scared."

Screenwriters who succeed move past their disappointment, their frustrations, and they move past their fears. They take action in spite of their fears.

One of the screenwriters I do business with deals with his fears and doubts about himself and his work in a very unique way. It may serve as a potential tool for you. So here it is:

First, it should be noted that he’s fully aware that he’s naturally a pessimistic person. He actually does believe the sky is falling and that some day someone will discover he’s a fraud... that’s he’s really not talented. Now, to address this he devised the following routine. A timer sits on his desk which rings at ten minutes to the hour. For those ten minutes he steps away from his laptop and allows himself to vent all of the doubt, all of the fear and all of the frustrations he’s feeling. At the end of the ten minutes he returns to his writing.

That’s one possibility of addressing your fears. Here’s another:

• Be crystal clear as to what you desire - have VISION & PURPOSE. If you don’t know where you are going, how can you get there?
• Declare your vision in written form and then share it with others. Let people know what you want.
• Take small baby steps. You have heard it before… The Great Wall of China began with one brick.
• Be flexible/adaptable - It’s really simple: Is the current plan working or not working?
• Reward yourself for the small and big improvements. You sent out 50 queries’s this week. You attended one networking event. You completed a new script. Developed a new idea. Rewarding yourself is crucial. Sometimes we get so caught up looking up (at where we want to be or what we want to have) that we never look down — and acknowledge how far we have gone or what we already have.

Make that call. Attend that event. Ask for what you want. Step outside of what you know to be comfortable.

To make your dream come true you must be willing to accept that you can not please everyone. Everyone will not like you. Everyone will not like your work. Everyone will not be supportive. Everyone will not help.

And more importantly that everyone experiences fear. But, only some allow it to imprison them. Be afraid, be very afraid then leap anyways.

Because as John Burroughs so eloquently said, "Leap, and the net will appear."

The Box Office Report

Lessons Learned: One Writer's Journey

High Roller

by mc foley

I never knew I was a high stakes gambler - until now.

In Vegas, I order drinks before I drop my bags, then spend the next 48 to 72 hours in a blurry maze of no sleep, plenty of liquid (water, of course), 4am dinners and that never-ending, no-boundary party that makes the city burn with primal, animalistic heat.

But do I gamble? No.

Do I walk by boxes where zombies fan coin-card leashes out in spider-webs, eyes glazed over from shitty well drinks and hours of watching the wild cherries spin?

Yes.

Do I wander by VIP rooms and peek inside when players scream bloody murder and jump back from the table like somebody stuck ‘em with a pitchfork?

Yes.

But aside from these observations and a handful of visits to the slot machine jungle, I’ve hardly gambled a dime.

Or so I thought.

In fact, all those times I’d watched the risky players, wondering how in the hell they could keep blowing their earnings like that; how they could return to the game, over and over, throwing down chips, chucking the dice, as if these things were going to somehow magically improve their life - just like that - in a moment, in a lucky show of cards; how they could keep believing that, one day, everything would change...

...all those times, I’d been betting much so more than a wad of cash.

I’d been – I still am – staking my life on a dream.

It’s been easy to turn a blind eye. I’ve earned enough to move into a decent apartment with working plumbing and a good view. I’ve got a nice bed with a firm mattress, LA sunshine (when it’s not shrouded in June gloom), a solid gym, activity all around me, I’m never hungry and my hot spot neighborhood shows all the signs of life and prosperity.

It could be the foundation to a brighter future.

Or a castle made of sand.

And deep inside, I’ve not only known this, I’ve been fueled by this, I’ve been driven by this, I’ve felt it in every fiber of my being, from the moment I creak my eyes open at five a.m., to the hazy seconds before I plummet out of reality back into R.E.M., I’ve known it was all a gamble. I’ve known I was tossing the dice every single time I sat down to slam my fingers against the keyboard. Every single time I’ve sent out a story, an outline, a novel, a script, anything written for approval – by somebody other than me.

Because – this isn’t a hobby. I don’t "make up stories in my spare time." And I don’t aspire – to write.

I write.

I write - and I place everything in the world upon my writing. I do it, regardless of what my friends and family think of me. I do it, regardless of some cynical joker at work who never made anything fantastic or amazing happen in all of the years they’ve been on the planet spouting bullshit between bowls of microwave chili. I do it, regardless of losing a boyfriend or missing a bill payment or watching my peers raise children or falling short of some milestone on a timeline that wasn’t ever mine to begin with.

I do it - because the world is bigger than me. Because I have no control over the outcome. Because there is no path for those of us who choose to do this - but there is that singular, driving force - that dream.

I admit it.

I’ve been gambling for years. And while I’ve yet to hit a real jackpot, I’ve definitely paid the price for my addiction. Monetarily, that is. But have I suffered? Has it all been worth it? Will it always be? I don’t know... ultimately, it’s a moot question - because something indescribable has always kept me going. Something deep inside my gut - has been carrying me on its back - all this way. In the face of doubt and uncertainty. In the face of so many dashed ideas and disappointments. I can’t say why or who or what it is - other than to say - I believe. And I’d keep rolling the dice even if I went bankrupt. If I only had a shred of clothes left on my back and a quarter in my pocket.

I don’t know why, but writing grabbed a hold of me long ago, carved itself into my five-year-old veins, and I will always roll the dice. Despite the outcome. Despite concern. Despite rejections, non-responses, or a million discouraging voices shouting out ‘NO!’

Of course they’ll say that - I think to myself - they don’t understand...

I’m not just a high roller.

I was born a gambling man*


-mc foley


(*with thanks to the allman brothers band)


About mc foley:
Melinda Corazon Foley was born in Cebu, Philippines, raised in Virginia and currently resides in West Hollywood, CA. In 2005, MC Foley was named East West Players' James Irvine Foundation Mentee affording her the privilege to craft a new original stage play, the result: "Down and Out." It debuted at the Union Center for the Arts. Foley was then awarded the Asian American Writers Workshop Scholarship, which she utilized to re-imagine the aforementioned play into a web based series incorporating verse, motion graphics and comic book illustrations. Recently Ms. Foley completed work on a debut YA novel, The Ice Hotel. The novel is a fantasy adventure written especially for readers experiencing the profound pain of loss. In the book, a family, reeling from their eldest son's death, escapes to the Ice Hotel, where an age-old, arctic magic connects this world to the next.

The Video Screenwriting Tip of the Week

Tip #29: The Single Biggest Mistake When Pitching Your Material

The Scoggins Report

Spec Market Scorecard: January through mid-June 2009

by Jason Scoggins

I’ve made a couple of adjustments to the Scorecard this month that I think will help shed additional light on spec script market trends. First, since the Scorecard will be published mid-month on an on-going basis, and because the data has a short shelf life, I’m now including numbers through the middle of the month. In addition, several of the categories in last month’s Scorecard were overly broad, so I made the following tweaks:

• The Overall Spec Numbers are now divided into two categories:
  • Wide, for specs that went out “wide” to the town; and
  • Total, the Wide numbers plus the sales of specs that did not appear widely in the market prior to selling.
  In a perfect world I would include the obvious third category (the total number of specs that were slipped to producers and buyers instead of going wide), but one works with what one has.


• I separated Buyers into two categories:
  • Studios, which I’ve arbitrarily decided includes the majors, their in-house labels and a couple of mini-majors; and
  • Other, for everyone else.
• And I split Sellers into two categories as well:
  • Agents; and
  • Managers.
  Plus, rather than look at a relatively meaningless "marketshare" number for each of the Sellers, I thought it would be interesting to compare their sales numbers with the total number they’d brought to market.

A couple of final thoughts: I went back through the database and removed a handful of projects that weren’t strictly spec scripts, which is why some of the numbers in the below grids have changed from the previous Scorecard. And finally, I’m no longer writing in the third person, which I’m sure is as much a relief to you as it is to me.

Overall Spec Numbers:

* Through June 12.

** Includes "Tapped Out," a script that sold (to Chockstone Pictures) in June but went out wide in February (from Original Artists and Kaplan/Perrone).

The most interesting thing to me about the above numbers is how ineffective it’s been to send a script wide to the town this year. I have no previous years’ data for comparison, but 6% has got to be some sort of record low (not counting strike and de facto strike years). The spec business is starting to feel like the TV staffing business – the odds are almost as long as winning the Triple Crown.

Spec Sales By Genre:

Spec Sales By Buyer:

One big improvement since the last Scorecard: Warner Bros. is now tied with Fox (including its labels) in the number of spec script purchases amongst the major studios. And while Disney tends to develop material internally rather than being a big player in the spec market (not to mention being out of development money until October, according to Nikki Finke), what’s up with Paramount? And Universal, for that matter – 2 specs in 5 months is pretty anemic.

Not much else to say about the above tables, except to point out that we’re halfway through 2009 and there are a number of significant buyers who have yet to break out their checkbooks: CBS Films, Lionsgate, Mandate, Overture, The Weinstein Company. Too bad they’re not following Intrepid’s lead.

Spec Sales By Seller:

While CAA’s track record in terms of efficiency is certainly impressive, if you combine WMA and Endeavor’s numbers the merged firm would be batting 46%, the best among the big firms, despite having the highest volume. ICM’s numbers must be disheartening to them, but at least they’re faring better than APA: That agency has taken 14 scripts out this year without a sale.

Most of the above managers’ "efficiency" percentages are statistically insignificant due to the small sample numbers. However, Benderspink and Kaplan/Perrone are obviously on top of their respective games, especially considering five out of their seven collective sales went wide, flying in the face of the trends discussed above.

Meanwhile, Anonymous and Circle of Confusion might need to rethink their strategies (along with half a dozen management companies who have taken out 4 or more scripts without a sale this year). I know, managers often send scripts out as much to introduce a writer to the town as to try to sell the material. Still, if going wide isn’t working (and it’s clearly not), it might be time to sit on the sidelines for a beat.

About The Spec Market Scorecard:
The Spec Market Report and the Spec Market Scorecard are terribly unscientific analyses of the feature film spec script market based on information culled from a variety of public and non-public sources. They do not include pitch sales nor the film rights to underlying material. Past editions of the Report and the Scorecard are collected at http://www.lifeonthebubble.com and in the BOSI archives at http://www.thebusinessofshowinstitute.com/newsletter/past-newsletters.html.

About Jason Scoggins:
Jason Scoggins is a manager and partner at Protocol, a literary management and production company. He represents writers, directors and producers of film and TV alongside Protocol’s founding partners Brian Inerfeld and John Ufland. After getting his start in the entertainment business as an assistant at ICM, Scoggins became a TV Literary Agent at The Gersh Agency, followed by a stint at Writers & Artists Agency and then several years in the wilderness. He returned to the business in 2007, just in time to be impacted by the run-up to the WGA strike.

Best Business Advice for Screenwriters

Screenwriters Charley and Vlas Parlapanedis on "The Best Business Advice I Ever Got":

Charley and Vlas Parlapanedis,
writers of "War of the Gods" (from the producers of "300" -- release date 2010),
"Deathnote" at Warner Brothers (set for 2010 release),
and "Live Bet" with 50 Cent (set for 2011 release)

The Business of Show Institute Recommends:

If you'd like some screenwriting advice from one of the most successful spec script writers in the business -- whose screenwriting method has single-handedly changed the entire landscape of Hollywood, then here's your opportunity...

"Attention Ambitious Screenwriters: Screenwriting Legend and Teacher Blake Snyder Wants to Talk to YOU!" (click here for more details...)