If you are reading this there is a good chance you're thinking about writing a movie.

The chances of selling your movie for a lot of money or a few bucks is a long shot. 

This is why we buy millions of dollars worth of lottery tickets and it may be the reason so many of us get married.

When I graduated in TV writing with an MFA from UCLA, decades ago, I think there were six people in my class.  The reason I snagged a degree was so I could teach. 

I never taught, always seemed to be too busy writing and trying to sell what I wrote. 

Today there may be as many people graduating from film/TV schools as there are people buying Lotto tickets. 

If you want to find out what the movie business is all about from a writer’s point of view, then get down on your knees and thank Your Father in Heaven for the Internet.  If, on the other hand, you are an atheist, thank Charles Babbage, Father of the Computer.

Before you fire up your laptop check out Wordplay.  There is a series of columns by Terry Rossio.  He’s bright and successful.  His columns are the equivalent of a couple of MFA degrees in film.  (There, you just saved yourself fifty grand.)

After you start to get the hang of the game, go to clichés−alas, you will find your idea is probably a cliché. Not to worry. Insert loveable characters and you'll be fine. Maybe.   

If you want a comic look but one that may be frighteningly accurate of who is buying what, check out Script Girl Report:

Now it may be time to write your feature film. 

Hint.  Read some screenplays before you inflict your ideas upon mankind. 

A great screenplay, maybe one of the greatest ever written, is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  It came out of the astonishing mind of William Goldman who also wrote Adventures in the Screentrade.  The book is worth buying just for the screenplay.

William Goldman said “no one knows anything” in reference to the movie making business.

He was wrong.  The problem with the business is everyone knows something.  Want to read more about film writing?