So You Want to Write A Movie

by 

Jaron Summers

If you are reading this there is a good chance you are thinking about writing a movie or you know someone who is.

The chances of selling your movie for a lot of money to a studio is what is called a long shot.  We as humans love long shots.  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 much, 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. 

In the last week or two several strangers have written to me asking me how you break into the business.  They are not exactly strangers – they are friends of friends or relatives of someone I know.  Or I might know.

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.

First, I’d check out Wordplay.  There is a series of 60 columns by Terry Rossio.  Rossio has been on the planet for about four decades and 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 reading Rossio’s columns, check this out. Bill Johnson explains how to write a story synopsis and  has many other ideas and notions on writing that make a lot of sense (at least to me).

After you start to get the hang of the game, go to clichés that seem to go through buyers’ minds.  Try to avoid those.  Hollywood is looking for fresh meat.  Picture yourself on a butcher’s hook. 

Speaking of the buyers' mind, if you want a comic look but one that may be frighteningly accurate, read some of the columns of a development girl.  You don’t know what a D-girl is?  You will after you read a few of the columns of D Girl Diary.

Now it may be time to write your feature film.  Hint.  Read some screenplays before you inflict your ideas upon mankind.  Go to www.google.com  and type in the name of a screenplay and do a search for it. With luck you’ll find it.

 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 became famous for saying – “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?

To read dozens more of Jaron's hilarious columns, please go here. 

copyright 2001 Jaron Summers