As 13 REASONS WHY returns I reflect on why you should write what you love

13 REASONS WHY returns at midnight tonight on Netflix and I'm very excited for season two. You might remember that I wrote a 13-part series on the first season last year:

One result of that was that my friend, GAWKER V. THIEL screenwriter John Gary, insisted it was past time that I write a teen drama spec pilot. To him, it was unbelievable I had done it yet. (The closest I'd ever gotten was showrunning my college drama while I was still in college, but I'd never written an original spec, or even a spec episode of a teen drama.) He said something like, "You watch all these shows! You know all these shows. You should WRITE one of these shows."

Despite John's advice to write what I love, I resisted this. I gave the same excuse Bryan Singer gave for not pursuing Star Trek, "I think I'm too big a fan of Star Trek. You'd feel like you were watching WRATH OF KHAN" again.  I knew the genre too well that I felt paralyzed by every wrong choice. With every notion, I either felt, "I've seen that, and they did it way better" or "This is exactly the kind of thing that I've railed against because the ways it can go wrong are A, B, C, etc."

He said, "No you have to do it."

So I did... and people really seemed to like the spec.

And then to compliment it, I wrote a spec 13 REASONS WHY and despite MUCH anxiety about if I could pull that off... my readers are liking that too. I forgot what a relief it was to hear "This feels like the show and everyone's voices are in-character." So if nothing else, I have two strong samples that weren't in my portfolio a year ago.

What I'm saying is, I owe John and 13 REASONS WHY a pretty big debt. I tweeted a few of these sentiments and John added his own thoughts: "Write your favorite genre. Write the thing you love to watch the most. Write what you know the best. Write who you are. Write you."

One thing I did while breaking the spec episode was go back and rewatch season one again. The internal timeline of the show is a couple of weeks, and we're given a couple hard dates to work with in there. We know that Hannah Baker killed herself on October 10 and that the deposition that is shown in the last episode happens on November 10th.

Given that Clay is said to take a few weeks to go through the tapes, and that the show starts a couple weeks after Hannah's death, I was curious if the timeline as presented on the show stood up to scrutiny. Turns out that it does! Here's the way the timeline seems to break down:

The biggest assumption you have to make is that Clay takes the weekend off between listening to Tape 4 and 5. (I'm referring to each individual side as a tape just for simplicity. I know that technically that's "Tape 2, Side B" and "Tape 3, Side 1." It's just easier to think of it as one tape per person.)

That weekend isn't depicted on-screen, but the first four episodes all are clearly back-to-back and would take us through an entire school week. When Clay gets to the fifth tape, it's ALSO a school day and it's a case where it's not directly tied to the end of the previous ep. Further, the episode dealing with Tape 7 ends up spanning a school day, a weekend and the start of the next school week. So week 2 of tapes has some wiggle room, just so long as we assume that episodes 5-7 cover one week of time for Clay.

It's neat to see the writers were clearly tracking this, and it drives home just how glacially clay must have moved through the tapes compared to the others. He's the 10th person to receive the tapes, so they passed through nine people in the span of October 11 to the 21st. (Clay receives the tapes via mail on Monday the 23rd, which means the person before him would have had to send them out on Saturday the 21st.) It's doable, especially if you assume that some people might not have mailed the tapes and instead delivered them to the next recipient personally.

[UPDATE: Season 2 has given fixed dates to details that had to have been worked out from context earlier:

- the date of Hannah's death is stated multiple times on screen to have been October 9th. I had presumed October 10th because that is the page we see Mr. Porter rip out of his planner. I'm guessing that the writers' notion was that was the back side of the page that he ripped out... October 9th. Originally, I thought this was a mistake because we see Hannah get the tape recorder from Tony at school and if she's getting it on that Monday, she couldn't have killed herself the same day, but...

- Episode 11 of Season 2 attaches the date of September 30 to the party where Hannah is raped by Bryce. This fixes one detail - giving Hannah an entire week to record the tapes and set up her plan. However, it also contradicts something Clay says in Episode 12 of Season 1, when he says that Hannah slit her wrists "less than a week after" that party.]

Check out Go Into The Story's interview with John Gary

Scott Myers is running an interview this week with my friend John Gary over on Go Into The Story. John is one of the many fine people I've met through Twitter over the years, and we've bonded through our similar outlook on the business at times, as well as our mutual histories as agency readers.

John's having a big week, as Deadline just announced that his screenplay SARAH has been acquired by Lionsgate's Summit. Buried in Deadline's announcement is the additional news that John is rewriting a film called OFF-WORLD for Paramount, with Josh Duhamel set to star.

(Having read SARAH, I'm rather perplexed by Deadline's comparison of it to LUCY. I don't see the two as being similar at all, beyond the fact both star young women and have action sequences.)

A lot of what John says in the interview really resonates with me. Speaking about the job of script reading, John observes:

"It is very easy to get stuck with velvet handcuffs when you’re pulling in good money for work that is pretty easy, not all that time consuming, you’ve been doing it for awhile and you’re getting the good scripts and you have some respect at work, and you’re complacent and it’s easier to read another script than it is to write something of your own. But in the end, you have to write."

SO. TRUE. I have lived this.

Later, John discusses how he reversed a cold streak in his career:

"I looked around and saw other people, other friends, and they were finding some success, so I knew there was a way in. I took a step back, and I said to myself, “What am I missing here?” and the thing I was missing was I was writing what I thought I should write, instead of what I wanted to write. I’d been listening to too many other people, and I’d stopped listening to myself.

"I fired my manager. I joined a small writer’s group. I needed to get back to what works for me creatively. I needed to figure out again what I liked to do. I’d forgotten by then. I’d gotten too wrapped up in chasing the machine, pining for success. But writing what you love is only half of the equation. Writing what Hollywood loves is the other half.

"I have this theory, and it’s a theory about who you are as a writer and what Hollywood does. It’s a Venn Diagram. There’s one circle – what Hollywood does. There’s another circle – what kind of writer you are. And this includes what you like to write and what you’re good at and what kind of writing really lights you on fire. The intersection of those two circles: that’s what you should write."

 Four parts have been posted so far, with more to follow.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

And don't forget to check out an archive post of mine: John Gary and the Hope Machine.

This blog turns six! - There's still much more work to do

Today this blog is six years old. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised it's lasted this long and that so many of you fine people still drop by to read every new post. It's funny to think that when I started it, I wondered if I'd have enough material to keep me going six months.

Some of you have possibly noticed that the blog output has slowed a bit. That's largely due to the fact that I've exhausted a lot of the common topics and questions I could cover related to screenwriting. I've been able to compensate for that over the last few months as it's Oscar Movie season and I've had a full buffet of great movies to discuss.

The other big sea change is that it's become more and more common for people to use Twitter as an output for their musings and advice. I still like the idea of a permanent archive on the blog, partly because it allows new readers to discover those nuggets long after the fact. Even so, I know I've had plenty of times where I've tossed off a good rant on twitter and found that got it enough out of my system that I didn't feel the need to come back here and flesh it out. I'm trying to be better about that.

Ah, Twitter. I really can't believe that I still have yet to plateau in terms of followers. As I write this I have over 27,700 followers and the last time I checked, only a few percent of those were deemed "fake." It's flattering to see evidence that people are still discovering me and interested in what I have to say.

I bring this up because even more than through this blog, I've made a lot of great friends and contacts through Twitter over the last six years. It's absolutely been one of the best things I could have done for my career. I've made some good friends, including fellow aspiring writers, actors, and working writers - including a showrunner or two. I definitely recommend trying to build your own social network. It takes time but if you use Twitter right, you might find a few doors opening up for you.

As it's Awards Season, it feels appropriate to conclude this look back with a few thank yous.  There's not enough space here to acknowledge everyone whom I've met and become friends with due to this blog, but there are a few in particular I want to call out.

I did my best to put this list in random order, but I have to start with Scott Myers. About five months into the life of this blog, Scott was the one who really put me on the map when he featured me and gave me a very generous plug on the only must-read screenwriting blog, Go Into The Story. For almost five years, my relationship with Scott was completely through emails and tweets. I met him just over a year ago and it was a genuine delight to find he was everything you'd expect. Scott is the screenwriting professor I wish I'd had in college, running the sort of blog I could only dream of reading when I was taking my first steps into screenwriting. As I implore you often, please visit Go Into The Story regularly.

Hollywood has a reputation for having a lot of assholes. Some of that is earned, but my first-hand experience has been that there are a significant number of sincerely giving people. Over the years, a very high percentage of the working writers I have met have been some of the kindest, most helpful people out there. There's this myth that working writers are out to screw over aspirings. I've never seen any evidence of this, and the people I'm about to name-check are the furthest from that:

Eric Heisserer was one of the first working writers whom I got to know through Twitter, following his reaction to a tweet about the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reboot. He later consented to an interview about the film and also authored a guest post about the life of a script in the studio development process. Even today, that post stands as my third-most-popular post of all time. On a one-on-one level, Eric has also been giving enough of his time to read some of my work and offer help where he could. He didn't do it so I'd blog about it, he's just that kind of person. Publicly he's very giving in offering the occasional screenwriting knowledge drops on Twitter, and I encourage you to follow him for his regular insights.

If you just know John Gary from Twitter, you probably have this image of him as the cranky pessimist who's the first one to say why the latest screenwriting development is a half-empty glass. But you'll have to look hard to find a more passionate advocate for writers, and someone more determined to make sure that naive aspirings aren't taken advantage of by charlatans and scams. He also regularly takes on what he calls The Hope Machine - the parent of the pie-in-the-sky fantasies that writers have about how easy it'll be to gain fame and forture from their writing. John doesn't tell you want you want to hear - he says what you NEED to hear. Like me he's seen the business from the inside as both a reader and a writer, and you would ignore the wisdom from that experience at your peril.

Along the same lines, I consider Geoff LaTulippe a must-follow. You can never accuse Geoff of not speaking his mind and while his blunt and aggressive nature sometimes gets him into trouble, he's very open to answering questions from aspiring writers on Twitter, on his podcast Broken Projector and on his personal website. If memory serves, Geoff might have been the first pro writer to reach out to me with an offer to read my script, and I know that's a courtesy he's extended to a few, perhaps many, others.

Justin Marks is a working writer who I first came to know via Twitter. We seem to approach things from a similar point of view and it's rare that there's a significant gulf in our opinions. (Justin once quipped that "we could pilot a Jaeger together.") I finally met him last year and it was a relief to learn that our rapport extended to our face-to-face interaction. Justin's got two big projects in the future: The Jon Favreau-directed Jungle Book movie coming in 2016 and the sequel to Top Gun, still unscheduled as far as I know. He's another one whose tweets can be a good insight into the business, so give him a follow.

F. Scott Frazier was one of the first writers to reach out to me to meet in person, and I'm glad I dropped the mask to do so. Scott tends to do his good deeds without advertising them, but I know he's gone out of his way to be a mentor to some writers. Like many others I know, he definitely believes in paying it forward, and frankly, he's prolific enough that it would be understandable if he didn't want to take the time to do so. I'd be remiss if I didn't plug my interview with him.

When people come to me asking for a coverage referral, I point them at Amanda Pendolino and ONLY Amanda Pendolino. Like me, Amanda's gotten a number of years as a script reader under her belt while trying to build her own career. She gives really sharp notes, and in a manner that always feels constructive. I recently gave her a script that I'm pretty sure wasn't her cup of tea, but she made a passionate, persuasive case for her opinions without making me feel like I'd been eviscerated. That's rare. On top of that, she's a great writer who deserves to be on staff somewhere. I know if I was a showrunner, she'd be one of my early draft picks.

Speaking of showrunners, Jeff Lieber is another favorite twitter-buddy. Currently one of the showrunners on NCIS: New Orleans, Jeff is one of the creators of Lost, as well as the creator of Miami Medical and was a showrunner on Necessary Roughness. He's used those assignments and others as fodder for his Showrunner Rules, which he regularly doles out on Twitter. You can find the whole archive here and his feed is always a valuable read.

The people I've named already are all great writers, but one writer whose work just knocked me on my ass was Brian Scully. I gave a spotlight post to his brilliant script MERCIFUL last year and soon after that, Brian landed management with Verve. I'm currently in the weeds on a very dark script of my own and I can honestly say that MERCIFUL has been like that rabbit they use to get the greyhounds to do laps around the track. I've read plenty of scripts that have inspired me and taught me, but MERCIFUL is one that really pushed me to be better and to not be scared to take chances.

Through my association with Go Into The Story, I also came to know Nate Winslow. Scott Myers calls him "future super producer Nate Winslow" and not without good reason. Nate is a savvy guy who's worked on a number of film projects, most recently at Defender Entertainment. If someone's smart, they'll snap him up to be their Creative Executive because he's got a great eye for projects. There are some people who you can just tell when you meet them that they have what it takes to make their own good fortune. With Nate, I know it's only a matter of time before he puts together a project and becomes one of those guys everyone is trying to get their scripts to. He's another one who keeps me motivated, if only so I don't feel like I'm standing still next to him.

And last, but certainly far from least, I consider myself fortunate to have gotten to know Black List founder Franklin Leonard. I take a very dim view of most services that ask screenwriters to pay for them. I don't typically trust coverage companies because you can't really trust who's reading those scripts, and it's rare to find such a company where the person in charge has a significant amount of credibility to put on the line. When Franklin told me he was expanding the Black List's mission to including hosting and review services for aspiring writers, I was skeptical. After he laid it out for me, I became a believer.  A few half-wits have accused my endorsement of the site of being the back-scratch that was redeemed by payola. I can assure you I have no official affiliation with the site, nor have I ever taken any sort of money, bribery or whatever you want to call it. I endorse the Black List because I believe in it and in what Franklin Leonard is trying to do.

I've been fortunate to meet many successful people. I've worked for a number of industry pros who were very good at their jobs and have been able to produce films for most of their adult lives. I want to tell you what sets Franklin Leonard apart from them. Those men and women are very adept players within the existing system. Franklin Leonard is a guy with the will and the forethought to change the system. The Black List is constantly evolving and expanding, carving out partnerships with management companies, studios and producers. More than that, Franklin is possibly one of the most above-board and intelligent people I've met out here. There's nothing phony about him, and if we had more Franklin Leonards, that wouldn't be a terrible thing for our industry.

Franklin is smart enough he could probably be very successful just playing the game as it is. Instead he's forging his own path. I'm glad that writers - both aspiring and professional - have such a driven advocate. I know he's going to continue to push to make the Black List better. I once said to him that he must be proud of everything The Black List has become and his reply was, "There's still much more work to do."

Those who succeed are often those who are rarely satisfied.

These people I have named all have a few things in common. In one way or another they have all provided support and inspiration, and I've been lucky to get to know them. And there are still plenty more whom I don't have the space to name here. I also would never have met ANY of them, had I not started this blog six years ago and stuck with it even when I was getting only 50 hits a day the first few months. I would be a poorer individual for not knowing them.

If you have good fortune, pay it forward. When you deal with others, know there's little to be gained from being a dick. When you reach a goal, start formulating the next one, pushing yourself even harder than you did before. Most of all, don't let yourself become too satisfied with whatever you accomplish.

Thank you all for six great years. There's still much more work to do.

John Gary vs. The Hope Machine

Monday night, while many people were preparing to watch the blood moon, my friend John Gary took to Twitter with some advice to aspirings to be wary of what they read about the business and what their expectations are for breaking into the business.  The commerce of trading on the naive dreams of aspirings is what John calls "The Hope Machine."

I agree with a lot of what John wrote on twitter.  He's especially right when he cautions against buying into the bullshit hype that the trades often manufacture.  If a trade article tells you that a particular spec is the hottest script in town this week and multiple studios are after it, that could be true - but it's often complete and utter fiction.  The people who have access to the major tracking boards can sniff out this lie pretty quickly, so it's fascinating the charade still persists.

This is not an easy business to break into.  Even once you "break in," the job isn't done.  There are writers who've been repped for as many as five years who haven't made a sale yet.  I've talked to writers who've taken as many as EIGHT years from their first option to their first sale.

This is a marathon.  Not a sprint.  At least not for most people.  If you're go in knowing that, you might not get crushed.  John knows what he's talking about.  He's worked in this business a long time, first as a script reader and now as a writer.

After you read John's full essay below, go check out Amanda Pendolino's excellent post on the subject as well.

What follows is John's rant from the twitter pulpit:

Story time: 2012. A close friend closed a deal on a script. She and I kept in close touch throughout the highs and lows of negotiations. I knew *exactly* how much she was getting upon close of the deal, and it wasn't much. 10k for a 12 month option. There was a guaranteed rewrite step for nearly WGA minimum - about $35k - and she stood to make a lot more money if the movie ever got made.

But the trades? "Mid six against low seven sale in competitive bidding!" Complete and total bullshit.

And yet, even though I knew EXPLICITLY the terms of the deal... when I saw the articles in the trades, my heart leapt. WOW.

And that, my friends... is the Hope Machine.

I have been doing this for a long time. I have many many screenwriter friends. I worked for an agency for more than ten years.  I have witnessed the sausage being made, beaks and hooves and intestines and all - and yet - I still eat the Bratwurst.

Reporters want stories, interesting ones. Agents and managers want deals they broker to be seen in the best possible light.  Everyone knows exactly what's going on - the reporters, agents and studios know the truth is often not quite as great as what's written. 

But here's who *doesn't* know the truth, and hears about the big 'sales' and whose heart leaps: the amateur, the young pro, the struggler.  Of course you want it to be true. I knew EXACTLY what was going on, and yet I STILL GOT EXCITED when I read "competitive bidding!"

Hope Machine.

Studios are able to call each other to find out details of deals. Did you know that? Business affairs departments phone each other on the regular. "What was that deal?" they can ask. The other studio freely discloses. Some deals are classified as "no quote" by the agents/lawyers.  "No quote" happens when a piece of talent (in this case a writer, obvi) takes a low deal and requests the studio not disclose it.  "I'll work for you for peanuts, but you better not tell anyone about it."

Here's the rich irony - it takes about a minute of drunk thinking for a business affairs exec to figure out what the "no quote" numbers are.  Who doesn't get to find out how much that young (or old!) writer earned on that script? You. Me. The amateur, the young pro, the struggler. It is incumbent upon you to educate yourself about the business you are seeking to enter. The reporters and agents have their own agendas. They will not change. Do not expect them to. It's up to you to change.

So that's what's up with larger outlets - trade publications. What about smaller ones? Websites that specialize in spec info?  If you have to pay a fee to access a website's information, that website needs you to renew. They benefit from your desire for news.  So everything they report gets amped up, accentuated. Everything is a capital-s "Sale," even if it's an option or even just an attachment. 

Contests need you to enter in order to keep on. If a contest winner signs with a manager or a producer boards a script, they'll promote that. But you know by now that a producer attachment doesn't mean money changing hands. It doesn't mean that writer can write every day.  But it feels that way, doesn't it? It feels like forward progress.

At William Morris, we said this *all* the time. "Doesn't matter until money changes hands."

[Someone asks John: “So high six figure scripts are rarer than they seem?”  John replies, “The overall deal may be worth six figures, but the money in hand once the writer signs the contract is often far far lower - and would certainly be much lower if that writer is a first-timer.]

Not everyone who is part of the Hope Machine wants to be part of it. Many bloggers and podcasters and tweeters talk about screenwriting - and from their perspective, it sounds like a real, viable job that is achievable. It is achievable - like the NFL is achievable.

More people played in the NFL last year than WGA members were paid money to work in features.

Info on NFL vs. WGA. Last year NFL players: 1696. Last year feature writers with WGA contracts: 1537. (The WGA numbers will get adjusted up by as much as 6% come this July, which would take us all the way to 1621.)

Were there lots of non-WGA contracts? Sure. How much money were they for? Mostly less than you make a month. When you read "six-figure deal," that should mean that the entire contract is worth six figures - option, rewrite money, production bonuses. When you read "six-figure sale," that should mean that the copyright has changed hands permanently for a decent chunk of change.

But - BUT - often when someone says "sale" they really mean "deal which starts as an option." People say sale over option, but when you're starting out, options are 99% of what you'll get.

So what to do? You're a young writer. You wanna write movies. You own Fade In. Your blu-ray collection crowds your closets.  Keep writing things you love. Make art. Watch the world. Explore humanity, people, relationships. Write things that are true and real. Never expect to get paid for it. Never think about the big hope, the big sale, the big tomorrow. Focus on the today. Focus on your work.

Keep your day job. Make it a good day job you can work the rest of your life. Find joy in your family, your parents, your kids.  Move to LA if you're serious about working in Hollywood. Know that everyone else moved here to write or direct. Nearly all of them never do.

Get your scripts to people who matter - agents, managers. If you're lucky enough to sign with one, know that the hard work is ahead of you. Nothing is for sure. No one owes you anything. One deal does not mean you've made it. One project rarely leads to another.

The Hope Machine wants to devour you, to consume you, to make you believe that your happiness is just one script, one sale away. It isn't. Your happiness is right there on the page in front of you while you're writing it. Your satisfaction is typing FADE OUT.

The job, the profession comes for almost no one. It calls who it wants. You can do little to influence it. You can only take joy in what you write and know that your victory is there in those words and in your friends and family when you fade out.

So that's it. How do you defeat the Hope Machine? How do you keep it from eating you up? You write what you love and ignore the rest.

Fade out.