It’s time. My current script is just about done, and I’m in the last vestiges of testing the dialogue. I’m making sure my subtext and humor do their jobs, and my hooks and twists are ready to blow your socks off. Now starts the marketing, which is the scariest part of the process for most writers. I had a new writer ask me the other day how it feels to market your screenplay. Liberating? Torturous? Painful? All of the above.
Well, here’s my take on marketing, the only way that I can really describe it. Marketing a new screenplay is like having a newborn baby. Yep. Really.
Picture this: You have your newborn bundled up, in her best and cutest outfit, ready for her first outing to the park. Everyone’s interested in your bundle, and stops to see. Some people cannot stop telling you how beautiful she is, and some will want to pick her up and hold her. You just hope that when they do, she doesn’t spit up on them. Then there’s the judgers. They walk by your baby, and say what a handsome and robust little boy she is. You, in clipped words, correct them, saying that the handsome boy is actually a beautiful, petite, baby girl. You now become protective of the baby, but start looking at her a bit more critically. Is she going to grow into that nose? Will she need surgery on that thing later? Better to dress her in pink so they know she’s a girl.
Marketing a screenplay is just like that. You need to get past the protective stage of the newborn, and realize that your work is changeable, and grows into something bigger than you hoped it would ever be. Words on paper, characters with subtext, and racy dialogue become production, actors, action, and comments of “Oh my Goodness! I can’t believe they did that!”
Like that newborn, your initial script will be developed by everyone who puts a hand on it. Will there be critical words? Absolutely! No piece of work will ever appeal to everyone. And it shouldn’t. You will rewrite, and rework for the director, the producer, and for the actor who doesn’t like the way the dialogue is written. You will watch your baby grow into a beautiful, thoughtful piece of cinema, up there proudly for the world to see. It’s a matter of teamwork, and flexibility to do what it takes to get the screenplay produced.
That’s the goal, to share it with the world. It’s why you wrote it in the first place, right?
And you, the writer, will sit back, tearing up, remembering the newborn that she was. She’s now grown into a beautiful, confident woman, out there in front of everyone on that screen. Sometimes you just have to spring for that nose job to make it happen.
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I could be just a writer very easily. I am not a writer. I am a screenwriter, which is half a filmmaker… But it is not an art form, because screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art.
—Paul Schrader
