But fortune increasingly favours the bold (which is ironic given that so many writers are anything but). As I've got older, I've come to realise that this is what I care about beyond all the imagined trappings. This is my geekery, in the same way others' is crochet, libraries, IT. This is what I do. This is who I am.
And I couldn't hold off anymore. The fear of not knowing begins to outweigh the fear of being shot down. I need to know if I have what Americans call "game". If the dream is a pipe one or if maybe, just maybe, I have a chance to do what I love and make some kind of living from it.
"All I offer is the truth. Nothing more."
The Black List 3.0 doesn't claim to make writers; it simply offers them exposure. That's all well and good, but saying we go in with no hopes or expectations would be disingenuous. There are three distinct layers of hope:
- An industry pro likes your work. They won't rep you, but tell you to keep at it. This would have been enough for me. I wouldn't have booked my plane ticket, but it's progress. Minimal validation, to be sure, but as all writers know, we'll take what we can get.
- Someone likes your work and offers to rep you. It's still not plane ticket time, but it's a step up. A toe-hold on the battlements.
- Someone likes your work, wants to rep you and thinks they can sell the script. I'd argue it's Sky-Scanner time, even if only from idle curiosity about how much a flight to LA actually costs.
But there are safeguards; the reader. Like Agents of The Matrix, they are guarding all the doors, they are holding all the keys. They are the system. If your script is downloadable it will still be available to the right people, but these are busy folk; they live on recommendations. If readers don't like the work and rate it accordingly, your chances plummet.
Last week I uploaded my screenplay for feedback on the Black List 3.0. This morning, I got that feedback.
The results were not what I expected, or hoped for. Now I have to deal with that.
I think ten years ago I would have thrown a hissy-fit. There would have been anger. Bitterness. A resort to the kind of tactical self-denial seen on screenwriting message boards across the world. It's better than X, and that got made. It's a conspiracy. It's not what you know, it's who.
I have no anger. Only determination.
The reader did his/her job. There's no malice in their words. I'm upset, I'm gutted and I've only just stopped shaking, but the classic screenwriter's retort that "they don't understand my work" is self-serving and of no practical use. Our job is to make them understand our work. If we can't do that, we've fallen at the first hurdle.
I lie beneath that hurdle with bloody knees and hurdle-grade plastic wedged into my balls.
There are positives to be taken. The words "throwback" and "fun" were used. The feedback also makes some decent points that I can address in the rewrite, not the least of which is that this reads like an R-rated movie, and would likely make less money as a result. That's not going to encourage any studio to say yes. We tend to forget this when writing for ourselves, but it's important to understand the realities of the marketplace, the milieu into which scripts are being plunged. The fact is that right now, studios want PG-13 content, and despite a multitude of 2+ hour blockbusters, 117 pages is now considered a hair too long.
The evaluation also raises some points I believe are misguided. I won't go into them because no matter how eloquent one thinks one is, a point by point rebuttal of that nature can only ever come across as bitter and angry.
Perhaps it all comes down to sensibility. I believe I know what I've written and why I've written it. The reader fundamentally disagrees. I think the rating is harsh in the context of the fairly mild criticism levelled at it. (There was nothing like "you can't write, please stop giving us your money", but perhaps they're just humouring me.) Like any artist, I'll defend some of my choices to the hilt, but the fact remains; we have to make them understand, and bawling isn't the way to do it.
Above all this illustrates how switched on we have to be to break in. I brought what I thought was my A game, and it wasn't enough.
What we as amateurs have to be careful of is swinging with the wind, simply changing everything somebody doesn't like; if reader A loves your characters and reader B hates them, which way do you swing?
You swing your way.
When you've reached a point where multiple readers address the same concerns, when the general consensus is that you are wrong, or where the studio has notes (this can be the same thing as scenarios one and two)... fine. It may never be easy but it's common sense. Compromise is inevitable in even the least collaborative of artistic media, and film is probably the most.
But before all of that, you have to write for you. From you. Or you are lost.
Be guided, be mindful of and serious about others' opinions, but first and foremost, write for you. Just know that in one of creativity's most cruelly sadistic paradoxes, doing so may mean that you labour without reward, without recognition. If you can reach even grudging acceptance of that, you're going to be a whole lot better off.
So where do I go from here?
I re-read the coverage and it's like looking at the last letter from an ex. The one that finally confirms what you always feared; this is definitively over. Your heart races every time you look, even though you know what it says so well you could read it in your sleep. Still, you hope the words have changed.
They haven't.
But this is not over. From here I go backwards. And forwards. Already rewriting. To truly know if these problems are not the result of a sensibility mismatch, I'm going to have to pay for another evaluation. It's the only way to be... sure? Maybe not. But more sure.
This has been a "no". But it only takes one "yes".
