Just How Many Screenplays Can You Write?

One of the best ways to increase your opportunities for selling your script or story idea to  Hollywood is to have lots of them–all types–screenplays, treatments, outlines, pitches.  The more projects you have, the more likely you are to have something that will be of interest to one given individual you will be pitching to.

I’ve worked with many screenwriters who write and rewrite one or maybe two scripts for years on end.  The good thing about that is that they are doing a lot of rewriting and they understand the importance of that, which many other writers don’t get.  On the other hand, if you are looking to have a screenwriting career in Hollywood, you can’t afford to have only two screenplays at the end of seven years.  You need to be much more prolific.  I mean, we’re not talking Gone With The Wind here, are we?

If you’re spending years on one screenplay and you want to have a career, you need to find some moderation on this issue.  If you’re doing it more for fun and feel like you only have one or two in you, then that’s fine, keep on, keepin’ on. But as a career, you need to write more.

As you think about this, it may quickly occur to you that no matter what, it takes a while to write a screenplay and to get it into good shape —  minimum of a few months, especially if you’re not doing it full time.  So how can you be prolific?  Very simple.

Instead of writing lots of screenplays, start writing miniatures of your stories.  Write loglines (2-3 sentences each) of many, many ideas.  Write one or 2 page synopses of stories.  Pick out your best and most favorite stories and flesh them out into outlines and treatments.  Run these ideas by industry people to get feedback on what would be most commercial.  Save yourself some time.

By doing this you can come up with countless ideas and not limit yourself to 1 or 2 screenplays a year.  It also makes you more marketable and gives you lots more to talk about when you meet prospective producers and literary agents.  It also makes you more appealing to those same producers and agents. And who doesn’t want to be appealing to agents and producers, right?  At least when they can do something for your career!

Anyway, that’s about it for today.  Now go knock down a few ideas and make them good ones.