In continuing our conversation about screenplays, we'll continue to look at the current landscape for all those that want to write a hit.
An interesting reality concerning screenplay writing is that it is not just the amateurs that are looking for a door to open: "playwrights like David Rabe and David Mamet, respected novelists like Larry McMurtry and Sherman Alexie, and even famous movie critics like Roger Ebert are all regularly writing screenplays on the side."
If you've ever written at all in the past or have followed the literary scene, you'll know that in the days gone by, it was considered a lower-level form of writing to enter into this field. Now if a successful writer has created a well-received play or novel, their next thought is to continue on with a script.
This strong inclination may seem odd when you realize that a script is, in a sense a simple blueprint that is made for something else, read by a small group of people and, with the producing of only several hundred movies a year by Hollywood, an extremely difficult area to break into. Yet the hopeful keep on.
Now one of the underlying movtivations for this push is that if you write a screenplay for a successful movie, it will propel someone to the top almost immediately, based upon one good thought and idea.
There is another side to the screenplay equation that has to be considered, and that of course is the financial side. One of the unique things about a screenplay is that it can be accepted without ever making it to the screen. Even in this situation the screenplay makes money for the writer and can lead to other potential rewrite deals involving other scripts.
This is only part of the story though as opportunities are growing in the area of online sites that cater to the short story writer. Create one of these and upload it and it gives even more possilities to be accepted than before.
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