The way it is.

Okay, so here is what my writing partner and I basically found out in the past few months.

Don't write scripts.

WOT?!

Well, okay. That's not exactly true. It's more like don't write scripts if you have no way of getting it in to the hands of someone who "matters". Why? Well, it apparently has something to do with executives and it goes something like this.

Executive, by the very nature of their positions, can never like anything. They can only point out that someone else seems to like it. Are you with me so far?

It's pretty elementary when you think about it. If you want to stay for any length of time as an executive, and this goes not just for movies but for everything, books, cars, pop corn, vinyl siding, whatever, you must never have anything that fails link back to you as in "we lost money because that executive liked it". And, the surest way to ensure that nothing they liked ever fails and gets linked back to you is to, you guessed it, never like anything. But you see, you can't do the job of an executive and not ever like anything because ironically your job is to "do business" and that's where the "someone else likes it" part come in.

In a strange way "market research" is in effect just that. It's not that it's even remotely accurate. No matter what the "law of averages" says, it's pretty obvious that grabbing random people off the street in no way guarantees that their opinion reflects anything out in the general public but that is not the point. The point is that executives, those in positions of power, or whatever you want to call it can point to the results and say "See? They like it" with the invisible tag line being "therefore I am not responsible if something goes wrong" which is... true. That makes one wonder why they even need executive if all they're going to do is point at other people's opinion and say that's the way we'll go. But that would be too cynical and not really useful. To quote Sun Tzu, know your enemy and know yourself and you'll win a hundred out of a hundred fights. And knowing how things "work" is really about accepting how things "are", not how you think it ought to be. So where does all this leave the first time writer?

Where else? Up the creek! :D

But all is not lost especially if you're one of those people who can get your stuff in to the hands of people who "matter" like a movie star or a "powerful" movie producer. But if you're not blessed with connections to such folks then you must find a way to put your writing in the hands of the people who matter the most. That's right, the general public or at least some subset of it.

This issue of "They like it so it's not my fault" explains why Hollywood has gone so gaga over what goes on at Comic-Con in the past few years. It also explains the big story today which is about some dude out of Uruguay who put on a slick "giant robots attacking a city" thing on youTube and landed a million dollar job to make his short in to a feature film. Basically, if you can get eye balls on your own then you've given those in charge the perfect excuse to flex their career muscle and do what they're supposed to do... safely.

And now you know why my writing partner and I have decided to write a novel and publish it on our own. In the end what matters is that people like what you wrote. Those people don't necessarily have to be studio executives to start with. As a matter of fact, if enough of the general public likes your writing and are willing to say it with their wallets, it's pretty much guaranteed that some executive somewhere will like your writing. Why wouldn't they? You've made their job so much easier and safer to do. I mean, do you think the executive who green lit the Harry Potter movies were sweating bullets worrying how it might fail and ruin his career? Probably not.

So, the question then becomes... how do you get the general public to like you? Any ideas? ;)