I think I may have hit on something that may well explain why I’m not a millionaire writer with an international following and untold numbers of fans – I haven’t managed to come up with a clever, gimmicky or off-the-wall way of dodging serious questions that are put to me by well-meaning, would-be writers simply out for a bit of useful advice.
A few moments ago I followed a link on Twitter over to The Script Lab website and a post entitled, How Do I Sell My Script? Now some of the entries on this site are interesting, but a lot of them seem to touch on topics that have been covered countless times (which isn’t necessarily bad), and there are others that seem to be just filler material. This piece falls into the last category in my view.
While I think that the principle of the advice of re-writing is sound (up to a point) and writing multiple scripts gives a broader base on which to approach agents and build upon, I think that in many ways Olson dodged the real question – How do I sell my script?
The answer he gave was very useful in lots of ways, but why did he not complete it by answering the question? At some point, the student asking the question will have done the re-writes and written other scripts and will then have to go back to Olson or find some other person who can give him the information he needs.
There are, I think, a couple of other things going on here. The first is that Olson is being very presumptive – why can’t a first script be something wonderful? Admittedly, the likelihood is that it won’t be, but without it being sent to studios and agents how the hell would anyone know? Playing percentages doesn’t allow for the discovery of the rare gem.
The second thing is that Olson may not know the answer. With markets changing so fast, an established writer may lose track of the current best way for new writers to get on the ladder and sell a script or a book or whatever. One of the hardest questions I’m asked is about how to get into writing for games. My own route cannot be used as an example because it was such a circuitous one and certainly couldn’t be applied to teh games industry as it is today. While I don’t think there’s any shame in not knowing everything, perhaps a writer like Olson feels it’s something he should know and has devised a clever way to dodge the question: “… throw it in the Pacific”.
Advice in general can be fraught with all kinds of dangers and sometimes a writer looking for advice must learn to be choosy about what they listen to and, when necessary, dodge the answer.
A few years ago I attended a writers’ group meeting at which the results of a short story competition were being annouced by the judge, a published author with years of experience behind him. I didn’t have an entry in the competition and when I heard his comments I was glad of that. Although there were about a dozen entries, he read out comments on all the entries before announcing a winner. On the face of it, this seemed like a wonderful thing for him to do, but he proceeded to do a very negative hatchet job on every one of them, even the winner.
It was my feeling that the guy was filled with bitterness because he hadn’t sold a short story or novel for a number of years. He as good as said that anyone trying to sell shorts in today’s market was wasting their time. I know that a couple of the writers got quite annoyed with him and I felt a little angry on their behalf, too. Thankfully, not all of them took too his advice to heart as at least two of those stories were later sold to magazines.
Advice is an odd thing. We’re all different, which means that we give and receive advice in different ways. What works for some of us won’t necessarily work for others, so we should all avoid any advice that appears to be some kind of golden key to success. The best approach is to take on all the advice you can until it wraps around you like a comforting knowledge blanket and from which you can pull at any time in order to perform your craft with confidence and maximum creativity.
Advice is only ever as good as the use to which you can put it.