So before you even think of contacting agents and producers, remember that you need to have a script...

... A GREAT SCRIPT!

And probably the ego to go with it. Because this is a tough rough town every bit as cutthroat and corrupt and stupid and insane as you have heard. Well, maybe not quite as bad as that. Hollywood people think they live in a movie, or should do, and the reality always fails to live up to the hype. It is however, a town full of people just as good and as deserving of success as you. Bear in mind that most likely ten per cent of the writers get ninety per cent of the work because they are one per cent better than anyone else is. Thus, you are involved with a culture obsessed with getting the required performance edge. Get to grips with that or do not bother.

If you do not know what a script is, by the way, and it is surprising how many people who want to write for Hollywood do not, then you need to find out. You should read them. You should buy them. You should discuss them and you should analyse all the various forms of Film and TV show that you can imagine and note the relationship between what is written and what is on the screen. You should find out what the directors do, what the producers do, what the actors do, and you should write in order to help them do it well.

There are essentially three areas of work in Hollywood and in order for the writer to break in they require different things.

Oliver Stone wrote 11 scripts before he sold one. So you should not have any fewer than three GOOD scripts before even thinking of making approaches.

The scripts should be laid out like a Hollywood screenplay:

• They should be on 11" paper.
• Have three holes.
• Two brass fasteners.
• Backed by red card.

You are going to need a Hollywood Agent i.e. one based in LA. They will approach the Studios for you.

There are three layers of Agencies:

• The Big Agencies that deal with the top of the range established writers.
• The mid-range "boutique" agency who deal with jobbing writers establishing their careers.
• And the sharks, crooks, upstarts, who charge money for editing, for reading, for "managing" and so on. Some of these actually might be useful - see http://ideatosale.com where you will find legitimate management services.

You get an agent by two routes.

• You can write query letters or
• You can be referred to them.

Neither way is easy. Most agents ignore Query letters but if the letter is interesting and you seem to have something that they want then you might get a meeting. If you are referred to them it means that you have found someone who will read your script and has sufficient credibility to be taken seriously as someone who can make referrals. These people can be writers managers, friends of the agents, can be attorneys, other writers, or simply Producers.

Most producers do not read unsolicited material from anyone, least of all those without an agent.... Catch 22.

However, if you write queries you might find the few respectable Independent producers who will look at un-agented material. They will usually send you a release form where you waive all rights to sue them if they produce a similar story later on.

You might use an entertainment’s lawyer who will provide a disclaimer for you and so make an approach a little easier. Essentially you pay them to submit the script to whoever you ask them to. The script has to be good to warrant that sort of expense.

Another approach is to find a Writers' Management company who will work with you to make the script as good as possible and then submit the script for you.

If the producer likes your material in anyway, then you ask them to recommend an agent. With their recommendation, you will be able to get read by an agent, if nothing else. This can lead to something called hip pocketing, which largely means that you have a relationship with the agent who will consider other projects of yours. There are no guarantees and no contracts. Unless you come up with an exciting script this means very little other than your scripts can now have the agent’s name and address on them and this means you no longer need to get the waivers.

Copyright to your material is yours as soon as you finish it.

You can give yourself some protection by registering it with the WGA or with the Library of Congress.

• WGA registration is for a limited period of five years.
• The Library of congress registration is in perpetuity.

Writers Guild of America (East) registration costs US$22. You can go to their web page upload a zipped file and fax their registration form to them with your credit card number. They will then send you confirmation and a receipt. http://www.wgaeast.org

If you use Movie Magic's "Screenwriter" software for writing your script, one of their add on services is a script registration system. This is by far the easiest way of dealing with this problem, since once you hit the save button, you can also hit the register button and all is done automatically.

However, none of this gives you any protection other than proof that you wrote a script and sent it to them at a certain time. This might be useful in proving someone stole your script. But it is next to useless in proving someone significantly used your "idea". A direct comparison with scripts has to pull up things like identical character names, identical titles, and identical lines of dialogue and story structure before any plagiarism suit will win. Significant borrowing of unique research material might be cause for a suit but if the research material is in the public domain it is not easy to prove.

Here you need sample scripts of on going TV series. Many different sorts of drama appear on TV. Sitcoms are a separate industry. TV Films and miniseries are special branches of the industry and I’ll deal with them under a different heading.

But to be able to get into the miniseries and Film market you need to have some kind of track record as a script writer in one of the other fields.

The scripts you need are "spec" scripts of different TV series. These scripts are not meant for broadcast but are meant to be samples of what you can do.

Traditionally you do not send a spec script to the show that you are copying. You send to producers of other shows. But you can only do this through an agent. You are in a very difficult position here because unlike the movie industry you have a limited number of independent producers willing to look at TV specs and give you referrals. So query letters count a lot.

However, there are more opportunities in the independent sector. (More about that later.)

TV writers used to be found by accident, though the accident of contact was rarely accidental. Nowadays, there are many routes into the industry and you increase your chances by joining writing groups, entering competitions, joining studio intern programmes, showing off your talents on web sites, enrolling on courses, and developing scripts under mentor systems offered by such as http://ideatosale.com.

Finally, you should move to LA, where you attend conferences, go on more courses and so on, until you meet up with some agent’s assistant or agent or get a referral. Unless of course you have been using http://ideatosale.com when you can breeze into town knowing that you have meetings to go to and things to do and that you have written some hot scripts.

In Series writing the career structure demands your presence in LA. (Whether you use http://ideatosale.com or not) You are expected to work as a freelance first. The producers give you an assignment. Then if they like what you have done they will take you on staff. This means that you get an office and have to be there from nine in the morning onwards. You will write in your office and you will attend story meetings and will rewrite others. You are an editor, a writer, and you might even deal with general administration.

You might become a writer’s assistant, which usually means that you are the secretary to one of the show’s senior writers and will do research and anything else that is of use to the writer. If you get a staff position you will be on salary and any script that you are credited with will get you extra. Some scripts are written by a large team, others by a single author.

The next stage is a Show Runner. This writer heads the writing team and is in charge of various creative decisions. They will check the casting, the directing, the budgets, and make sure that shooting takes place on schedule and on budget. In the UK these are line-producers/producers and are not usually writing the show. In the US though they are always writers and are the real creative forces on the show.

They will often be making sure that the Franchise is carried out as laid down by the Executive Producer who created the show in the first place. The Steve Bochcos, David E. Kelleys, and David Milch’s of Hollywood are show creators and now oversee the production of a number of successful shows. They often write episodes but cannot do it all, though David E Kelley sometimes tries to, and so Show Runners report back to them and work under their wing. These guys are seriously rich, passionate, obsessed and are a breed apart.

In the UK these people come under the Light Entertainment or Comedy departments of TV shows, underscoring the different tradition from drama that they come from. Similarly in the US they also come from a different dramatic tradition. Where Series and TV films come from the Film tradition in the US and the Theatrical tradition in the UK, the Sitcoms come from the traditions of Music Hall, Stand Up Comedy and Sketch cabaret.

Sitcom is more showbizzy and if you want to be a writer on these shows, it pays to be a natural performer. Often in the US the writers are Stand Up comedians in their own right and sometimes they do their own acts to warm up the audience for Sitcoms shot before live audiences.

Even so, there is the same method of getting started as in other TV shows. You write sample Specs, i.e. episodes of the various current shows. As in Series you also avoid writing for the obvious shows since everyone must have seen a Friends spec several thousand times by now. Similarly, you do not write for shows that are no longer current, for obvious reasons. In addition, you do not show your specs to the show you are sampling.

Again you need an agent but there are fellowships for this sort of thing. Disney runs a fellowship system where it invites submissions and the winners will go on a course and maybe get an internship on one of the shows they are doing.

All the usual rules apply:

• Go to LA.
• Get involved in the workshops, the courses, and in this case the Comedy clubs and theatres.
• Get an agent. Certain agents are more likely to deal with Sitcom writers than others, so you need to find out who specialises in what.

US Sitcoms are much more formulaic than UK sit-coms. They require one liners. They require a tightly designed style of humour. They get written around performers. They often develop from one sit-com into another. Frasier for instance is a spin off from Cheers, even though it is a very different sort of show.

This is not an area that is easy for outsiders to break into. For UK writers, you write for the UK market and let the US buy the rights and make their version in their way. Humour is notoriously parochial and unless you are American it is unlikely that you will make much headway in the US. And vice versa.

This is a growing area of TV and has more and more work for Freelancers. It used to be seen as an area where old hacks tired of the meat grind of Network TV could relax, earn a bit of money, and ease themselves into retirement. It was also seen as a place where those with stalled careers could re-establish themselves and maybe claw their way back into Network TV. But not any more.

Syndication TV is now proving a very lucrative area and is beginning to develop its own methods. Syndicated TV is TV made for the Cable and Satellite Services. It can also be taken up by the Networks and become a Network show under certain circumstances.

Baywatch is one of the most successful of these shows. It is cheap, it has thin story lines, basic characterisation, and Babes in Swim Suits. It is a Show rather than a Series. Others like Xenia:Warrior Princess or Hercules are exploring a new genre of fantasy shows and even the X-files was made like a typical show for Syndication, i.e.

• It was made in Canada.
• It was not made in LA.
• It used writers who were non-LA based.

It originally was thought to have a non-general audience of significant size, but it managed to cross over to a general audience and took off.

Syndication shows are often minority genre type shows. If you look at a bookstore and move further away from the General Fiction to the smaller genres, you will find the areas that Syndication TV comes from.

Interestingly if you look at the miniseries, Film-Series, MOW’s (Movie of The Weeks) of US TV you will also find Genre based material. Here are your Romantic Fictions, Murder Mysteries, Horror etc. But rarely will you find the sci-fi show here, or the teen and children’s shows.

Many Independent Producers in the US are looking to this area for their bread and butter. Which means you can now pitch formats, pilot scripts to them, and they are happy to look. This area does not care where you live or even where you set the show, as long as there is a legitimate commercial reason, i.e. it is cheap. Though if you have a show set in Hong Kong for instance, you want to deal with US producers who have strong Hong Kong connections, which largely means they once worked for Golden Harvest.

Independent Producers are roughly of two kinds:

• Ones with money

These are in short supply, but if you can find one who likes your project then half the battle is won.

• Ones without Money.

Those without are happy to receive anything and will go and pitch your show round the studios. They might have no other role than this. They might get themselves attached as show runners or even executive producers. They might have other sources of money than the standard Hollywood studios and thus be able to sell the show through Syndication, i.e. direct to cable networks, and finance the show that way. You should always aim to find ones that have that sort of connection. You want people who can buy options rather than give you a promise. However, if you make friends with someone you think capable of doing this then fine. You can become a producer writer team.

There are no rules here. It is much like the Independent film market. The product might never get distribution even if it is made.

TO SUM UP

The main message in Hollywood is that your presence in LA is very important. It is more important in TV than in film because films are shot wherever the location demands and the writer, having delivered the script, has very little to do with the project afterwards. The studios are interested in good scripts and they do not care where they come from.

However, if you want a career, you will have to be in LA frequently enough to take meetings and get assignments. You will get books to adapt, rewrite jobs, and if you are lucky you will get a three picture deal, where they pay you to go away and write and you promise to give them first refusal on your scripts. Sometimes you can get a deal where they put you on salary and all you do is go away and write and they have the rights over anything you write. This gives you a steady income and can be a very successful formula for a stable career.

Sometime in your Hollywood career, you are going to have to commit yourself to a long time in LA until you can happily leave without being forgotten. If you cannot live in LA, then you must establish yourself so firmly that you can have maximum impact when visiting.

In Network TV it is necessary to be in LA, though you might write your spec scripts outside. Nevertheless, even that is hard because you have to know what are the hot shows and do the research. If you write Chicago Hope specs, then you must know something about Chicago and the medical system. You must know the history of the characters, which means at least a regular viewing of the series and study of the scripts. How can you get hold of scripts if you cannot phone up a friendly sympathetic writer on the show who will let you read a lot of the scripts? It is thus, not easy to do from anywhere outside LA.

For a list of current shows, you should subscribe to Written By, the Writers’ Guild of America West’s Journal. Go to the WGA web page and find out details. http://www.wga.com

The Hollywood Creative Directory is your first choice. Here you will find listed a large section of the Hollywood Film and TV Industry. http://www.hcdonline.com E-mail: hcd@hcdonline.com

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