Playing The Fields
Keep his
identity secret!(Ed. Note: There’s nothing good to report on the state of our contract—and by “good” I mean both “interesting” and “positive”—and as I’m pretty busy shooting the movie, I’m turning the blog over to a long-time friend and pro writer, Jacob Sager Weinstein, who most notably wrote for The Dennis Miller Show back when it aired on HBO, and is now an author. Sadly, unlike Dennis, Jacob’s a big lefty, but I still love him. Here’s his essay on his experiences working as a cross-platform writer.)
I know what you’re thinking.
You’re thinking, “I really don’t want to know about the serious labor unrest that could change the face of the entertainment industry. No, what I really want to know is, how does writing a radio script for the BBC compare to co-writing a series of tongue-in-cheek government manuals?”
Well, today is your lucky day, If you’re reading this, it means Craig has finally decided that paying attention to his stewardship of a gazillion-dollar movie franchise is maybe a little more important than posting updates on his blog, and he’s temporarily handed over the reigns of the Artful Writer to his buddies.
Unlike some of the other guest posters he’s lined up, I can’t tell you how to be phenomenally successful in any one kind of writing. But while I’ve never been a Ted-Elliott-level success in any single field, I’ve nonetheless managed to break into a lot of them. I’ve been a staff writer for a TV show, I’ve sold a film script, I’ve co-authored three published books, I’ve been on staff at a (non-fiction) magazine, and I’ve done some freelaance writing for various humor magazines as well. So if I can’t tell you a vast amount about any one of those fields, I can, at least, tell you a little about each.
Having tried my hand in all these fields, the one general rule I’ve been able to deduce is this:
The more money is at stake, the more nervous people get. And the more nervous people get, the less they trust the writer.
With that in mind, let’s move from most-money-at-stake to least.
Film: There’s no way I could come up with any broad insight about film that Craig and/or Ted haven’t already expressed with vastly more eloquence and authority. But speaking from a strictly personal point of view, the most significant thing about film is how slow a process it is, and how much of it is out of the writer’s hands. In 2004, I was hired to do three drafts of a screenplay adaptation. From the time I signed the contract to the time I handed in my third draft, the process took about two years—an average of eight months per draft. Yet it only takes me about one month to write a draft. So what was going on the other seven months? Well, I was off working on other projects while the producer got notes from the director, got notes from his financiers, thought about his own notes, and arranged a time when he, the director and I could all sit down and discuss everybody’s notes. Plus he was no doubt doing other producery stuff, like chasing down financing.
On the one hand, that two-year process gave us all a lot of time to think about how to best turn the novel into a workable screenplay. On the other hand,it could also have given everybody time for a lot of second-guessing and over-thinking. (Fortunately, from the very beginning, there’s been a respected and strong-willed director attached to the project, so I haven’t had to contend with a dozen competing artistic visions.)
TV: The good news is, TV is much faster than film.
The bad news is, TV is much faster than film.
It’s good news because you can write something on Wednesday and have it shot on Thursday. And it’s good news because the fast turnaround gives non-writers much less time to muck around with your work. Oh, you will get rewritten, but it will be by the showrunner—a fellow writer, and quite possibly the guy who created the show in the first place. And you’ll probably be in the room when it happens. All this makes you feel much more like a driving force, and much less like a tiny cog in a vast machine.
But the speed of TV is bad news because it gives you much less time for polishing. If you write something on Wednesday and shoot it on Thursday, and then on Friday think of a much funnier punchline… Well, it’s too damn late. You’re already on to the next episode.
Radio: This one takes some explanation. In America, radio is reserved for talk shows and for music. But the UK still makes sitcoms and dramas—what we in the US would call “old-time radio shows.”
As you can imagine, it’s much cheaper to make a radio show than a TV show. So the BBC often uses its radio stations as a lab to try out ideas that may or may not become TV shows. This video clip, for example, comes from a TV show called “That Mitchell & Webb Look,” which started off as a radio show called “That Mitchell & Webb Sound.”
I wish this path existed in the US—a radio show is much cheaper to produce than a TV show, which makes everybody less nervous about taking creative risks. The radio show I sold to the BBC, for example, was a Dickensian sitcom, which is not the kind of thing you regularly see on primetime. I originally pitched it as a TV series, but it was quirky enough that they wanted to try it as a radio show, first. That wasn’t what I had hoped for when I pitched to them—but it was far better than an outright pass.
The other advantage of radio is that all special effects cost the same amount, which means my pilot script could feature start with an instance of spontaneous human combustion and end with an avalanche, all without breaking the bank.
The disadvantage of radio? There’s just not much money in it. I had to work just as hard crafting the characters and storylines of my radio pilot as I would have for a TV pilot, but for much less money.
Books: We’re now at the very bottom of the cost spectrum. Publishers don’t have to hire actors or sound technicians, and they don’t have to pay sets. They also don’t have to pay writers too much; generally speaking, an advance of about $10,000 would be fairly typical for an unknown first-time book author. That’s a fraction of WGA minimum for a script sale.
And you’re writing for a smaller audience, too. There are currently more than 80,000 copies of my books in print, which is a decent number for a print author. Yet it’s about a tenth of the viewership figures of the lowest-rated primetime TV show.
So why write books?
Because with much less money at stake, people get much less nervous. And that makes them much more willing to trust the writer.
Which means that once you sell your book, you’ll have all the time you need to write and revise it, with very little interference. (In fact, some authors feel they don’t get enough interference; Maxwell Perkins-style hands-on editor are rare nowadays.) You don’t have to navigate notes from a half-dozen different sources. You have no fear of being replaced, no need to delete your best scenes because you couldn’t get a location. Your ideas and your words just ride a river of paper straight into your readers’ brains.
And there’s one other thing that must make writing books look especially attractive to my fellow Guild members nowadays:
You never have to go on strike.
Hi Jake!
I liked your peace.
It was well written.
Of all the things you right, which do you think your best at?
Which do you like the most?
And which would you never do again except for hella monies?
Excellent article, Jake. It really is too bad radio dramas and comedies aren’t available here. Especially with as much time as people spend in traffic every day.
Thanks, One Bomb To Rule Them All.
The thing I am best at is writing responses to comments on blog posts. Take this comment. Although I am only on the second paragraph, it is already the gripping must-read response of the year. Anything could happen. Like, at any moment, I could reveal that I am really good at writing comment responses. Wait—I just did!! Didn’t see it coming, did you? BAM! That’s how good I am!
The thing I seem to keep selling is joke-y stuff. The Dennis Miller Live gig was pretty much non-stop joke-writing, my books tend to be joke-y, I’ve done a little freelance stuff for The Onion, etc. You can’t necessarily tell from my kinda dull online persona, but people seem to like paying me to write jokes. I like to think I’m equally good at other things, but it’s just easier to sell yourself in a field you’ve done before.
The thing about joke writing is, it’s very transient. 20 years from now, I don’t think anybody is going to remember the really great Bill Clinton joke I wrote for DML, or the bitingly satiric George W. Bush headline I contributed The Onion. Movies seem to have more staying power, so that’s what I like most. (Of course, in order to have staying power, a movie actually has to get made. None of my feature scripts have been produced yet; maybe I’ll have changed my mind by the time one gets to the screen.)
What would I never do again except for hella monies? Work for a psycho Hollywood boss. My DML experience was great, and I liked everybody there—but I’ve had one or two experiences at other places that I wouldn’t care to repeat.
There are several other writing “venues” which I will add to your list (if you don’t mind).
D2DVD - a feature film written at the speed of television and the financial rewards of a first paperback novel.
Live events - award shows and presentations are always scripted and go through changes right up to about a half hour before the curtain goes up - just enough time to plug the new material into the teleprompter and get the “A” pages to the production staff. You will be rewritten - by the director who cuts away from the visual joke you had planned, or the Emcee who decides his joke is funnier and more what “his audience” expects of him. The pay is appropriate to the time invested which is usually two days writing and show day.
Okay, I have a question about, hold your the nose, the money. Can you make a living as an author? I mean what kind of level of success do you need to achieve to earn a decent wage (don’t worry about a precise definition here, you get the point.) As a screenwriter, a professional, you can make a decent living without a “hit,” though it helps to have one at some point. Do authors who don’t have major “hits” make any money? I only know one author well. Well enough to ask him directly about money. He published one critically acclaimed novel, went on a speaking tour, etc., but really didn’t make any money.
Thanks in advance for your response.
If you’re that upbeat about BBC Radio I dread to think what happened with your screenplay. Did the producer beat you with his fists? Hold your head underwater until you went still? Make you watch Glenn Beck?
Thanks for posting, Jacob. A few more questions:
What about blogging? How does the blogosphere pay compare to, say, making random scrawls on typing paper and handing the results out at the bus stop?
How has consorting with the English contaminated your writing? Do you find yourself “apologising” for U.S. “civilisation” constantly? Do you eat crisps” from “packets” while “standing on line”? I certainly hope not.
You once wrote, I believe, that you followed your wife to England because it was her turn to have the job she wanted, or some such. A. Have you found her? B. You seem to be enjoying the work you’ve found in Blighty; does this annoy her? Or is she pleased that you’re not hanging around the “flat” drinking lager and eating “take-away” curries?
Good luck with all your projects!
Andy
Josh: Good point about people sitting in traffic. With the various digital satellite radio stations, I’m surprised nobody has tried to experiment on the “Music, News, and/or Talk” formula that seems to rule the airwaves.
Bill: thanks for adding info on D2DVD and live events. I’ve always wondered about those fields.
Anonymous,
That’s a fair question, and a tricky one to answer. The WGA releases statistics every year on its members’ earnings, but there’s no equivalent union for book authors, so I can’t offer you hard numbers.
But based on anecdotal evidence:
It’s much harder to be a middle class book author than a middle class screenwriters. The superstars in both fields do just fine, but a screenwriter who gets the occasional (WGA signatory) gig but never breaks out is probably doing much better, financially speaking, than the author who sells the occasional book but never racks up many sales
You sometimes hear Borders, Barnes & Noble, and other chain stores blamed for the demise of the middle-class author; either every Borders in the country stocks your book, or none of them do. I’m not sure if that’s accurate, and I don’t know how Amazon (which pretty much stocks every book ever) has changed the equation. .
Heh. Had a bad experience with the BBC, Sir Momo?
Want to share?
I just published a book (“SINCE THEN: How I Survived Everything and Lived to Tell About It” by David Crosby and Carl Gottlieb, available in Berkley paperback edition Oct. 30) It’s the sequel to “LONG TIME GONE, The Autobiography of David Crosby” which was written in 1988).
The first book was published by Doubleday in hardcover and Dell in papewrback, this one was published by G.P. Putnam in hardcover. In 18 short years, the business evolved uncomfortably. In 1988, I had a real editor and a conscientious publisher. In 2006 I had an editor who was, for all practical purposes, “a suit.” All editorial decisions were based on notes from the Marketing Department, and all marketing efforts were geared to producing a big “opening weekend.”
Publishing has become just like the movie and music business, reaching for the home run, ignoring the middle numbers and decent backlists. An Oprah appearance guarantees you a half million books sold. GUARANTEES. In fact, if you’re a publisher of a book that Ms. Oprah is having on her show, you must agree by contract to print 500,000 copies and have them available in stores on the first air date of the show!
No more tweedy guys with leather patches on their jackets, no more over-qualified women lit majors working for minimum wages reading the slush-pile and getting coffee, no more of that cozy author-publisher-agent triumverate working together to print Great Books… Just more show-biz shit.
Hi Jake,
I have nothing to offer except I think you should post more entries on your blog … once a week? C’mon!
Seriously, good stuff … I’d offer about theatre and what not, but i realize I have nothing to seriously offer in that regard … as hard as life in the midlist is on novelists, it’s far, far worse for mid-list playwrights … you get a smattering of royalites here and there and that’s it.
Which is why playwrights write other things, screenplays, novels, comics, etc … because one gets paid for that.
But blogging be free!
Jacob, it may be different for high flying Americans swanning in to steal our jobs (immigrants out!) but for lowly British youngsters like myself it’s a chore to get anything of any value made. It seems like all they’re interested in is cheap topical jokes, god awful panel shows and vehicles for stand up comedians.
If you’re Armando Iannucci you can do what you like, but from my experience (and it’s entirely possible I’m simply not very talented) they’re looking at a very narrow range of programming. I’ve had more luck in television, and I’ve had no luck in television.
The only way I have found to write creatively and get the bloody thing made is by writing for the theatre. Although, as Joshua says, creative freedom doesn’t pay your rent.
Another economic subtelty to take into account:
If you are a writer of literary fiction who has two or three generally well reviewed books, you still probably will be making almost nothing from writing. BUT: you can probably get a good and pleasant teaching job at an MFA program. Maybe even with tenure eventually. Not a bad life. There isn’t really the same career option for screenwriters— I mean, there are the film schools, and then big universities maybe hire a few adjuct professors, but there isn’t the same institutionalized system.
Was Dennis Miller always a right wing crank, or did he just lose his shit on 9/11, never to return?
JSW,
I liked your comments about the speed of TV, how it’s a double-edged sword. I’d add that TV writing teaches you, through force of necessity, economy in your writing. This is especially true in half hour comedies.
That’s the beauty and the terror of television; how to find the handful of words that will convey emotion, idea or character where you’d normally use a handful of sentences.
Cheerio, or whatever you earl greys say.
Jacob and Mike S,
Continuing to explore the income potential of writing fiction (novels):
Are you saying that there is no expectation of a reasonable living from writing fiction without the teaching aspect? Are only the authors who sell millions of copies of their works making a decent living? BTW, that’s what I see, but I don’t know for sure.
Just like the earlier poster, I know a few novelists who publish and don’t perish, but it’s not because they publish. Their primary income comes not from publishing novels. I know one successful novelist and he is “famous” and in that big name category and does earn a great living.
So, are there inbetweeners? Are there novelists who write (and don’t necessarily teach) and who aren’t the heavy hitters that make a living at it. I see in the WGAw publications I read that many members write novels, too. Maybe, they have an insight into this question.
Andy B wrote:
I would definitely recommend the random-scrawl-at-a-bus-station option. It’s vastly more profitable.
The exception is if your blog happens to focus on a topic linked to one of the most expense Google ad keywords. If you are a top-rated blog about (say) auto insurance, you can use google ads and make a nice little profit. (It is no coincidence that the only pages in my blog to ever make me any real money were my poems based on the most expensive Google adwords.)
If you are just a general-purpose blogger, and you don’t have a massive Penny-Arcade-level readership, then odds are your blog’s only real commercial value is as a promotional venue for something else. (Obviously, it may have non-commercial value as well—personal expression, keeping in touch with friends, etc.)
I have definitely been somewhat contaminated. When somebody says “chips,” the first thing I think of are chunky-cut French fries. Only recently, I was soundly ridiculed by an Americna friend for writing “pyjamas” when I meant “pajamas.”
Thanks—same to you! (Unless any of your projects are in competition with mine. Then I hope you get run over by a lorry.)
Carl, thanks for sharing your experiences. Clearly, when you’ve got David Crosby co-writing a book with the screenwriter of JAWS and THE JERK, you’re on a much higher rung of the publishing world than I was. It’s interesting (and a bit disheartening) to hear about the changes you witnessed over that 18-year period.
This may be a case where being on a lower rung is better; we actually had no unwanted interference from the Marketing Department in the writing process. Maybe we were low-profile enough to fly under that radar.
Incidentally, we ended up benefitting from the Borders/ Barnes & Noble effect. Both chains were looking for books to put on their “If You Like Harry Potter, You Might Also Like…” tables over the summer, which resulted in our publisher doing a pretty big reprinting of The Government Manual for New Wizards.
Fair cop, guv.
I realized at one point that I was never going to be a blogging superstar unless (a) I posted something every day, day in and day out, or (b) my career took off and I became famous for something other than blogging. The problem is that going for (a) would be so time consuming it would pretty much preclude (b). So I decided I’d spend most of my writing time on books and/or screenplays, and just post when I had something to post about…
Interesting. I know Tom Stoppard has said that he actually makes more money from a play than from a screenplay, but then, he’s Tom Stoppard. It’s interesting to hear the view from the not-quite-Tom-Stoppard level of success.
That’s interesting. For what it’s worth, my BBC Radio experience was a couple years ago. Things may have changed since then. (And, even then, I sold the pilot script but it never actually got made. Maybe it would have gotten made if it was in panel show form…)
James wrote
First off, I would never call Dennis a crank. He’s a professional entertainer, which means that it’s his job to express his opinions in the most entertaining way possible, rather than the most nuanced or even the most persuasive way. Behind the rhetorical fireworks there is actually a well-thought out political philosophy (albeit one I disagree with completely.)
Anyway, I think Dennis’ politics had been slowly moving rightward even before 9/11. But 9/11 certainly crystallized it.
Ugo wrote:
Absolutely.
Also (at least in my case) it taught me to be merciless in revision. Each week, we’d probably write 500 to 1000 monologue jokes, or which maybe 10 would actually make it onto the show. You learned pretty quickly not to be too precious about anything you wrote.
Yes, this is a very tough time for novelists. The “mid-list” group is suffering.
On the other hand, you can always surprise the market experts.
But the real reason to write novels is that language is as close to a disintermediated relationship with the audiences’/readers’ consciousnesses as we can have.
That and we never have to worry about all the good consonants being represented by CAA, nor the ink sulking in a trailer.
What does the color of a super-hero’s mask say about their character?
Signed,
Curious-in-Detroit
P.S. a Red mask seems so Bono-fadish.
Dear Jacob,
Lovely to see you here. Please give your charming wife my regards.
And Carl(/B>,
If Crosby needs another liver transplant soon I bet that will kick sales through the roof. So is he going on OPRAH to shill the book?
Best,
C…
I’m glad you’re a lefty, Jake, but come right for my campaign.
Barack
Jacob,
Don’t you feel it’s inflamatory to sell your wizard book in the Mormon state?
Great article, Jake. And I have to say, it’s incredibly refreshing to read a blog run by writers in the industry. Too often it seems like the scripts involved in film and TV get glossed over, when in fact they make or break every single production I’ve ever seen. Good luck in the negotiations.
when will Craig be back?