Another great question and another great answer.

As usual of course!

A line from the original post ...

"It's difficult for unproduced writers to know when to submit ..."

Makes me wonder ...

When does rewriting, rewriting, and (more) rewriting eventually become...nitpicking, that could do harm more than good to the screenplay?

I'm sure there are so many different opinions to this question but I wonder.

I've rewritten mine so many times (about a year now) that my mind has suddenly become blank.

Is that a clue?

I'm sure I could continue to nitpick this thing to pieces for another year but maybe it's time time to let it go.

Could be fear...just don't know.

Has anyone else faced this before?

I think I should let it go...

But?

Courtney, here's another situation where "I feel your pain" is a relevant response. I think we all want to believe we can write the 'perfect' script. But that just isn't possible. So it's helpful to remember that as this knowledge can help to loosen the grip of a few of our fingers on our scripts.

The other thing is this: It's critical to get the feedback from knowledgeable readers. Perhaps you have friends or professional acquaintances who have writing backgrounds. Or you go to a peer review site like our own The GITS Club. In some situations, a screenplay consultant may be the optimal choice. But it's important to receive a response that has some connection to 'reality' about what does and does not pass muster in Hwood.

A lot of GITS followers pursue screenplay competitions as a way of determining where their script stands, and hopefully open doors to Hwood.

But bottom line at some point, you just have to have faith and put your script out there.

Again: There is no perfect script. Frankly Hwood doesn't care about perfection anyhow. All they want is a great story.

Thanks for the post, Scott. I've pasted below Terry Rossio's answer to a question with regards to agents and reps. Could you comment on it? (full interview here: http://johnrobertmarlow.com/lonelykeyboard/sa__terryrossio.html)



Question:"What are some signs of a bad rep—things to watch out for?"

Terry Rossio: "When you meet an agent, if one of the first things they mention is how good they are at developing material, and giving notes, I say run. They're just giving themselves an out, a way to excuse not being able to effectively market your work. Everyone wants to be in development, because it takes the pressure off. A lot of agents give notes to help cover the fact that they haven't done anything else for their client. But if a project can't be automatically marketed and sold, it's far better to skip the make-believe that something is actually happening with the agent-rewrite, and just move on to something else.

A writer needs to have the same attitude the Coen brothers had from the beginning of their careers. "Everyone wanted to talk about the screenplay. We told them, 'No, the screenplay is finished. We've handled that. Now we need help making the movie.'"

Now you might point out, that only works if the writer has written something great, if the writer has written something that really works, that doesn't actually need changes. And my answer to that is a resounding yes. Exactly right. If the screenplay is anything less than that, the effort will fail anyway—and rightly so.

Of course, I do a disservice to all the times an agent read a draft and offered some fantastic suggestions and insights, and the writer went on to reassess their own work, and do a much-needed rewrite, and the work was vastly improved for the exchange, and then went on to sell. There is nothing wrong with that, if it happens. But that should never become the target. You can't count on co-writing something with your agent. The writer needs to be the expert on the writing. If someone fixed your work for you, with an actual great idea you missed, that should make you really pissed off, and you should endeavor for it to never happen again. The writer should be vastly more capable than any agent, or anyone else in the world, when it comes to a particular screenplay, else how could the writer ever hope to be hired?"

@George: What Rossio is describing is how I've always worked with agents. They'd get a draft, provide feedback, I'd take that into consideration, but when I said it was done, that's it - the script went out, either as a spec or writing assignment or whatever.

I think most successful, working screenwriters have a similar approach. It comes with the territory. You have to feel confident in your creative instincts.

I responded the way I did to the original question because it's one of several I've gotten in the last several months about 'young' (newer) writers trying to work out their relationship with a manager or agent. I think it's more of a manager thing - with their emergence over the last decade - because they also (often) lay themselves in as a producer on the project (which agents can't do), and part of a producer's job is to develop the script.

Thanks, Scott!