[…] Nobody: Does this mean most people or literally nobody? Like 100% of the people who have heard the idea or read the script did not respond favorably? If it is the former, I don’t think that would persuade me to stop. If, however, it was every single person, especially if they were part of my reader’s …read more […]

I can relate to this. Last year I made it a goal to write two scripts (six months per script). The first was a sci-fi drama about competitive eating as sport. Everyone liked the concept but didn't think a movie like that would ultimately play well with audiences. I already understood this; I wrote it, as I told them, because I *had* to. My next project was an action-thriller, closer to what the mainstream wants. That's the one I'm pushing to sell, but the other script still exists -- I managed to birth two different kinds of passion projects (I care about them equally). So I say write what you want, but be willing to supply what's in demand. Your foot in the door could be a script that's not your usual bag but makes the gatekeepers say, "You're in." After that, who knows? When they ask what else you've been working on... There are myriad writers -- Sorkin, Tarantino, Rodriguez, the Wachowskis -- who wrote the scripts they felt passionately about, but only after achieving success with more regular, mainstream fare were they able to say, "Hey, I got this other thing, been workin' on it for years. Wanna hear about it?" Of course they do... now.

How about the reverse -- because I've lived through it. What do you do if you off-handedly toss out an idea for a story you're not overly passionate about and everyone jumps on it and wants you to write it. How do you motivate yourself to write it?

There are lots of reasons why people don't warm up to movie ideas. I remind myself that Harry Potter was rejected by seven publishers, and then Arthur A. Irvine Books took a chance... and if a woman on the dole can get richer than the Queen, only after being rejected multiple times, then the powers that be don't know what they are looking at all the time. Some things are execution dependent. How about this idea: We'll make a TV show about a teenage girl who goes around helping people, and she can fly. No wings. She will just fly around instead of taking the bus. Oh yeah, she is a nun. We'll call it "The Flying Nun". It worked. It got made, and Sally Field launched her career. How about this: The movie will start off with ape men screaming and killing for fifteen minutes, and then jump 4 million years into the future with people in space for twenty minutes of screen time, and then a a jump of 2 years with an entire new cast of two guys and a talking computer on a deep space mission. The computer will kill one guy, but the other guy turns it off before leaving the space craft. He goes on a journey, hard to explain. Yes, I helped adapt the screenplay and I want to direct, but I don't know how the film will end. I will figure that out while we are shooting. Trust me. We will call it 2001: A Space Odyssey. How about pitching Pulp Fiction. "Oh yeah, one of the anti-heroes will get killed, but he will be back in the film at the end because, well, I'll just show the film out of sequence and the audience will go along for the ride." The Flying Nun was a success. The other examples were incredible successes, but would you respond to the pitches with passion? I wouldn't. Yet I have both films in my top ten and Harry Potter in my top ten, and I'm not alone. Of course many ideas are just not exciting, like my first script. It was a boring zombie screenplay. Not bad, but nobody responded to it passionately. It would have been great in 1977.

Help, I've got an ugly baby. Should I stop loving it because the rest of the world doesn't like it? Hell NO! Aka, write whatever you want and love your creative baby, but don't expect that every script/story will be liked by the majority of people. Every artist is obliged to follow their passion. Only in doing so, you will be able to fully develop yourself. Some ideas will be commercial viable and some not. If Edvard Munch and many more artists would only make what everybody else likes, their work would never exist. If you are very eager to share your story with an audience, you might think of putting the story in another form. I was thinking of a novel, a short story of a poem. These days, anyone can publish a novel by self publication.