Stories from screenwriting - Part two
You couldn't write it
In Part One I ended with the line that took me the longest to admit: that the whole system is rigged against writers. This isn’t a call for sympathy. It’s simply an attempt to describe, as honestly as I can, how screenwriting actually works from the inside — an odd combination of confidence and guesswork, glamour and grind, extraordinary access and very little power. What follows isn’t a list of grievances, but a set of observations: the good, the bad, the absurd, and the reasons so many writers quietly keep going long after they’ve realised how unlikely the odds really are.
The process usually begins with a speculative screenplay — a script you write because you want to write it, not because anyone has commissioned you to do so. The truth is, these scripts rarely sell and even more rarely get made. Instead, they function as a kind of calling card: like a business card, but one that takes months — sometimes years — to produce.
Beginner’s luck meant that our first spec did attract a lot of interest. But as I mentioned in Part One, Hitler wasn’t selling that year. (link)
More often than not, the way it goes is this: either you or your agent sends the script to heads of development at film companies. If they like your writing — not necessarily the script itself — they may ask you to pitch an idea. If they like the pitch, they’ll ask for a treatment (a prose synopsis of the story). If they like that, they may commission a script.
I want to pause here, because this is the point at which one crucial truth becomes clear:
Nobody knows what will work.
They know what has worked, and they want more of it — just not exactly the same thing. One year, everyone wanted another Blair Witch Project that wasn’t The Blair Witch Project. Which is, of course, impossible. What made that film successful was precisely that it was one of a kind.
Even when a producer likes a pitch, they can’t know whether it will translate into a strong screenplay. They may — or may not — be able to recognise good writing. But whether it will work as a film is impossible to say at that stage, because a script is only one part of a much larger package: director, cast, crew, budget.
And until that package exists, they don’t know whether they’ll be able to raise the millions needed to finance it. And even when the finance is in place — sometimes with A-list actors attached — nobody knows whether the finished film will succeed. Star names help, but they can’t turn a weak script into a strong one. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
Which brings me back to the beginning: nobody really knows what will work. At least, not for sure.
That uncertainty means that every single step carries risk. Enormous risk. So how do producers manage it? By spreading it. They keep a slate of projects in development at all times. When you’re commissioned to write a script, yours is only one of many. Some projects fall away after the treatment stage. Others are dropped after a first or second draft. A few make it to final draft. Fewer still reach pre-production. And once principal photography begins, barring disaster, a film will usually get made.
If you’re thinking that the writer absorbs most of that risk, you’d be right.
Although screenwriting fees can look generous on paper, the reality is that much of the money is paid in stages — with the largest payments arriving only if the project reaches milestones that often never materialise. Delivery fees come early; the real money arrives on the first day of principal photography.
Which, more often than you’d think, never comes.
The Money
Picture a producer with a big chocolate cake. The writer is the first guest at the party, eyeing that cake. But the producer has no idea how many more people are coming. So the writer gets the thinnest slice imaginable. It’s not cruelty; it’s that if the producer hands out big slices early on, there might be no cake left to finish the film.
So the deal is this: you get a small fee upfront, paid in little bits at each draft stage. The big money — or what they promise will be big money — only arrives if the film actually goes into production. And if it doesn’t? That promised slice of profits never materialises.
In the end, they’ll tell you the credit is the real prize. And it’s true that each credit nudges you up the ladder. But credits don’t pay the rent, and they certainly don’t make up for a cake slice that might never arrive.
The Grind (90%)
Being a screenwriter is 90% grind and 10% magic. And somehow, that 10% feels like just enough to keep you going.
Like most writers, you spend endless hours at your computer. You write, rewrite, and rewrite again. It would be lonely, except the characters start to feel so real you sometimes wonder if you’re living in a parallel universe. After each draft come meetings with producers and, inevitably, feedback.
Ah yes — feedback.
This can be brutal. It can feel like giving birth to a beautiful baby, only to be told it’s the ugliest child anyone has ever seen. Some producers don’t mince words. Others will tear a script apart, leave the entrails on the floor, and head out the door. The kinder ones deliver the famous shit sandwich: praise, devastation, praise. At least that version doesn’t break your fragile heart — and sometimes, it’s actually useful.
Meetings can last all day, sometimes for several days in a row, and they’re exhausting. I remember sofas so comfortable that by mid-afternoon I was sliding sideways, genuinely in danger of falling asleep.
Writing for television brought its own particular challenges. Notes often came from multiple producers, and they weren’t always compatible. A favourite was being asked to remove a storyline in one draft, only to be told in the next that we were “missing a trick” — and invited to put back the very strand we’d been told to cut. This was delivered without a flicker of irony.
Some producers were frustrated writers. They’d opted for the security of a salary, but still wanted to meddle with scripts — often making them worse. It was hard not to notice that they were well paid for this, while someone else took the risk.
Meanwhile, you have to keep pitching, because you never know when your next job will come. And you have to keep working, because the longer a script takes, the lower and lower your effective hourly rate becomes. You don’t get paid more for taking longer — you get paid the same.
Then there are the constraints on your creativity. No red-haired characters, because it limits casting options. No setting a story in Wales, because “no one will relate to it”. No romantic lead who’s a dentist, because nobody likes dentists. Budget restrictions mean fewer locations, fewer speaking roles — and absolutely no smashing up cars.
Briefs often come as “this meets that”: Jaws in space, for example. I can just about understand that. Less clear was the request for Touching the Void meets Moulin Rouge. A mountain disaster movie… as a musical?
One film company told us they wanted to “put Kazakhstan on the map”. We met in a very posh London hotel and drank prosecco while the producer described the lead female character. She sounded cold, manipulative, and frankly unpleasant. When I asked if she was the villain, he was astonished. No, he said — she was the romantic lead- strong and aspirational.
All of this — the grind, the notes, the meetings, the compromises — makes up a screenwriter’s working life.
The Magic (10%)
Remember the 10% magic — the 10% that keeps you going, when the doubts set in?
For me, the magic was in the research. It could mean stepping into the underground tunnels that run beneath the streets of Prague, the air cold enough to feel ancient. Or in the Czech countryside, walking through deserted chateaux, chandeliers still hanging above dusty ballrooms, as if the owners had been hounded out moments before.
It meant spending a day with the FBI, learning how to profile a serial killer or coax a confession out of a suspect with their favourite fast food. It meant wearing a SWAT jacket that hung off me like borrowed armour, and firing a Glock — terrifying, and loud enough that my ears rang for days.
Research for a script about a deadly virus meant consulting epidemiologists and asking how, exactly, a non-scientist might invent a fictional virus that wouldn’t immediately be laughed out of the lab.
These moments were astonishing. They opened doors into worlds I’d never have entered otherwise. And at the very end of all that work — if luck and circumstance aligned — there was the quiet, almost unreal moment of seeing something I’d written come alive onscreen. It was fun, inspiring, creative work — and even though I wasn’t paid a king’s ransom, simply being paid to write never stopped feeling like a dream come true.
That’s the magic.
The Virus Script
But back to that deadly virus.
It was 2020, and I’d just completed a script for a dark thriller in which a deadly virus was the antagonist. Beyond scientists and doctors, most people knew very little about viruses then — where they came from, how they spread, how quickly they could change everything.
When the first reports began to surface in January, I watched with growing horror as life started to imitate art. Those around me thought I was imagining things, overreacting. But I knew how a zoonotic virus worked. I’d spent time with those epidemiologists. I’d asked the questions. I’d done the research.
The virus behaved almost exactly as I’d written it. And I watched, stunned, as it began to shut down the world.
As for that screenplay, it’s sitting on a shelf somewhere, quietly gathering dust — a fictional virus killed off by a real one.
You couldn’t write it.
And so I decided to take a break.
Hi, I’m Carole. I’m a somatic life coach and a writer, currently working on my first novel after many years in screenwriting. If you’d like to follow my writing journey — the drafts, the doubts and the unexpected turns — you can find me over on My Novel Year Thanks so much for reading.