We’ve created a wish list for writers this holiday season of things we love or would love to have ourselves. Leuchtturm1917, MacBook Pro, Emotion Thesaurus, Casper Glow Light, ProBar Meal Replacement, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Writer’s Tears Whiskey, Ember Temperature Controlled Mug, Final Draft & Kindle Paperwhite.

There was this article written back in 2019 I read. You can read it yourself below…

http://undergrids.com/2019/04/what-are-the-odds-of-selling-a-good-screenplay/

Many of you have probably seen this already. However, there are a few points worth discussing here in wonderful post-COVID 2022.

First off, their numbers are wrong. I worked at the WGA and someone fed them the wrong number of submissions or it was some old post on the WGA website. There were 50,000 submissions maybe ten or more years ago. In 2019, there were over double that at 100,000 submissions. Today we are over 120,000. So not only did the numbers go up, but every writer’s chances of being seen under that tsunami have decreased.

Whether you are submitting your script to a competition, a producer or an agent, you have to make sure it is tight enough to get past those first round readers to make it to the decision makers.

Here are some of the things writers MUST do to overcome reader pet peeves and show they know how the industry works. Otherwise, writers face an early exit from competitions and their scripts being bounced by assistants to the “PASS” pile.

Two websites where you can find every Oscar and WGA Award script up for awards in 2022.

Once you read through the scripts of masters, then you should read every script you can get your hands on. Read from your writers group, read movies you love, read scripts people share on line. Read anything you can to build your understanding of screenwriting. What this will do is several things:

1. Grow your understanding of story structure in a screenplay format. It’s much different from reading a novel.

2. You will see what works, what doesn’t, what pays off in a story and how it is seeding throughout.

3. Show how emotion is core to a story and how to tease it out in a script.

4. You’ll find examples of great dialogue, description or sluglines and how to use them.

5. You will learn from the masters and then see how new writers are developing on their shoulders or how they are not and why their stories fail.

6. You will learn basic screenplay formatting if you don’t already know it. You’ll internalize it.

7. You’ll see what works and what doesn’t and eventually, if you read enough, you’ll come to know why.

Last year, the WGA received over 110,000 submissions for registration. 110,000!!! Now remember, a WGA registration is virtually meaningless as only a copyright is true protection, and many pros know that. So now, add in all the scripts out there floating around in Hollywood that are not registered with the WGA. We’re probably talking near two hundred thousand by now.

Here’s the thing, I never understood when I was starting out as a writer… just how much material there is that assistants, coordinators and producers have to read. 

The point is, that readers for competitions, assistants and everyone else up the chain, they need a way to filter the tidal wave of scripts crushing them. 

That is why spelling matters.