
Just fucking figure it out - endlessvoid94
http://www.scriptmag.com/2010/10/29/primetime-juggling-writing-and-a-job-figure-it-out/
======
gamble
I know nothing about the entertainment industry, but this idea of 'putting in
your dues' by working your way up from a menial position based on personal
relationships has always seemed naive. Either you can do something or you
can't, and working as a dogsbody isn't going to impart those skills.

This advice seems like the equivalent of telling someone who wants to be a
game programmer to start in the QA department. You're better off just becoming
a programmer. Create a game. Someone with a kick-ass demo is going to get ten
times as many interviews as a guy who spends the same time pumping his
connections.

Maybe I'm naive about the way television works, but if I wanted to be a writer
in TV I'd start by trying to write something that was so good, people couldn't
ignore me. And if I couldn't find someone to produce it, I would try to
produce it myself. More than one career started with a film that only cost a
few thousand dollars to produce. And if it didn't work out, at least I'd have
spent the time doing something creative and productive rather than wasting my
life fetching coffee and dry cleaning.

~~~
rauljara
"I know nothing about the entertainment industry..."

Then maybe you shouldn't speak about it as if you do. I have heard the same
advice in this article from a number of people working as tv writers (either
reading articles, or as part of my mfa in creative writing), and it does seem
like the vast majority of them only got where they are by "working their way
up". The idea that you can just make something good enough that people can't
ignore it is, in fact, the view that is hopelessly naive. It isn't like the
internet where you can easily achieve massive distribution. You have to get it
in the hands of a very small number of people who are swamped by an incredibly
large number of people in the exact same situation as you.

The amount of good content that is generated by writers is overwhelming and,
in fact, incredibly easy to ignore. Not saying you can't point to success
stories of people who produced their own stuff. You can just point to more
stories of people who lost a lot of money producing their own stuff and have
nothing to show for it. Building relationships certainly seems to be a more
reliable way to go about breaking into the industry.

~~~
DannoHung
> The amount of good content that is generated by writers is overwhelming and,
> in fact, incredibly easy to ignore. Not saying you can't point to success
> stories of people who produced their own stuff. You can just point to more
> stories of people who lost a lot of money producing their own stuff and have
> nothing to show for it. Building relationships certainly seems to be a more
> reliable way to go about breaking into the industry.

Obviously, the answer is to write terrible shit, because no one is putting any
of that heaping pile of good content into consumable products.

~~~
mechanical_fish
As many famous screenwriters have been at pains to point out, a movie is a
very, very large collaborative enterprise by at least a dozen _departments_
full of people, the leader of any one of which can make or break the results.

What this means is: There are a lot of bad movies made from good scripts.
Don't assume that the quality of the average finished film is representative
of the quality of the average script, let alone of the skill of the average
writer (who is, after all, operating under many, many constraints).

~~~
billswift
That's nothing new. Read what Heinlein has to say about the making of
_Destination Moon_ in 1949 in his Guest of Honor Speech at the Rio de Janeiro
Movie Festival twenty years later. It was published in the posthumous tribute
collection, _Requiem_.

------
daniel-cussen
I've always sort of admired people in the entertainment industry for their
ambition and determination. Someone who is taking time off studying CS at
Stanford and trying to make a company work is not taking a risk of remotely
the same magnitude as someone dropping out of highschool, getting a GED, and
working in the music industry
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kesha#Childhood_and_youth>).

If you're a programmer, you have so much to bank on (the CS knowledge/degree)
and even if you fail people will be pretty understanding. Try getting a good
job in any industry with music skills and a GED.

At the end of the day, a technical stopout founder is taking a smaller risk
(really, losing the college experience) for a bigger potential reward
(billions) and attractive intermediate rewards (talent acquisition). And
frankly, the odds of making it big as a programmer (industry celebrity-big)
are not very different from the odds of making it big as a musician (standard
celebrity-big).

~~~
palish
_Kesha described herself in an interview as being "very studious" in high
school; she would drive to Belmont University to listen in on Cold War history
classes after school and achieved "near perfect" SAT scores.[7] However, she
dropped out at age seventeen and earned her GED afterward.[9] She left school
after being convinced by Dr. Luke and Max Martin to return to Los Angeles to
pursue a music career. They had received Kesha's demo after Pebe passed it to
Samantha Cox, senior director of writer/publisher relations at BMI, and were
impressed._

Why would she pass up that kind of opportunity? If it didn't work out, she
could always go back to college.

~~~
gruseom
Ha. A friend of my father-in-law used to be a Montreal hipster. She and her
husband ran a folk club (folk was the indie rock of the day) and Robert
Zimmerman came through before he'd changed his name to Bob Dylan. His show was
ok. Annette told him, "Kid, you need something to fall back on. Go back to
college!" She was fond of recounting her spectacularly wrong moments. (The
other was when Leonard Cohen played _Suzanne_ for her and she told him it was
dreck and asked him who wrote it.)

------
postfuturist
Best advice in this article: stop driving and take public transport. This
applies to hackers as well as writers--really, anyone who can do creative /
useful work on a laptop. If a typical commute is 30 minutes by car or 1 hour
by public transportation, you may feel like you are losing an hour a day
leaving your car at home, but you are actually gaining an hour of time if you
bring your laptop, assuming you want to spend at least 2 hours a day working
on things on your laptop outside work. Other upsides: cheaper, less stress,
safer, better for the environment.

~~~
nostrademons
Or move closer to work.

When I was in Boston, I had an hour commute, half by car and half by train.
Yeah, I could read a book on the train. It was still a pain in the ass, and I
could be doing much more productive things at home.

When I moved out to Silicon Valley, my #1 priority for deciding where to live
was "It must be within 15 minutes of work." I ended up getting a place that's
5 minutes by car or 15 minutes by bike from work. It was probably one of the
best decisions I made moving out here. Now I can roll out of bed and into
work, and when I leave work, I'm home and can do whatever I want.

------
gatsby
Loved this message. Some of the most successful people I know fucking figured
it out and just got shit done. Here on HN, we're exposed to countless stories
of people with five kids getting shit done, and introverts making sales and
getting shit done, and people with no money finding money to get shit done.

Anyone can think of 100 excuses to not push forward, but in the end, we all
have problems, failures, and setbacks, and a lot of life is about silencing
our own excuses, fucking figuring it out, and plowing ahead.

------
cloudbrain
Disclaimer: Everything I know about Hollywood I learned from watching
Entourage...

A big difference between breaking in to the script writing world and breaking
in to the web app / internet startup world is the amount of effort required to
evaluate your work.

A new web app / start up can be evaluated in a few seconds. We do it all day
long on this website ("Check out my new project...").

A new script for a movie or show probably takes a few hours to read (excluding
Michael Bay movies...). That's a huge commitment to ask of someone. You always
see producers / director being asked to "read my script". That's a lot of
work.

So, my guess is that all the work to start at the bottom and build
relationships is required because the people you need help from (producers /
directors etc.) need to like you before they will invest the 3 hours in
reading your script. Michael Arrington doesn't need to like you to take 5
seconds to look at your MVP page.

~~~
ruang
You could make a 5-minute trailer and put it up on YouTube.

------
chegra84
This guy doesn't even include Pareto principle in his guide to success. This
guy has us working most of our time getting coffee.

I say, better to write the script without a job and produce a 2 min trailer
with your friends and show a couple people, than to work for months serving
coffee that you hate and only to work on a script you can't complete.

[I don't support balls to the walls philosophy, only do stuff that gets
results, be ruthless about efficiency. Activity is not productivity.]

~~~
dasil003
The Pareto principal is relatively easily applied by young programmers, but
how can young screenwriters apply it? It's an industry of relationships. If
they are a great writer they might get attention, or their brilliant script
might never be read. If they aren't actually talking to people in the industry
they'll never know, and if they aren't actually working in the industry the
only way to talk people is to randomly harass them so their first impression
of you is annoyance. Under that lens, getting people coffee might actually be
the best 20% for an entry-level screenwriter.

------
ilamont
Reminds me of something I read about the advent of cheap disk-based digital
cameras with video capabilities and iMovie when they came out in the early to
mid 2000s. The NYT or Rolling Stone or some other magazine interviewed a
couple of documentary directors about how they were using these tools to test
out ideas or do simple, short pieces.

One of the directors basically said now that these tools were available,
people who wanted to break into the industry no longer had an excuse to not
make movies. "Lack of available time" might be considered a fallback, but as
TFA points out, getting up an hour earlier every day, multitasking during your
commute, or switching off the damn TV can work wonders.

~~~
joezydeco
You know it's funny you mention that, because I just finished reading an AV
Club interview with the producers of the original Saw movies. It was one thing
to have a script passed around from place to place, but these guys went the
extra step and made a 5-minute short to demonstrate the concept.

Telling people you're talented and _showing them_ you're talented are two
different things, and it's surprising how few people take that one step to get
into the latter category. And sometimes it's not that difficult to actually
do.

~~~
gregpilling
So you are suggesting that people who want to make movies should create a
trailer as a MVP? interesting concept.

~~~
joezydeco
From the interview:

 _"When we came to L.A., we had our script in one hand and this DVD in the
other hand. People liked the script, but they loved the DVD. As you quickly
find out in Los Angeles, everybody’s got severe ADD. Reading a script is
fairly boring—it’s a nightmarish task. Whereas people loved to be able to put
the DVD in..."_

I used to be in a business similar to the film business where everyone and
their brother had a winning concept, but the people that hand-built a
prototype in their garage got the meetings. People are visual creatures,
reading about a concept isn't the same as actually touching it.

------
ChristianMarks
The Paris Review ran a series of interviews with successful writers. The one
thing they had in common was a fixed, immutable writing schedule. A schedule
impervious to deaths of family members (some will take offense to this, but
writers aren't necessarily nice people--I grew up with one).

I'm reminded of an alt.writers post from the annals of USENET.

"... My opinion is that if you want to be a good novelist, start by being a
bad novelist, not by becoming a good magazine article writer. Start at the top
and work down -- don't start at the bottom and work up.

On the other hand, I know people for whom "start small" has worked. But it
doesn't for me."

------
callmeed
Reminds me of Gary V's line: "stop watching 'effing Lost"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhqZ0RU95d4>

~~~
CamperBob
Believe me, that's at the top of my list of Things to Do Right After I Get My
Time Machine Working. Go back and invest in Apple and Microsoft, bet on the
Saints to win the Super Bowl, and try my best to convince the LOST writers
that they'd be better off playing World of Warcraft instead.

------
andysinclair
Yes, you need to just find the time to write and get on with it.

For example I am sitting here on a Saturday evening writing an article on my
laptop (as well as occasionally browsing the net!). I could be watching TV or
playing computer games or something else, but I am writing.

You need to dedicate time to write, and once you start you will find it easier
and easier, and generally quicker and quicker to write. As Nike used to say,
Just Do It.

~~~
Tichy
You're so good.

~~~
andysinclair
No need for sarcasm. I was just making the point that getting something done
requires commitment and often sacrifice.

~~~
josefresco
Try sacrificing something real like time with your family and let me know how
it feels. Not everyone has regular TV time to replace.

------
Tichy
So if somebody comes up with the greatest script on earth, but doesn't work 17
hours a day as a slave for some TV producer, his script will never be made?

~~~
apl
Correct, correct, correct.

Television (and music and film, for that matter) are hardly a meritocracy.
What ends up on screens and CDs isn't determined by quality, at least not
primarily. There are fantastic scripts out there, masterpieces that will never
get made. Crap gets turned into two-hundred million dollar blockbusters.

[EDIT: This gets voted down why exactly?]

~~~
mbateman
Because I don't believe that there are fantastic scripts out there not getting
made. The crap we see is the best there is, sadly. (I have several friends in
the movie industry.)

~~~
jamesbritt
I read this in the article, " You have to be an amazing writer, the best
writer people have ever read… and you have to have a large Rolodex of
personal/professional contacts who will hire you, rehire you, support you,
recommend you."

Based on what I see on TV I have to believe that the Rolodex counts for far
more than the writing skill because there's a ton of crap getting produced.

On the bright side, there's way more stuff than I can reasonably keep up with,
so the relatively small amount of good stuff is maybe about enough.

~~~
toolate
"Based on what I see on TV I have to believe that the Rolodex counts for far
more than the writing skill because there's a ton of crap getting produced."

Like, for example, "Reality Binge" or "Celebrity Drive-By"? Which happen to be
the author's two shows (<http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1941257/>).

~~~
jamesbritt
Not only haven't I seen those shows, I've never even heard of them before.

Based on the titles, though, I would hazard a guess that they would trigger my
Crap-o-meter.

But as another poster pointed out, "crap" depends on your goals. If eyeballs
and ad revenue are the metric, maybe these shows are models of quality.

Discussions on "How to be Successful in $INDUSTRY" really need to clarify the
meaning of "successful."

For some, the prospect of selling scripts so long as they are in the realm of
low double-digit-IQ appeal may not be considered a win, while others might see
that as hitting pay dirt. Either way, you should know before following
someone's career advice where it will lead.

------
chipsy
A recurring problem with the creative media industries is that the path from
initial concepts to audience awareness is quite lengthy and convoluted. Even
great creative products tend to have a preferred niche, and rarely is the
marketing information available to nail down niche audiences for a big launch
day.

But these industries are still mostly focused around big launches, because
they have to completely reorganize with smaller budgets to attack the long
tail. Music, comics, and writing have all made some progress towards this
reorganization since both their production and marginal costs in digital form
are low, so there's a great opening for the non-pop genres. Games are a bit
less so, and video probably the least. But what's slowing this process down
the most right now is that a niche audience has to be built from scratch, on a
per-creator basis.

So either you work within the system and hope for a big door-opening break, or
you go completely indie and bootstrap your entire business model, customers,
etc. from nothing - which effectively means that even if you are indie, you
still need to find a bandwagon to jump onto, or you'll probably never get a
critical mass of interest.

I suspect that there's a business in providing aggregation mechanisms for
untapped genres; I've just started building something along these lines in the
last few days :)

------
frederickcook
A corollary to the entrepreneur's mantra, JFDI:
[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/19/what-makes-
an-...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/19/what-makes-an-
entrepreneur-four-lettersjfdi/)

------
mhb
Or _revealed preference_ sans expletives:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference>

------
shawnzizzo
I love the message and the attitude in this article. Although it's about
writing in the entertainment industry, I like that it's part of the Hacker
News list. The point of this article (To get where you want, you have to make
sacrifices and work your ass off) is applicable across anything in life. As a
hacker, as an athlete as a business person, etc.

This is hard to do. Why do you think there's such a short list of people that
are absolute "guns" at their trade?

------
coffee
This snippet basically sum's it for me:

"Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it’s lonely. Yes, you give up many other things that are
important to you. But that’s what being an [entrepreneur] is."

------
njharman
similar thought to jffio is behind why i try remember to tell people "because
i don't make time" in stead of "i dont have time" when they ask why i havent
started/finished the projects i talk about.

making time aka passion, drive, determination is major factor in peoples
"sucess"

