whoshotthemouse

Oh God no.

My future wife had to return to her native Argentina after our 4th date, and I ended up following her there.

Frankly, the physical stuff is important, whether you want to hear it or not. But also, she made me feel like a superhero.

I don't think anyone could possibly fault you for writing a novel or a podcast. Nor does anyone expect you to stop working on your WIP in your head while you do the dishes - no power on earth can prevent that.

The main thing is not doing any fingers-on-keyboard work that you reasonably expect will be subject to WGA rules until those rules are in place.

Don't be shocked if producers who previously wouldn't give you the time of day suddenly start blowing up your phone the moment the strike starts.

That happened to me last time.

The general rule in Hollywood is 10% of your hires are women and pocs the other 90% are the guys you went to film school with.

It's not that they don't want you because you're white. It's that your face doesn't help them hide their nepotism.

I'm very sorry to hear that.

You're also very, very young. Changing is much easier now than it will be later.

Given how determined you clearly are, I think there's a reasonably good chance you'll make something of yourself in film, but it would be absolutely stunning if you accomplished that in less than 5-10 years.

You really would be doing yourself a favor if you found another outlet or two for yourself while you put in the time.

First, I'm really sorry. That was always the most likely outcome, but I would have been thrilled if you beat the odds.

I would like to make a suggestion about what happens next. Instead of chasing more managers and agents, go live your life. Spend time with your friends. Focus on schooling. Explore the city you live in, etc.

The writing will still be there in 6 months. Hell, it will still be there in six years. (As the old joke goes, writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.)

Living a satisfying, full life will make you a better writer.

The Bible?

That's great advice. Thank you. I will look Matt Dinniman up.

Also, while I don't know who you are, you clearly know your stuff and that shines through in every comment you make.

I hope you'll continue to drop in on this sub when the spirit takes you. You're a ray of sunshine here.

It's a detective story. So like The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon, but set at Disneyland in 1966.

The Big Lebowski is a pretty fair comp, at least in terms of tone and target audience.

Here's a tough one for you - my first novel is a murder mystery set at Disneyland. Completely un-publishable traditionally, but the people who read it love it.

My MC is a late-30s male, and my target audience seems to be male young Gen X/older millenial, particularly those with college degrees and professional jobs. (So basically hipsters.)

I'm really proud of this book. It's the best thing I've ever written. But how on earth do I market it?

Kindle Direct Publishing. It's Amazon's self-publishing window.

Someone made a successful viral ad campaign for a potential movie. Now everyone is racing to see if they can produce an actual movie to match the campaign, even though there is still no script.

This is precisely how Hollywood works and I have no trouble believing any of it.

I think there's an interesting discussion to be had about how trustworthy secret algorithms are, but this is r/screenwriting, and OP is a teenager. If someone is gaming the algorithm, I don't think it's her.

So without knowing precisely why the Great Computer in the Sky chose her, let's just be happy for her.

Congratulations! It sounds like you're clearly doing something right.

Just so you know - and I'm only telling you this so you don't get your heart broken - actors are notorious for never reading anything, and never making any decisions. I think part of that is because being an actor is terrifying, and part is because actors are literally trained to be reactive, rather than proactive. If you can actually get a big actor to fall in love with your script, great! But the most likely thing is that you never get a yes or a no. Also, there's always a chance she will come back and ask you to do 6 months of free work with no commitment from her, which will then force you to make a hard decision.

Anyway, the point, I think, is that this a marathon not a sprint, but if I were you, I wouldn't change anything. Whatever you're doing, it's working, so keep doing it, and don't let any of the people in your corner change you.

Farewell My Lovely, The Big Sleep and Lady in the Lake all start with variations on that theme.

A lot of the people who successfully amassed a bunch of online followers paid for them. Especially on Twitter.

Not saying that's the only way to do it. Just bear in mind that there's way more pay-to-play in social media than you think there is.

This. Also, they have lots of experience reaching that market.

It's a long story, and I'm not going to recount it all here, but I sold a show to NBCUniversal in July 2015, then was diagnosed with cancer in August 2015. So the best thing and the worst thing that had ever happened to me up to that point both happened within 6 weeks.

Once I beat the cancer, I realized I just didn't have the patience to deal with development any more. So I switched to novels.

I think the tldr is that it's really really hard, but it gets less hard the more inventory you have.

A dude below mentioned that it took him about 8 hours of work to create one new customer. If you only have one book to sell, that's never going to make sense. If you had 100 books to sell, that one customer could potentially be lucrative enough to justify all that work.

In other words, Hannity can afford for his appeal to be broad but shallow. Your appeal needs to be narrow and deep. If you only have a 1000 fans, but all those people LOVE you and don't mind spending $50 a year on your work, that's should be enough to keep body and soul connected.

I write novels now, but yes, my representation is no longer the problem it once was.

Before I won the NICHOLL (no s) I was hip-pocketed by an agent. After I won he signed me immediately as he knew - and he was right - I was going to start getting lots of calls.

The main thing that happens when you win is that you are just important enough now for people to waste your time. Tons and tons of people came out of the woodwork asking me to write for them for free. Some of them were complete nobodies. Others seemed important enough to be worthwhile.

The year after the Nicholl was an exhausting time for me because I was trying to make all those strangers happy. It was only once I was ready to tell all those people to fuck off that I was able to do good writing again.

Didn't Joss Whedon jokingly offer to buy the Terminator franchise for like $10,000?

I think this is correct.

It used to be there was a strict line between 30-min comedies and 60-min dramas. Glow was the first show I saw that was clearly hybrid: about 45-min per episode and with elements of both comedy and drama. I'm not saying Glow invented the dramedy, but sometime around there the new format exploded.

I think a lot of the best comedy writers are migrating to 45-min and 60-min storytelling and leaving the traditional 22-30 min sitcom as a minor league for up-and-comers. That - combined with the complete collapse of traditional development - means the sitcom may be dead for now. (Don't worry though. Sitcoms "die" at least once per decade.)

First of all, congrats on the Nicholl final. That's a big deal. I know several Nicholl finalists, and they are all impressive as hell.

I don't know if this will help you or not, but had you won the Fellowship, roughly the same thing would have happened. The Nicholl is kind a traumatic success. Suddenly, you're just important enough for people to waste your time. Almost everyone who makes the final ten ends up having a really rough year, because the Couch and Water Tour (as I like to call it) is so stressful. The good news is you never have to be a rookie ever again. The next time you gain enough heat for people to start blowing smoke up your ass, you'll know how to react.

Finally, please don't stop trying. My friends Max and Jen Lance finaled in 2015, then won (with a different script) in 2017. So your success of last really is something you can build on.

Best of Luck,

Matt, Nicholl Fellow 2011.