• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

John August

  • Arlo Finch
  • Scriptnotes
  • Library
  • Store
  • About

QandA

Screenwriting competitions aren’t worth the money

March 5, 2021 Film Industry, First Person

Since the early days of the site, I occasionally run posts by writers who can share their experience working in the industry. In this case, Paige wrote in to Scriptnotes with her take on screenplay contests.


My name is Paige Feldman. I was a guest/contestant on a Scriptnotes live show about a year ago (the one with Ryan Reynolds and Phoebe Waller-Bridge). That’s still one of my best quarantine memories.

I’m writing because contest season is fast approaching. Nicholl, AFF and Final Draft all have deadlines in May. While I know most aspiring screenwriters will be champing at the bit to apply, I wanted to share something I discovered about the cost of entering contests like these: it’s a lot of money for little upside.

Like many not-yet-full-time screenwriters, I have entered multiple contests, hoping for placement or notice that might help me push to the next level. And, like many not-yet-full-time screenwriters, I have received glowing comments from readers — and no momentum.

In June 2020, I embarked on an experiment. For four months, I kept track of every screenwriting contest I was advertised (either through email, targeted ads, or coming across them organically on social media). And for every contest that I could enter without doing more work (e.g. I had a completed script I could ostensibly enter), I would take the cost of the entry fee and put it in my savings.

Over the course of four months, from June to October — so not even “contest season” — I saved $1424.

That is from individual contest entry fees alone. This does not count paying extra for coverage. It is not the early entry fee plus the regular entry fee plus the late entry fee. It’s one entry fee per contest. Extrapolated to a full year, that would mean spending nearly $4500 on contests.

I already knew screenwriting competitions were an industry, but the amount is just shocking to me. What even is this screenwriting contest industrial complex? And why is it? And how many people is it actually helping?

At the end of my experiment, I didn’t have answers to those questions, but I did have an extra almost-$1500 lying around thanks to my savings scheme. I decided to use it to further my career in a way a contest could never do.

I took one of my already-written pilots and adapted it for audio. Then, I hired actors and recorded it remotely over Zoom (modeled after how you, John, had me send you audio recorded on my computer for that show last year). I hired a composer to write original music, an artist to design a logo, and used YouTube to teach myself how to edit and process audio. And now I have an audio pilot up across podcasting platforms. Plus, it was such a fun experience that I wrote the remaining nine episodes of season 1 and we’re starting to record them this weekend!

Now, instead of a bunch of contest rejections, I have an actual product that I can share with people: How to Fall in Love in the Hard Way

I wanted to write to you about this because I feel like the rhetoric that contests are the best way for unknown writers to break in continues to grow (especially on Twitter). I think it’s important to point out how much of an industry screenwriting competitions are becoming, how they help very few writers who invest that cash into them, and that there are other ways of becoming a working writer than winning a contest.

In my case, I met a director who hired me to write a script via someone I met in an acting class I accidentally took five years ago. That ended up being a better use of my money.

This isn’t a slam on all screenwriting competitions or the writers who’ve found some success through them. But for most aspiring screenwriters, I believe there are better ways to spend your time and money.

Feature Residuals and the Mystery of SVOD

February 10, 2021 Film Industry, Follow Up, WGA

Following up on my earlier post, here’s an update on Aladdin’s residuals.

Let’s look at the breakdown for 2020 Q3:

Re-Use Market Amount
Basic Cable $1,536
Foreign Free TV $8,071
Home Video/DVD $11,161
Pay TV $76,687
New Media — EST $11,134
New Media — SVOD $222,496
TOTAL $331,086

Note that these are total writer residuals. As Aladdin’s co-writer, I get half, so I’m simply doubling what I see in my individual residuals report.

The first four categories are pretty self-explanatory. You can find more information about them in the WGA’s residuals survival guide.

New Media — EST stands for Electronic Sell-Through. This is when a customer purchases a download, which they then own forever. If you buy a movie for $19.99 on iTunes, that’s an EST. It’s the digital equivalent of someone purchasing a DVD at Target. The residual is calculated as 0.36% of the company’s accountable receipts.

The final category is a little confusing. Even after serving on the negotiating committee for the last MBA, I ended up emailing a colleague at the Guild for clarification.

New Media — SVOD combines very two different ideas. The full title for this category should really be something like New Media — Rental and SVOD.1

Rental is what you think. If you’ve ever paid $1.99 for a movie on iTunes and had 48 hours to watch it, that’s an electronic rental. The residual is calculated at 1.2% of the studio’s accountable receipts.

SVOD stands for Subscription Video on Demand, services like Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu, also referred to as streamers. The residual is calculated as 1.2% of the amount the studio receives for licensing the movie to the service. For example, MGM might license an old James Bond movie to Amazon Prime for 12 months. The screenwriter would get a residual based off the price MGM was able to charge.

In the case of Aladdin, it’s available exclusively on Disney+. Disney is never going to license it to Netflix or Peacock or Amazon Prime. So any fee Disney-the-studio is charging Disney-the-streamer is really just numbers on a spreadsheet. They’re the same company.

Now you’re asking: Wait, if this residual is 1.2% of a made-up number, how do you know it’s a fair price?

Self-dealing is always a concern, and has long been an issue in television. My colleague at the Guild writes:

When that happens the MBA requires the company to impute a license fee based on comparable pictures. This is an issue happening across all the streamers and is one of our most important enforcement efforts.

For 2020 Q3, this lone residual was worth nearly a quarter of million dollars for Aladdin. It’s both hugely important and largely opaque.

I don’t have a breakdown to show how much of this line item came from rental versus the imputed license fee, but it’s something I’ll be watching closely in the years ahead.

  1. And even that’s not complete: this category also includes “Premium VOD,” which hasn’t really been a thing but might become more important. ↩

What I Learned Writing a Trilogy

February 3, 2021 Arlo Finch, Author, Books, Projects, Psych 101

In October 2016, I began writing Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire. It’s about a kid who moves to the mountains of Colorado, where he joins the Rangers. Modeled on the scouts of my youth, Rangers can do some kinda magic things because the forest outside their town is kinda magic.

arlo 1Arlo Finch sold to Roaring Brook/Macmillan as a trilogy, with Valley of Fire debuting in February 2018 and Lake of the Moon the following year. It has spawned thirteen translations published around the world. I’ve toured extensively across the U.S. and Europe. It’s been a wild trip.

Now the trilogy is finished. The paperback of Arlo Finch in the Kingdom of Shadows arrives in bookstores across the U.S. and Canada today.

As this part of the journey ends, I wanted to look back on what I learned in writing a trilogy. Here’s what I wish someone had told me before I started.

1. Have a plan, but be ready to change it.

When I sold the trilogy, my proposal included descriptions of books two and three. Here’s a paragraph I wrote in my summary of Kingdom of Shadows:

The Duchess, who has always operated through proxies and emissaries, is finally forced into the open. Charming, clever and ruthless, she’s willing to make a bargain with the boy she can’t seem to kill. Arlo must decide whether to forsake his friends and family in order to keep them safe.

No spoiler warning needed, because this doesn’t happen. The Duchess — a character I’d intended to become the series villain — never appears in the trilogy at all. There’s nothing even remotely like her. Early in writing book two, a better villain appeared, one who was a much stronger foil for Arlo.

arlo coverAnd it’s not just the Duchess. Here are seven crucial elements in the trilogy that I didn’t know when I sold it:

  1. Hadryn, and his connection to Arlo
  2. Fallpath
  3. The Broken Bridge
  4. Big Breezy
  5. The Summerland Incident
  6. Mirnos and Ekafos
  7. Why the Eldritch actually need Arlo

Shouldn’t I have planned better? Was it pure hubris to start writing without locking down these details?

Maybe. But I didn’t know about Hadryn until he showed up in a scene. He was a bit player who caught my interest and ended up becoming a costar. I didn’t know — and perhaps couldn’t have known — that I needed him back when I was writing the first book. Many things you only discover while writing.

In the end, a series outline is like a map. It can help keep you from getting lost, but if you follow it too closely you may drive right past some amazing discoveries.

2. Set rules. Break them when necessary.

Every book has rules. Some are conventions (such as spelling and punctuation), while others are specific to the genre or audience (no swearing in a kid’s book).

These rules help both authors and readers. For example, consider how we handle dialogue in prose. The author doesn’t have to add he said or she said to every line because readers have come to expect that characters alternate speaking unless otherwise indicated.

The same principle applies to point of view. Like many fantasy novels, Arlo Finch is told from a close third-person perspective. As the reader, we are hovering right behind Arlo’s shoulder. We only see what he sees, and we can only peer inside his head. Arlo Finch is at the center of every scene.

Fifty feet away, by the edge of the gravel driveway, a dog was watching him. Arlo assumed it was a dog, not a coyote or a wolf, though he had never seen one of the latter in person. The creature had a collar, which at least meant it belonged to somebody.

Arlo knew to be careful around strange dogs, but this one didn’t seem threatening. It was simply watching him.

Although the book never explicitly states it, the reader quickly understands the rule: Everything is from Arlo’s point of view.

This point of view splits the difference between a first-person narrator (e.g. The Hunger Games) and an omniscient narrator (Game of Thrones). It keeps the reader dialed in with the hero, which makes it a perfect choice for Arlo Finch…until chapter 37 of Lake of the Moon.

Arlo and his friend Indra had gotten separated. Now I needed to show what Indra was up to. But how? There was no elegant way to do it without breaking the rule on POV.

So I did it. I broke the rule. After 100,000+ words from Arlo’s perspective, we shift to Indra’s POV for that chapter.

And it was fine.

My editor noticed — but no one else did. (Or at least, they didn’t complain.) In context, it felt natural to be seeing these events from the point of view of a well-established supporting character. Later, when Indra meets up with the Blue Patrol, they’re focused on finding Arlo but the reader hardly notices that our POV character isn’t there.

Ultimately, I wasn’t breaking the rule as much as amending it: Everything is from Arlo’s point of view — unless he’s not present. Then it’s from the POV of the best-known character.

For book three, I stuck with this modified rule. One of my favorite chapters in Kingdom of Shadows is told from Uncle Wade’s perspective.

POV wasn’t the only rule I ended up breaking in Arlo Finch. I initially set out to show that Arlo’s real strength was not as a leader, but rather a follower. If there was a decision to be made, he’d help find consensus but would never take the reins.

This “hero as wallflower” approach lasted until the midpoint of book two, when he found himself facing many more challenges alone. By the third book, he’s standing up against governments and supernatural forces of unfathomable power. He’s a reluctant leader, but he’ll do what it takes.

Doing what it takes is part of writing a trilogy. You need to break rules carefully but unapologetically.

3. Build roads, not worlds.

The town of Pine Mountain brushes up against the Long Woods, a vast extra-dimensional wilderness that can only be navigated by mastering a special Ranger’s compass. Unlike a lot of fantasy literature, there’s no map at the front of the novels because the Long Woods cannot be mapped.

But there are books in Arlo Finch: Arlo and his friends occasionally consult Culman’s Bestiary to learn about the dangerous creatures they’re facing, yet I never seriously considered putting together the actual catalogue. Nor did I write out the oft-cited Rangers’ Field Book. I knew the names of the ranks and a few of the requirements, nothing more.

When it came to world building, I tried to create only what Arlo could himself encounter. I put a sticky note on my monitor to remind myself: Don’t build more than you need.

In the case of Arlo Finch, the decision was partly practical; I simply had too many chapters to write. But I also recognized a pattern I’d seen in a lot of fantasy literature:

  • Elaborately constructed universes that have little to do with the hero’s story.
  • Supporting characters who talk about events that happened long ago.
  • Visitors hailing from faraway lands the hero (and reader) will never visit.
  • Creatures described but never encountered.

Even over the course of a trilogy, your characters will only see a small corner of their universe. So focus on that. Make it rich, rewarding and most of all relevant.

4. Slow and steady wins the race.

I started Arlo Finch as part of NaNoWriMo, the annual challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. That’s a pace of 1,667 words per day.

While I’d had a lot of experience as a screenwriter, I was a complete newbie to the world of publishing. I knew I had a lot to learn, so I used the excuse of making a documentary podcast (called Launch) to ask hundreds of naive questions to editors, booksellers and other authors. They taught me about the joys, challenges and frustrations of getting a book published.

When told I was writing a trilogy, authors invariably offered a sympathetic smile along with a gentle shake of the head. Oh, child, they seemed to be saying. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into.

Writing any book is a marathon. Writing three books back-to-back is like a race that never ends.

I wasn’t prepared for the sheer number of words I’d be typing — 202,595 in all — and having to do copy edits on one book while finishing the next. In the morning, Arlo might be investigating a mysterious campsite in Lake of the Moon. In the afternoon, he was back six months earlier in Pine Mountain, meeting his friends for the first time in Valley of Fire.

As a screenwriter, I’m used to working on one movie at a time. When writing Toto, I don’t need to worry about the sequel; it’ll only happen in wild success.

Instead, my experience writing a trilogy had much more in common with the life of TV showrunnner. My friends who write TV have to map out a season, then write the episodes, then oversee all the tweaks and changes — often all at the same time.

While it’s amazing to have this amount of control over one’s work, it requires a steady pace. There’s simply no way to sprint it.

5. The middle book is the hardest, but also the most exciting.

The middle book of a trilogy serves as a bridge between the start of the series and the end. It’s the second act, where stakes and complications are raised. As the writer, you’re spinning a bunch of plates, and then you add more.

You can find many articles about middle book syndrome, because if there’s one thing writers love, it’s lamenting about how hard writing is.

For me, the second book felt like the second season of a TV series. And I love second seasons. That’s when shows hit their stride.

Having established the characters and the rules of the world, I could introduce new obstacles and conflicts. For example, Arlo has friends — but what if his friends aren’t getting along? Arlo has a routine with family and school, but what happens when he’s away from all of that?

I wrote the second novel while I was living in Paris. My friend Damon Lindelof was in town and stopped by to record an episode of Scriptnotes. In our conversation, we discussed the list of ideas you have as a writer than you never actually get around to writing:

Damon: I always wanted to do a show about time travel. And then I suddenly realized, hey, Lost is that show. There is not time travel embedded in the pilot of Lost, but J.J. and I tried to do everything that we could to open up all possibilities in the pilot so that if we wanted to get to time travel, we could.

And I always wanted to set a show in the ’70s, and I was like, well, we’ve got time travel now. So Lost is that show, too. And I’ve always wanted to do like a pirate show. Well, Lost could be that show, too.

I always wanted to write some time travel as well. So I decided that was a thing that was possible in Arlo Finch.

Having established the mystery of the lost Yellow Patrol in book one, I wanted Arlo to not only learn what had happened, but to be the cause of it. Figuring out how to do that was brain-melting, but the resulting novel is my favorite of the series.

6. Most reviewers only read the first book.

Librarians and professional reviewers have to look at dozens or hundreds of books each year, so even if they love book one, they’re unlikely to review book two unless it’s a publishing phenomenon. That’s a real frustration when you’re writing a trilogy, because you’re deliberately portioning out your story over three books.

In the case of Arlo Finch, I wanted to push back against the tropes of the genre (cf. Harry Potter and Percy Jackson), in particular the notion that the titular hero is the chosen one. So in book one, Arlo is confused why he’s special. Then in book two, he gets the answer: he wasn’t “chosen” at all. He’s an ordinary kid who made a choice — and in the process, created the villain of the story.

But reviewers won’t see that, because they’re only reading the first book.

Now that all three books are out in the world, it’s been gratifying to see some bloggers and librarians looking at the series as a whole when making their recommendations.

I am so sad that is over but it ended in such a satisfying way! If you haven’t read this series yet, do so. It will be one of the best stories you read in your lifetime.

Returning to the TV analogy, readers who start reading Arlo Finch now will have a different experience than those who encountered it one book/season at a time. Without a year between installments, Arlo’s arc becomes a lot more clear. The setups and payoffs aren’t separated by time.

7. Clear some shelf space.

In addition to the original English version, Arlo Finch is available in 12 translations. For each of these, I receive five copies, for a total of 195 books, which have to go somewhere.

This is luxury problem, to be sure. It’s great and gratifying that so many international publishers took a chance on Arlo. And it’s exciting to cut open a box to see the new Polish or Romanian translation. But then what? I can’t read them. I don’t need them. Yet I can’t bring myself to get rid of them, either.

I hadn’t anticipated how much space it would all take.

shelf with arlo finch books lined up

In my library, I cleared room for one copy of each translation. The rest are packed away in boxes in a closet.

8. You won’t get everything right. (See #1.)

If I could go back to book one, I would make a few changes.

Capitalize Eldritch. I didn’t realize these supernatural beings would become so important. (I also didn’t know they were giants.) We started capitalizing Eldritch in book two, but it bugs me that we’re not consistent.

Set up Arlo’s origin earlier. In book one, we learn Arlo is a “tooble,” but not what it means. We get an answer in book two, but as noted earlier, most reviewers only read the first book. Fox, who appears at the end of book one, could have been less oblique.

Name the Warden. In book three, we learn that the adult Ranger Arlo talks to after the campfire in book one is the middle school band teacher (Mr. O’Brien). I wish I’d given him his name from the start.

Put Hadryn in book one. Hadryn appears early in book two, but by the rules of trilogies, he should have shown up in the first book — if not as a character, then at least as a named threat.

Call out how it’s different from other fantasy trilogies. Unlike Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, Arlo Finch sleeps in his own bed every night. It’s a much more grounded adventure. I think that’s obvious, but none of the reviewers seemed to notice. I should have underlined that.

9. Don’t wait to thank people.

Early on, I decided that I wanted to save all of the thank yous and acknowledgements until the end of the third book. My reasoning was that as a reader I generally skip these sections, so why waste the pages and the ink? Plus, wouldn’t it feel presumptuous to thank a bunch of people for a book that might not be well-received?

In retrospect, this decision was dumb.

I should have included thank yous in the first two books as well. As the past year has demonstrated, anything can happen. There was no guarantee the final book would ever come out, or that everyone would be alive to see it. So thank people often and publicly.

10. It’s hard to say goodbye.

It’s been almost 18 months since I turned in the final revisions for Kingdom of Shadows. I’m finished, yet I don’t entirely feel finished.

The series was conceived as a trilogy and definitely resolves the major open questions. Like any finale, I took advantage of the opportunity to burn down the sets and let characters move on.

Could there be another book? Sure.

Does there need to be another book? Not really.

Had Arlo Finch become a runaway best-selling phenomenon, I’d certainly be writing more books in the series. But as a writer, my most precious resource is time, and the best use of it going forward is on other projects.

Still, Arlo is special. I’ve lived with it longer than anything except Big Fish. I know every inch of the Finch house. I know Indra’s secrets. I know what happens at the Ranger equivalent of the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico and the circumstances of Arlo’s first kiss.

There are Arlo Finch books that won’t be written and stories that won’t be told. But I’m grateful for the three I have, and the years it took to write them. I’m happy they’ll outlive me.


You can find Arlo Finch in bookstores everywhere. The series is appropriate for anyone age 8 and up, including quite a few adults.

Philosophy for Screenwriters

Episode - 483

Play

January 12, 2021 News, Pitches, Scriptnotes, So-Called Experts, Transcribed

John and Craig discuss their personal philosophies and how writers can approach philosophical questions in terms of theme (central dramatic question) and character (moral codes and motivation).

Then we cover virtual pitches and listener questions on eight-sequence structure and how to read a script. We also follow up on the agency campaign, failed insurrections, and bad IP.

Finally in our bonus segment for premium members, we revisit our disagreement in episode 481 about whether it’s okay to lie.

Links:

  • WGA Rejects WME Deal, Judge Rejects Injunction
  • Rubik’s Cube
  • Mr. Clean: a sailor? A genie? Both?
  • Eight Sequence Structure
  • John’s 2020 Year in Review
  • There is No Game
  • Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
  • Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
  • John August on Twitter
  • Craig Mazin on Twitter
  • John on Instagram
  • Outro by Rajesh Naroth (send us yours!)
  • Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

UPDATE 1-15-21 The transcripts for this episode can now be found here.

Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Newsletter

A weekly-ish roundup of stuff we've found interesting delivered right to your inbox.

Read Past Issues

Explore

Projects

  • Arlo Finch (27)
  • Big Fish (87)
  • Charlie (39)
  • Charlie's Angels (16)
  • Chosen (2)
  • Corpse Bride (9)
  • Dead Projects (18)
  • Frankenweenie (10)
  • Go (30)
  • Karateka (4)
  • Monsterpocalypse (3)
  • One Hit Kill (6)
  • Ops (6)
  • Preacher (2)
  • Prince of Persia (13)
  • Shazam (6)
  • Snake People (6)
  • Tarzan (5)
  • The Nines (118)
  • The Remnants (12)
  • The Variant (22)

Apps

  • Bronson (13)
  • FDX Reader (11)
  • Fountain (32)
  • Highland (71)
  • Less IMDb (4)
  • Weekend Read (33)

Recommended Reading

  • First Person (83)
  • Geek Alert (145)
  • WGA (121)
  • Workspace (19)

Screenwriting Q&A

  • Adaptation (66)
  • Directors (90)
  • Education (48)
  • Film Industry (480)
  • Formatting (128)
  • Genres (90)
  • Glossary (6)
  • Pitches (29)
  • Producers (59)
  • Psych 101 (117)
  • Rights and Copyright (95)
  • So-Called Experts (46)
  • Story and Plot (170)
  • Television (161)
  • Treatments (21)
  • Words on the page (236)
  • Writing Process (177)

More screenwriting Q&A at screenwriting.io

© 2021 John August — All Rights Reserved.