Screenwriting : Screenwriting industry inclusiveness by Jeffrey Knepper

It's low risk to read a screenplay by a noobie. If it's bad, no big deal. If it's great, lots of potential upside.

The industry isn’t open at the upper business levels. We think we are part of the business, but we supply material that is used by the business.

In some segments we are more involved. TV requires more writer involvement. But the business is still buffered from us by showrunners and producers. Yep, some people can be writers and have those roles as well.

If you can write well, it’s actually a plus if you come from another field and bring that knowledge with you. It can add verisimilitude to your scripts. That’s interesting to some producers. The world of medicine, real estate, restaurants for example. You still need to be a strong writer.

You need new talent to engage with new audiences.

I'm not so sure it is actually that open across the board. I mean, 99% of it is located in Hollywood for a start. In my own country, if you're not in London, and from certain schools, you're pretty much dead in the water. There's a lot of performative words leveraging issues for PR purposes with little to no action to back it up.

Diverse creatives have typically cut their own path and fought their way in, often by creating new niche markets in the process.

At a script reading level however, I agree with the above. It's low commitment and people are often looking for stories from people outside of their own circles.

M LaVoie, that's not how I've found it on the industry side. People recommend scripts all the time and other industry members know that taste is subjective. I've had scripts recommended to me that I've not liked but I know the person who recommended it only meant the best for me and the writer. I'd happily read anything else they put my way.

At a coverage level, I see it like following a critic. You heed the advice of those you know your taste aligns with and turn a blind eye to those that don't. Again, it's all down to subjectivity.

At the level of running Script Revolution, on which certain coverage services are considered reputable, and I add all the accolades myself, there are writers out there getting recommends, and there's a quantifiable difference between a reader choosing that over a consider. As above, it's up to the person browsing the scripts to decide how much weight they give the endorsement.

screenwriting to me is like awesome food , people will line up for hours in a old run down shack until its sold out...people will consider your terms and conditions to have access for awesome scripts

CJ Walley would you say half of success is driven by subjectivity and finding your tribe before pitching

Jeffrey Knepper I've been saying for a long time that everything comes back to alignment; alignment with industry members, alignment with financiers, alignment with distributors, alignment with an audience.

So many people spend their time fretting that they won't be accepted universally while they bastardise their material in the hope it's objectively good. Worse still, so many others actively encourage that mentality with their rulesets.

You can't standout and play it safe at the same time. You have to put yourself out there and aim for alignment with people on your wavelength. Dulling yourself down increases the chances those people are going to blow by you.

It's just like dating, You need to be the most authentic version of yourself you can and lean into situations where you're most likely to run into the kind of person where mutual appreciation is going to happen. A lot of aspiring writers are instead choosing to try and get the perfect haircut, wear the perfect clothes, and rehearse their perfect pickup lines before going speed dating in the hope of finding true love with every person they meet.

The crazy thing is, in any conversation about this, all the people making films will be saying the same as me, yet there will be twice as many amateurs and gurus advising the complete opposite. It's painful.

CJ Walley agreed...cant be everything to everyone bc ultimately it comes down to the one