Hollywood Tales: Someday someone will beat you to the punch

Photo by Aman on Unsplash

If you traffic in high concept stories, chances are you’ll confront this scenario.

It’s 1988. My writing partner and I are excited. We are just finishing up a new spec script, a comedy with a strong high concept: A couple adopts the child from hell (not literally, just a boy who simply can not help but get into trouble). One last pass on the pages, then it’s off to our agents and out to buyers.

So I’m feeling pretty upbeat as I to get to my office on the old MGM lot and open up the trades like I do everyday to catch up on the news…

Wait. What’s this?

“Universal buys spec comedy ‘Problem Child.’”

No. No…

“The plot described as a married couple who adopts a child from hell…”

NOOOOOOO!!!

And so it goes: The first time one of my ideas — and this one was my concept — gets squashed by the sale of another project.

Sadly, it’s not the last time.

For screenwriters who don’t work exclusively on writing assignments, but generate original story ideas, this reality is one that really bites, creating a sense of dread every time we open the trades.

Someday someone will beat you to the punch.

With Hollywood sifting through approximately 30,000 project submissions per year, it’s inevitable. As the saying goes, “There are only so many good ideas.” And with thousands of writers chasing them down, we live with a weird version of Russian roulette — one day a bullet is going to be in the chamber and blow the brains out of one of our projects.

As screenwriters, we can’t escape that reality. So the trick is to learn how to deal with it.

First, when you hit on a great story concept, you want to try to speed the script to market as quickly as possible. Of course, you have to consider equally as much the quality of the writing. It does you absolutely zero good to have a strong concept wrapped in a poorly executed script, something I touched on previously…