Reader Question: What to do with projects when splitting from a writing partner?
From Paul:
Hi Scott-
I remember you mentioning that you’ve worked with writing partners as well as on your own.
My questions is, say you’ve written with a partner for several years, developing a few projects, but have since decided to break out on your own, what becomes of those writing partners projects?
Do you continue to rewrite and develop them with an understanding there will be no future collaborations? Abandon them? Just not sure how the post break up part works, especially if you still really like the projects you worked on.
It depends upon what the nature of your relationship is with your ex-writing partner. If it’s cordial, then see if you can pull together some sort of legal agreement specifying what each of you would get in terms of percentages in the event either of you sell (individually) a script you have worked on in the past.
If your relationship is not so cordial, that could be problematic. The last thing you want is to sell a script to Hollywood, then have the whole thing fouled by your ex-partner’s claim to a portion of the script’s underlying rights.
So if you can’t get your ex to sign on to some sort of legal agreement, you may have to walk away from those projects.
Life is short. You don’t want that drama.
One other thing: If this had happened after you had been working as writers in Hollywood, do you know how much you could use any of the previous scripts you had written with your partner as writing samples for yourself? You couldn’t. No matter if you swore you wrote 99% of a script, the perspective of an agent, producer, or exec would be as long as you and your partner’s name was on the title page, that script would be considered co-written.
That’s what happened to me after Siegel & Myers ended. I had to start from scratch. In fact, the very first movie writing gig I got with my second writing partner was literally for WGA minimum, less than half my previous quote.
All the more reason to write solo. And here’s another reason:
100% divided by 1 = 100%.
That means whatever money you generate as a solo writer is all yours. When you figure in agent, manager, lawyer, business manager, and Guild dues, that is not an insubstantial consideration.
GITS readers, feel free to weigh in with your thoughts. And just generally about the pros and cons of working with a writing partner.