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The Screenwriter in Cyberspace
By Charles Deemer

Column #2: The SCRNWRIT List and FAQ

Surely no area of cyberspace of interest to screenwriters is more active than the Screenwriters List, a subscription-based "listserv" that generates 150 or more email messages a day. Over 750 people subscribe to the list but the vast majority are "lurkers" who seldom, if ever, participate in the email discussion and chat that make up the content of email activity on the list.

THE ELECTRONIC PUB

In theory, the Screenwriters List is a place for screenwriters to talk shop - at least this is what the name implies. But in reality the purpose and scope of the list is much broader than this, best summarized by list owner Jack Stanley, who thinks of the list as an electronic pub:
"Newcomers are often put off by the fact that the list isn't just for discussing script formats, cover stock, and/or type fonts. When you're beginning and you find a list devoted to screenwriting, I think you must expect every post to be about only what you're interested in and nothing more. But the truth is writers, like lawyers, bankers, doctors, and ditch diggers, talk about other things except their business. So it is with people here."
Stanley founded the Screenwriters List three years ago when the university where he teaches urged professors to become Internet literate. As Chair of the Communications Department at the University of Texas - Pan American, and with a film background that includes a Bronze-star-winning stint directing combat films in Vietnam, Stanley found a big cyberspace vacuum when it came to Internet activity of interest to filmmakers and screenwriters. The List was born.

AN EMAIL AVALANCHE

To most newcomers (called "newbies"), the list is overwhelming, both in size and substance. Well over 100 messages a day end up in your mailbox when you subscribe - twice that on a busy day - and most of it is friendly chat, a fact that regularly leads some newbie, with varying degrees of decorum, to advise the other listers that they are wasting everyone's time and that all talk should be restricted to serious stuff about screenwriting. The unfortunate newbie is usually then flamed, with varying degrees of playfulness, and reminded that s/he is the guest, not the host, and that good netiquette requires newbies to listen and get the feel of the cyberplace before speaking up, particularly with such arrogant advice.

All of which could be avoided if newbies would just remember a cardinal rule about all writing: writers like to avoid their work. There is no better place in cyberspace to avoid your work than the Screenwriters List. It is, just as owner Stanley says, exactly like an electronic pub.

SUBSCRIBING TO THE LIST

Before you subscribe to the list, you may want to check out Stanley's opening greetings to newbies, which comes in two forms. The first is a straight-forward welcome; the second a short screenplay of welcome. (Note: what you see underlined or highlighted are hyperlinks, of course - if you don't know what I'm talking about, see my first column, "Finding Your Way In Cyberspace").

You also can check out the list on the Web before subscribing at Neil Sandow's convenient daily digest of the past week's traffic.

If you decide you want to subscribe to the Screenwriters List, you send email to listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu (this link supports "mailto") with the one line message:

subscribe scrnwrit Charles Deemer
substituting your own name. You mail to the same address to unsubscribe (not to the list itself), changing the one line message to:
unsubscribe scrnwrit Charles Deemer

OPTIONS ON THE LIST

Once you've subscribed to the Screenwriters List, or to any "listserv", you can activate various options, such as receiving a weekly digest of messages rather than the daily batch or temporarily going off the list while on vacation (you don't have to unsubscribe and resubscribe). The most useful of these options is called the set command (always send commands to the listserv address, not to the list proper). The full range of listserv (mailing list) options is available on the LISTSERV Users Manual.

Navigating the high volume of traffic on the list is a learned art. In the beginning, as you get the feel of chat and people, you'll want to scan or read every message but very quickly you'll get a sense of what you are looking for and who is providing it.

For example, using a Pine newsreader (not especially high-end), which permits me to delete messages within set ranges, I can go through 200 list messages in 15 or 20 minutes. I do this by reading the "From:" line and the "Subject:" line. For my uses of the list, there are a few listers whom I always read and many whom I never read, unless the "Subject:" leads me there.

I seldom "chat" myself on the list, and I find myself reading about ten percent of the traffic. What I get from this ten percent, however, is very much worth the little time it takes me to sort through the huge volume of daily messages. I know I miss a lot because subjects change faster than subject lines do, and sometimes when I have time I do read more than my daily habit. But for the most part, the quick scan and ten percent read make up my list activity.

THE SCRNWRIT FAQ

A spinoff of the Screenwriters List is its "FAQ." A FAQ is a "Frequently Asked Questions" document, which most organizations in cyberspace (mailing lists, newsgroups, etc.) eventually put together and publish. The SCRNWRIT FAQ evolved this way:
"The FAQ," Stanley recalls, "came out of a question (or several, I don't really remember) a new subscriber asked (i.e. did we have a FAQ and if so how would they find it?). From the beginning of my deciding to make one until it was finally done was over two years. I figured it would take about six months --- boy, was I in for a surprise."
Without a doubt, the strength of the FAQ that resulted is a consequence of Stanley's making the FAQ a list group project.
"I had very little conceptualized notion of what the FAQ should or even could be when I started it," says the list owner. "Like so many other projects on this list, I threw it open to the good people here. I simply asked what subscribers thought we ought to have on a FAQ. From that I developed an outline and began collecting material for it, item by item. I also used some of the collected wisdom of the list from some of the topics we'd discussed here."
The result goes beyond the scope of most FAQs. Indeed, the SCRNWRIT FAQ is a comprehensive mini-course in the writing and marketing of the modern screenplay.

WAYS TO GET THE FAQ

Every beginning screenwriter new to cyberspace should put reading the FAQ high on a list of priorities. There are two basic versions of the FAQ online, each with advantages.

The original document is available via "gopher". The advantage of accessing the gopher FAQ is that both the full document (318K) and a zipped document (118K) can be downloaded on the spot. This version is organized by chapters, each a hyperlink, and the entire page is only two screens long.

A much more useful version of the FAQ is available on the Web. This hypertext FAQ breaks the original document into chapter sections, providing a hyperlink for each (resulting in a 22-screen page). One can find particular information much quicker in this version. However, if one wants to download the entire document, it's better to use the original gopher site.

I've also linked to relevant chapters of the FAQ throughout my Screenwriters & Playwrights Home Page.

UPDATING THE FAQ

If there's a disadvantage to a FAQ document, it's that it is not updated as often as, for example, a Web page. Stanley is aware of the challenge of keeping the FAQ current.
"I have over 900 messages collected for the update," he says. "I may have to reorganize the whole damn thing. The table of contents and the outlines in front of each chapter, plus the alphabetical decimal point system I've used for the original, could make the update a real pain in the ass. I truly don't know how I'm going to do it. I want the information to be laid out in an easy to use, easy to access format -- but I'm not 100% sure that the one on the original is the best way. "
Much of the information on the FAQ is timeless, so updating isn't necessary. Other areas - about contests, marketing, screenwriting software - are volatile. But the FAQ remains the best place for a new screenwriter in cyberspace to get acquainted.

THE BEST AND THE WORST

Most screenwriters will want to check out the Screenwriters List as well. Stanley says the list does some things well, other things not so well:
"Best --- help guide writers through the different steps of getting an idea, developing the concept, writing the script, rewriting the script, sending it out, finding an agent and/or a producer, and sharing the successes or the failures along the way. If someone has a real good question, particularly if it's one not dealt with in the FAQ, they'll get great answers here --- answers which prove there are no 'one and only' ways to do anything in this business. We're also very good at accepting people at face value.

"Worst --- flame each other for offenses perceived but not intended. The main problem with this type of communication is that it lacks the subtle nuances of a wink, a gleam in the eye, or a tone of voice, all of which mean so much in putting the right spin on the mere written words. We're all typing out answers, or questions, in haste and often wound when what we intend is to help. And those who are wounded are too quick to strike back rather than to ask if the injury was meant. And, too, we don't tolerate fools very well."

For all its strengths and weaknesses, there is no resource quite like the Screenwriters List in cyberspace. Check it out.

--Charles Deemer

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Originally appeared at the Hollywood Network.