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The Screenwriter in Cyberspace
By Charles Deemer

Mr. Deemer is an award-winning playwright, a screenwriter, an editor and writer. He teaches screenwriting at Portland State University, is the author of the book Screenwright: the Craft of Screenwriting, and is the webmaster of The Screenwriters & Playwrights Home Page. For more information on Mr. Deemer and his work, please click here. This column is a guide to using the Internet to a writer's advantage in matters of craft and marketing.

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Column #21: About Options

Recently in a phone conversation with my agent, the matter of "options" came up. My agent was complaining how she sees the general take on getting a script optioned, which would put considerable money in the pocket of a screenwriter, was the exception to the contemporary rule, which has it that an option has become a small first step toward getting a development deal with very little upfront money involved.

This state of affairs is echoed in a column in the November/December 1998 issue of Creative Screenwriting. Under the title "The Slow Death of the Option," Ron Suppa writes:

"Today, with a booming economy and yearly theatrical box office grosses totaling a staggering $6.5 billion and climbing, nobody anymore seems to want to give the poor writer a few miserable option dollars for his script. Producers will ask instead for a free option, maybe even a free rewrite in the bargain. Are they just cheap, or not 'real' producers? Maybe, but another possibility is the changing nature of the business itself."

That the option business is changing is evidenced by the options recently received by two of my screenwriting students at Portland State University. Both are from reputable production companies with track records. One, called "a grace option" by the producer, is free; the other might as well be free - it is ten dollars.

Suppa goes on:

"Unsolicited submissions to opportunistic producers willing to 'shop' a project they do not own is the principal cause of the decline in option payments to writers, particularly new writers without representation. The Writers Guild of America prohibits shopping in its agreement with producers, levying substantial fines on abuses, but the practice continues to be widespread."

This producer, it would seem, is playing the role of a second agent, submitting material at no upfront cost and "betting on the come", which is a small bet indeed since there is no upfront investment.

In a recent visit to Portland State University by Richard Krevolin, author of the outstanding new book Screenwriting from the Soul, Krevolin noted that managers now are also getting in the growing act of shopping a writer's work without significant option-remuneration to the writer. This trend appears to be a change in the way business is being done inHollywood, a change of no benefit to the screenwriter.

The Good Old Days

When I entered the screenwriting business in the 1980s, first working on an adaptation of my own stage play, there were clear and more common rules to this game. A script generally sold for about three percent of a film's budget and the option was ten percent of the selling price. Thus my first option was to be budgeted in at one million dollars. I would receive $30,000 for the script if the budget was raised and did, in fact, receive $3,000 for a one-year option (which was subsequently renewed at the same rate).

This is not a lot of money (but considerably more than ten dollars!), but not bad for a low budget movie by an unknown screenwriter. Today, figures like that seem like wishful thinking to many beginning writers.

Of course, many have a different sense of this market because of all the hooplah raised about six digit advances against six- or seven-digit deals. But remember, these big monies are for studio development deals, not for script options, the step that comes first. The fact is, the marketplace is so crowded with material, so many writers are hungry for any attention they can get, that everything works in favor of the producers' trend to get significant option money out of the practicing equation. This trend is very real, particulary when the work at hand is by new writers.

The Hype of Big Money

There is a lesson to be learned from all this. It is another chapter in the book called Reality 101. This is the way the business works. It's difficult for a newcomer to fight it because the newcomer is not eligible to join the Writers Guild (WGA), the institution best situationed to fight it. Of course, this brings up another problem: with the vast majority of WGA members unemployed at any given time, the union has little incentive to lead a crusade that mainly affects writers who don't qualify for their ranks.

Preparation is the lesson of the day for the new screenwriter. Understand that the "decline of the option" is a real trend in the business. Count it as yet another disadvantage to being a screenwriter, a field where surely writers are less respected than in any other narrative form. If you want to get onto the playing field in today's market, you are going to have to swallow several bitter pills, and this is one of them. Later, when you have credits and belong to the WGA, maybe you can remember your early days and lead a crusade for those newcomers who follow in your footsteps. But more realistically, you might be just another unemployed, experienced screenwriter scrambling to get work before you enter yet another arena of minefields aimed at the screenwriter, the minefield of age discrimination.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Yes, the beginning screenwriter is between a rock and a hard place, here as in other areas (getting an agent, for example).

I tell my students to forget about all this for the time being. Your job, I remind them, is to learn the craft and to become such an extraordinary screenwriter than you can't be ignored. If you have to take a few free options to get into the ballgame, consider them dues, which suck no more or less than dues in other professions. When you make it, do what you can to change the rules. Don't forget your roots.

Nobody ever said this was going to be easy. Unfortunately, it used to be that at least you could put away some meaningful money along the journey of your early career by selling options. That possibility is getting rarer all the time for beginning writers.

So what else is new?

--Charles Deemer



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Originally appeared at the Hollywood Network.