Great Concept or Great Writing?

A reader asks:

"Is it more important to have a great concept/idea or a well-written screenplay?"

The easy, and most obnoxious answer, is you need both.

But that's just me being a jerk.

But it does seem a little weird to advise you as to whether you should pursue a good concept or great writing since the two are not mutually exclusive and, obviously, if your goal is to sell a script, the bigger your idea and the better executed it is, the better your chances of a sale. And anyway who wakes up one the morning and thinks "wow, I just had a great idea for a movie, I'm going to sit down and write the shittiest screenplay the world has ever seen!"?

So I'll approach this answer by telling you how the town generally responds to a great idea as opposed to great writing.

The sad truth is that in the short term, Hollywood wants the big idea. Here's the way they look at it. There are a million great writers in town... but very few really good ideas. So if a great idea falls into Hollywood's lap, no matter how poorly executed it is, someone will probably buy it. That's the upside... the downside is that they won't buy it for much money (probably the WGA minimum), and the original writer be immediately kicked off the project in favor of another writer that the buyer thinks can better execute the concept.

As an example, I spoke to a producer friend of mine the other day who told me she was looking for a writer to attach to a script she'd bought. It was a great idea, she said, but a horrible script. So they paid the original writer off and now they intend to bring in a new writer to develop the idea. Once the expanded concept is in better shape, the producer will take the writer out on a series of meetings to "pitch" it to the studios. If one of the studios sparks to the pitch, they will make a deal with the writer to do a certain number of drafts and/or rewrites of the script for a pre-negotiated amount of money.

So where does that leave you as the original writer? Well, you've sold your idea and made a bit of money, which is nice. But you're also back to square one. You've been cut out of the process and you're back at your desk facing the herculean task of coming up with another great idea. Maybe that will happen and maybe it won't. But even if it does, and you sell another great-but-poorly-executed idea... what then? Now you've begun to develop a reputation around town as a great idea guy who can't execute a draft.

That's bad.

It's bad because in order to be a working writer in Hollywood long-term you have got to be able to get writing jobs every couple of months. Jobs adapting books, rewriting existing scripts, or doing first drafts of other people's ideas. That's the day-to-day business of a working writer. No writer can survive writing nothing but specs. The spec market sucks. It seems like fewer and fewer of them sell every year, and frankly, they're just not an efficient use of your time as a business person.

Think about it this way, what's more cost effective, spending three months or more writing a spec that may or may not sell? Or spending a few hours coming up with a great way to rewrite a script or adapt a book, articulating that vision in a pitch meeting, and then getting the job based on that few hours work?

I can tell you how an agent would answer that question. No agent wants to represent a writer who can't get studio jobs. Agents are looking for writers who will one day command million dollar quotes and be in the "incoming call" business. That means the writer has gotten such a sterling reputation that studios and producers call their agents to offer them every new job that pops up, rather than the other way around. Brian Helgeland, Peter Morgan, Bob Gordon, Paul Attanasio, Bill Monahan, Charlie Kaufman, David Benioff, Billy Ray... these are the guys in the incoming call business in today's Hollywood. I've seen agents turn down clients who had very saleable spec scripts that were ready to go out to the town simply because they didn't think the writer was talented enough to have a long-term career... Why? Because whether that spec sells or doesn't sell, that writer will still be on your phone sheet every day asking "what's next?"

So, what about "great writing"? If I had to choose a fate for a writer, this is the one I'd choose because it suggests the potential for career longevity, even when it sacrifices the opportunity for short-term financial gain. Everyone loves great writing, and everyone wants to meet, talk to, and get to know great writers. If you're a great writer, even if you weren't quite able to write a script that everyone wanted to buy, Hollywood figures it's only a matter of time before your talent slams face-first into the perfect idea and magic happens.

You can always tell when Hollywood thinks a new spec script is "well-written", because even as producers and executives are calling the agent to pass on the script, they are ending the conversation by saying "but I'd love to meet the writer." If your script is not going to sell, especially if you're a newer or unknown writer, this is the best possible fall-back position because in this business, longevity, whether it's as a writer, director, producer, or agent, is about maintaining great relationships, and to do that you have to be able to get in rooms.

Great writing will get you into every room in this town. To me, that sounds like a pretty good start to a potentially long and lucrative career.