Making the Book (stories about making my book of short screenplays)

In my day job, I often tell people, “If I am doing my job right, your job should be easier.” Same thing with the book – I want people to use my screenplays to launch their filmmaking hobbies or careers a little more easily.

The making of this book is a journey of me finding an outlet for a bunch of film script ideas that weren’t working as feature length screenplays.

Using Your Strengths

In 2009, I wrote a book called ’26 Short Screenplays for Independent Filmmakers’ and it is… well, it is 26 short screenplays for independent filmmakers. I have written about a half-dozen screenplays. Like most screenwriters, I am a master of procrastinating. But, like all screenwriters, I procrastinate in my own special way.

My unique form of abandoning a project is to come up another brilliant idea that I decide to focus on instead. My early screenplays all have second act issues, petering out about page 60 or 70 and ending with an “Ehhhhh… EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! They kiss. The End.”

After that, I dive into the first 30 pages of my next project with unheralded passion. For feature screenwriters, this is a terrible habit. However, this is a blessing if you want to specialize in writing short scripts.

So I decided to focus on short scripts instead of epic ones for a while. I believe it was Popeye who once said, “Play to your strengths.”

I also had a day job at the time that involved being on an airplane between six and ten hours a week. This was perfect time to fill my hard drive with a series of short scripts and scenes – a writer’s sketchbook, if you will. Thanks to a short attention span and many long flights, I developed this collection of screenplays ranging from one to ten pages each.

The next challenge was packaging them in a way that makes it easy for people to buy.

Pitching Your Project, in Person, to Other Human Beings

The next step was getting comments and critique from someone with credibility. This involved interacting with human beings in real time.

I happen to be on the board of directors for a regional professional organization – the Dallas Screenwriters Association. This gets me out of the house and going to meetings with screenwriters, filmmakers, hobbyists, and all sorts of other people.

After one DSA meeting, I was having a conversation with Greg Mansur, one of our guest presenters and a film professor at Texas Christian University (TCU). (He’s a thoughtful, clear, and interesting presenter, by the way. I have no doubt he’d be an incredible guy to study with.)

Greg asked if I happened to have any short film scripts he could use in his film production classes. I told him I was working on a book of scripts that seemed like they’d work well in his classroom situation. I let him read an early draft of the book and provide feedback. Not only did I get some valuable feedback before going to press, I got an incredible endorsement.

This experience gave me the opportunity to pitch the concept: a book length collection of short scripts, licensed under Creative Commons so that professional and derivative works can be made from it. Yadda yadda. In the space of a few sentences, I had to explain what the book is and why someone would want to own it.

In my day job, I often tell people, “If I am doing my job right, your job should be easier.” Same thing with the book – I want people to use my screenplays to launch their filmmaking hobbies or careers a little more easily. People who have writers block or some similar problem should find my scripts as a solution. To my knowledge, there is nothing out there quite like a collection of short screenplays for independent filmmakers. So, of course, they should flock to it and buy it, right?

In the second and third posts on the making of my book, I will discuss some strategies for helping the book find its audience after it was published.

In the second post: Why I Gave Away Copyright on my Book. 

In the third post: Why I Give Away The Book To Teachers.