Category Archives: Obstacles
Where Story Meets “The Sex Factor”
Doug Richardson posted an interesting article on his blog this week called The Sex Factor. (If you haven’t read it, check it out, then come back here.) Now you may find it offensive, but he warns you of the content up front. I’m not condoning the behavior presented in the article, but I get it. And what the execs in the article are actually discussing is sales and marketing.
These are the decisions that fall on the business side of, well, this business. As writers (or actors) we aren’t always as tuned in to what this world entails. The fact that someone would use sex appeal as a decision-maker may not sound right (or be right), but it is a fact in a medium where people pay money to see attractive actors on the screen. Sex sells. It always has, it always will. But, it’s not the only thing that sells. And it’s not the only thing that goes into an executive’s decision-making.
Few of us have ever managed the multi-million dollar budgets or had our jobs on the line for the decisions we make with that amount of money. Just this week, Disney’s film chief, Rich Ross, resigned over the $200 million dollar loss on the John Carter film. The stakes are high when you are managing budgets and divisions in this realm.
What can we learn from Doug’s recounting in his post? Sales and marketability are key determining factors in the decision to buy, produce and hire in the film/TV industry. The judgements levied at actors over physical appeal may not be fair; but they exist, if for no other reason that when actors present themselves for casting, they are marketing their talent and their “physical presence” – in energy, looks, mannerisms, voice, and how they relate to other actors on screen.
Which brings us back to marketing. Emmy-award winning writer-producer Erik Bork posted on this topic today in Scriptmag in his article “Sending Queries to Literary Managers about a Screenplay.” This is well worth your time in reading. Erik reminds us that the industry is hungry – always has been and always will be – for marketable material.
Marketable material. That’s solid, saleable scripts and actors who can deliver and carry the weight and risk of hundreds of millions of dollars.
So I say before we all jump up and down in outrage at the “sex factor” – we might try to walk in the shoes of the executive responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of stockholders’ money.
And we should probably write well, too.
More On a Writer’s Confidence…
Michelle Goode (Twitter: @sofluid) kindly included one of my posts in her The WritesoFluid Daily today (thank you, Michelle!) – and my post was on Confidence. I wanted to expand a bit more on that here, because it’s something that writers often have a hard time developing.
First off, confidence is not to be mistaken for attitude or arrogance. It’s not thinking that you’re better than someone else. Humility is always an element of true confidence, because it allows you to interact with people as human beings and not see them just for what you stand to gain from them. Confidence comes from knowing who you are and that’s not always an easy thing to do when you’re a writer (at any level of the profession).
Knowing who you are involves seeing your work as valuable. It’s also about being able to separate your sense of self-worth from opinion. Writers work in a media that is highly subjective (all art is) to opinion; and while there are ways to clearly improve craft, at the end of the day, only the writer can say whether or not he or she wrote what was intended. I don’t know who to credit for this quote, but it’s one we should all memorize: “Don’t let others opinion become your reality.”
As a writer, you alone have the right to decide the value of what you’ve written. You alone know the Story. You alone get to decide whether to continue writing or marketing it, or not.
What I often see is that we tend to put too much power in the hands of others. It’s true that business executives have the power to buy or not buy our work. And that will always be the case. Executives and deal-makers of all ranks have the power to make commerce decisions about our work.
But what I see too often is that writers place their worth and credibility as a writer in the hands of others. As if someone else gets to decide whether or not we get to be writers? Does that make sense? If you are a lawyer, you’re a lawyer – no matter what others think of you. If you’re a doctor, you’re a doctor. A teacher, a teacher.
If you’re a writer, you’re a writer. Right? No matter what others think of you? Right.
Confidence comes by deciding that you are the one who gets to decide who you are. Others will always be judging our work – some rightly, some wrongly. But you have to know and believe in who you are.
It’s that confidence that leads to professionalism.
Professionalism means you value yourself as an equal contributor to your field, your industry, your art. You meet others – executives, colleagues, networkers, readers, assistants – as peers, with respect. You treat them with kindness, not because you want something from them, but because we’re all human beings just trying to do our work and none of us knows the full backstory we each bring into the room. It means you assume goodwill. (Mark Sanderson (Twitter: @scriptcat) wrote a great post on this and successful meetings yesterday – read it here.)
Will you get nervous? Of course, we all do, every time. But you’ll calm your nerves by reminding yourself that no matter who the person you’re meeting is – he or she is, after all, a person just like you. You’ll remember that when you’re talking with them. You’ll remind yourself that no matter what they decide, you are still a writer, your work is still your work, and you have the courage to take the next step. They don’t get to tell you who you are. You do.
Confidence comes from courage. Being willing to say “yes, I can” even when you’re plagued with doubts. It’s stepping up and taking a risk. And knowing, that your worth as a human being has nothing to do with your work as a writer. Your worth as a human being cannot be changed by anyone’s opinion. It’s fixed, by a benevolent Universe.
So, you really don’t have as much to lose as you fear, do you? What’s the worst that can happen? Someone who could say yes, says no. So? Does that mean your life as a writer is over? No. Only if you decide it is.
What will you decide?
creative inside out 