How world events can help or harm your screenplay
You have to accept you’re not in control
By Ian Masters
For the last two years, I’ve been working with Sudanese writers remotely, helping them storyline their experiences of South Sudan’s conflict into radio drama.
While it’s been frustrating not being able to work with my fellow collaborators face-to-face, it’s good to know that this is not a speculative writing project. Our radio plays will go on air as soon as they’re written and recorded – distributed to partner radio stations across the country and reaching an audience of nearly 2 million listeners.
Which is a great comfort to me because for the past months I’ve been in a fug of despair that nothing that my writing partner Jon and I write on spec will ever reach an audience.
We were very close with a TV series called Radix, until the political situation in Tunisia spiralled and the broadcaster pulled out at the contracting stage. Because of the changes in the geopolitical climate, the show is now considered “too close to the bone”. Yet at the same time, our movie script set during the last days of the Vietnam War has received an unexpected boost and suddenly become highly relevant.
The hero of the story was a dweeby scientist from Idaho plunged into the military chaos and testosterone of the American war machine in retreat.
This script, Endgames, is set during the fall of Saigon. I’d come across a true story about a secret mission to extract uranium and plutonium from a US-built nuclear research reactor before it fell to the North Vietnamese and their Russian backers. The hero of the story was a dweeby scientist from Idaho plunged into the military chaos and testosterone of the American war machine in retreat – a character who shouldn’t be there, but whose moral conviction saved Vietnam from the world’s first dirty bomb. But Endgames had languished for years. Producers would pass on it time and again, intoning, “Why is this movie story relevant? Why now? Who cares about the Vietnam War anymore?”
Then the fall of Kabul happened.
The pictures of evacuations at the airport recalled (not necessarily accurately) the parallels with Saigon. Endgames became hot again and over the past two weeks it’s been sent out to A-list talent in the US, with top producers pushing it for us, stressing how relevant the project is to the world today – all because of the changes in world events.
Neither the situation in Tunisia, nor Kabul, have anything to do with us writers or our team. One was crushing, the other elating.
Scripts and stories find their own “right time.” Or rather, the right time finds the script.
All you can do is keep writing and sending your work out, in the hope that one day the moviemaking planets will align.
There are so many examples of scripts taking decades to reach the screen. This has nothing to do with the craft or the talent of the creative team.
While you’re writing, you are in total control of everything that happens in your story world. Every line of dialogue, every scene transition, every character arc and plot twist. Every individual word. We’re the absolute puppet masters of our story. But once we send out our scripts into the world, we have to learn to relinquish everything to forces beyond our control. It’s not a reflection of our writing, talent, or ability. There’s zero point in spiralling into self-doubt and second-guessing why a project isn’t being picked up. Is it because it’s not good enough? Does it need a rewrite? Is it worth rewriting or is it dead in the water?
All you can do is keep writing and sending your work out, in the hope that one day the moviemaking planets will align.
And in the meantime, think about what you’d want to write next. At least that choice is entirely within your control. And if you haven’t seen it, Scriptfella’s excellent video on How to Hit Your Writing Sweetspot is a great place to start.
Ian Masters
Ian Masters is an award-winning scriptwriter who has worked across Africa and Asia for the past two decades. He is now based out of the UK with his writing partner, Jon Smith.
You can connect with Ian on LinkedIn, contact him through his agent or his website, and find out more about his work here.
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