Trends Hunt for Foundations
I was listening to a podcast today, and the producer is an expert of mining Reddit for Hollywood gold. What does this mean for you? I’ve already handed you this answer, and I’ll do it again.
A Night on the Town
I was listening to The Town with Matthew Belloni the other day. If you don’t know, this podcast covers the business of entertainment, with a focus on movies, streaming, and television in Hollywood.
On this episode, entitled “Inside the Internet IP Gold Rush Sweeping Hollywood,” producer Scott Glassgold tells us how his team has been scouring Reddit for years. They’re continually looking for what everyone in Hollywood will likely be looking for over the next few months: short stories. This is due to some internet breakout successes recently, including Backrooms, Obsession, and Iron Lung. (Though I am under the impression the latter is an adaptation for a video game from a huge Twitch streamer.)
In the episode, Matt asked Scott what his litmus test was for finding a great story.
Scott’s answer was so telling. On Reddit, the title for the articles are the concepts of the story you’re about to watch. Scott is looking for Hollywood concepts that are easily communicable and interesting.
I love this, because it reinforces one of the bedrocks of screenwriting that all us need to internalize.
Your script likely lives or dies based on the concept and logline of the film. After all, if it doesn’t sound compelling, why would people watch it? Producers can tell based on the concept whether that sounds like a marketable movie or not. You need to nail that concept, then execute it to a professional level.
Not so challenging, really. That’s only like two things. Anyone can do only two things.
Capitalizing on Trends
I love trends in Hollywood, because they breed some of the worst fucking advice I’ve ever heard. Now that this thing is popular, you should do this thing!
You see that a lot with short films, Youtube videos, Tik Toks, and so much more.
Like yeah, I have all the time in the world to master the wildly difficult craft of screenwriting, work to feed my family and pay rent, and invent a time machine, go back to Youtube’s golden age, work a fulltime gig building myself a fanbase. Maybe now you’ll pay attention to me.
One teacher told us once, “Make short films.” What he meant to say was, “Make one of the greatest short films ever, and spend the equivalent of a small house in marketing it on both the festival circuit and to a mass audience.” Because making a short film is NOT a path to success. Do you know how many people make short films, and how few of those people are lifted by industry angels into Hollywood’s waiting bosom? Nobody does. Because short films aren’t exactly hot marketable commodities. This advice is not the teacher’s fault. They were thinking of the various random ways creators were found and introduced to the Hollywood system.
I thought of this though, when an agent said to a group of writers, “make content online” as a way to get discovered. That’s an incredibly difficult job, dude, with almost zero returns in the early years. That’s right, being a content creator with a truly healthy following will take fucking years, if the algorithm doesn’t change and you can dissect it well, or if AI slop doesn’t chase everyone with a pulse out of these spaces. I can’t even spell algorithm without a lot of help!
There IS something hiding in both these suggestions that you should absolutely do. I’m doing it right now. You should regularly release something into the world so people can see you do what you do.
You should regularly release something. Not helpful screenwriting blogs though. That’s my sandwich. Get your own.
(I’m kidding, I’d gladly encourage you to add your voice to this space! Come be a guest writer on my blog!)
I regularly publish this blog. Why? Well, it gives people looking into you a way to legitimize you, but it does more than that. And for that, I bring us right back around to The Town with Matthew Belloni.
What an Audience Wants
You likely saw this news break. Netflix is having a wild problem where their audiences aren’t coming back for Season 2 of their shows. I listened to this on the aforementioned podcast, and innately understood something that many writers don’t want to face.
Creating buy-in is extremely hard. So hard, in fact, that the industry works on relationships instead of reads. Really let that one sink in. This isn’t done to gatekeep, it’s done because we only have so much finite time on this Earth. Relationships are shortcuts. Writers with distinct voices are shortcuts. If I say James Gunn wrote a movie, you have a pretty strong idea of what that movie is without knowing anything about it. That’s a shortcut, and a good one.
Back to Netflix, audiences love longevity. It’s an oxymoron in many ways. Audiences don’t want to pay for buy-in, and they don’t like giving new things a chance, but they DO get curious when something gains legs and shows it’s worth watching. What season was released when you finally watched Game of Thrones? For me it was Season 04. Breaking Bad was Season 03.
(I started the show at the beginning, but it was that long into the show before word of mouth swayed me to pay attention.) (This is terrible practice if you want to be a TV writer. You should absolutely watch new shows constantly, especially what’s in your genre!)
Longevity, then. We can build that. We can build audiences with storytelling in places like Reddit. In fact, Reddit is a great place to be because you can just show up and pop your story in. There’s no BULLSHIT FUCKING ALGORITHM GODS you have to convince to put your work out there on your behalf.
As someone who is terrible at algorithm, I think it’s fair to say that anyone who advises you to make “viral content” or “content” in general is really asking you to produce content at a regular cadence and become an expert in manipulating the algorithm, which is a billion dollar marketing industry, by the way. Good luck. You’ll need it. It’s not all that feasible, though it can be done. You and everyone else and their dog are already working at it.
But Reddit doesn’t have one (it does, but it’s very different). You post, and the people vote. Forget the upvotes and downvotes - don’t fall for this trap. Those won’t matter to you for the first steps of this challenge. My challenge to you is to post writing at a regular cadence. Become routine for an audience. Create things you love. If you do this, you are doing something that helps you, helps others read you, and keeps you engaged with your writing career.
And when you do that, start with the foundations. In every trend, all things come back to the quintessential question someone wonders when they hear your concept and logline: can we sell that?
Keep coming up with work that answers that question with a confident “YES” and put it out in the world. Don’t chase trends, but be visible.
But… At the same time, don’t let this take away from the work before you. Don’t let it stop you from mastering the craft, from feeding your family, from living life once in a while. If you’re going to write, do it from a place of love. That’s all we CAN do.
But don’t follow Hollywood logic and leap on a bandwagon now. Once you’ve heard of the bandwagon, it’s already left town without you on it. Most of these creators being “discovered” were toiling away thanklessly for YEARS. You can start that in any medium you wish, and there is value in that, but don’t think it’s your ticket to getting discovered. It’s not. You have to do it for the love of the craft.
Fall in Love with Creating
Someone asked in a public post if you’d still do what you do if you weren’t being paid. The answer for most of us is, in some way, yes. The poster then wanted to challenge that thought. Would you teach it for free? Would you continually work in that space for free?
My answer was yes. I already do ALL of those things. Yes, I teach for free. I read scripts for free. And while my lovely subscribers do pay me because my hired goons know a select few of their addresses, I started this with no financial gain in mind, and I will continue. I want to be extremely helpful to writers, and I want to do it for free.
I have SO MANY THOUGHTS on this to come.
Your odds of being paid in Hollywood are slim. No, wait, that’s not the most accurate word we can use. They’re dismal. I’m sorry, it’s true. I wish it were better for all of us. But we can improve those odds by mastering our craft (this is like, the only thing we truly HAVE to do), building audiences, making friends, and being genuinely awesome.
I met an author the other day I’m excited about. I haven’t read a word of her work. But she told me her concept and her goal, and I couldn’t help but want to be on her team. She is writing for the love of it, and after she’s done, she wants it available in the world because she loves books, and wants to be able to read hers as a real book. She didn’t want money, fame, none of that. She just wants to write and publish a great book, and she quotes, “even if nobody but me reads it.” That’s an author doing it for the love of the craft, and I immediately gave her my contact information.
Let’s do more of that. Together, if possible. Let’s keep writing and showing the world what we’re capable of.
I see these trends and feel like I wasted opportunities to be a part of this wave. Maybe that’s true. Maybe I’m missing more opportunities, now. But I have very limited time, and this is a very challenging job. Consider what your goals are, and decide for yourself whether this is all noise or not.
And as always, Happy Writing!
If you’re still here, I’d love it if you’d share this article! My goal this year is growth, and I do that through consistency and with your help. A like, a comment, a share, that’s incredibly valuable to me. In return, if you’re a screenwriter, I’ll put you in a draw. This season, I’ll pick three writers and read their scripts, provide notes, and help them improve.
It’s the least I could do. It’s a win win. Plus, we’ll be friends for life, and who doesn’t want to be friends for life? Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in a week!
So basically, they're combing reddit for ideas and concepts they can steal.