Can you become a screenwriter outside of LA?
You can make it there, but can you make it anywhere?
This week’s rebroadcast combines two posts from 2016 with stories from working writers who live outside of Los Angeles (or New York, or London).
In episode 267 of Scriptnotes, we shared stories from screenwriters who managed to build careers while living outside of Los Angeles, New York or London. We had more contributors than we could feature in the episode, so here are a few more tales from the trenches.
Post-pandemic, it’s gotten significantly more common for film and TV writers to live outside of Los Angeles or New York. Most meetings and pitches are on zoom. Even some TV writers rooms have stayed virtual. Anecdotally, it feels like many of these working writers built their careers in LA and then moved away. When it comes to starting a career, there’s still a strong network effect of living in the town where writing happens.
Chad from Nashville, TN: After studying film in college, I moved from NY back to Tennessee to get better at writing screenplays. It took eight years of writing to win Slamdance’s competition. I had been a finalist in others and even won a smaller festival, but they didn’t really matter besides being a barometer for my writing progression. But with the Slamdance win for my horror screenplay JUG FACE, I was able to get most anyone to read it.
I contacted a producer who had made other horror films that I felt my movie fit in with. At the same time, I had been in preproduction on a horror short and was about to shoot it the very next weekend after speaking with that producer. Three weeks later, I sent him the completed short and he called me that night and said we were going to make the movie with me directing it. Five months after that, we shot JUG FACE and it premiered at Slamdance the very next year. The film went on to get world wide distribution and did pretty good for an indy horror film.
Since then I’ve gotten management and have had a number of projects fizzle but have finally made the move to LA to make things happen. My family and I landed here six weeks ago.
Alan from Connecticut: I am a produced screenwriter with screen credits for two Lifetime movies. I have lived in Connecticut my whole life and attended an online college program through the Academy of Art based in San Francisco.
After graduating, I worked on several spec scripts and began the long process of manual queries. I placed in a few screenwriting competitions, but they led no where. I finished a MOW Thriller and used IMDB Pro to get production contacts for niche low-budget companies. After getting a few hits, I used my spec to get my first assignment and it was produced into the film “Her Infidelity”.
All of my meetings, contracts, and contact has been done through phones, email, and faxing. It has worked out fairly well. I have other projects in development, but have not reached a point where I am screenwriting full-time yet. I also edit wedding videos and do a lot of freelance writing to help supplement my screenwriting career.
Chris in Arizona: I live in Arizona and recently got hired for my first feature. I had done a few episodes of TV prior to this and as all aspiring writers do, submitted many scripts for competitions and what not.
Unfortunately the show I was originally hired to do never made the light of day (due to the writers strike a few years back), but I have to always assume it’s the norm.
Regardless of that I worked as an exhibitor, a fancy way of saying I worked for a movie theater company. The way things really began is I started building relationships with people in the industry when our theaters would do research screenings and I was assigned to coordination and handling the “talent”. An easy job for me. I started out speaking with many post production supervisors and would ask for introductions to producers, editors, and directors during screenings. Not to pitch or be annoying but the chance to say my name, for them to see my face, and do what I was supposed to do for my job.
Over time many of these industry professionals would use our locations consistently and began calling me directly on my cell phone for scheduling changes, requests, etc.. Eventually relationships became more and more relaxed and I was able to have more casual conversations which eventually led into THEIR inquiry of my enjoyment of my job. I never approached anyone myself but allowed the conversations to flow naturally. I didn’t want to be the norm of what I assumed they were used to.
Basically it was a right place, right time, situation for a lot of things but it happened outside of the traditional locations.
JJ in Chicago: I’ve managed to make some money screenwriting from out here in Chicago. So far it has only been in independent films.
It started when I sent a spec to a producer friend in LA. He passed it to another producer who happened to be looking for someone to do a rewrite on his script. He asked for more samples and I was hired a few days later.
After forming a relationship with that producer I’ve been hired for a few more projects since that first one.
That said, I still have a day job and am finishing up another spec with hopes of making it into the big leagues one day.
Isaac in Portland, OR: I graduated long ago with an MA in Film Studies but decided soon after that what I really wanted was to become was a novelist. I pursued that for a number of years, getting five books published, but none that were successful enough to keep me from simultaneously working various day jobs. My first real exposure to the movie industry came when one of my books, Tokyo Suckerpunch, was optioned, first by Fox Searchlight and later by Sony. Talking to folks who worked on it and reading various scripts that emerged from its long development process de-mystified screenwriting a bit for me. I started reading every script I could get my hands on, thinking maybe this was something I could do one day.
I wrote the requisite terrible first script that I showed to maybe two people before burying it. The next script I finished I uploaded to the Black List site. That one attracted the attention of a manager. The next one went out and won a few fans around town. I flew to LA for some generals. The script after that was eventually optioned by an independent production company.
My manager encouraged me to come up with some TV ideas. I was wrestling with a sci-fi pilot for months when I decided to take a break and from that and write this crazy idea that had been germinating in my head for a long time — a Michael Jackson biopic told from the perspective of his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles.
That script blew up in ways I couldn’t have imagined. Within a couple weeks of BUBBLES hitting the town, I was back in LA for a whirlwind water bottle tour — meetings with execs, producers, agents, directors (the experience underscored what you often tell listeners about finding an agent — when you’re ready for one, they will find you). The script ended up atop the 2015 Black List and eventually sold.
I’ve been steadily working since, though given that I’m less than two years into my career as a professional screenwriter, it remains to be seen whether I can maintain any kind of career longevity living outside LA. Moving there is not really an option for me at the moment — I have two young children and love living in Portland. But I spend a week in LA about every three months and my reps understand that if something comes up and I have to hop on a plane tomorrow, I’ll be there. I spend a lot of time on Skype and on the phone, but so far being at a geographic remove hasn’t hurt me in any way that I’m aware of (major caveat: all my work so far has been in features rather than TV). I’ve been told by more than one exec that I’m lucky because writing features is maybe the one job in the industry where you can live pretty much anywhere.
Lynelle: I was writing and directing short films while living in St. Louis, MO. I did a two week summer film program in Missouri for women only. The program was run by a lovely gentleman and Missouri native named, Ken LaZebnik, who has worked as a TV writer.
I kept in contact with Ken over the years and when a position on the writing staff for the tv show ARMY WIVES opened up, he contacted me. He’d previously written on the show. Ken thought I’d be a good fit because I was prior military. I was living just outside of St. Louis when I hit send on some writing samples to Ken. He, in turn, forwarded the samples to the showrunner of ARMY WIVES and after I flew out to LA using frequent flier miles to meet with the showrunner, I got hired onto the show.
It was a Cinderella story. After ARMY WIVES was cancelled, I went on to work for a small zombie apocalypse show on SyFy called Z NATION.
But here’s the caveat to my Cinderella story. I hadn’t spent years in Los Angeles prior to getting staffed. I hadn’t been an assistant anywhere. I hadn’t been all over town on the water bottle tour. Nobody knew who I was so that makes getting subsequent jobs more difficult.
My agent was unable to get me any meetings so that’s when I decided to attend UCLA to get my MFA in Screenwriting. One, to further hone my craft but two, to make connections that I simply didn’t have because I was literally plucked from obscurity.
I’ve chosen to split my time between LA and St. Louis for my own personal sanity. I’m just not an LA person and probably never will be. Every individual must decide what’s right for them.
Brandon Dickerson: Funny enough, I didn’t start getting paid as a writer until after I moved out of LA after being there for eight years (and the Bay Area eight years before that).
Long story short: my wife’s mom got cancer which moved us abruptly to Texas to care for her with six months to live.
As a DGA director of commercials, docs, and music videos whose childhood dream was to make features, it wasn’t until I got out of town and finally focused on writing scripts that I was able to jump into writing and directing films instead of having “good meetings” that went nowhere.
My first script with writing partners in Texas became my directing debut SIRONIA. When my mother-in-law passed, we moved to Austin where I went right into adapting an optioned memoir for my second film VICTOR. I was then paid to adapt the novel Benjamin Dove for the screen, and now my second solo writing effort has become my next film WHEN JACK WENT GLAMPING — currently wrapping up post production.
These are all indie films financed in Texas in the under $2 million range, so maybe this isn’t truly “in the system.”
Aaron and Jordan: We are Hawaii born and based professional screenwriters (and identical twins) who landed our representation and sold our first spec script while living in Hawaii, where we continue to live and successfully work. But before we can recommend our absentee-ballot path to screenwriting, there are a few caveats to our story worth sharing.
Representation: Our manager flew to Hawaii to sign us after reading our first two spec scripts… something we have NEVER heard of happening to anyone else. Would they have flown to Kansas? We can’t say. Was the fact she got to write off her mai-tais on the beach a motivator… undoubtedly. Needless to say we got powerball lottery lucky. One in many millions odds. And we’ve stayed with that manager ever since.
First sale: Several years and many unsold scripts later that manager got one of our specs into the hands of an agent who agreed to to hip-pocket us if he sold it. The offer from Disney came in while we were in the middle of teaching an SAT prep class at Obama’s alma mater. And the first thing our agent asked us when the script sold was “When are you moving here?”
And for a time we did…
We lived in LA for three years. Took the usual round of water bottle meetings. Built a rolodex of contacts, fans and friends. And didn’t sell a single thing until we decided to move back to Hawaii.
And ironically, almost the moment our feet sunk back into the warm sand, our careers took off. The funny thing is, when we lived in LA, we were always available to take a meeting -— or more often than not -— have that meeting canceled while we were already an hour in traffic across town and half a day of writing wasted. In the three years living in LA, we probably took around 30-50 meetings. Now whenever we fly into town, we often take that many in a week. And none of them cancel. When they can’t have you, that’s when they want you. Such is the law of mating and meetings.
Sustaining a career: We find we are more productive creatively when we are away from the Hollywood hustle because we can focus solely on writing. But if you want to sustain a professional career, the business side of the career demands that, while you don’t HAVE to live in LA, you do have to travel to LA and pound the pavement, be present often and whenever needed, and at the drop of a hat. Otherwise you quickly drop off the radar completely.
We write from Hawaii but try to fly to LA at least once a quarter. Also we are primarily feature screenwriters. So BIG CAVEAT: if you want to write for television or animation… you NEED to live in Los Angeles. Last year for example, we had to relocate our families for seven months to work on “Moana” for Disney Animation.
These stories follow a pattern we discussed on the podcast. It’s more challenging to get your foot in the door when the door is thousands of miles away. But it’s not impossible.
Some writers have found competitions to be a good way of attracting the interest of managers. But we have yet to find one that got started based on a query letter, unless writers are eliding that detail.
While some working screenwriters are staying out of LA — often flying in regularly for meetings — quite a few pack up and move here. I call this the Nashville effect: moving to where the business is.
Thanks to all the writers (and producers) who wrote in to share their stories.
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🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com, Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art, or Threads @ccsont@threads.net