Over the past couple of decades, we have seen all the legacy studios—Warner Bros, Fox, Universal, MGM, and Paramount—gobbled up by giant media conglomerates like so many dots on the Pac-Man screen. The new, more vertical configuration of the current media industry can make it more daunting and confusing than ever for an amateur screenwriter looking for a way to get started on a professional career.

There is still one tried-and-true strategy for breaking into the business that works extremely well, and this is a path open to anyone regardless of where you live, your background, or who you know. The answer is to write a spec script that people want to buy. It really is that simple.

The Power of the Spec Script

There is nothing like a high-profile spec script sale to create buzz and excitement around a new screenwriter. Sometimes a spec script can even create an auction-like situation with several production companies bidding against one another for the rights to fast-track the movie into production. A big headline-grabbing spec sale doesn’t happen every day, but it does happen enough to be a real thing.

Anybody can do it. You don’t have to have produced screen credits or even be a member of the Writers Guild. Obviously, this is all much easier said than done, but the point is that there does exist a realistic path for an amateur screenwriter to launch themselves out of obscurity to a thriving career as a professional, virtually overnight. All you need to make this happen is an original spec screenplay that somebody wants to buy.

What Makes a Good Spec?

It’s important to note that the vast majority of screenplay deals are not the result of spec sales. Most movies come about as works for hire—adaptations of novels (or other preexisting IP), and/or projects that established screenwriters have developed from longstanding collaborative relationships with producers and studio execs.

Studios and movie producers already have a pretty good idea of the kind of movies they want to make. They know what kind of screenplays are most likely to attract the acting and directing talent they want to work with, and they know what kind of movies they can best market to their customers. A spec script, by definition, is not a project they developed in-house. It’s an opportunistic buy. It stands to reason that the best chance to make a deal on what amounts to an impulse buy is to offer the buyer something they already want.

Why Specs are Different

Today’s cinematic landscape offers more diverse offerings than ever, and there are paths to success for all different kinds of movies. But, for the purposes of this conversation, we’re not talking about “all different kinds of movies”—this is about the spec scripts, and that’s a unique subset of the market.

Spec script submissions are handled by studios and streamers in a particular way, and there are certain types of projects that fare much better in this process. Typically, an agent who has a hot spec script will send the material “out wide” over the weekend, with the hope that interested buyer(s) will contact them by Monday morning with declarations of interest and cash offers.

The first thing all prospective buyers do with a “competitive” submission is send the material to one of their staff readers for “priority coverage” and assign a couple of mid-level executives to take a look over the weekend. The reader will then distill that 100+ page screenplay into a 2 ½ page synopsis and roughly a page of comments that will conclude with one of three options for next steps: Pass, Consider, Recommend. That’s it, and, believe it or not, there is a lot less subjectivity involved in making this call than you might think.

The coverage will be the most important document this submission will ever face. If a spec script does not get at least a “Strong Consider” from the reader, the likelihood that anyone else at the company will even read the material is virtually zero. Movie studios must move all the way up the chain-of-command. The clock is ticking in an auction situation, and senior executives often make snap decisions about whether to bid based on the consensus of their subordinates as it is expressed in the coverage.

What’s the Reader Looking for?

It may be disheartening to learn that the fate of a cherished spec screenplay lies in the hands of a sole lowly reader who has infinite power to reject it, but that’s just the way it is. The good news is that these people do actually know what they are doing. They know what they are supposed to look for, and they know how to identify it and properly promote it when they do. This isn’t a secret formula that needs to be decoded, it’s common sense.

Production companies want to make movies that minimize financial risk and maximize successful outcomes. They do this by identifying particular genres and types of movies that have been successful in the past and making more of them. A successful movie is a movie that has broad audience appeal, racks up significant box office revenue (and/or what they now call “viewer engagement” on social media), and attracts quality acting talent.

If you want to feed the beast, you have to give the beast what it wants. By and large, what the streamers are most hungry for are genre movies—Action, Horror, Rom-com, Psychological-Thriller, High-concept comedy, and contained Sci-Fi. This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, and there are many exceptions, but these are the mainstay movies that provide the revenue needed to keep the lights on. Without a steady supply of solid, commercially oriented popcorn movies, none of the quirky, offbeat, auteur movies that we all know and love would be possible.

What Doesn’t Work

There are many screenplays that might make for fabulous, critically acclaimed, award-winning movies, which typically don’t work well within the crucible-like intensity of the spec script consideration process. Projects that stray too far outside of established commercial genre categories are not going to do well, precisely because readers have been trained (either implicitly or explicitly) to filter them out.

I will probably make some enemies, but there are certain kinds of movies I would recommend against writing if the goal is to make a big spec script sale, so here goes with a partial list:

• Period/Historical subjects. If at all possible, set your screenplay in the present day. For a number of reasons, period pieces automatically have less immediate curb appeal. They are far more expensive to make and much harder to sell to general audiences.
• Ensemble pieces. The spec script market highly favors projects that have one or two clear-cut protagonists. Attracting A-level acting talent is the best way to get any movie made, and studio executives want projects with standout movie star roles over movies acted by committee.
• Straight Drama. The best movies in this category tend to be adaptations from novels or other pre-existing IP. They require special handling, and they are highly dependent on the right combination of acting and filmmaking talent.
• Musical/Animation/Fantasy. Niche movies that require extensive world-building elements or the integration of various different creative disciplines are not likely to receive the kind of attention they need as spec script offerings.
• Niche/Specialty movies. The spec script market is not the place to push the creative envelope with projects that stray too far from mainstream sensibilities.

Understanding the “Assignment”

Not everyone loves genre movies. I get that, but the movie business is a business—it’s not a movie festival or a screenwriting contest. The rules are different, and different criteria are applied to determine what qualifies as a successful submission. Movie studios and streamers have an almost bottomless appetite for material, but they want the right kind of material. Writing genre movies doesn’t mean you should churn-out cookie-cutter screenplays that blandly follow the same tired formulas. It doesn’t suggest you have to abandon creativity or originality in your writing.

There is a fairly wide spectrum of viable genres from which to choose, and they are all hiding in plain sight. You can play with genre tropes all you want, mash-up concepts in new and unexpected ways, and throw in all kinds of twists and surprises to subvert audience expectations and keep things fresh. The trick is to not color outside the lines so much that the project loses the crispness of concept that a spec needs to get snapped up.

The buyers make no secret of exactly what it is they are looking for. If you want to exponentially increase your chances for success, the assignment is simple and straightforward--try to give them more of what they always already want, and not something altogether different.

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