Manuscript Wish List

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  • #16
    Re: Manuscript Wish List

    Originally posted by Rantanplan View Post
    Go for it! Especially if you write YA. That is by FAR the genre agents are most looking for (see list on right hand side of MSWL page).
    Agree it's the best genre to write, if you have something that fits it. If you listen to Scriptnotes, John August's adventures in writing and selling his (middle grade?) novel were pretty helpful along the way.

    Writing a novel is a longer slog than a screenplay. The odds that you'll sell it and have any meaningful financial result are very small. But for me, I get more satisfaction out of writing a novel.

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    • #17
      Re: Manuscript Wish List

      Originally posted by Rantanplan View Post
      Re. $$$: it's just as hard to sell a book as it is a script, it usually pays a lot less and it takes a lot longer to write.
      Rantanplan,

      I agree with the last two parts of this and disagree with the first. Of course, there's all sorts of gray areas with self-publishing, etc., but from my experience, it's much easier to sell a book to a name publishing house than it is to sell a script.

      K44

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      • #18
        Re: Manuscript Wish List

        Originally posted by kidd44 View Post
        Rantanplan,

        I agree with the last two parts of this and disagree with the first. Of course, there's all sorts of gray areas with self-publishing, etc., but from my experience, it's much easier to sell a book to a name publishing house than it is to sell a script.

        K44

        It might be, I'm not sure. It would be interesting to see the statistics. Both are very hard, but one thing is certain, it doesn't cost tens of million dollars to publish a book, so that's one advantage.

        @Lostfootage: I enjoy writing both, but yeah, I would probably have to say a novel is more fulfilling. You have much more freedom with language, since you're not limited to just dialogue (the only "writing" of yours in a script that a viewer will actually hear). Creating a great narrator is one of the great pleasures of writing prose. Then again, the immediacy of scripts is a lot of fun. I really think the story and the format come to you, and then you just have to go with it. You don't sit down and ask yourself, OK, what am I going to write next? And do I want to make this a novel or a screenplay?

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        • #19
          Re: Manuscript Wish List

          Originally posted by Rantanplan View Post
          @Lostfootage: ...I really think the story and the format come to you, and then you just have to go with it. You don't sit down and ask yourself, OK, what am I going to write next? And do I want to make this a novel or a screenplay?
          Yes! My favorite creators, like Noah Hawley, do both. I love his Fargo series, and then I've read some of his novels and also love them. He does what's right for the story. I think Derek Haas also does this.

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          • #20
            Re: Manuscript Wish List

            I would say that if you have the skills to do both, you should write both. If you're a good writer with a strong novel and marketable idea, you will get published, and you will see your work in print. That's gratifying. You can spend years writing a great script though, and hardly anyone (outside of a small Hollywood community) will get to see what you've accomplished.

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            • #21
              Re: Manuscript Wish List

              Someone once said that the best non-fiction writing reads like a novel and the best fiction reads like it's non-fiction.

              I wonder if the same is true of prose and screenplays. While I don't believe that screenplays should read like novels, do the best novels and non-fiction books feel like they are films playing in your head?

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              • #22
                Re: Manuscript Wish List

                Originally posted by kidd44 View Post
                Someone once said that the best non-fiction writing reads like a novel and the best fiction reads like it's non-fiction.

                I wonder if the same is true of prose and screenplays. While I don't believe that screenplays should read like novels, do the best novels and non-fiction books feel like they are films playing in your head?
                Idk the answer cuz I've never written a novel. But I can say that the script that initially got me signed faced the question "Is this a true story?... Feels like a true story."
                Bruh, fukkin *smooches*! Feel me? Ha!

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                • #23
                  Re: Manuscript Wish List

                  Originally posted by kidd44 View Post
                  Someone once said that the best non-fiction writing reads like a novel and the best fiction reads like it's non-fiction.

                  I wonder if the same is true of prose and screenplays. While I don't believe that screenplays should read like novels, do the best novels and non-fiction books feel like they are films playing in your head?
                  I came to the conclusion once (and I wrote it here at some point) that you write a novel with words and a script with images. Obviously within that general rule there is the whole range of nuance and degrees, but that is the major difference.

                  You can tell a whole small story in film with just a series of images and no words. With a novel, you have to use words to complete that story. Others have explained it better than me, I'm afraid. It's the beauty of the different forms of artistic expression and the amount of imagination the reader has to contribute.

                  For instance, in a graphic novel I recently translated about children in the French Resistance, there's a sequence of three panels and no text that tells a powerful story: in the first panel, a woman rows a passenger across a river at dusk; in the second panel, she rows the empty boat in the other direction, while in the foreground, two Nazi soldiers spot her and one of them takes his rifle off his shoulder; in the third panel, the boat is empty and the oar is floating on the water.

                  With a novel, you need to use powerful words to create those images in the reader's mind.

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                  • #24
                    Re: Manuscript Wish List

                    yep... I checked the wish list on and off for years. It's a good tool but it's one tool that's smaller than it looks and has its limitations.

                    I've been an aspiring novelist for decades but my handicap is that I want to write literary fiction. I like the 'write a novel/words, write a script/images thing'. You write a literary novel with ideas, the story is underneath the words. For commercial lit agents it's a form of ebola only slightly less lethal than poetry. They won't talk to you or handle your stuff without a hazmat suit. But of course, like poets, when an artist starts to win awards and be embraced by the public, then Godzilla shows up.

                    In the olden days, publishing a book was like a block buster movie requiring lots of people and lots of money which attracted the usual predators. It was controlled by six giants. Nowadays, I've published great books in exchange for liquor and they've made actual cash selling their book on Amazon in several countries. With the explosion of media formats and outlets, screenwriters might be in the same environment soon.

                    MSWL is a good place to look but I've found that it's generally the same agents and agencies using it. Once you strike out with them, you check occasionally to look for a new listing. If you happen to have a dark, dystopic thriller about a vampire detective falling in love with a zombie girl he must arrest, stuff like that does come up there.

                    Research ANY lead before you submit! There are people who will rob you, do you and take the rights to all you have created and all you will ever create, they lurk amongst the listings. For me, MSWL is just like the DDP database, I'm looking for a specific agent for a specific manuscript so I usually do a deep dive into them before I hit 'send'. I found a promising lead here (DDP listings) in the agents only to find she had died years ago and her agency was gone. It was a while ago and I don't remember the name. I guess I should have said something to somebody.

                    BTW: Self publishing is always an option. If you have a good product and are willing to do the work, people make a living at it. But it is HARD word! Your art will be instantly swamped in the infinite sea of newborn content. It is up to you to keep it afloat against the perpetual tsunami of printed vomit. Like anything, it takes lots of work and or money.

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                    • #25
                      Re: Manuscript Wish List

                      Yeah, anyone on these boards who thinks getting a novel published is easy is in for a nasty surprise. Everyone from Melville to Agatha Christie to Stephen King to J.K. Rowling has had their manuscripts rejected. Agents get hundreds of queries a week and turn 95% of them down.

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                      • #26
                        Re: Manuscript Wish List

                        Originally posted by Rantanplan View Post
                        Yeah, anyone on these boards who thinks getting a novel published is easy is in for a nasty surprise. Everyone from Melville to Agatha Christie to Stephen King to J.K. Rowling has had their manuscripts rejected. Agents get hundreds of queries a week and turn 95% of them down.
                        Nothing worth doing in life should be easy. It takes about a decade or two to master a craft.

                        Tons of published novels are crap. The prose is weak, stories are boring. Makes me wonder why I just wasted 2 weeks of my life. Rejection is a part of the game for any artist. 95% of those queries should get turned down. It should be even harder to publish a book than it is now. There shouldn't be room on the shelves for such mediocrity.

                        If you write a great novel, it will get published, believe me, but if you write a great script, there's no guarantee it gets purchased and there's no guarantee it gets made, and even if it does get made, there's no guarantee it'll be a good movie because of how many artists are involved in the project. With a novel, it's all your work. There's an editor usually hired from the publishing house and that's it.

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                        • #27
                          Re: Manuscript Wish List

                          Originally posted by Vango View Post
                          There's an editor usually hired from the publishing house and that's it.
                          You sound like you must have a lot of experience with the publishing industry.

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