Although the writer’s strike put everything remotely related to selling scripts on pause, that didn’t mean I was barred from preparing for a time after the issues were resolved, when I would be able to network and try to option my screenplay. Taking the time to thoughtfully draft a query letter for representation was a big step, but it was also only half of what I wanted to do during these circumstances.
The other task I planned on doing was following the advice that I had been given by the judge I’d had the second consultation with for the script of Dig Down: to keep writing scripts.
I had already adapted Dig Down and Lock the Doors into screenplays, but hadn’t gotten to I’m Not My Father yet. This wasn’t the only story that was low hanging fruit for conversion to a script. There were plenty of stories I’d written before I had finally made the move to self-publish, and I felt more than a few of them could be worthwhile and engaging screenplays.
But at this point, a few weeks removed from that second consultation, a lot of the points the judge had made were fresh in my mind, and I was starting to accept that although I had stories available for adaptation, this wasn’t the path to take. All the stories I had written already were written as novels and short stories. That was primarily how I saw them, and I felt any effort to convert them to this new medium would run the risk of arriving at the same end point as Dig Down: good…but not good enough.
I decided that if I was going to write another screenplay, I was going to write it with it being a screenplay in mind from the start. That meant, for the first time since 2008, a full 15 years(!) I was going to be writing an original screenplay, not an adaptation of one. If the story was going to be adapted, it was going to be adapted from a screenplay to a novel, novella or short story.
At this time, I was starting to outline and flesh out the idea for a new story-one that would be too big to be a screenplay-but that was fine to focus on it for now, because I didn’t yet have my idea for a new script.
That was going to come much later.
But I had the map of a plan. When I came back to the screenwriting circuit, to the contests, and festivals, and networking, it was going to be with a story designed to be a script from the start.