SCRIPT Magazine has published my article analyzing the common elements of screenplays that sold in 2012. One of the key things that I noticed was the pretty obvious SAVE THE CAT genres of each. Here’s how the article begins:
We screenwriters want to sell our work, naturally. This, of course, is very rare. How rare? Well, in 2012, according to The Scoggins Report’s “Year-End Spec Market Scorecard”, there were 132 “spec sales” – or scripts that sold — in the entire year. And this matched a 15-year record HIGH from 2011. And this is not just studio sales – this includes all buyers who were known to have bought a spec screenplay from a writer, according to my friend Jason Scoggins’ research. (He’s been compiling this information – and making it available for free – for many years.)
But the point of this post is not to discourage you – as you consider how many tens of thousands of scripts did not sell, so that these 132 could. My point is to offer a few observations about those scripts that sold, and especially about their content – as evidenced by the logline and genre information the “Scorecard” includes… Read the full article here
