He says that while it's true that talent cannot be taught, people with talent can be taught. He also says being a writer and making your living as a writer can be two very different things.

Over the last decade, a dozen screenplays written in Hal Ackerman’s UCLA Screenwriting classes have been sold. His teachings have been highly praised by many, including those who have found success with films such as A Walk on the Moon, The Big Tease, and Terminal.

For years, Ackerman's students encouraged him to write a book on the craft. The result? The esteemed Write Screenplays That Sell: The Ackerman Way (Tallfellow Press), which has been called an intuitive, inspirational “must have” on screenwriting and has been adopted as a new text by university film studies departments around the U.S.

Recently, we asked Ackerman what he feels are the most common mistakes aspiring screenwriters make when pursuing the craft of screenwriting, and what it takes to increase the odds of making it in this difficult industry.

Here's what he told us.

What are some common misconceptions you feel screenwriters have when they begin to pursue the craft?

I think aspiring screenwriters these days are far more savvy about film, both the business and technology, than I was when I came here in the early 1970s. Film has supplanted theater and literature as the primary form of story telling, the technology is readily available and by comparison far less expensive. It has become deceptively EASY to make a movie. The great misconception that walks hand-in-hand with the technological ease is the notion that whatever gets created is good.

WHAT to film, WHAT to write remains as hard as it ever was: Most notably, once you get past the delight of playing with the toys, what makes a story interesting and compelling? How do you create characters who are interesting beyond the scope of a ten minute skit? In the same way that blogging is not necessarily literature, writing down or filming anything indiscriminately is not art, is not story.

The beauty of a great artist, a great athlete, a great race car driver, is the ability to make something amazingly difficult and complex look easy. The great misconception among new and untested writers is that screenwriting is easy. It's harder than it looks.

What, in your opinion, are the most common mistakes aspiring screenwriters make when they're getting started -- mistakes that can ultimately lead to their failure?

I'd prefer to replace the word “failure” with “delayed success.” The only thing that absolutely guarantees failure is quitting, giving up, packing it in... In my book I quote Flannery O'Connor, the brilliant and subversive Southern fiction writer. When asked if she thought university writing programs stifled creative writers, she replied, “Not enough of them.”

The wonderful and horrific truth about the film business is that many of the people who decide what gets made seem to have no ability to distinguish between truth and trash. And equally sad, that is also true about audiences. (Look who they elected president.) Some films are written by people who probably had more aptitude as shoe salesmen. And many brilliant and deserving screenplays are not recognized.

Art is subjective. People like what they like and you're never going to please everyone.

Your hope is that [what] pleases and delights you will have the same effect on people who read it. Your job, then, is not to change the marketplace. It is to develop your own voice—the product that you are going to take to that marketplace.

Rumplestiltskin turned straw into gold. We have to spin passion into product.

The two mistakes with the highest degree of “fatality” about them are the two opposing sides of the same coin. Quitting and rushing. Lack of stamina and impatience. Among the many things it's going to take to succeed (ability, luck being high among them) is time. We've all heard the urban myths about the 22-year-old writer who came to Hollywood and made a seven figure deal on his/her first script. Can it happen? Yes. Should you count on its happening as your Plan A? Please.

It is more realistic to think of an Olympic gymnast. Before those two minutes on the world stage, that athlete spends six hours every day, six days a week for years in the gym. Writers have to commit to that effort and the development of their craft, too.

You need to commit to the time it is likely to take to start and continue a career, a time of indeterminate length, which will not rise predictably and heartingly (as a corporate career might). And you must commit to giving each individual product the time it takes to reach its potential.

Many mistakes are made in sending a script out too soon or too late. There are twin dragons of destruction on both sides of every narrow strait. Impatience and timidity.

Some of us want to rip the last page out of the printer, make 20 copies and hit the town at first sunrise. Others will write draft after draft, spend years on the same script, sharpening it to the inevitable point of dullness.

There are always two opposite proverbs for every situation. Which defines you—? “Better safe than sorry” or “Nothing ventured nothing gained.”

Whichever it is, you might try to moderate your approach. If you know you're impetuous, force yourself to sit on a script for three weeks before sending it out. Show it to valued friends, the fewer the better. People who get you, but not who'll stroke you.

For you who are paralyzed by perfectionism. Flush or get off the pot. He delay is not about the script it's about your relationship to rejection. Accept that someone whose opinion you value will think this piece sucks. Then die or go on living and see what happens next.

So. Love what you do. Keep a day job. Don't rush. Don't be impatient. Get yourself as ready as you can be for when the moment arrives. Don't try to outguess the industry. Write a movie that you would pay to see.

Page 1 of 2