Q&A with Hal Ackerman, (Continued...)

What are a couple of things new screenwriters need to know--and do--in order to increase their odds of making it in the industry?

The best strategy for guaranteed success is to choose your parents wisely. Select a mother or father who runs a studio. If you already screwed up on that, here are a few back-up scenarios.

Know what you like, know what you love, hate and fear. As was said 4,000 years ago, “Know thyself.” At UCLA, where I've been teaching screenwriting for twenty years, when we look at prospective new students to take into the program, we look for an individual VOICE. Craft can be taught. Technique can be taught. But what makes you sound like YOU! Your sense of humor, your neuroses, your sense of what is fair, your EXPERIENCES and your courage and ability to access them. The individual characters you've known. The things that have happened to you and the people around you in your life. Only ONE PERSON in the universe has access to those golden nuggets. That's you.

Tell your own stories, stories that no one else in the universe can tell. The movie industry likes nothing better than to find that beautiful, fresh individual voice (and to spend the next ten years corrupting it and making it sound like everyone else.)

There's a very entertaining, informative chapter in the back of the book titled, "Living Your Writer's Life." Please describe your own personal writer's life.

In my book, I describe the moment I decided to take a shot at being a writer for my life. I was twenty. It was 8 AM. I was standing at a busy corner in New York. Thousands of people were coming out of the subway on their way to work. Their expressions were already set. Grim. Worried. Tense. Numb. Resigned. And that was the way they were going to feel for most of the day and the week and their lives. I decided [I] was going to get away with doing what made me happy for a long as I possibly could. I was willing to accept the sacrifices.

I began as an off-0ff Broadway playwright/Bartender-waiter. I had a few dozen plays done, and served many martinis. When I came to L.A. I was a fledgling screenwriter/photographer. I don't go for extravagances; money is not the most important driving motivation to me. (It may be more so for you. Without putting any judgment on it, you should know its importance to you. It will affect many core decisions about lifestyle, sacrifice, time allotted, BEING A PARENT.)

I've had blocks of years where I was steadily employed as a writer and financially well-rewarded. And blocks of years of anonymity. Through it all, as of this very day, I wake up every morning excited at what I'm going to be doing. Since the beginning of this year I've written a new screenplay and rewritten a novel about to go into submission. My new one-man play will open later this year. A poem I wrote is appearing in an anthology in a few weeks, I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Essays on Parenting Teenagers (Seal Press, 2005), in the company of some great writers like Dave Barry, Anna Quindlen, Louise Erdrich. So despite my new little Mini Cooper getting scratched in a parking lot yesterday, and not yet having sold a script for seven figures, I'm happy with the life I've chosen and would not trade it for anything except possibly having played major league baseball.

So that's the writing life in the long sense. Day-to-day, I get up fairly early, get done with the required procrastinations (eating, exercises, life-maintenance errands) by nine-ish and then get into it for the next many hours. Till 4'ish. (With a couple of breaks, of course). I might do a late night session sometimes too, after watching a rerun of The West Wing.

I arrange my teaching schedule at UCLA so that it accommodates my writing schedule.

What motivated you to write this book?

Obviously, when you read it you will see that it renders obsolete all previous intellectual discourse on the subject. But more seriously: I guess I wanted to see if I could. Over the years, people seemed to "get" a lot of classes they took with me and said I ought to write a book. I had not read the other books, so I didn't know what other people were saying—how they were teaching. Whatever I knew I had learned through my own experiences. People more familiar with other approaches told me mine had an original approach. (Originality is easy. The question is always whether it also has any value). The only way to find that out is to do it. I'm very happy with [it]. I can actually read parts of it and think that's not too damn bad. (No small accomplishment)

When did you decide that you wanted to be a writer?

I mention above when I decided when I was going to try to make my living as a writer.

Being a writer and making your living as a writer can be two very different things.

I decided to be a writer after I didn't make my high school varsity baseball team, and figured that a career in the bigs was probably not going to happen. I could always make people laugh, and enjoyed writing humorous little essay, song parodies. Class clownish type stuff.

In college, two friends of mine were involved in theater and hearing them discuss it got me curious. I fell into freebie tickets to the Broadway show, Camelot. It blew me away and I knew I wanted to do that. I wrote book and lyrics and one of those aforementioned friends wrote an original score. We did a full musical comedy at Queens College (about Robin Hood). It was a transforming experience to hear audiences of 500 people laughing at lines I wrote just the way I thought they would, and to be (Author, Author'ed) on stage and feel all that love and applause.

What do you hope readers of Writing Screenplays That Sell will take from the book?

I make a promise to every writer in every class I work with at UCLA. “Ten weeks from now you will be a better writer than you are right now.” I hope that will be true of everyone who buys and works this book.

Do you have a favorite writing quote?

"Sweet are the uses of adversity."

- William Shakespeare

Click here to order Write Screenplays That Sell: The Ackerman Way. You can also learn more about Hal Ackerman at his web site, www.HalAckerman.com.

Page 2 of 2

Jennifer Minar is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the managing editor of www.WritersBreak.com. She can be contacted at jminar@writersbreak.com.