Fiction Writer’s Toolshed | Practical Tools for Authors
You’ve written a screenplay you care about. Now you want someone to help get it made. What happens between those two things?
In this episode, Doug Hall returns to talk with me about the business side of screenwriting: researching potential buyers, sending queries, staying flexible in a pitch and building relationships with people who know they can rely on you.
Doug also recommends a specific kind of script for your portfolio: a story that takes place in one location. We talk about why that constraint can matter to a producer, and what it can ask of you as a writer.
This is a conversation about our current best approach, drawing on Doug’s experience. It isn’t a promise that a particular pitch or script will sell. And it doesn’t mean everything you write needs to be written for sale.
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Fiction Writer’s Toolshed
The Business of Screenwriting: Pitching Scripts and Building Relationships (with Doug Hall) | ep 032
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Writing for enjoyment and writing to sell can overlap
Doug says he writes for both reasons. Something he starts for fun can turn into a screenplay, and an idea can lead him toward a poem, short story, script or novel.
But when selling becomes part of the goal, understanding the business becomes part of the work.
I’ve seen writers put enormous care into a project without looking closely at the market they hope will receive it. Loving the work matters. Spending time on it matters. Neither tells you who might want it or how to reach them.
You can keep the pleasure of making something while learning more about the people you hope to make it with.
Research the people who might be right for your script
Doug’s advice is to narrow the space enough to understand it. If you’re writing a comedy, look at the kinds of comedies being made, their tone and the producers behind them.
The same question comes up when an author queries an agent: is this person a useful fit for this particular project?
A project can be good and still arrive at the wrong desk. It might fall outside someone’s interests. It might be too close to something they already have in development.
Research gives you a better starting point for that conversation. Look at what a potential collaborator actually makes and check their current submission instructions before approaching them. Don’t assume everyone accepts unsolicited scripts.
A pitch can open a different conversation
Doug describes sending a query about a project while mentioning some of his other work. The producer became interested in a different title: Old McDonald.
That wasn’t the project Doug had set out to discuss. But something in it matched what the producer was looking for, and the conversation moved toward a synopsis and possibly a treatment before a script.
Doug compares pitching to helping someone on a car lot. The first car they look at might not be the one they need. You have to listen well enough to recognize another possibility.
That’s the part I want to hold onto: helping someone find what they’re looking for. You arrive with something you care about, but you also listen to what the other person wants to make.
Flexibility can create room for a project that interests both of you. It doesn’t mean every suggestion is right for your story, or that you have to agree to everything.
Try looking at the same story through another genre
Doug passes on an exercise a writing instructor suggested to him: take a script you’re proud of and try its basic story in another genre.
What would change if a drama became a comedy? What could a thriller do with the premise? Which choices would stop working because the tone had changed?
Doug is clear that he hasn’t done this exercise himself. It’s an idea he was given for developing flexibility, rather than a method he’s reporting results from.
You don’t have to commit to four new full scripts to consider the question. Looking at one scene or the central premise through a different genre may help you see which parts of the story are essential and which are choices you could revisit.
Become someone people can count on
We also talk about being professional, listening and working well with other people. Those things affect what happens after the first conversation.
Doug tells a story about being asked to write the opening of a project that eventually became Route 666. The producer initially chose another writer, then came back to Doug when that arrangement didn’t work out.
Doug connects that return call to his reputation for being dependable and easy to work with. He also makes an important distinction: the movie that was eventually made didn’t use what he wrote.
The point of the story isn’t a guaranteed credit or a neat path from assignment to screen. It’s that someone remembered Doug as a person they could call when they needed the work done.
We can talk about “the business” as though it’s one giant abstract machine. But these decisions happen between people. A reputation for reliability grows through the way you work with them.
Give the story one place to happen
Near the end of the conversation, Doug recommends that screenwriters have a single-location script in their portfolio.
His business reasoning is practical. Multiple locations can mean moving equipment and people, arranging access and permits, and coordinating dates. A story that can be filmed in one place can reduce some of that logistical burden.
That doesn’t make every single-location film inexpensive. It does give you a production constraint to think about while designing the story.
Doug found a craft benefit too. Keeping the story in one place made him work with what was already in front of him. He couldn’t solve every difficult stretch by moving somewhere else or adding a spectacle.
What can change in this room? What do these characters want from each other? What new pressure could make the same place feel different?
It reminds me of our earlier conversation, Writing the Ending First: How to Build a Satisfying Story. Knowing a destination gives you something to build toward. A single-location constraint gives you a different kind of boundary to work inside.
Both can ask you to make more deliberate choices. Try the constraint if it interests you, and see what it reveals about the story you’re making.
Choose one thing to try
If you want to take this conversation back to your own work, start small:
- Research one possible fit. Choose a potential producer, look at their work and check their current submission instructions. What evidence suggests your project belongs in that conversation?
- Name the overlap. Write down what that person might need, what your project offers and which parts you could reasonably adapt.
- Test one constraint. Sketch a scene or small story that holds attention in one location. Notice what you have to solve when you can’t simply move elsewhere.
These are ways to investigate the work, not a guarantee of a sale. Pick the question that fits where you are now.
Fiction Writer’s Toolshed: Practical Tools for Authors is a Make Exist podcast hosted by Tim Kearney. It offers hands-on training for fiction writers to diagnose writing problems, build their skills and finish more work.