The Breakdown - Week of 7/27/20
Hello, hello, hello! I hope you’re all safe and well!
Now, before we get started, I have one tiny correction to make from my previous newsletter about the WGA/Agency dispute. I mentioned now that UTA is moving forward with an agreement with the writer’s guild, there were two other major agencies we needed to keep our eye on. I listed WME and ICM, but I meant to say WME and CAA. Not sure where that brainfart came from (a holdover from my ICM days, perhaps?) But in any event, I was typing really fast in order to get the newsletter out to you. The key point here is that out of the three major talent agencies (WME, CAA, & ICM), WME and CAA are the holdouts to watch since they were so heavily into packaging. But I’m sure a concession by any one or more of the Big 3 will help bring this dispute to an end.
For those new to The Breakdown, the lineup changes a bit from issue to issue, but just to give you an idea of how this issue will go down, I always start with a little section of creative writing prompts pulled from a prompt book I created. Now, I know most of you just want to get to the news and analysis, and that’s perfectly fine! I’ve wavered on whether or not to keep including the prompts; but when I found out a reader is using them to write flash fiction, and it’s really helped her out of her writing slump, I decided to keep them in. That was really cool to hear, tbh! 😊
In any event, this edition will be broken up into four sections:
Creative Writing Prompts
An Opinion Piece on Short Stories and Film & TV Options
News
Final Thoughts
So, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get this party started, shall we?
Prompts
As mentioned, these prompts are from my book, “What Would Your Character Do?” They’re designed to give you some momentum if you ever find yourself stuck in a scene. If these five prompts don’t work for you, hang tight! You’ll get another five in a week, or you could just buy, or check out, the book to pick from over 500 more.
Okay, so let’s get started.
If you're stuck in a scene, try to have your character:
1. Receive important information that changes the course of the scene
2. Blackmail someone into telling them something
3. Consider a worst-case scenario
4. Realize they've just lost an argument and react to this loss poorly
5. Perform a ritual, either personal or religious
Give those prompts some time to marinate, and if they’re not doing it for you, you’ll get five more next week!
Opinion Piece
So, how far can a short story *really* take me?
Now before we get started, I want to offer up a couple of caveats on these case studies of short stories that have recently been optioned for film or TV.
Unless you’re in on the deal or friends with those involved, you simply never know the backstory behind an option deal. The write-ups in the trades always make them sound so straightforward and easy. But, in all honesty, you don’t know the pre-existing relationships, the conversations, the cajoling, or the negotiations that go on behind the scenes. So, with all of these stories, please focus on the bigger picture, which is now is a time filled with much more open access and many more innovative and accessible platforms for your work.
These deals don’t happen overnight. Time and again, if you’re paying attention, you’ll see stories getting optioned years after having been published, either traditionally or online. So, if you want to optimize the chances of your work being seen and/or getting picked up, then you have to think long term and work on seeding many gardens with as many variants of your ideas and as many versions of your work as possible.
Okay, with that, let’s dive in! (Click on the segment title to see referenced article)
Netflix Wins 7-Figure Auction For Horror Short Story ‘My Wife And I Bought A Ranch’
In another deal that shows the streamer-fueled appetite for promising material and packages, Netflix has made a low-seven-figure commitment between rights to the Matt Query short story My Wife & I Bought a Ranch, and scripting fees for the author’s brother, Harrison Query, to write the screenplay. The story appears in six parts on Reddit.
Scott Glassgold and his Ground Control Entertainment are producing. They came as part of the package, and talks are underway for 21 Laps’ Shawn Levy and Dan Cohen and Atomic Monster’s James Wan and Michael Clear to produce with him. 21 Laps has Stranger Things and 11 other projects at Netflix.
The bidding was just getting hot on this one Thursday night, and Netflix simply took it off the table by lunch Friday. The story involves a couple, Harry and Sasha, who find their dream house in a ranch in Idaho. He’s a soldier getting back to life, and they bid what they can, which is a lowball offer. They get the ranch but find they are not alone. The short story is considered very compelling and creepy in a Stephen King/M. Night Shyamalan way.
So, this deal really caught my eye because, for all its reputation as being a toxic environment, filled with shady and nefarious characters (and on some level, it is), there are many, many subreddits that are bastions of insight and creativity and are repeatedly overlooked and undervalued. The r/nosleep often being one of them. This is the subreddit where Matt Query posted his story in six parts.
Now, before you go posting all your short stories up on reddit, keep in mind a few things.
While Matt Query doesn’t appeared to be a published author—not that I could tell—his brother, Harrison Query, although currently an unproduced screenwriter, has sold projects previously, and to Netflix at that.
Harrison Query, the brother and proposed screenwriter, sold his prior project to Netflix in conjunction with Scott Glassgold of Ground Control Entertainment. Interestingly, in 2019 Ground Control teamed up with Screen Gems to create the Screen Gems Horror Lab, focused on developing, and in some cases producing, horror genre proof-of-concept shorts.
I think one could safely assume that although Matt Query’s story may not have been an official part of the Horror Lab, posting it to reddit was probably done in the same spirit of the Horror Lab proof-of-concept model, and that’s where Matt’s brother and Scott Glassgold came in.
But you just have to take a peek at the enthusiastic comments on the last post of the story, and picking it up for an option seems like a no-brainer. It’s a rather brilliant strategy, to be honest. I don’t know if optioning the piece for $1 million makes sense, but that’s way above my paygrade.
What’s more telling here is the proof-of-concept model and using data to find your audience and therefore your advantage. Honestly, if I hadn’t posted my story, The Otherworlders, to Wattpad, I would never have learned that it appealed to Percy Jackson and Mortal Instruments fans even more so than it did to the Harry Potter and Teen Wolf fans I’d assumed it would. Now, that’s some actionable insight for me to work with and shows you the power of data, my friends.
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Issa Rae, Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw & Universal Team For Female Identity Genre Movie ‘Sinkhole’
Jordan Peele and Issa Rae are teaming up for a new genre movie for Universal.
The duo will partner to produce an adaptation of short story Sinkhole. In a low-seven-figure deal, Universal beat out more than 10 studio bidders and multiple talent and filmmaker packages for screen rights to Leyna Krow’s short story, which is about a young family that moves into its dream home despite the gaping sinkhole in the backyard. The mysterious sinkhole manages to fix broken and destroyed things. However, the story asks, what if that thing is a person?
Leyna Krow, the author of the short story, will exec produce along with Alex Davis-Lawrence of the literary journal, Moss, where the story was originally published.
Now, I wish I could dig up more about the history of this deal because for a short story writer and the head of the literary journal her story was published in to become co-executive producers, especially with this kind of talent on board, on a project like this is highly unusual. That’s typically reserved for big-time writers and their literary managers. Maybe the crazy bidding gave them crazy leverage? Not sure.
The story was originally published in 2016 in a rather obscure online literary journal called Moss. Krow seems to be a prolific, albeit largely unknown, short story writer. Interestingly, there’s little about the author online and she seems to have deleted her Twitter account. There was, however, a reading tour planned for Sinkhole this year that like everything else, got canceled due to the pandemic. (Click on the image to go to the author’s website.)
How the story got into Issa Rae or Jordan Peele’s hands, who knows? But Issa Rae is launching her own creative management company and Jordan Peele has a five-year development deal with Universal, so maybe they have development folks all over the “internets” on the lookout for new material. 🤷🏾♀️
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This one is a little older (July 2019), but Kate Folk’s short story collection The Void Wife is being published by Random House, but it originated as a short story first published in the gulf coast literary journal.
In its original incarnation, it’s a very—and I mean very—short story, like maybe 1000 words, at most. Folk is a Stegner fellow at Stanford, and I’m sure the option was made on the larger short story collection this story eventually evolved into, but still. Not bad…
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All right. So, what can we gather from these case studies? Well, I’d say first and foremost, get your work out there…stat! Especially if it’s spooky, supernatural, or metaphysical horror. Horror is one of the easiest genres to sell if you’re an unknown writer because it can be made on the cheap and it travels well, internationally. You’ll notice that all three examples fall within this genre. It also helps if the story speaks to a larger theme. Sinkhole is being billed as a thought-provoking genre movie that engages with questions of female perfection. The Void Wife looks at marriage and identity, and My Wife and I Bought a Ranch looks at PTSD.
Overall, I do believe the short story form, as well as online serialization and audio-first formats, will provide more opportunities for creators to get their work out there and noticed (we’ll tackle Tumblr and TikTok at a later date.) Unconventional mediums can provide incredible ways to cut through the clutter and get past the traditional gatekeepers.
Just in my short time actively writing (about four years now), I’ve participated in a private contest through Wattpad where we got to pitch Universal Cable Productions show ideas for the USA channel, a public NBC Universal contest looking for show ideas that highlight diversity, and a not too widely advertised, but totally fun contest to pitch episode ideas to an Indonesian soap opera. My point being, with the internet, you don’t have to go the traditional route in order to get your ideas considered, and your story doesn’t have to be a published book or a completed screenplay in order for it to make good source material for TV or film. There are more options to get your work out there and “in circulation” than ever before, so think creatively. If these r/nosleep and r/NoSleepOOC threads are to be believed, shorts getting optioned off reddit is not that uncommon, so get to it!
Just be sure to do your homework, research the folks approaching you, and know what rights you may be giving up by posting your story online or signing any paperwork!
News
CAA Furloughs 275 Employees And Lets Go Of 90 Agents
Layoffs at the firm follow similar moves at other Hollywood agencies as the representation business has been hit amid a film and TV shutdown since mid-March. Endeavor, the parent company of WME, laid off 83 staffers at its Beverly Hills office, while Paradigm temporarily laid off 130 employees at its headquarters in the same city, UTA furloughed staffers and ICM had layoffs back in June.
Between this and the WGA battle over packaging, I really do wonder about the future of talent agencies. I’ve been telling newbie screenwriters to submit to managers, rather than agents, for ages now. Having sat on an agent’s desk at ICM and having had hard-hustling junior managers as friends back in the day, I know where the doors are cracked open wider for brand new writers. I’m not a WGA screenwriter (I’m technically not a screenwriter at all, really. I’m just making money off of a script I’m currently writing—more on that later), but in any event, between Twitter, Zoom, and Google Docs, folks seem to be selling scripts and getting hired onto shows, so if you’ve got a literary manager and a lawyer, I do wonder: are agents absolutely necessary anymore? I’m not asking to be snarky. I’m genuinely curious.
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Entangled Publishing Branches Out
So, this Tweet caught my eye, largely because Entangled Publishing is known for their very popular romance lines.
For those who don’t know, Entangled is an independent publisher with thirteen imprints, 42 titles appearing on the USA Today Bestsellers list, 14 titles on the NYT Bestsellers list, and books distributed through Macmillan. And by the looks of it, they’re branching out. Two relatively new imprints, Sideways and August, might be of particular interest to many of you.
Sideways is intriguing because of its focus on thrillers with little to no romance. In the author comps on the submissions page, Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, and A.G. Riddle are listed right up there with Gillian Flynn, suggesting male authors and protagonists are welcome.
The August line is aimed at those looking for stories with older protagonists, 40+ to be exact, who after living full lives and building fulfilling careers, are circling back to love and romance.
Both lines are looking for high concepts (to better position the books for film & TV options, perhaps? 🤷🏾♀️) and across all of their lines, there’s an explicit call for more diverse characters and broader representation. So, if you’re unagented and struggling or hearing crickets during those Twitter pitch fests, I’d say give Entangled a serious review. If I recall, almost all lines were open to unagented submissions.
Now, before you give me the virtual side-eye, thinking your non-romance, high tech thriller with a male protagonist over the age of 42 couldn’t possibly fit within this house, let me just bring your attention to the rise of the Bromance Reader, and also note a recognition on the part of the publisher that these books are different from the majority of their catalog.
Just to make sure, I reached out to Senior Editor & Entangled Co-Founder, Heather Howland, to ask about marketing support and get a sense of just where these books might fit into their overall slate, and she responded:
We craft our marketing plans based on the audience we’re targeting, not what might be assumed is the general Entangled readership. This is across all imprints, including Sideways and August, and we’ve seen solid results! - Heather Howland
Because there’s often a first-mover advantage to being early in any new endeavor, if you’re not making headway finding an agent, it might be worth your time to check Entangled out.
You can learn more about their imprints and submit your work here - https://entangledpublishing.submittable.com/submit
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Kobo Unlimited subscription system has launched in Canada
I’ll be diving more in to this one in a later post, but I wanted to get this news to you in a timely fashion, in case you’re not plugged into the indie publishing scene. Kobo, the Canadian eBook distributor, now has a program to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. They’ve been testing Kobo Plus, as the program is being called, in the Netherlands and Belgium since 2017. Kobo Plus readers get unlimited reading of their Plus catalog for just $9.99/month. And unlike Amazon’s KDP program (the Kindle Unlimited enrolment option for authors), the Kobo Plus program is non-exclusive and payment is calculated based on time spent reading the eBooks instead of pages read. Being a Canadian company, Canada is Kobo’s largest market, so this is a significant step for the program.
Final Thoughts
Well! We had a lot to unpack in this issue, and I hope you’ve learned something new. The landscape is changing quickly, and in order to optimize your chances of success—whether that’s in that first step of getting published or the bigger dream of seeing your work on the screen—you have to think outside-of-the-box; you have to push yourself past your comfort zone and give new avenues a try.
Yes, there are hurdles, tons of competition, and the odds are not necessarily in our favor, but the dream (and I know this from experience) really is more accessible now than it ever was.
Don’t forget to hit the ❤️ or the “Like” button if you’re enjoying this content! And you can subscribe (there’s a free option!) if you want these posts in your inbox. This kind of interaction means so much to me, and it lets me know the newsletter is valuable to you as well.
Until next time!
~ Paula
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