12 Hints for Rekindling Your Creative Spark

by Dr. Ken Atchity
Reprinted from Writer's Digest

Sometimes the struggle to publish can drain even the strongest creative dynamo. Here's how to recharge your creativity, to keep your career going...and going...and going...

When you began your struggle to establish a writing career, you were no doubt highly motivated. The joy of challenge, the lure of creativity, lured you into your dream.

But now you've struggled for so long that you may not be feeling that same joy. You may not be feeling it at all. What once seemed so promising now seems like folly at best, madness at worst.

What's happened? You've allowed the struggle to overpower the hope and positive energy you began with. You've forgotten that the creative process follows a natural cycle, from concentration to abandonment. The cycle begins when motivation leads to work; which, when not punctuated with appropriate rest periods, leads naturally to exhaustion; which leads to frustration; then to depression; then, ideally to reassessment and renewal. If you're pursuing a "creative" career, the process of keeping yourself motivated, like the challenge, is endless.

So what do you do when you're not feeling motivated?

So what do you do when you're not feeling motivated? Try the following:

Remotivation Rule #1: Keep moving forward despite your moods. You cannot allow achievement to depend on mood. If you always must be in a good mood to accomplish your work, then it's probably time to consult a therapist. You haven't grown up. Grown-ups have to get the job done no matter what mood they're in. Imagine a firefighter throwing down the hose because he's no longer in the mood, or a super Bowl game dependent on a quarterback's moods, or an Olympic gold medal contender announcing she's not in the mood to skate in the finals. Edmund Burke said, "Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair."

If Rule #1 fails because the meeting with your agent went badly, or because you stared at a blank computer screen for an entire week, you apply...

Rule #2: When things get tough, take a vacation. But do so in a carefully limited way. Say, "I need three days off." At the end of three days, you're likely to feel much better. If not, try a few more days off: "I need another week away from this project." Never decide to abandon your project when you're tired. Things always look worse when you're tired. Remember that you're taking a vacation only from your work, not from your commitment to the work.

The moment you're officially on vacation, allow this to percolate in your mind:

Rule #3: The difficulty you are experiencing is normal -- and necessary. Writing is the highest expression of human creative potential. So how could it be easy? If it were easy, everybody would be doing it (instead of just talking about doing it). Sometimes writers have a hard time with the stress simply because they haven't realized their stress is necessary. It's not simply par for the course; it is the course. I once spoke on a panel with the late Louis L'Amour. he had just published his 93rd novel, and said to the audience that night, "I feel I'm finally beginning to master my craft." Afterward, one writer told me she was quite discouraged by L'Amour's statement. "discouraged?" I said. "You should be elated! What that tells you is that no matter how long you live or how many books you write, you'll always feel challenged by this endlessly challenging craft."

What better way is there to live than with the assurance that your work will provide you with endless discipline and demands for excellence? Doesn't it make more sense to congratulate yourself for having the courage to write than to berate yourself because you haven't "succeeded"? If you're making progress, you're succeeding. Now you understand what St. Catherine of Siena meant when she said, "All the way to heaven is heaven."

Rule #4: Don't doubt yourself. Identify the negative influences that have caused your resolve to falter. Maybe a well-meaning relative made a remark about how painful it is to see you wasting your life pursuing a dream of being a writer. Maybe the doubting Thomas is your own dark angel -- the little voice inside that tells you to forget about a writing career.

Either way, it's time to refurbish your self-confidence. You may have to reevaluate the amount of time you're putting into your writing, making adjustments that will help you feel more comfortable about the effort you are putting into your writing career. You may also have to remind yourself that what other people say can't affect you unless you allow it to. One way or the other, it's time to talk to yourself, asking the various parts of your mind, "What's going on in there?"

Lack of self-confidence is for all of us the greatest enemy. No matter how successful you become, you'll see -- it never goes away, but the successful person has managed to move forward despite his or her lack of self-confidence. Self-confidence increases when you continue to act (in this case, write) with no regard for your insecurities.

Rule #5: Face your fear, and make it your ally. According to popular anthropological accounts of the Malaysian Senoi tribe, a child dreaming of being chased by a monster would be told that the monster was, instead, his friend and that he should turn to face the monster the next time he's chased in his dream. We all know by heart that crises, when confronted directly, provide opportunity as well as danger. The first step is to acknowledge and face the fear, remembering David Viscott's observation (from his book Risking): "If you have no anxiety, the risk you face is probably not worthy of you. Only risks you have outgrown don't frighten you."

When a client or student tells me he's filled with anxiety, I assure him that not only is it a good -- and normal -- sign that he's afraid, but that he should try to be more afraid. The writing flourishes when you face your fear, owning it as yours. If you dare to turn the doorknob behind which the pain lurks, your fear can become a positive force. The hero's fear becomes a powerful ally, making his entire being alert and engaged.

Rule #6: Associate with positive people, and stop associating with negative people. Nothing is more helpful than a positive support group, and nothing more damaging than constant negative reinforcement from "friends" and family. Make whatever adjustments are necessary to reduce or eliminate your contact with the naysayers.

The positive people in your life are the hero's allies who've encouraged you to pursue your dream no matter what. They are your true "saints," inspiring you to go on living to the utmost of your ability. The philosopher-poet Johan Wolfgang von Goethe said, "If you treat people the way they are, you make them worse. If you treat them the way they ought to be, you make them capable of becoming what they ought to be." The positive people are those who treat you the way you have imagined yourself to be, at your best. Which leads us to...

Rule#7: Take responsibility. When one of my artist clients told me, "I never get personally involved in my own affairs," I realized how often creative people try to remain detached from their own commitment -- a defense mechanism with all-too-limited effectiveness.

I call this "magic thinking": "If I'm real good, work hard, be patient, the world will honor me eventually, and I've been good, worked hard, so now I'm waiting for the world to honor me." The world hardly ever works this way. Most successful people have struggled long and hard, and endured through multiple failures before achieving their success.

Rule #8: Take charge of your own thinking. You can control your own mind better than you may believe right now. Not all the time, but as you practice, more and more of the time. When you think, "I am succeeding at being my best self," you are succeeding. Motivational experts agree that you must see your success, be able to envision it internally, before you can experience it in your outer life. It helps to remember that you can't fail at being you; you're the only one, in fact, who can do that -- which means that everything you do is important, even being depressed!

Rule #9: Let go of the wrong kind of control. You can only do what you can do, and then you'll have to let fate take over. Control what you can do; don't try to control the rest. Even the most successful people can't control everything -- so why are you upset about things you can't control? The things you can control include work you can do in the next hour, or today, and calls and letters that will help you market your work.

Rule #10: Try to figure out what you really want -- and start living as though you already have it. Function follows form. If you commit yourself to the form of your optimal lifestyle, it will follow in function, but function follows only when your commitment is truly in place. Important to your remotivation agenda is reaffirming your commitment to writing. I call this fine-tuning. Your career will profit from fine-tuning at every stage.

Be careful what you wish for, though, or you're likely to get it. A screenwriting client called to tell me that she'd gotten her wish: She'd been hired by the staff of a successful series. But she'd forgotten to wish for a successful, intelligent series. now she was paying for her oversight with ten-hour-a-day tedium.

You've gotten past fear and returned to action and concentrated on the details of your work. Now, it's time to conclude your remotivation vacation with:

Rule #11: Congratulate yourself and celebrate! "Let's drink a toast to folly and to dreams," writes Paul-Loup Sulitzer in his novel The Green King, "because they are the only reasonable things."

Recognize your courage. After all, you've freely decided to take this unsafe road; you will never be choked with the tears of regret shed only by those who lament "the road not taken." the creativ

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Design Your Novel to Be a Film

Design Your Novel as a Film

Novelists seeking representation complain that none of their books have been made into films. At any given moment, we have literally stacks of novels from New York publishers on our desks in Los Angeles. Going through them to find the ones that might make motion pictures or television movies, we—and other producers, managers, and agents--are constantly running into the same problems:
“There’s no third act…it just trickles out.”
“There are way too many characters and it’s not clear till page 200 who the protagonist is.”
“I can’t relate to anyone in the book.”
“At the end, the antagonist lays out the entire plot to the protagonist.”
“There’s not enough action.”
“There’s nothing new here. This concept has been used to death.”
“We don’t know who to root for.”
“The whole thing is overly contrived.”
“There’s no dialogue, so we don’t know what the character sounds like.”
“There’s no high concept here. How do we pitch this?”
“There’s no real pacing.”
“The protagonist is reactive instead of proactive.”
“At the end of the day, I have no idea what this story is about.”
“The main character is 80, and speaks only Latvian.”
“It’s set in Papago…in the 1960s, and is filled with long passages in Uto-Aztecan.”
“There are no set pieces.”
Of course anyone with the mind of a researcher can list a film or two that got made despite one of these objections. But for novelists who are frustrated at not getting their books made into films that should be small consolation and is, practically speaking, a useless observation. Yes, you might get lucky and find a famous Bulgarian director, who’s fascinated with the angst of octogenarians, studied pacing with John Sales or Jim Jarmusch, and loves ambiguous endings.
But if you regard your career as a business instead of a quixotic crusade, you should be planning your novel from the outset to make it appealing to filmmakers.
Give us a strong (preferably male) lead who, good or bad, is eminently relatable—and who’s in the “star age range” of 35-50 (where at any given moment 20 male stars reside; a star being a name that can set up the film by his attachment to it).
Make sure a dramatist looking at your book will clearly see three well-defined acts: act one (the setup), act two (rhythmic development, rising and falling action), and act three (climax leading to conclusive ending).
Express your character’s personality in dialogue that distinguishes him, and makes him a role a star would die to play.

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MERCHANDISING YOUR STORY

In today's competitive creative marketplace, the reality of selling your story - whether it is fiction or from life - takes more than just writing it down and waiting for someone to notice your genius. It takes a fully dedicated approach, a savvy business mind, and, more than anything, understanding exactly how the business you are trying to break into works. The fantasy of waking up one day and suddenly being on the best-seller list is unfortunately not the reality. Dan Brown was virtually an unknown until The Da Vinci Code, and now his earlier works are finding themselves on best-seller lists too. With a little luck, and a lot of hard work, you too can be a successful Story Merchant - someone who's not only a good storyteller, but also believes in his or her story enough to make sure it finds its market.

The starting point to success is how you think about your story from its inception. At AEI (www.aeionline.com) and The Writer's Lifeline (www.thewriterslifeline.com), we think of our clients as storytellers, not as novelists or screenwriters. The biggest mistake many writers make is thinking of themselves as only a novelist, only a game inventor, only a comic book writer, only a screenwriter for film or TV. While of course it's not a poor choice to dedicate your time and your craft to the medium you are currently most adept at, our most successful storytellers hone their skill set and learn to write in all formats, or for all formats. This means crafting a story with a high concept that is adaptable to all media. A high concept is a one-line pitch that describes your story (prehistoric mega- shark terrorizes California coast - Steve Alten's Meg [book trilogy, screenplay, videogame]).

The ability to wear both hats means more success for you in this business. AEI client, now partner in his own production company Warp & Weft, John Scott Shepherd wrote the screenplays for the films Joe Somebody and Life or Something Like it, which AEI produced for Fox. He's also found success in the publishing industry with his novels The Dead Father's Guide to Sex & Marriage (Pocket Books), and Henry's List of Wrongs (Rugged Land), which director Mark Waters ("Mean Girls") will direct for AEI and New Line Cinema. In addition, Shepherd's ABC television series The Days has been met with critical success. Just like any of the most passionately successful storytellers, John learned there's more than one way to tell stories. You can learn that too.

The second key is to think of your story, and yourself, as a brand that is sellable to NY and Hollywood. A brand is a product that is a household name, like Levi's or Windex, except in this case we're talking about Steven King and Steven Spielberg, Steve Alten, James Michael Pratt ("the master of moral fiction"), Jamise Dames (who writes for those who check "Other" on their census questionnaire), or John Scott Shepherd. When you think of Steven King, you know you're going to get horror and suspense. You must think about yourself as a writer and the expectations of your readers in this same way. What is your brand? What are you selling to the public? Are you the person who writes those fantastic historical romances? The person who writes the mysteries centering around one character (a la Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series) or the person who writes fantasy for the big screen like Tim Burton? Also keep in mind to study market trends and see what is hot right now (our Internet column, "What's Hot/What's Not" on aeionline.com is updated regularly for that purpose). Aspiring book writers, fiction or nonfiction, especially should be aware that women make up 70% of the book buyers.

While the writing itself is the first step, the next step is being collaborative - taking notes from people who are familiar with the marketplace, and being able to improve your work; the final
step is promotion and publicity. There are numerous things writers can do to spread the word and garner media attention for their product. Successful publicity can lead to brand name status:
• Securing a well connected agent or manager is key, as they know who to talk to and how to spread your name in the industry.
• Hire a publicist. They can help you land radio or TV spots, get you interviewed in newspapers or magazines, coordinate book signings, and much more.
• Do you have something educational to share? The Learning Annex is always looking for new teachers. This avenue is a great way to share your knowledge and contribute to the world. There are Learning Annex locations in many cities across the U.S., and their bi-monthly catalog (a good place for ads!) reaches 2 million people.
• Come up with a marketing scheme. Start a website! Get your link sponsored on other websites. Write emails! Send an email to friends, family and co-workers about your product, and ask them to pass it along to everyone they know. You'll be amazed how fast word of mouth spreads!
• Read books on publicity, such as The Savvy Author's Guide to Book Publicity by Lissa Warren (Carol & Graf, Dec. 2003), Guerilla Publicity: Hundreds of Sure-Fire Tactics to Get Maximum Sales for Minimum Dollars by Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman and Jill Lubin (Adams Media Corporation, June 2002) and How to Get on Oprah...and Other PR Secrets by Rick Frishman (audio cassette, FME Publishing, Sept. 2002)

Remember, even Shakespeare had to schmooze Queen Elizabeth to get support for his plays, and the ancient playwrights Aristophanes, Sophocles, and Euripides had to raise money each year to mount their plays competitively in the Great Athenian Festival. It takes serious effort and business savvy to thrive in this business of taking stories to market.

Above all, you must believe in your story. Romantic notions must fly out the window if you have any desire to succeed in this business. As much as writing is a solitary exercise, the business is a collaborative enterprise, and writers must be prepared to take constructive criticism, re-work plot lines, develop and adapt their tale to fit the needs of the marketplace. Remember, you are not just a writer, you are a Story Merchant.

With more than thirty years experience in the publishing world, and over ten years in entertainment, Ken Atchity is a writer, producer, teacher, and literary manager, responsible for launching dozens of books and films. Based on his own teaching and writing experience, he has successfully built bestselling careers for novelists, nonfiction writers, and screenwriters from the ground up. Now, as chairman and CEO of Atchity Editorial/Entertainment International, Inc., Ken is maximizing his entrepreneurial skills to provide a one-stop full-service management machine for commercial and literary writers by building their presence on the web, promoting their books and careers through public relations, media management, and speaking engagements, selling their books to publishers, and producing motion pictures and television films of client screenplays, novels, and non-fiction books. AEI, a literary management and motion picture company, is always looking for author submissions, especially:
• Celebrity or "branded" books and films that can be series
• Authors who are ready to move from one medium to another - a successful author wanting to break into film, a comic book writer wanting to write screenplays or novels, a successful screenwriter wanting to write novels, etc.
• Books by women or written for women
• Successfully self-published books that can be taken to the national market
• Novels with a fresh or contemporary voice and/or film potential.
• Pop culture, music books and music related films
• Celebrity biographies
• Multicultural/Ethnic fiction
• Entrepreneurial business books by distinguished business leaders
• Personal achievement by nationally know names
• Visionary, heroic and true stories of every kind
• Narrative non-fiction/memoir
• Non-religious inspirational
• Mainstream commercial novels - action, suspense, mainstream romance, espionage, outstanding science fiction that can
also be made into TV or feature films
• Dramatic fiction with fresh, original voice - especially by women and minorities
• Screenplays - especially adaptations of classics into modern times; teen action; comedy; horror; heroic true stories (past
or present), especially involving families in a crisis; action; thrillers; serious dramas for big stars; romantic comedy;
science fiction with strong characters; female driven heroic stories

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QUICK WRITING ANALYSIS Is Your Work Ready for Market?

Find out before investing your time or money with our affordable Quick Writing Analysis Service!

Here’s what you’ll get:
Commercial evaluation
We'll let you know if your novel, screenplay, nonfiction book, or children's story is commercial in today's marketplace and, if not, why not. If it's fiction, we'll also tell you if it would be stronger as a book or a screenplay.

Problem Areas
We'll point out any specific flaws
(a) in your story: character arc, plot, development, etc. - even the writing itself; or
(b) in your nonfiction approach.

Suggested Improvements
A few specific suggestions to address any of these problem areas.
You only get one chance to make a first impression.

Make it your best.

Just $75 for a one-page Quick Writing Analysis of your two-page synopsis ("overview" or "treatment"), sent in to us in Courier New 12-point, on single-sided double-spaced pages, and your two best sample pages.

If you can't seem to get your synopsis down to two pages, add $25 for each additional page you send. (Sample pages are limited to only two.) Each analysis and consultation is performed by a published novelist, published nonfiction writer, or optioned screenwriter, and double-checked by a professional Writer's Lifeline editor with best-selling marketing savvy. Your analysis will be sent to you by email at the address specified by you. Please allow seven days for turnaround.

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INTRODUCING AEI BOOKTRAILERS TO PROMOTE YOUR AUTHORS

Hi Ken Atchity here from Atchity Entertainment.

Just thought you’d like to see a new service from AEI—the AEI BookTrailer, the sample one showing David Angsten’s Dark Gold. You can also view it on www.davidangsten.com-- find and click the pink bikini!

Promote Your Author's Books With AEI's BookTrailers
Write publicity@aeionline.com for pricing and more information.


ABOUT AEI
AEI is focused on developing and producing major franchises:Ripley's Believe It Or Not! Jim Carrey and Gong-Li starring, Tim Burton directing; AEI producing with Richard Zanuck and Alphaville at Paramount. Script by Scott A. Alexander and Larry Karaszewski ("People vs. Larry Flynt," "Man on the Moon").

Royce Buckingham’s Demon Keeper, forthcoming from Putnam’s and in development with Fox 2000.

Meg, based on Steve Alten's New York Times Bestselling Novel, producing with Larry Gordon Productions ("Die Hard," "Lara Croft"), Guillermo del Toro ("Hellboy") and Nick Nunziata, Jan de Bont ("Speed," "Twister") attached to direct script by Shane Salerno ("Armageddon," "Shaft").
Noire, the provocative #1 Essence Bestselling Queen of Urban Erotica, licks some more candy out of the ballpark.

The Writer's Lifeline, Inc.

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Seven Bestsellers and Counting...


The Writer’s Lifeline, Inc., is a full-service editorial development company that prepares stories (books, treatments, true accounts, scripts) for representation in the commercial marketplace for publishing and motion picture or television production.
Literally millions of people have great stories to tell. As the new millennium unfolds, literary assets are among the most valuable properties in the world. The Writer’s Lifeline, Inc. is a story-merchant company that assists storytellers in turning their literary properties into commercial assets primed to earn income in all possible markets.

ABOUT THE WRITER'S LIFELINE, INC.
The company was incorporated in July, 2000 by Dr. Kenneth Atchity (Yale Ph.D.) , who is also chair of Atchity Entertainment International, a motion picture production and literary management company (www.aeionline.com). As a direct result of Dr. Atchity’s focus on sales, Writer’s Lifeline editors and development execs base their mentoring and literary productivity not only on artistic integrity but also on commercial marketability—with an aim toward securing representation for the client at the end of the process. As a “bridge to the professional world,” The Writer’s Lifeline, Inc. occupies a unique niche in the world of literary entertainment—a company devoted to taking storytellers from amateur to professional status, with a track record proving its effectiveness!

The Writer’s Lifeline, Inc. serves the needs of two clienteles:
1) Storytellers are teamed with editors and development specialists who mentor them one on one to bring their skills and craft to the level of their vision and ambition.

2) Storytellers with great stories to tell, or information to impart, who have no wish to become commercial writers are teamed with editors and writers who tell their stories for them to ensure its readiness for professional representation by agents and managers. For both kinds of clients, The Writer’s Lifeline, Inc. ensures that no work is undertaken without first taking marketing into consideration.

Editorial/writing services include: _conceptual focus _ mentoring _rewriting _ghostwriting _books to film _marketing _business books _treatments _screenplays _book proposals _translation _photography _distribution _children’s books _industrial films _documentaries _research _copyediting

The Writer’s Lifline, Inc. success stories have included

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-Governor Jesse Ventura’s best-sellers I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed (13 weeks The New York Times Bestseller List) & Do I Stand Alone?

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-Steve Alten’s Meg (followed by The Trench, and Primal Waters), sold to Walt Disney, then New Line for $1.1 mil; to Doubleday-Bantam for $2.2.. Movie directed by Jan de Bont (“Speed,” “Twister”)

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-The Amazing World of Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not! and Ripley’s Believe-It-or-Not! Encyclopedia of the Bizarre (Julie Moonie) (movie starring Jim Carrey, directed byTim Burton)

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- John Scott Shepherd (“Life or Something Like It” (Angelina Jolie), “ Joe Somebody” (Tim Allen), and novels Henry’s List of Wrongs -and- The Dead Father’s Guide to Sex & Marriage (Pocket Books).

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-The Learning Annex: provided writing and editorial services for its line of books published by John Wiley & Sons.

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-Los Angeles Times bestselling Cheryl Saban’s Sins of the Mother and Shirley Palmer’s Lioness, Danger Zone, and The Trade; James Pratt’s The Last Valentine.

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Subscribe free to our daily inspirational newsletter by writing to inspire@storymerchant.com for latest client news, info on our sister company, Atchity Entertainment International, and contests and awards available to writers.

Turning Books Into Film: Navigating the Industry
originally posted: December 31, 2006

Turning Books Into Film: Navigating the Industry
by Ken Atchity

Option/Sale vs.Packaging

This column will explore various issues involved with the process by which books, fiction or nonfiction, published or otherwise, make their way to the big or little screen. Warning to the reader: There are exceptions to everything I'll be talking about here. I'm basing this advice on describing what most often happens in film and television, not on prescribing anything.

Authors who've already made one or two sales to Hollywood, or are otherwise financially solvent, are often frustrated when their books seem to wither on the development vine; all too often they enjoy neither the financial payoff of the option's exercise, nor the emotional payoff of seeing their story on the screen.

When a sale of a book's dramatic rights is made, it's often by a 'correspondent agent' in Los Angeles, one who their literary agent hands the book off to for sale to the broadcasters or studios. The correspondent agent makes a commission—ranging from 10% to 15%--on whatever revenues are received from the option and sale. He makes money when the book sells easily, and his attention span is, necessarily, short.

A typical film deal might be $50,000 for an 18-month option ($5,000 to the correspondent agent), non-applicable against the purchase price, with a second 18 months automatically available to the buyer for the payment of an additional $50,000 applicable against the purchase price—against a purchase price of a floor of $250,000 or 1-2% of the film's "all-in" budget, with a ceiling of $500,000. Once the deal is signed, which normally takes 60-120 days, the writer receives $50,000; the $200,000 or more balance is paid on the exercise of the buyer's option, which normally occurs on the day the cameras roll (known as "commencement of principal photography").

The problem is, by far the majority of options sold to major studios and broadcasters are never exercised because the project never makes it through development hell. Studio execs, after all, aren't as motivated as managers and producers to fight through the obstacles projects encounter and get the film made. When that withering occurs, though the writer may indeed receive his rights back ("reversion"), there's a price tag involved ("turnaround"): any new buyer must repay the original buyer's investment, along with interest compounded from the date of first payment, when the new buyer makes a deal for the book's rights. Because compounded interest mounts so rapidly, turnaround costs often turn a dormant project moribund.

In a deal my company previously set up with a studio, for example, the turnaround costs now amount to nearly a half million dollars; though another studio wants to do the movie, they haven't been able to work out an acceptable buyout with the first studio (who couldn't care less, at this point, whether the movie is made or not, since they failed to make it).

How do writers and their lit agents avoid this unhappy fate? Instead of allowing their book to be sold by a correspondent agent, whose only source of income is in the commissions that come from sales (which I call "taking in a naked story"), writers can work with a manager or an independent producer to attach protective elements--a director, major screenwriter, star, or financing-- before the book is offered to the major distributors. The manager/producer's financial incentive is in receiving producer's fees, and these fees are much larger than the agent's commissions on the literary sale would ever be.

Once a director is attached, a star, or co-financing (in other words, once the project is at least partially "packaged"), the studio or broadcaster (a) has greater incentive to take on the book; and (b) to see it through to production, its further development protected by the talent now attached. The downside: the manager/producer value-added process takes longer, because of the challenge of attaching talent, etc. The upside: the book author is more likely to receive the full sales price and see the movie made, while at the same time retaining greater consultation on the process. (When a sale is made by an agent, the original author is usually out of the loop from that moment on). Generally, this is what authors come to if they still retain affordable rights to their book after they survive its option and development hell; they try to get someone passionate enough to run with it against the muddied waters of its previous history. Better to invest that time at the beginning, and recognize that it's passion and incentive that works best—as they should know from their own process in writing the book in the first place.

It's the author and his lit agent's choice: make an option deal, or focus on making the movie from the start.

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Looking to hook up your story with a top buyer?
originally posted: August 5, 2006

"My mission in life—and greatest pleasure--has always been making good stories better, and getting buyers to pay storytellers to get their stories in front of the widest possible audiences--helping storytellers to get their stories to the audiences that wait for them in print and screen format. Stories with the potential to reach millions are so valuable that an entire profession, known in the publishing and entertainment industries as “trackers,” was created to find unpublished stories and report their whereabouts and the ownership of their rights to the motion picture studios and publishers. "

Do You Have What It Takes To Become A Bestseller!

Do you have what it takes to become the next Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich, Trace Price Thompson, Jamise Dames, Shirley Palmer, Noire, Candace Bushnell, Jhumpa Lahiri, or Suze Orman? Did you know that half of the New York Times Bestsellers are written by women, and nearly all the ones written by men are about women? The market is increasingly being tailored toward the female audience, and publishers—and producers—are hungry for fresh new female voices for mystery series, chick-lit, literary fiction, multi-cultural fiction and non-fiction.

Contact The Story Merchant Kenneth Atchity!

AGENTS & MANAGERS

If you're a literary agent or manager and could use our help perfecting your clients' projects for publication and/or production, The Writer’s Lifeline would love to work with you because we're good at fixing stories that aren't working yet.

Writer's Lifeline, Inc., based on experience, can add potentially multi-million dollar value to projects that you haven't been able to sell, or wouldn't consider representing, because of the "shape" they're in. Many of our clients are referred to us by Hollywood studios, agents in both L.A. and New York, entertainment attorneys, and publishers.

Some success examples: We turned a great idea for a novel into a $1.1 million preemptive film deal, then re-edited the MS and auctioned it for $2.2 million. We took a novel MS that had been shopped to publishers and production companies, worked on it for nine months, then changed the name and sold it to a studio for $750,000; and took a self-published novel that sold a few thousand copies, sharpened it up, and sold it to a publisher for $250,000 and later set it up as a television movie.

Email us at publicity@aeionline.com for more information.

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I believe we can change the world through stories. I believe in making a difference in the lives of others through the power of storytelling--as a story teller myself and as a “story merchant” who enables other storytellers to make a difference.

Producer, Strategic Career Coach, Writer, Speaker; formerly Professor of Comparative Literature at Occidental College, Fulbright Professor University of Bologna, Literary Manager, Editor: STORY MERCHANT

My Story Merchant companies serve writers in all phases of their career: www.storymerchant.com for strategic career coaching and direct publishing; www.thewriterslifeline.com for mentoring and ghostwriting; and www.aeionline.com for representation and motion picture production.