The 13 Types of Screenwriting Success

Getting paid to write for a living is the dream. But there are many versions of what that career can look like.

Welcome to my Weekly Email Newsletter! Every Friday I do a deep dive into an aspect of the craft and business of screenwriting from a literary manager’s perspective.

Today’s post is for subscribers only. If you’re new here, I recommend checking out the free posts at this link to sample what this newsletter has to offer.

Otherwise, keep reading for my insights on the different types of screenwriting success.

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Last week I discussed the importance of having a specific vision for where you want your career to end up.

Knowing the kind of writer you want to be is important.

But if you’re just getting started on your screenwriting journey, you might not know what the potential finish lines are and what the pros and con are for each. Today I will walk you through some options so that you can pick the one that best aligns with your ideal lifestyle and creative process.

Before we get started, a word of caution:

Many people in Hollywood want to be as successful as possible by doing as little work as possible.

This is very doable if you’re rich, but even then, it is still harder than it looks.

But when it comes to building a real, successful screenwriting career, you don’t have a shot in hell unless you are ready to put in the work and stick with this for the long haul. You might think that there is a chance at becoming an overnight success like some of the media darlings that seem to pop out of nowhere. But the reality is that a lot of their pre-work is invisible.

This is either because the work of building a writing career is unsexy and boring, so most readers don’t care about it.

Also, many writers purposefully obscure all the work they did early on in their careers because it makes their achievements sound more impressive if they call something their “first script.”

Everyone wants to enshrine their own name into a legendary legacy, but only those who have successfully accomplished such a thing know how much dedication and sacrifice went on behind the scenes there.

Photo by Elena Takmakova on Unsplash

If you are going to dedicate and sacrifice for years, even decades of your life, you need to know exactly what you’re building toward.

What kind of success do you want here?

Just “make a living writing” is not specific enough. Specificity of vision is key. It’s good to be flexible, but you want that flexibility to show up in how you’re going to get to your destination, not what your destination itself is.

There are pros and cons to each type of successful career.

Here are 13 options for screenwriting career goals: