Recommended Screenwriters
Surviving A Story Meeting
- July 10, 2010
- Posted by: HalCroasmun
- Category: Articles
Surviving A Story Meeting
At some point in the future, you could easily find yourself in a story meeting about one of your scripts or you may be part of a writing team who is creating a TV series.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
There you’ll be, sitting with a room full of assistants, creative execs, and producers. They’ll assume you are a professional and that you can cope with the multitude of stresses that are going be placed in your lap during that meeting…
…and get this — how you deal with that meeting determines your future with that production company.
So you want to deliver the goods and show up as a professional without sucking up or going to battle.
How do you do that?
My goal for writers I take into meetings is two things — First, for the writer to establish credibility and be listened to as a valuable source. Second, for the producer to be so happy that they’ll go out of their way to hire this writer again.
Over the last month, I’ve been in a lot of story meetings on a feature and on a TV Series I’m working on with another producer. In both sets of meetings, I got to watch some interesting situations and strategies that worked.
First, let’s look at the issues, then some strategies.
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THE PARADOXES
Within a short time, you’ll see many of these paradoxes emerge and the thing to know is this — they are a natural part of how people interact.
So the best thing to do is to ACCEPT IT and don’t create any additional drama around it. Just go with the flow and move forward. I’m going to give these to you quickly and then present a few solutions below.
Paradox 1: Story meetings are not about ego, although ego shows up and you need to be okay with it.
Paradox 2: Story meetings are not about proving yourself, although you are going to be judged on the quality of your creativity and the response you have to others.
Paradox 3: Story meetings are not about arguments (especially about minor details), but arguments happen and you need to keep your focus for the good of the story and team even if you are being berated.
Paradox 4: Story meetings are about coming up with great ideas, but a great idea that doesn’t fit the vision is of no value at all and could be a problem.
Knowing those paradoxes, you won’t be caught off guard when they show up in a meeting. Now, on to the solutions…
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HOW TO SURVIVE AND SUCCEED
Other than a few extreme exceptions, surviving a story meeting is not about combating the evil producers and their team.
Instead, it is about becoming an indispensable part of the team who is totally focused on making the vision happen. Do that and you’ll have credibility with the team and you’ll be on the top of their list of writers to work with in the future.
Here are a few guidelines:
1. Most important: Focus all your thoughts on accomplishing the goal. You are there to move things forward for the story.
2. Make sure your ideas FIT THE VISION of the show and the characters.
3. Be there to contribute. Be friendly, but speak up when you have something valuable to say.
4. Just as important, be there to let others contribute. Be just as willing to go down their path of creativity as you want them to be on your paths of creativity.
5. If an idea doesn’t work, let go of it ASAP. Be willing to present ideas, have them shot down, and move on without any resistance at all. It is okay to stand up for an idea, but the moment ego or argument is involved, you’ve gone too far.
6. If you get confused or feel yourself getting defensive, regroup and focus on the vision/characters.
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WHAT TO DO?
Now look back over those six points. If you were conducting a meeting, wouldn’t you want everyone in the group to follow those guidelines?
And imagine what happens if no one in the group follows them. Wouldn’t that be total chaos and conflict?
These guidelines are as much for creating long term success for you as they are for avoiding problems during meetings. Follow them and producers will want to work with you.
Master them and you’ll gain fans among the decision makers in Hollywood.
Most of the story skills you need to make meetings successful are contained in our FREE Rewrite Teleconference or in our six-month long ProSeries professional screenwriting program.