Writing For The Market

Writing for the market is an issue that drives writers to despair.

We are always told to write for the market or starve.

Like all advice there is a grain of truth in it, but is that grain enough to cause you to write in a genre you don’t like?

Many writing ‘gurus’ around the net now appear to believe that the average writer can understand the market and its forces.

They also believe that those same average writers can use such information to come up with a bestseller – just like that. Maybe you can – read this article.

I use the term average, not in a derogatory sense, but merely to demonstrate that not all writers are great at business concerns.

Not all business people are great at writing.

There are some who are, but they are not average.

SCRAP YOUR NON-MARKETABLE IDEAS

The idea that you can tailor your writing to what the market wants is even more widespread now with the advance of digital technology.

Writing forums are now spreading this as if it is some global truth.

They are advising people to scrap all their ‘non-marketable ideas’ and get on with the serious business of writing bestsellers.

Hitting the top ratings has become an aim in itself.

This aim can often be held above good writing.

If you have been to a few meetings with producers, publishers, or agents you’ll know this already.

MANY MEETINGS

I have been writing a long time and I have been to quite a few meetings.

To be honest, I now find myself wishing I could get back the time I wasted preparing for, and travelling to meetings that I now see were a complete and utter waste of my time.

Between my day jobs and single parenting I didn’t have much free time.

What time I had could have spent writing, writing more, and writing even more…

TOO MANY WORDS

One memory that stands out in my mind is a meeting with a film producer.

The meeting was at his request. He had expressed an interest in my story so I was ‘pitching the script.’

Since pitching is now considered to be as important as, or even more important than writing I had attended several workshops and seminars to learn how to do just this.

But it was soon apparent that this particular producer was more interested in telling me about his ideal film script – the film he hoped I was writing.

It didn’t take him long to explain his amazing idea.

The film was, in his words ‘a commercial romantic comedy’ that was ‘funny’ with a ‘bare script.’

He said he didn’t like to have to read too many words.

MEDICAL STORY

The next meeting was with a producer who told me he wanted a ‘created by’ credit for a very marketable and commercially viable idea for a series he was developing.

The idea, he told me in all seriousness, was ‘medical story.’

I waited for the rest of the idea, with a view to perhaps hearing what made this any different to the many medical stories already on TV.

But, the self-satisfied look on his face told me there was no more.

This producer was looking for someone to take his ‘medical story’ and write it into a fully developed proposal and script – for no money until it was ‘financed.’

Then the writer was supposed to settle for a scriptwriter for hire’s pay while he gave himself the lucrative ‘created by’ credit.

Another film producer told me that the film I was pitching was the sort of film he and his friends would enjoy but not the type of film that ‘got financed.’

STRAIGHT TO VIDEO

Does any of this surprise you? Go look in the video shop and count the films you would love to rent.

EXECUTIVE LEVEL

An executive in the Irish Film Board once told me in a meeting that my proposal was excellent.

Oh, how my heart sang – for a second –  before he went on to explain they’d financed a film set on an island already.

This was a second meeting about the same script. At the first meeting, he had told me he thought the idea was great and to be sure to develop the story and send in a proposal.

I hadn’t changed the location between meetings.

Writing and developing proposals, by the way, is hard work – if you are serious about them, as I was.

The same executive also sang the praises of another writer,  a male, not surprisingly – this being the Irish Film Board, of whom he said he would finance anything he wrote – without reading it.

I wish I could say meetings like this were rare…

RATED

And then there’s television…

I once had a meeting with a television executive so joined at the hip with his ratings and polls that he couldn’t tear himself away from the graphs on his laptop to look at me and pretend to listen to the story I was trying to pitch.

In fact, he didn’t listen.

He didn’t need to listen as he had already read my script via email and had very much liked it, hence this meeting.

But he had only called the meeting because he wanted to meet me in person.

He proceeded to inform me that he/they never developed scripts with writers unless they had written for their soap.

He added, by the way, that women writers usually wrote soap and didn’t normally write the sort of stuff I wrote.

So, if female television writers didn’t write soap – they were writing themselves out of the market.

BREAKING GOOD

He could have saved me the six-hour round trip by telling me this via email but maybe he had a gap to fill.

Or maybe he was looking forward to bragging to someone about his ‘crucial’ role in developing the successful television show his station had produced because that was what he spent the rest of the meeting talking about.

According to him, the show had been successful because of his input, wisdom and insight.

He demonstrated is genius to me by explaining how he would regularly tell ‘his’ writers to ‘make it good’ or ‘make it better.’

Of course, producers would argue that making television and films is so expensive that they have to be sure that audiences will like it.

I might argue that going by the number of crap films in the video store and rubbish on the television that their judgement of what audiences want isn’t always all that sound.

But that isn’t telling them what they want to hear…and there are plenty of other writers who will.

THE AGENT OF IDEAS

Are publishers and agents any different?

According to one of my former agents, he himself was possessed of many commercial ideas.

Being a generous sort he would distribute his ideas among writers he deemed worthy of writing them.

How my heart sang (again) as I heard that there was a whole file of marketable ideas and that my agent owned it.

I waited a very long time for him to open his file.

Then one day, he finally said he had some important advice for me and we should meet.

The meeting for which I had waited for another embarrassingly long time took place in London.

At that time I was so eager (naive) that I would have happily travelled from Ireland to Greenland in a pedal canoe if it helped my career as a writer.

Sitting in the crowded cafe my agent explained how important it was that since my first novel had been optioned for film, that my second novel should follow its path.

He said this as though this wasn’t something I would have hoped for myself.

I could see he was waiting for me to ask the question, and so I did (well I’d travelled a long way)

How could I do this?

‘Think film as you write,’ he said. ‘Think Film.’

BUT YOU’RE A WRITER

I have more of these stories but I think you’ve probably got the point at this stage.

But you are a writer, enthusiastic, hard-working and maybe even talented.

So, after reading this you’re probably still wondering if there is a way you can interpret and write for the market?

If you are, maybe you should give it a shot.

Knowing the market sounds like a good start and maybe the thing to do is to analyze the best seller list, or the current most popular films and find out what is selling.

But think about it first.

Let’s say you work out that the most marketable story you could write is one that is set in the future with a male protagonist: a scientist living on a remote island in the Arctic, who has replaced love with alcohol and fantasies of finding the last lost dinosaur as the ice melts etc.

Thing is if that is current now and people want to read books about that now – can you write a book fast enough to catch the coattails of this current trend?

Or, will the market have changed by the time you have finished writing?

Will next year’s trend be for a female protagonist who becomes a private detective after ditching her waitress job where she had served steak to the main players in a major criminal gang?

BUT, WRITING FOR THE MARKET IS A GREAT IDEA

Okay, so writing for the market is a great idea in theory.

Who doesn’t wish they could do it?

But in practice, can you write about any subject, in any style or genre, and do it all exceedingly well?

If you can, then great – go for it.

Analyze the market and write for it.

Or, you can write what you are good at and write it more and more and more until you achieve flow.

You can continue to write, practice writing exercises until you get so good – that your audience finds you – trending…

As always, my opinion is just another opinion in a world full of them.

It’s up to you – as always.

Whatever you do – keep writing and I wish you the very best of luck with all your work.

Grace

P.S. If you are thinking about giving up the day job you should read this post.

The Sunshine Girl

Josie knows how to survive but what’s wrong with wanting more?

It’s 1970s Liverpool and everybody’s broke but that doesn’t stop her dreaming. A smiling stranger could make her dreams come true but she hasn’t met his family yet.

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