Film Courage: The Formula for Writing a Great Story

A Great Story Begins With a Great Character!

The Assumption That Most Writers Get Wrong

"The Road to Hell is Paved With Works in Progress ~ Philip Roth

Film Courage: Every Artist Has a Calling

There Are 3 Ways To Break Into Hollywood And I Didn’t Use Any Of Them by Dr. Ken Atchity

“You cannot fail at being yourself, which means doing with all your might what you were born to do with your light, your vision, and your time.” ... let us remember the words of Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: “I think the only immoral thing is for a being not to live every instant of its life with the utmost intensity" 

~ Jose Ortega y Gasset

Film Courage: What key steps did you take to go from being a tenured professor? Most people would do many things that aren’t good to be in those shoes. I’m sure first of all you had to deal with social pressure, people were probably trying to talk you out of it…maybe not? What steps did you take?

Dr. Ken Atchity, producer/author: Well…in retrospect you can always make it look more planned and logical than what it was at the time. But I basically…I ran into a very inspiring many whose name is Norman Cousins who was the editor of Saturday Review world of those days and he came to speak in a class of mine at Occidental College and it turned out we shared a motto that no one else in the world had ever heard of and that motto was a single sentence by the Spanish philosopher [José] Ortega y Gasset that said “I think the only immoral thing is for a being not to use every instant of its existence with the utmost intensity.” And I had never heard anyone else quote that, but after his talk in my class I asked him to come to my office and I showed him that it was framed above my desk and so needless to say we bonded. 

Long story short, I asked him what I should do when I grow up which I’d asked male authority figures all my life basically. He told me after we got to know each other that I should consider the entertainment business because it was much broader than the academic world and people can basically do whatever…anything creative you’re encouraged to do basically. You can find your own way. There are no rules and schedules and all of those kind of things that we find in academia.

And I love academic you know? The world and the ideas that are exchanged and all of that. But it was restricting and it was (for me) suffocating. Which is a word that means a lot to me personally. It’s my most ancient nightmare being suffocated and I’ve never been suffocated in the…

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Film Courage: Starting at Age 43

Film Courage: Ken, as a tenured professor in your mid-40s, what made you think you could change careers?

Dr. Ken Atchity, producer and author: Well, this is America and you can do whatever you want to do. It’s one of the great things about this country.
What I was doing was very related to a career I’m in now. It was developing stories, developing writers, and of course, teaching a number of things that I no longer teach like classical literature and Italian literature.

So it’s all united by storytelling. I had no idea which world was sort of the bigger world of ideas, the world of academia that I had been in for 17 years, or the world I went into. And I discovered that the world I went into was really the world of ideas, because it’s a world in which people are tracking ideas across continents to find out who owns the rights to a story.

They pay lots of money to acquire the story (at least they used to pay lots of money) and they spend millions of dollars to turn the story into a movie and they’re fiercely competitive about the world of ideas. The motion picture business is the jungle of ideas and it’s survival of the best idea and the best business people.

I always so it’s called show business for a reason. It’s not just about show, it’s about the business of how stories get developed into movies that the whole world can see.

Film Courage: I’m hoping we can go back to maybe before you made this transition to wanting to be in film? Was there something that happened, was there a time in your life that where you felt like “You know what? I want a new challenge.”

Dr. Ken Atchity: That’s a good question because I’ve reflected on it all of my life since then and it was actually provoked by my receiving tenure. I actually belonged to an untenured faculty committee against tenure. One day when I was a Fulbright professor in Bologna, Italy, I got a telegraph from the Dean of the faculty at Occidental College telling me that I’d received tenure in my absence.
And my reaction to it was not very understandable to my friends and colleagues. I became deeply depressed for about a year. And it took me a long time to figure out why I was depressed and it was because I had really never asked to be in this golden cage where nothing can happen to you. It was like the most secure place you could be and I realized at the time that my father’s chief value in life was security. He was a child of The Depression and security was all important to him. And I had to admit to myself that it wasn’t that important to me. I never worried about being secure. I’d published lots of things and I was in demand as a speaker and just never had to worry about it.

And what I valued was freedom and I didn’t feel and I didn’t feel freedom when under a structure where you had to behave a certain way and you had to know a year in advance that on the week of October 12th you’d be teaching the 8th book of The Iliad. And it was wonderful to be teaching The Iliad, but that to know a year in advance you were going to be somewhere.

I now live in a world where I don’t know where I am going to be tomorrow literally and it’s complete opposite, it’s a free world. And of course I realized that as I got older that freedom is as much an illusion as security (both of them are illusions), but it was my illusion. Security was not my illusion and so I’ve lived with complete insecurity. But with the freedom to express myself creatively and in every possible way (which is what the film business allows me to do) and so that was very exciting to me.

Film Courage: And do you ever tell people that? If they are looking to be in a creative pursuit whether it’s being an author or screenwriter or actor, that security will probably be something that they will not encounter and to be okay with that?

Dr. Ken Atchity: Absolutely. I mean this is not a career to wish on anyone. You have to have a burning desire to do it and you have to be willing to sacrifice anything to do it and to persist despite every setback and I can tell you that this is a business in which (a career) this never gets easier, I don’t care how many movies you’ve done. The next one is going to be the biggest challenge you’ve ever faced, the world changes all the time. It’s been changing ever since I’ve been in it which is around 30 years now and it never gets any easier and it never gets any more secure and even if you’ve had windfalls and lot.

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Book Pleasures Interviews Writer, Producer, Career Coach, Teacher and Literary Manager, Dr. Ken Atchity

Bookpleasures.com welcomes guest writer, producer, career coach, teacher, and literary manager, responsible for launching hundreds of books and films, Dr. Ken Atchity.

Ken's life passion is finding great storytellers and turning them into bestselling authors and screenwriters.

Ken has produced over 30 films, including “Angels in the Snow” (Kristy Swanson), "Hysteria" (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy, Informant Media), "Erased" (Aaron Eckhart, Informant), the Emmy-nominated "The Kennedy Detail" (Discovery), "The Lost Valentine" (Betty White; Hallmark Hall of Fame), "Joe Somebody" (Tim Allen; Fox), "Life or Something Like It" (Angelina Jolie; Fox), and "14 Days with Alzheimer's."

Nearly twenty of his clients’ books have been New York Times bestsellers. His new imprint, Story Merchant Books, has published more than 150 titles in its first three years. Ken’s many books include books for writers atevery stage of their careers, and, recently, three novels, Seven Ways to Die (with the late William Diehl), The Messiah Matrix and Brae Mackenzie.

Norm: Good day Ken and thanks for participating in our interview.

Ken: My pleasure, Norm. My Story Merchant authors love your blogsite.

Norm; Could you tell us a little about people you have met or books you have read that have inspired you to embark on your various career hats that you have worn?

Ken: That’s a great question. I’ve had many inspiring mentors, from whom I’ve learned the fundamentals that have shaped my life.

Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins, who urged me to leave my tenured academic position to challenge my abilities and aspirations in the world of commercial storytelling.

Yale President and Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, whose course in the Renaissance inspired me to follow his model, and become a practicing “Renaissance man.”

I ran into him in the Yale Club elevator one day. He said, “Atchity, what is this I hear about a professor of comparative literature producing romance movies?” I said: “What is this about the President of Yale becoming the Baseball Commissioner?”

Psychology Today editor Paul Chance, who counter-inspired me by saying, “Find your niche, young man. Find your niche.”

I swore when he said that, in turning down my proposal to publish DreamWorks, a journal exploring the relationship between the arts and dreams, that I would NEVER be a niche-person. And it’s true years later. I found a publisher for the journal, by the way: New York’s Human Sciences Press.

Novelist-professor John Gardner, who urged me to clean my writing of all academic spider webs and write and speak clear English that everyone could understand. He also told me to start a file for crazy letters, critical or otherwise, called “Cranks & Weirdos”—and put letters in it without reading more than enough to determine they belong there. That file is about four inches deep at this point.

Norm: In the last few years have you seen any changes in the way publishers publish and/or distribute books? Are there any emerging trends developing?

Ken: The last few years have seen nothing but change in publishing. To begin with traditional publishers have nearly all been acquired by conglomerate international corporations. The impact of that is to make them focus almost entirely on the bottom line and to take fewer and fewer chances with new voices.That’s exactly why I founded Story Merchant Books. It was getting discouraging watching promising new writers get nothing but rejection from the traditional publishers and I wanted books in my hand to take to my Hollywood associates. One day I thought, why don’t I make the books? The trend is definitely away from traditional publishing and toward this kind of direct publishing.

Norm: In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of the writing process? As a follow up, what, in your opinion, are the most important elements of good writing?

Ken: The most difficult part, by far, is finding a good story and letting it ruminate long enough to make the writing down of it almost like ‘automatic writing.’ Character is the heart of it, but plot is also important—and action that keeps moving the story along, preferably in unexpected directions.

Norm: What makes a good story and how do you go about finding great storytellers and turning them into bestselling authors and screenwriters? As a follow up, what is the process in determining if a book has film potential?

Ken: A great story transports the reader or the audience to its world, and you don’t want to leave it. You want to prolong the engagement, or repeat it. It sells you on that world and on its characters. If a story does that, it can be a film as well as a book.

I don’t go finding writers anymore; they come to me from my years of experience, from my books on writing, from my alumni as a professor, and from referrals from publishers, agents, studios, and independent producers.

Norm: Many writers want to be published, but not everyone is cut out for a writer's life. What are some signs that perhaps someone is not cut out to be a writer and should try to do something else for a living?

Ken: You can determine whether a writer is cut out for it or not the minute he starts asking you to help him determine, numerically, his risk-reward ratio. Real writers invest everything they can access, physically, mentally, psychologically, spiritually, and financially--to pursue their careers.

Norm: Do you feel that writers, regardless of genre owe something to readers, if not, why not, if so, why and what would that be?

Ken: Yes, they owe them a good story, thereby repaying them for the time the reader invests in their book. As I learned from Lowry Nelson, Jr., my Yale mentor, there is a “fictive contract” between the reader and the author under the terms of which the author sets expectations and then must fulfill those expectations satisfactorily.

You know you’re reading a good story when you begin by reading it faster and faster, and end up reading it more and more slowly because you don’t want to see it end. When that happens the author has fulfilled his part of the contract. When the reader posts a thoughtful review, he’s fulfilled his.

Norm: Do you ever suffer from writer's block? If so, what do you do about it?

Ken: I’ve never had writer’s block. “It’s a sign,” Norman Mailer said, “of failure of the ego.” I think the key to writing is having something to say, or some story to tell. I’ve never wanted for either.

My book A Writer’s Time (available as an e-Book as Write: Time) gives good advice about dealing with it. One of my points: “Never sit down to write until you know what you’re going to write before you sit down.”

Norm: What is Story Merchant Books all about and what do you look for when accepting to publish a book?

Ken: I started Story Merchant Books to give promising new writers a professional entrée into the story marketplace, and I’m happy to say that even mid-career writers and several estates have found their way to SMB as well. I almost always base the decision on the strength of the story and the voice behind it—as well as my being able to envision it as a film.

Norm: Could you tell our readers about your two recent novels, The Messiah Matrix and Brae Mackenzie.

Ken: After I was asked to finish the late and much-admired William Diehl’s unfinished thriller, Seven Ways to Die, and discovered I really did have a knack for fiction (most of my previous books were nonfiction).

Messiah Matrix was based on my first lifetime of classical learning and teaching and the childhood comparisons I heard from the Jesuits between Caesar and Jesus.

It got such great response—including outrageous attacks on those who insisted on regarding it as nonfiction—that I revised a novel I’d drafted years ago, and am just publishing it, Brae Mackenzie, about a discontent American woman who investigated her ancestral roots and finds the love of her life in the myths of Scotland, and a man who introduces her to them first-hand.

Norm: Are you working on any books/projects that you would like to share with us? (We would love to hear all about them!)

Ken: Yes, I’m working on my memoirs, A Story Merchant’s Story, which will be in several volumes. I think I’ve learned a lot in my various walks of life and it’s time to pass what I’ve learned on to others.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and your work?
Ken:
My AUTHOR CENTRAL  PAGE ON AMAZON
The Messiah Matrix
is a good start. Thanks for asking Norm.

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors.

Norm Goldman, B.A. LL.L, is the Publisher & Editor of Bookpleasures, which he created in 2002.' Practicing law for over 35 years enabled Norm to transfer and apply to book reviewing his many skills that he had perfected during his career in the legal profession and as a result he became a prolific free lance book reviewer & author interviewer.  

To read more about Norm Follow Here

Nadine Maritz of My Addiction Interviews Ken About The Story Merchant

Interview - Kenneth Atchity the American Story Merchant

Kenneth Atchity is an American producer and Author who has worked as a literary manager, editor, speaker, writing coach, brand consultant and professor of comparative literature. He’s been called the story merchant.

He is the captain of ships such as www.storymerchant.com ; Atchity Entertainment International, inc (www.aeionline.com ); The Writers Lifeline, Inc (www.thewriterslifeline.com ) and The Louisiana Wave Studio which together produce films and develop books for publication,  screenplays, and films for television and cinema--and consult with writers about their career strategies and tactics.

In this interview we are aiming to discover more about Kenneth himself and the world he lives in. As per the first interview http://ow.ly/dx211 which was based on the launching of the Messiah Matrix – we are enormously grateful for Kenneth to stand off his time for a written interview.

Kenneth, your entertainment career started in 1967 and is still flourishing can you tell our readers a bit more about your journey?

My journey has been a rollicking literary adventure, from my days as a professor at Occidental College and the University of Bologna, Italy, to the decision I made to leave the academic world and enter the commercial world of storytelling. There’s literally never been a dull moment—and the one thread that weaves through it all is my passion for stories of all kinds. I’ve been a first-hand witness to the world’s hunger for stories, and privileged to be able to bring them to their audiences.

You are known for producing filmography such as  “The Lost Valentine,” “Life or Something Like It,” “14 Days with Alzheimers,” “Hysteria,” “The Expatriate,” and “The Kennedy Detail,” which is but a few. What do you feel has been your best work in the filmography range?

Much as I love the movies I’ve been lucky enough to work on, I feel my best work is yet to come.

You founded Story Merchant for strategic coaching in writers in 2010. What inspired the idea behind these two new divisions?

I founded Story Merchant because the world of publishing and entertainment has changed so much in the last few years I found I was unable to spend time with individual writers in a way that made business sense—and Story Merchant allows me to do that through its (1) coaching services; (b) its publishing arm, Story Merchant Books; and its marketing arm, Story Merchant Book Marketing. We began (c), with my partner a former head of Fox Family Films, because the number one challenge of any author publishing a new book is how to make it VISIBLE in a world where thousands of books are published every single week. VISIBILITY is the published writer’s biggest challenge, so SMBM is focused on making writers visible.

Your academic career started in 1970 up to 1986 where you received the Faculty Achievement Award and the Distinguished Instructor at UCLA Writers program. How did you accomplish such awards within the same year?

You don’t really achieve awards—you just do your thing, and they either come or not. For people who love what they do, it’s not the awards that motivate it’s the privilege of getting to do what you love on a daily basis. It’s nice to be recognized, but an authorpreneur needs to be self-motivated because there’s a long wait between moments of recognition.

Your work has appeared in numerous journals and newspapers such as the American Quarterly, Classical Philology, Comparative Literature Studies, Contemporary Literature Criticism etc – how does it feel to be seen as such a popular and sought after writer?

It feels great to do the work of writing—the research, the composition, the revision. The more you publish the more you will publish. And it’s very satisfying to look back down a long road and see that many of my dreams—and those of my clients and partners--reached fruition.

You have written books such as : How to Publish Your Novel (SquareOne) (2005); How to Quit Your Day Job and Live Out Your Dreams (Skyhorse) (2012), plus Writing Treatments That Sell: How to Create and Market Your Story Ideas to the Motion Picture and TV Industry (Owl Books, 2003) and Write Time (2012, available through amazon.com).

How has exposure been on these books?

It grows over the years. It’s nice to know that several of the books have been through several editions and continue to resonate with writers year after year. It’s an extension of my years in the classroom to reach out and help people accelerate their progress along the success curve. 

           

Have readers ever given you input on how it    has assisted them with their career requirements and goals?

I couldn’t have written any of these books without constant input from students and clients along the way. It’s their experiences, in failure and success, that I describe in these books.

Your companies - Atchity Entertainment International, Story Merchant, and The Writer's Lifeline have been responsible for launching numerous books and films. I mean the list of stuff you have done is never ending, where to from here?

If I’m lucky enough to continue, I will continue pushing forward the projects I’m involved with—both my own personal projects like my first novel The Messiah Matrix which we talked about here earlier, and the many projects of my clients—wonderful books, screenplays, and stories that are just waiting their turn to see the light of day. And my honor and responsibility is to move them toward the light!

Have you ever thought about stretching your skills into countries that are not as skilled as America?

I did experiment a few years ago with reaching out to Brazil, at the request of a consultant from that country. I wish there were a way to do that at least in other English-speaking countries around the world because the world I work in, publishing and producing, is increasingly global so the principles I propound are universal.

In 1990 you founded the editorial and consulting company The Writer’s Lifeline, Inc. I am told that this company has been responsible for over a dozen best sellers. Can you tell our readers a bit more about what the company consists of? 

The Writers Lifeline, consisting of select editors I’ve chosen over the years to work with clients, is all about bringing “a writer’s skill and craft to the level of their vision and ambition.” On one hand, we ghost-write stories and information that the author needs put into the world; but on the other, our primary mission, is we make books and scripts ready for publication and production by giving them the conceptual, structural, style, and copy editing they need to stand out as professionally worthy of commercial acceptance.

You also do a lot of television, radio, web and television interviews and classes on contemporary literature, creativity, dreams, myth, writing, producing, publishing, time-management, business expansion, brand launching, and various other academic and entertainment-publishing subjects.

Where do you see yourself going with all of this within the future?

I am consolidating more and more of this into Story Merchant Book Marketing so that I can buy the time to help writers more. Writers need to remember the simple arithmetic, money buys time (that’s what the saying “Time is money” is all about). We all want unlimited freedom to create, so that means we need to achieve unlimited financial reward for the fruits of our creation. Anything I can do to concentrate and streamline my time helps me get more stories into the world.

In 2011 you were nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Documentary Programs on The Kennedy Detail – this was shown on Discovery Channel last year. And now you’ve turned the same book into a feature film, currently being written by director Stephen Gyllenhaal that will be released in 2013..

What do you expect to see from viewers on this release?

I know we will see respect for the amazing men who served President Kennedy even at the moment of this death—and had to endure the pain of it, and then go on with their work of attempting to protect the next president, and to move the country forward despite tragedy. I’ve seen that respect pouring out throughout the book tour for The Kennedy Detail and in the television audience’s reaction to the documentary—so I know the feature audience will express it as well.

How did it feel to be nominated for such an award?

It felt surreal to be in the room with the icons of television news and get to meet some of them at the pre- and after-party. There’s something so ‘arbitrary’ about awards and nominations—as I said earlier, you just do your work and focus on it, and sometimes it’s recognized. The recognition is time-consuming—I could be at my phone working on future deals. But it’s good to pause for them, take a breath, and put it all in perspective. There are SO MANY wonderful people working in publishing, television, and film that just being in the same room with them makes you realize that dreaming is the foundation for the reality we all live in. I got to be in the room with fellow dreamers. That’s like dying and going to heaven!

South Africa seems to be a country that holds a lot of promise in many things. Filmography and publishing are but some of its lesser opportunities.

How do you perceive these two factors to grow in the future?

As the world continues to shrink thanks to the technologies and the internet, film and publishing will grow in all parts of the world. I’ve been offered to amazing South African projects in the last two months, and there are many out there being dreamed at this very moment—persistence will turn them into realities.

For someone like me – Hollywood and big novel publishing brands seems to be something that is not easy to come by. It’s as if success is mostly concluded through the people you know and the money you could spend. Have you ever thought about branching out internationally?  

I’ve become all too aware of my limitations—primarily the limitation of the hours in the day. The only way I could conceive of branching out further is with the help of energetic partners who can build the infrastructure. Otherwise I’m happy with my present base, though I have clients in South Africa, Hong Kong, Germany, Belgium, France, England, Australia, Canada—and probably a few others I’ve forgotten at the moment.

If someone wanted to submit a manuscript or screenplay for your recommendation – what steps do they need to follow?

The best way to get my attention these days is to submit it to the ‘project launch analysis’ on www.thewriterslifeline.com That way your project gets read, analysed, and reported back to me—for me to take a look at if it’s ready to move forward. If it’s not ready, you’ll be told why and we can help you do something about it.

What genres do you follow?

We have worked in every imaginable genre. I just love GOOD STORIES of all kinds.

Which age groups are you limited to?

­We aren’t limited to any age groups. We’ve found ways to work with them all.

Where can people follow your work and access your sites for possible submissions and enquiries?

My personal blog is a nexus that changes daily but gives you access to all the websites: its http://www.kenatchityblog.com/

 What do you prefer – reading, writing or screen?

I equally prefer reading and watching movies.

These days I find that the line between novel publishing and putting it to screen has become fairly narrow. There are very few books I have read that hasn’t made it to film or possible future filming.

I’m surprised because it’s my experience that the book that makes it to film is 1 in a hundred or more. Great books are the exception, but it still can take years to get to the screen.

What is your viewpoint on such a matter?

Persist. Do it right. Learn everything you can, especially from other people’s experience.

What are your views when it comes to online kindle reading and actual printed novels – do you feel that the market will always remain for physical publishing?

I’m sure it will remain for another 50 years, though I’m not sure it’ll be that long. When Gutenberg invented the printing press I’m sure folks still said, “I prefer my scroll.” But 50 years later I doubt that anyone was still making scrolls, and few still reading from them.

Final words for striving authors and producers around the world.

If you have a dream, you have a responsibility to yourself and to us to make it come true. That’s the most important thing in your life. Don’t let anything stand in its way. And let me know if we can help you get there!

Kenneth – thanks so much for granting me this interview.

Listen to My Interview On The Funky Writers Show!

Ready to be a bestseller?

In this in depth conversation with Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts I share my views and insider tips on how to be your own success story. 

Monetizing Your Knowledge With Creativity

My intention to surround myself with the finest minds in the world has certainly made an impact on my ability to tap into my own creativity.

I recently attended a Marketing Mastermind meeting and found myself surrounded by an amazing circle of influence. Each of us brainstorming our creative powers with the other members of the group as we discover new ways to bring our knowledge and services to the marketplace.

After the meeting we joined for dinner and as I looked around I realized just how amazing this circle of fine minds was! Creative energy flowing, laughing, learning and enjoying the company of genius leading edge thinkers…. and I couldn’t help but acknowledge that I created this experience through the intention I had set years ago.

Here I was sitting across the table from Award Winning Architect Julie Lineburger, Musical Genius Lisa McCormick, Founders of Magical Earth Retreats Don and Jane Jones (Don is also known as The Wizard of Wisdom) and

Internet Marketing GENIUS- Tellman Knudson! (Tellman is also the worst banjo player in the world…. but that’s another story) I found myself learning new things, stretching myself a little out of my comfort zone…. but finding my balance and stepping into the fullest version of myself by seeking out, connecting with and recognizing the power of Creativity.

Creativity is such an important part of our life, much more powerful than most people realize, and we all have it in us. All of us…. no matter what…. no exceptions.

Recently I had the honor of being joined in the LeadingEdge Talk studio by Hollywood writer/producer, author of 15 books and nominated for an Emmy for his work in “The Kennedy Detail” -Dr. Kenneth Atchity, whose industry depends on this very power. During the show we talked about What is Creativity and Why is it so powerful? And you can listen to the entire show here to find out why Dr. Atchity says “Creativity is more important to humans than breathing”.

Enjoy the replay here

Whatever path you are following to wealth…. it will take creativity to get there. Sometimes that means learning, which is what you are doing right now by reading this blog and taking advantage of the wisdom and resources my guests share. You are a Creative Genius…… it’s already in there, you just need to connect with it.

Another way to get creative in learning is to READ! I HIGHLY recommend you check out Dr. Atchity’s Book

“How To Escape Lifetime Security And Pursue Your Impossible Dream”

It is possible for you to have the life you want to have, and to connect with the creative power you already have within yourself. Believe it. Believe in You. There is a saying (by who I don’t remember at this moment, but it goes something like this

“I have discovered as truth as I look at what I myself am creating…… When you believe in yourself, the world has no choice but to Believe in you too”.

Your experience is valuable, and you can learn to monetize what you know. Open yourself up to learn and the most amazing teachers will find their way into your life.

This I know for sure.

Be sure to follow the “Aware to Millionaire” blog and get your inbox Rocked by Wisdom.

Stephanie Kathan.com

An Interview With iStudioi

An Interview with Hollywood Literary Manager and Film and Television Producer Dr. Kenneth Atchity

iStudioi Interview

Dr. Ken Atchity, Chairman of Atchity Entertainment International, Inc. (AEI), is a self-defined "story merchant,” with more than forty years experience in the publishing world, and over fifteen years in the entertainment industry. He is a writer, producer, teacher, and literary manager, responsible for launching dozens of books and films.

Ken looks for great storytellers in order to turn them into bestselling authors and screenwriters, utilizing AEI’s The Writer’s Lifeline, Inc., which consults with authors in need of a bridge to the professional world, and Finish Line Brand Launch Management, a new division of AEI, which partners with business-minded authors to reach maximum markets in all media.

Known for his “outside the box” thinking, Ken has produced nearly thirty films for his clients and has sold numerous books in all categories, including 15 bestsellers.

Ken’s films include Joe Somebody (starring Tim Allen; Fox), Life or Something Like It (starring Angelina Jolie; Fox), The Amityville Horror (NBC), Shadow of Obsession (NBC), The Madam's Family: The Truth About The Canal Street Brothel (CBS), Gospel Hill (Fox), and The Lost Valentine (Hallmark Hall of Fame) and Hysteria (Sony Classics).

Films in development include Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not! starring Jim Carrey, with Chris Columbus (“Narnia”) directing (Paramount), Demon Keeper, with Sam Fell (“Flushed Away”) directing (Fox), and 3 Men Seeking Monsters, with Mark Steven Johnson (“Ghost Rider”) directing (Universal).

Additionally, AEI produces reality shows in partnership with Renegade (“Blind Date”), and has several shows in development for its brand clients. AEI has associate managers in 29 countries, and nearly every state in the U.S.

Ken actively works with his authors to help them maximize revenue from their book royalties and film revenues. Based on his experience with launching Noire, Ripley’s, Demon Keeper, The Thrillionaires, and Dracula: The Un-Dead, Ken now provides brand franchising partnership services for selective clients. These services permit the integration, evaluation, and launch of brands in all media to build ongoing multiple pillars of revenue.

In addition, Ken’s years of experience as a writer, editor, professor, manager, and producer have allowed him to form a wide network of international relationships and contacts, creating the most productive and positive team approach for his clients.

Ken completed his undergraduate work at Georgetown University (A.B., English/Classics; Winner Virgilian Medal), and his graduate work at Yale (M. Phil., Theater History; Ph.D. Comparative Literature). Ken is a regular at Mark Victor Hansen’s Mega Book Marketing University, and speaks at writers conferences throughout the world.

We caught up with Ken in Los Angeles and had an opportunity to speak with him about his fascinating career.

iStudioi: What brought you into the world of literary management?

KJA: When I left the academic world to produce movies, I realized that managing stories and storytellers was my strength. When I discovered literary management, I had found the promised land and my mission: to bring talented writers across the river to their professional destiny.

iStudioi: What types of literary projects do you find most commercially appealing?

KJA: I have a broad range of tastes and a passionate love for all kinds of commercial stories. My number one criterion is excellence and the other number one criterion is the market. A great story with a market—that’s what I look for.

iStudioi: What is that makes a great story?

KJA: A great story is a story that moves the reader—to delight, to action, to thought. It has strong characters and a strong beginning, middle, and end.

iStudioi: How can you tell whether a story is best as a book or film?

KJA: Ideally a great story can be both. Then it’s just a question of where to begin the marketing process.

iStudioi: What to you tell your emerging manuscript and screenwriters as they begin to prepare that next great book or film project?

KJA: Talk to us first to make sure you don’t waste a year or more of your life on something that has no current market.

iStudioi: Are some books better for self-publishing?

KJA: That depends on a number of factors, starting with the author’s (a) financial resources and (b) ability to connect with the book’s market. If both (a) and (b) are high, then self-publishing (through an established imprint that services entrepreneurial writers) may very well be more lucrative. If (a) and/or (b) are on the low end of the spectrum, then self-publishing is not the best way to go. Aside from that generalization, find a consultant like our Writer’s Lifeline company, who can advise you professionally.

iStudioi: Is there a rule for determining whether a film project is more appropriate for a studio as opposed to being produced as an "Indie."

KJA: If a story is original, it’s probably not for a major studio. Because of their corporate ownership and the immense cost of their films, studios in the last few years have gone to acquiring stories that have underlying property value­—such as Broadway plays, high visibility novels, well-known comic books, etc. The exception is a screenplay that has a major director and/or star firmly attached. All else, in today’s filmmaking world, has become “Indie.”

iStudioi: Tell us how you envision your representation in the world of literary management.

KJA: We keep an open mind, and an eye on rapidly changing events to allow us to protect our clients’ interests. Amid the turmoil of the changing channels of delivery, one thing remains constant in the story marketplace: the worldwide demand for great stories and important information, which makes creating and owning intellectual property an even more stable opportunity than owning and developing real estate. We feel that the important thing for authors is to pursue the right strategy, so the tactics will fall into place to make it all happen.

WHAT DO YOU DO?

GumboWriters aka The Gatekeepers PostInterview with Literary Manager, Ken Atchity



GumboWriters had the opportunity to interview legendary literary manager, Ken Atchity. He has been responsible for managing the careers of many bestselling authors and securing million-dollar film deals for them as well. He also has a wonderful blog you should take a look at.


How long have you been agent and how did you get your start Ken?

Well, to begin with, I'm NOT an agent although half the world calls me one. I'm a literary manager and producer, which allows my company, Atchity Entertainment International, a much wider purview and operating plane: we develop literary properties, sell them to publishers (like agents do), then set them up as films or multimedia franchises. It's been a nearly 20-year evolution to where we are today, following my first career as professor of comparative literature at Occidental College (Yale Ph.D., Georgetown B.A.), Fulbright Professor to the University of Bologna, Instructor in Screen- and Novel-writing at UCLA Writers Program, and regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

My second career is founded on my first. I wanted to move on from analyzing and critiquing stories to helping storytellers create them for publishers and the big screen. As an author myself, with 15 books to date and a half dozen or so screenplays, I thought I should 'put my money where my mouth was" and focus on creation instead of deconstruction. Turns out, the latter serves the former and has continued to do so. In fact, I formed a second company, The Writer's Lifeline, as a kind of farm team for my management and representation company—a company that mentors writers not yet ready for representation, and also ghostwrites for individuals and companies who want to get a story or information into the world but don't have time to be writers. Some of AEI's biggest successes have been incubated in the Writer's Lifeline, including Dracula: The Un-Dead, a novel AEI just sold for nearly $2 million and will produce as a film in '09.


What makes your agency different than any others?

Primarily that we think outside the box and focus on storytellers instead of screenwriters vs novelists. Our ideal clients are ones that want to be paid for their intellectual property on both coasts, publishing and entertainment, and in the global market.

What are you looking for specifically that you wish you would see more of?

We've just launched the Brand Management division of AEI, for projects like Dacre Stoker & Ian Holt's Dracula: The Un-Dead, Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not!, Royce Buckingham's Demon Keeper, that can be branded in all media—book, film, television, internet, music, merchandising & licensing. We'd like to see more high-concept and/or blockbuster novels to set up as films (like 3 Men Seeking Monsters, which we're producing at Universal, Demon Keeper at Fox 2000, Sex in the South at Lifetime, and High Voltage which we're producing with Baror International and just about to make the rounds with). When it comes to screenplays, we're looking only for high-concept action, broad comedies, successful comic books or graphic novels, high-profile fantasy (based on underlying properties) and ones based on high profile true stories. And we're also looking on the constant hunt for film financing because we've decided to take our clients' fates into our hands by financing independent movies as a more realistic supplement to the original business of setting up big studio films. Does that mean a screenplay with money attached gets our attention? Yes indeed.

Ken what are you tired of receiving?

(a) Books that have too narrow a market; (b) children's picture books (we can't make a business of them unless they're already successfully published); (c) nuclear war stories—arghhh!; (d) childhood abuse stories. I could go on…

How can a new writer get your attention in a good way?

Sending me a two-line email about their project, and two lines about themselves. When the email gets longer I forward it to my staff to answer. Don't worry--if I'm interested in the 4 lines, I'll ask for more.

How can a signed writer stay in your radar without driving you insane?

Great question. My fantastic staff is there to answer their everyday questions, and to handle the flow of the business required to get them into the marketplace. The clients we tend to retain are those that work with the whole group—including my long-time partner Chi-Li Wong. Those that demand my attention for every little thing that pops into their mind tend to drift away. I focus on creative thinking and marketing (sales!), and hope my clients understand that's where their best benefits lie. My radar is my company, and when I hear good things or nothing I'm aware the client is working well with us; when I hear about them too often, there's usually trouble brewing. The busier we get the more we turn away from trouble. But I have to say we've gotten better at better at selecting people we work well with we're pretty happy these days.

What do you wish more writers understood about you as an agent Ken that they don't seem to?

That I'm much more than an "agent." Because of my prior experience I'm a writer, editor, producer, manager, psychologist, teacher—and, above all, a determined enthusiast who will go to the ends of the earth to sell a story once I decide I love it—and have done so long after a client has lost hope

So You Want To Write A Screenplay.

Striking Oil: An Interview with Kenneth Atchity and Chi-Li Wong

by P. J. McIlvaine

What does Minnesota Governor, best selling author ("I Ain't Got Time to Bleed") and former pro wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura and novelist/screenwriter John Scott Shepherd (who made an astounding six film sales and one TV series sale in little over a year) have in common?

If you guessed a body slam, sorry. They're all represented by the burgeoning AEI firm, a self-described "one-stop full service management machine for screenwriters, novelists and nonfiction writers."

AEI's feature projects include "The Kill Martin Club" at Warner Brother's with comic Ben Stiller attached; "Henry's List of Wrongs" at New Line with funnyman extraordinaire Jim Carrey tentatively set to star; "Life or Something Like It" at New Regency; John Mulholland's "Dante's Inferno" with Mike Richardson's Dark Horse Entertainment; and the biopic "Robert Ripley" of Ripley Believe It or Not! fame with Barry Sonnenfeld ("Men in Black") interested in directing, and actor George Clooney interested in playing Ripley.

President and Chief Operating Officer Kenneth Atchity is a veteran producer, teacher (Occidental College, UCLA's Writing Program and Fulbright Professor), literary manager, poet, entrepreneur and author (the best selling "A Writer's Time") and co-wrote with AEI Partner and Exec Vice-President for Development and Production Chi-Li Wong "Writing Treatments That Sell: How to Create and Market Your Story Ideas to the Motion Picture and TV Industry."

P. J. McIlvaine: First, let me say that I liked the book ("Writing Treatments that Sell") a lot. It works for the beginner, the intermediate, and the more experienced screenwriter.

Kenneth Atchity: Thank you. That's what we were trying to accomplish.

McIlvaine: How did the book evolve?

Atchity: My partner Chi-Li and I gave talks around the country on selling to television. The questions we were asked the most often were about treatments: How do you write one, and what do you do with one? Basically, we answered the question so many times that we got tired, and looked around and realized there were no books on treatments. We also started talking to people in the industry and realized there wasn't a clear kind of agreement on what a treatment was. We find now that almost every studio uses our book as a kind of handbook -- when somebody says, We need to do a treatment, they hand them our book. It's very exciting that a lot of creative writing classes have also adopted it as the first book on treatments. We based it (the book) partly on a survey we did of development executives in television and film to find out what they consider to be a treatment. McIlvaine: What do you receive more of at AEI, completed scripts or treatments?

Atchity: It's a mixture of both, but we get more treatments than we do scripts, partly because we want them. You know, it's much harder to sell a script unless the script is outstanding. But somebody can write a pretty good treatment and not write a good script and their real goal is just to sell the story and get started, so that's where a treatment can be very, very useful. We can sell the treatment, and have a great scriptwriter attach to it.

McIlvaine: This is the opposite of what people have told me: Write the script and then try to sell that. You, on the other hand, seem to be saying, "No, write the treatment and then try to set that up." Am I correct?

Atchity: It's not that simple. It depends on what your goal is as a writer. If your goal is money and/or just getting a credit, then writing a treatment is a faster way to go and get you into the business -- and get you some money. And it also gives the buyer maximum flexibility. Let's say you come up with a great idea for a story but you're not a known writer yet. Rather than invest a year in writing a script, write a treatment. We sell it, they attach an A-list writer to it, and you have a movie up there that's based on your story. But if your goal is to be known as a screenwriter, then yes, that advice is the right advice -- which is to write a spec script first, and let us go out with it because studios pay more money for spec scripts than almost anything else in the business -- other than novels by famous novelists.

The two important reasons for writing a treatment are to sell and to diagnose your story. It's not always easy to write a treatment of the whole story before you've tried to write at least part of the script. Sometimes you start writing it and it flows along nicely until page twenty, when suddenly you pause. Generally that's a good time to stop and write a treatment of the whole thing because it will help you structure the rest of the screenplay.

To me, it's a complete waste of time for a screenwriter to write a screenplay for six months, then we look at it and say, This is never going to work because what's happening in Act 3 means I can't sell it to today's buyers. If the writer sent us 20 great pages of a screenplay with a treatment of the rest of it, then if we were excited by the writing and the treatment, then we could say, This is great, but you need a new Act 3 -- and the writer wouldn't mind because "it's only a treatment." He hasn't yet committed all that time to writing the screenplay, which to me is the most challenging kind of writing there is. A screenplay is highly precise, technical writing, and you've really got be very, very good by that time and know your story inside out, and so many people drill right through a screenplay and they turn it in and it's just no good at all. So what good does that do when instead you should take the time to work the story out?

In my earlier book, "A Writer's Time," I talk about how you should never sit down to write until you know what you're going to write before you sit down. And that's what a treatment lets you do. It lets you know what the story is, and you just put it down in broad beats as though you're writing a letter to a close friend and just telling her what happened to you the other day. That letter's free form is similar to that of a treatment -- anything goes, the point is to get the story across, whatever you have to do to get the story across. A good joke teller can tell a fully-elaborated ten-minute version of a joke if he's got the audience's attention, or he can tell a two-minute version if he has to. The same beats are there to make the joke work either way.

McIlvaine: Then maybe this is a misconception, but a lot of my screenwriting friends would really love to set up treatments. That's their goal. They go to websites where you can pitch for free, send in a logline or a synopsis and want somebody to pay them to write the script.

Chi-Li Wong: Yes, that's a misconception. Unless you're already an established screenwriter who has sold projects, it's rare. I'm not saying it never happens, but I would say it's extremely rare that someone would buy a treatment and ask a writer to write it without his having some kind of track record.

McIlvaine: What do you think are the most common mistakes screenwriters will make in writing a treatment?

Atchity: Somebody that should know better sent me a 34-page treatment yesterday. I said, "I'm not even going to read that -- you've got to be joking. After we've been doing this for four years! Send it back to me at 15-20 pages at the most." The most common mistake is to put everything in the treatment, try to get everything into it when the truth is, you don't need to put everything into it you -- just put enough. It's a selling tool. But also the purpose of it is to put the skeleton of the story in so that the bones show clearly, so you can see what the story structure is. You don't need to go into so much detail; it's the flavor of the story. So the mistake people make is trying to make it into a synopsis, which is something that tries to cover every detail in the story.

Wong: Probably they write them too long, put too much dialogue in, they're not concise, that kind of thing, they become a bit too verbose, they don't realize that it needs to be very short and the action and the characters need to be presented very quickly. I would guess that's the biggest mistakes when they're first starting, but I also want to say that's okay because it's like making chicken soup, you have to have that big huge pot of water and throw everything in it and then just reduce it down. So start that way and teach yourself.

McIlvaine: Can a treatment be less than 15-20 pages or is that pretty much the standard?

Atchity: We say in parts of the book that the ideal thing is to have a battery of treatments of different sizes starting with the longest one which might be at the most 20 pages, and then a shorter one that might be 5-8 pages and then an even shorter one that might be 2-3 pages, and then ideally, a one pager, and then one that's a paragraph and then finally, you get down to the logline which is the shortest treatment of all that just gives you, for example, "Under Siege" is "Die Hard on a boat."

McIlvaine: It sounds like a Chinese Menu.

Atchity: The writers should do it backwards, because it's easier for writers to write long than short. Mark Twain said, "if I had more time I would've written a shorter letter." Writers tend to write long but the discipline is to keep shortening it and sometimes you have to write the long one first to know what you have to cut out.

McIlvaine: In my own work, I feel that since writing a treatment is almost as hard as writing the script itself, so why not just write the script first and the treatment will come later?

Atchity: The second purpose of a treatment is diagnostic. If you write a treatment first it's easier to spot the flaws in the story structure. When you do it that way, you're less invested in what's in the treatment than you're with the script. I know it sounds like a lot of hard work to write the treatment as compared to the script, but the truth is, I think once you have a version of your script, then you generally end up, realistically, having to do 5 or 6 versions of the script before it's really presentable anyway -- and so you just count all of that and before you know it, the script has taken you six or nine months or a year at least to write. At least with a treatment, if you really got serious about putting your story beats, you could actually do that in a couple of days. Chi-Li is really the best one in the company at writing treatments, and helping writers write treatments. Her treatments are very, very strong.

Wong: I think that every writer has her own process so if that's what works for you or another writer, then that's the way they should do it. Some writers need to first have everything in there, and know their characters and what they're saying and how they're reacting before they can go back and figure out how to tell the story in treatment form -- although I do know a lot of writers both novelists and screenwriters who can't write a treatment. That's it. It's just something they cannot do. I suppose it's a different kind of writing. I don't know. I've done it for so long ... I started in the business immediately where I was always asked for treatments of books, so I learned to write them short and quick right off the bat.

McIlvaine: What do you think of Internet websites cropping up like mushrooms where writers can pitch an idea or a treatment? At some of these websites, they don't even require that the idea be registered (with the Writer's Guild).

Atchity: If I knew that my clients were putting up stuff on the Internet without protecting it, I'd be very upset with them. It's so easy to have things go off in different directions that way. I think it's very, very alarming for writers. And I doubt that professional writers -- those who are actually making sales -- make this mistake. They've learned better.

McIlvaine: So newer writers should be more careful, which is hard when it seems like everyone from Canada to Peoria is trying to get a leg up and it's very enticing when you see websites offering access, whether it be free or fee based.

Atchity: I've never seen any evidence of those websites really working. I mean, if a major studio like Disney or Warner Brothers were saying put your treatment up on our website and we'll look at it, and you have to sign a release, maybe I'd believe it. But I've never seen anything other than what almost appears to be a vanity press situation.

We all get e-mails every day saying put your short stories, poetry and screenplays up on our website -- but what does that invitation have to do directly with the business of buying and selling stories? It's only a few people in town who know how to sell and only a few people in town who have the money to buy, so they're the only ones you want to be dealing with as far as I'm concerned. I guess the answer depends on exactly what the situation is on the particular website. I'd be very, very cautious.

McIlvaine: I see this all the time on my screenwriting boards. Someone will post that they have an idea that will make a lot of money and if you help me write it, we'll split the profits 50-50. I mean, you can have an idea but that doesn't mean you have a marketable idea or that it will even make a good script.

Atchity: Yes, and one of the problems is that when people come to us wanting us to find a writer to work on their idea -- a writer that will do it on spec -- it doesn't make sense. The good writers don't have to do it on spec. We refer them to Writer's Lifeline, Inc. Program, run by Vincent Atchity from New York -- where we have writer clients who are very promising and are working on their own projects and in order to earn money we put them together with people who need somebody to write for them. But they have to pay for that. Our writers could be doing something of their own -- they need to be paid one way or the other.

I've a rule of thumb about collaboration: You should collaborate only with someone who's better than you, never someone who's worse than you or who's at the same level as you -- because you can't profit from that. It's called "value added." Nobody's adding value to the situation if you get somebody who's at your same level. When somebody's better than you, then you have to ask yourself, why would they do it? So the minute somebody agrees to collaborate with you, it's suspicious if you're in the position of you're not broken in yet. Why would they do it without getting paid unless they're not as good as you and certainly no better than you?

McIlvaine: Is it easier to sell a treatment to television or to a studio or production company or does it take a different type of treatment?

Atchity: In general, TV uses treatments as a way of buying much more often than the feature world does. Many, many shows and movies start from a treatment. In effect, the way a series starts -- we went into pre-production today on client John Scott Shepherd's series "Sherman's March," that started with him writing a bible which was based on what he read in our book (Chapter 4: Treatments for Television Series), which he'd never done before. First, he actually began with the short treatment, then a bible.

Television is used to operating that way because that way the experienced execs can guide it in more successful directions. Let's say they don't like the mix of the characters, they have to have a diversified group of characters, and they can tell you that easily in a treatment before you've invested yourself in creating a character in a script.

Feature films tend to buy treatments when they're extremely high concept and/or when they're from well-known writers they've already dealt with. But it's very hard for an unknown writer to sell a treatment to feature films; they like to deal with people they know. An exception is -- and Hollywood is filled with "exceptions" to every rule -- if you've got a truly great story and we can then take your treatment and then attach a writer to it who's already a known entity. We get calls every day from attorneys and from other managers and agents who say they have clients looking for stories, Columbia owes them a deal, Disney owes them a deal, do you have any stories that we can attach one of our writers to?

McIlvaine: But you'd think their writers would have their own ideas.

Atchity: Just because you're a well-known writer in demand doesn't mean you always have ideas. A lot of writers are good in terms of writing structure and dialogue, but they don't always have great ideas. About a third of the scripts we see are very well written and completely unsaleable because of the concept.

McIlvaine: I'm an unofficial, unpaid reader for an entertainment company and it's given me a good sense of what's selling in the industry right now and I've to admit, the one thing that most surprised me were the quality of the scripts. Most of them are dreadful.

Wong: We find the same thing. I don't know what that means about the industry or what it even means about writers today. One of the things I find interesting is that I don't think people read much anymore. People trying to write a script have not bothered reading professional scripts. I also don't think people have literary backgrounds or foundations as they had in the past and I think it really shows.

One of the things I think is brilliant about Ken in development and that I feel so fortunate in being his partner on is his literary background and his foundation in Myth. That's one of the reasons why the things we develop really end up having so much flesh on the bone because Ken has all that background and then when you meet people who don't know any of that stuff, who don't know the basics, or haven't read basic literature, you're confused how they can write at all. But it's the same thing in the publishing world. Nobody reads and it's very tough to sell literary projects to publishers for the same reasons. We have the same problem there and in this industry (movies): People don't read and that's why the treatment is so valuable because there's so little time to get someone's attention. And that's why I think treatments are valuable and people shouldn't look at them as something that's going to deter the sale of their script. I think if you can blow somebody away in three great pages, he's going to look at that script -- and he's going to take that script. The business has changed today because we all move almost faster than the eye can see.

McIlvaine: Between cable, television, movies....

Wong: Yes and that's why I think the treatment is so valuable and why it's valuable to learn that process and get very good at it.

McIlvaine: Given the current state of the industry, is it easier to break into television and still a little bit harder to break into features without an agent?

Wong: It's difficult to break into either without an agent. Period. It's very difficult to get read by agents. Young writers, new writers -- I think they're going to have difficulty no matter what. They just have to be tenacious and figure a way how to get to people. They should research and find out who's taking on new writers. They always want to go to the big guys and sometimes you're better off going to somebody smaller or to production companies or to management companies and not try to get that William Morris or CAA agent.

McIlvaine: Do you think newer writers tend to have unrealistic expectations? They shoot for the top agencies rather than a mid-size or a boutique agency.

Wong: I don't know if it's unrealistic because I always say you should set your sights high and then work your way down if you have to. So I would say sure, go to the big agencies first, why not? But I think where they become unrealistic is maybe what you said before, in where they want to be paid to write a script.

I went to a pitch festival that was sponsored by Fade In: Magazine and they had some very wonderful agencies and production companies that show up for this, it's a great pitch festival, and I actually had someone argue with me about the fact that he pitched something to me and I said to him, is this written, I don't know what made me ask the question. Something must have told me, and he said to me, oh no, I expect to be paid to write this. I was trying to explain to him, oh no, you're going to have to write it first and I'd love to see it because it's a great idea, and this guy was really annoyed with me, I mean, very angry with me, telling me off. Jeez. Get a life! Find out how people actually break in!

McIlvaine: Because you weren't telling him what he wanted to hear.

Wong: Yes. And he was like I should be paid, I'm a writer, and I was saying, but it doesn't work this way, that's the unfortunate part in one way, you have to be entrepreneurial or you have to another job, a day job, as a writer. It's just the way it is. I look at someone like John Scott Shepherd who was under our wing for over two years and wrote 30 versions of one script before the doors finally opened up to him. He had to move his family back to Kansas City, he'd lost his original agent, ended up with us, and the guy kept writing from Kansas City and sending stuff into us.

He does everything in treatment form first and we work out the story with him in treatment form because we don't want him to start on something we don't think we can sell -- and we don't want him to take a wrong direction so we try to do it in treatment form in a rough way, it doesn't have to be polished or anything, just so that we can see the framework of the story and where the characters are going to go. Then he does the first draft and then we get into more specific development notes.

McIlvaine: What is AEI looking for right now? Any particular genres?

Wong: We sometimes look for particular genres -- and I guess there are genres and trends that happen but they change so quickly that as soon as I put it on the site, sometimes, I almost have to take it off the next day. But I do know that people at this moment are looking for paranormal stories like "The Sixth Sense" rather than horror or gross. Somebody asked me today that they want true stories with happy endings or do you have a true crime with a happy ending and I've to say, oh, let me think a minute. Some people are sometimes very specific like when Disney was looking for a gladiator film they actually asked us for a gladiator film. And now they have one and now it has to come off the site because there was only one to be purchased.

McIlvaine: How many gladiator scripts could there be floating around? Maybe they'll be a renaissance of "Jason & the Argonauts" movies.

Wong: Everything always goes full circle so as soon something is successful, everybody wants one of those.

McIlvaine: But the problem is, with screenwriters, it takes the average screenwriter a couple of months to write something, they're working on something that was hot six months ago, and by the time they turn in the draft, it's not so hot.

Wong: Exactly. That has happened. We've had people where we've developed something and we got it at the right time and say okay, we know we can sell this but they couldn't finish it in time and we lost the window. We've had that happen to us a couple of times and it's unfortunate. But you can't make a writer hurry up and come out with a good product. They have to do it in their own time, and sometimes if we miss the window, we miss it. So we just wait. And there are certain things that never change. Always romantic comedies, they always want romantic comedies, even though they're hard to sell, but if you can find a unique concept to it, find a unique thing about a romantic comedy and write it, you'll always sell one. That's for sure. Or a unique angle into an old story. Anything that was a winner, if you can find a new hook, like when they did "Dangerous Liaisons" -- they started to redo and adapt all of these, "10 Things I Hate About You," "The Taming of the Shrew," for instance, that was very smart so the industry picked up on it and we ended up with like three or four of them over a spread of time, over I think a two year period, where they were being shown and I thought that was really smart, whoever first thought of it. So the idea is to make anything old new again and you can sell it.

McIlvaine: Concerning a newbie breaking in, would it be easier to slant their writing towards television rather than features? Or would you be fearful of them getting pegged in one particular genre? Or as in John Scott Shepherd's case, can you be both?

Atchity: It all depends on who your manager is, frankly. We wanted to develop John in every area, so he's a novelist and now television as well as feature, and he's also going to be doing a play that we can stage in New York in a couple of years. And that all depends on the vision of your coaches. Agents tend to want to pigeonhole writers because the agencies themselves are organized as pigeonholes. But it's up to the writer to avoid that. Some writers are very happy working in only one medium and other writers want to write in many different media so there isn't a simple answer -- it's really a matter of your individual character and vision about yourself and your career.

McIlvaine: For someone starting out, it's hard to get a manager or an agent to look at their work.

Atchity: It's very true, though because managers are much more entrepreneurial they tend to be more open. I look at my writers as creating assets -- for themselves and for us. Obviously, if you're creating diversified assets, you have a bigger chance to succeed. It's like the oil business. If you don't drill new holes, you don't advance. If you drill fourteen holes, you have a much better chance of striking oil than if you just drill one or two. I kind of regard that literary properties are that way both generally and particularly. The more an individual writer can write in different media, the better chance she's going to have financial freedom -- and freedom to me is the key to creativity.

McIlvaine: Do you think it's easier to get a manager than an agent?

Wong: I think the processes are the same. Maybe managers are a little bit more accessible. You know, it's hard to say. My first gut feeling is no, it's probably not all that easier.

McIlvaine: Do you think writing can be taught or is it an innate talent? For example, anyone could pick up your book, maybe somebody who doesn't have any writing talent, but maybe has an idea -- it's possible that they could write a decent treatment.

Atchity: I think storytellers are born, not made. Talent is something you're almost born to, that you nurture from an early age. But I think the difference is craft and skills. That's what Vincent and his team of development editors teach writers who want to break in, in our Writer's Lifeline program. Every writer who's really great has talent. The treatment book really just talks about the craft and skill and if you have talent, you still need them.

We get so many scripts that show promise, but no one has the time to develop them anymore -- which is why we started the Writer's Lifeline program as an extension of our former careers as teachers -- so we could actually develop promising talent. Now, after our first three years in the management business, everyone refers writers to us -- studios, publishers, agencies and production companies -- because they don't have the time to develop a writer that has plenty of potential but just isn't there yet.

The Writer's Lifeline Program is focused on teaching the craft and the skill and reminding people of the main important points about storytelling. But you have to be born a storyteller. It's like a joke. Some people can tell them, some people can't -- and if you can tell a joke, that's a different thing from somebody who tells a joke and nobody laughs because his timing's so bad.

McIlvaine: In my own writing, I've discovered that it's also useful to write the treatment first rather than the script to find out if your idea isn't already out there. You've written a fine treatment and then somebody tells you that your great idea is already being developed by Dreamworks. I've had that happen to me.

Atchity: And you saved all that time! Imagine how you'd feel if you'd spend six months on it dying to get it right, and you turn it -- and somebody tells you within ten minutes, I'm sorry, we can't read it, there are already three movies like this in development. You've wasted all that time. So you see the marketing value of a treatment is to let you know what the market is much sooner, which is why we urge people who we think are talented to send us short e-mails just saying, Here are some things I'm thinking of writing, which one do you think? -- and we can instantly pick out the ones that are more commercial. Don't waste your time on ideas 4, 5, and 6, idea 2 and 3 are great, it's something that could be commercial. Then you're motivated to write a longer treatment and then we can work out the story details with you.

McIlvaine: One aspect a lot of screenwriters tend to forget is that when we write our treatment or script, we don't think of the marketing end of it or the selling part of it.

Wong: I've a writer who's become very good at writing treatments, though when we first started, it drove him crazy because I'd tell him I want a three page treatment, I want a one pager, I want a teaser -- I want a little bit of everything because all my buyers are different. Some prefer just a teaser, a logline, and just a paragraph, and they may say, yup, I like that, and they'll take it into their meetings, it kind of depends on how they work. And so they have these meetings, let's say, every Monday, and they'll do a teaser or a pitch, a one page pitch of scripts that they're going to consider for a read or a purchase. And that's where we use the treatment a lot, for those executives who aren't actually going to bring in the script for everybody to read but for everybody to see what it contains and why they like it, what is this story that you think we should be reading and we should be buying.

McIlvaine: Now let's say a writer pitches you an idea or a treatment that you like, and perhaps you don't like the treatment they hand in, then what would you do? You like the concept but you don't like the writer's take on it.

Wong: I'd develop it with them just like I do everything else. As a matter of fact, I just did that with a young woman. Brandy (singer/actress) was looking for a project for herself. She (the writer) had a script and I asked her to change it to accommodate a twenty-year-old rather than this older ballerina (the character). I wanted to make her (the character) younger and in college. So she's (the writer) doing it in treatment form, and now we've gone through the treatment and now I tell her I just think you need more or this or less of that or have her do this or have her do that. Someone like her, because she already has a script that exists, even though it's not the same script, and she's a new writer, I might be able to sell her project based on the treatment because she has a script to back it up, she has spec scripts.

So it's a project she's already working on so they might say, okay, I do like the way the treatment reads, I do like the way you write, now write the new script for Brandy, that could happen. It could happen for her and that's why I told her (the writer), do you want to put the time in and do it because they may very well ask you to write the script since a script already exists but not the one they want. But they can see that you can change it for them and if they like the way the original script that you wrote reads, they may say go ahead and now re-adapt it for Brandy. So we try to find different ways to get people read and that's one of the ways I thought of for her, the treatment.

McIlvaine: Now what if you have a writer who's writing you like, but just hasn't come up with a concept that you think can sell or is marketable?

Wong: Sometimes we might give them some ideas of things that are running through our heads or something that we read that we think might be more commercial, that might be to their taste. We do that sometimes. We have matched up novelists and screenwriters, we've done that or people who have good concepts but aren't great writers, we've done that. I mean, we're sort of an odd company in that way, that we match a lot of writers up with other different kinds of writers that if they have a certain weakness, maybe we can match them up and still get the project sold for them. So everybody's happy and everybody's sort of gets involved. But it's a lot of work because you really have to know your writers and who's gonna do what and trying to figure out all the credits and everything, it gets a little crazy.

McIlvaine: But you would advise a writer breaking in to write the script first rather then try to set-up the treatment.

Wong: You know, I would never say do this or do that because anything can happen. If you can get to someone and get them to read a treatment, and it blows them away, and you have a spec script, I mean, you have to have some kind of script written, let's put it that way, and you have a great spec script and a treatment, I say go for it, why not. Try it. The whole idea is that they want to know if you can writ so if you have a really good treatment and a really good spec script, you could get hired to write the script based on that treatment. Why not? Stranger things have happened in this town. But I would say to them it's probably better if you write the script. It's not impossible.

McIlvaine: It's not impossible, but not probable.

Wong: Nothing's impossible, I've learned that. I tell people all the time, don't ever, even if it's something I don't like or I turn it down, I tell them, go somewhere else, never stop, you have to get to that yes, because my taste is one thing, I see things a certain way.

Same thing with writing treatments, I've a certain style that I like and maybe somebody else likes another style. It's like I've heard people say, there shouldn't be any dialogue in treatments. Well, I guess that's a rule, that you usually don't have dialogue in treatments. But sometimes, because dialogue is action, you can give information so fast and so quickly and so much information in a piece of dialogue, that sometimes it fits in a treatment.

McIlvaine: I think one concern that screenwriters have in treatments is that they don't want to give too much information, they want the producer or the manager or the agent to read the entire script, so they try to leave it a little bit tantalizing at the end to make them want to read more.

Wong: The idea of the treatment is to get the story across so I think they're doing themselves a disservice if they don't prove that they can tell the story and that it's fully there. A teaser is one thing. I think they have to figure that out. A teaser is one thing you would put in a query. So when someone sends me a query and it just has a paragraph or two about a script, that to me is a teaser, it's not a synopsis, and it's not a treatment. So I might call back and say you've intrigued me, send me the synopsis and the script, and I always get that they don't want me to read the synopsis because they're afraid I'm not going to read the script.

First of all, that's not the case here. The reason we do it here is to save time. One, so we don't have any projects that's similar to something else we have, which is also why we require a release, everyone thinks that they're idea is the only idea out there, and ideas are always in the air. So that's part of it, they don't want you to get a synopsis or a treatment because they're afraid ... but you can register treatments and synopsis', and they should do it.

Anytime someone sends me something, the first thing I ask them, is it registered? Don't send it to me until it's registered and we used to read things without releases, but now we also take our lawyers advice and we better do releases because we're selling so much product, just as a safety net. Some people do think their idea is the only idea on something out there. For us, it's to save time, for that reason, and it's also because I want to know that the whole story is there. Also, if I read it, I usually know in the first act whether I like this writer as a writer, so if I read the first Act and I love it, and I already know what the rest of the story is about, I can save time by calling that person up and saying, look, I read the first Act, I think you're a really good writer, good dialogue, I mean everything is there for me, I love the treatment or the synopsis because it tells me the whole story, that I can see you've got the whole thing there, come in and talk to me about developing this. I can get through more scripts that way.

McIlvaine: Because based on your years of experience, you've developed your sense so you can do that.

Wong: I guess that's true. I can tell pretty quickly if I like something.

McIlvaine: AEI seems to be very accessible to new writers.

Wong: Definitely. We love new writers, that's really what were known for. We're known as developers. If something isn't even quite there, or it's 99% there but the buyers want to change something, they probably will take the chance on our property because they know we're going to guide that writer through the development process they require -- unlike an agency that sells a product just the way it is and generally doesn't help out the buyer afterwards. That's because we're producers, not just managers; Ken and I were producing before we went into the management business. Management just gave us a wider reach. We will go in and say, okay, what is it you want and we can redevelop it and sell it again to the same company just by them knowing that we're going to do that for them. Because there's so little development money out there anymore, few do it anymore, so we're unique that way, and we really like new writers for that reason because they tend to have that excitement and that enthusiasm and that willingness to develop and work on things, a lot of writers who have success too soon too fast are unwilling to go through that process anymore. They think everything they write, every word, is golden and they want it sold, or they want it sold and then "Pay me to rewrite it." If you're in that place in your head, we don't want you as a client. If you're willing to do anything you need to do to succeed, no matter how long it takes, give us a call when you've got a great treatment ready!

TIP FOR THE DAY: 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).



For someone that is new to the business of writing screenplays, the term "treatment" will most definitely be new to them as well. Basically, if a writer has an idea for a story but for one reason or another does not want to write an entire script, they'll need to know about treatments.

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