Interested in selling a script? Screenwriters interested in selling a script will need to acquire business management skills and an entrepreneurial mindset. After all, you are a creative freelancer marketing yourself and your script products. You need to have an entrepreneurial mindset to make money and be successful as a screenwriter. First of all, you need to understand the importance of a SWOT analysis when it comes to screenwriters. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. A SWOT analysis is what you should create for every screenwriting project and long-term goal you have in mind.
Let’s say your long-term goal is to sell a script. This is a pretty straightforward goal that all new writers have. So you have to ask yourself, “What are my strengths as a screenwriter?” Write down all the strengths you have that make you a worthy and marketable screenwriter. These could be your writing skills, creative imagination, passion for movies, the connections you have, and any support systems that give you an advantage in the business. This will let you know what he brings to the table right away. So what you don’t have as your strengths will end up on your next list, which is your list of weaknesses. If you’re a new screenwriter without an agent or connections, you’ll put it on your weakness list. You can also put up personal weaknesses associated with your writing skills and personality, such as bad grammar, poor punctuation, missing deadlines, antisocial behavior, and anything else that you think hurts your chance to sell a screenplay.
Opportunities are something any freelancer should pay attention to. As a screenwriter with a desire to sell a script, you will look for outside opportunities and opportunities that you can create yourself. Of course, paid gigs are what you’ll have in the beginning to gain experience and build a list of connections. But you don’t want to write other people’s stories and ideas forever. Eventually you will want to create your own opportunities by selling your own script and being an entrepreneur to do it. This will give you more ownership and control over your own ideas. Not only that, the profit potential is much higher. So what you want to do is write down all the opportunities that you currently have in the business, like the places or people that you have that you know can give you work.
Then you want to write down the opportunities you have to branch out and sell a script. This could include the names of festivals, investors, producers, and connections you have. You may find some of these related to your strengths. But the difference is that you have to ask yourself questions about your ability to find opportunities. Ask yourself, “Do I relate?” “Am I investigating all the opportunities that exist?” “Am I constantly promoting myself?” Sometimes you can be good at these things, but you just forget to do them for whatever reason. So by asking yourself these questions, they can act as a reminder of what to do for sixteen of all the possible opportunities that are available to you.
As for threats, this is a bit different than weaknesses. Threats to the sale of a script are basically all the possible problems that you might face as a screenwriter. Some of these threats could be lack of funding, money depletion, writer’s block, stolen ideas, and lack of paid jobs. After making this list, ask yourself how you will overcome these obstacles if you face them. Which of your strengths will help you overcome these threats? Which of your weaknesses allowed these threats?
How can you turn these threats to sell a script into opportunities? For example, if the threat you face is that you don’t have paid jobs available, this will give you the opportunity to work on your own script idea rather than writing a script based on someone else’s idea. If your threat is writer’s block, then maybe you could take a break from writing and focus on self-promotion and marketing. This is the kind of mindset you should have when analyzing your threats. And now that your SWOT analysis is complete, you can refer to it as you try to establish your original long-term goal of being a successful screenwriter.
