When Carole Kirschner told her mother she wanted to be in entertainment, she was told to get a job as a court reporter, because those are good jobs and they pay well. “My first day on the job working when I was head of Steven Spielberg’s first Amblin Television Department,” Carole continues, “I was sitting in the screening room. Raiders of the Lost Ark was on the screen. I called my mother and I said, “I think I made a better choice,” and she had to agree, “yes you did.””
Carole has had a stellar career, including stand-up comedy, general dogs-body to two TV writer-producers, comedy development, TV exec, consultant, speaker and entertainment career coach. Her achievements include setting up the CBS Diversity Writers’ Mentoring Programme and helping Jeff Melvoin to develop the curriculum for the Writers Guild of America Showrunner Training Programme, both of which she still runs today. Somewhere in amongst all that, she found time to write a book which sounds like a must read: Hollywood Game Plan.
“I wanted to study what makes successful people successful, and what makes people give up and go back home and sell life insurance, or be court reporters.”
Carole has seen so much talent succeed and fail, that she has distilled down how to succeed into four pillars.
Blazing Hot material
Don’t send out “a good first draft”. Wait until it’s the very best it can be. If your material has been in the market for 3-4 months, and it’s not getting traction, it’s not blazing hot. Level it up.
Nina Tassler, former CBS president, defined a blazing hot pilot as one that grabs you by the throat, grabs by the heart and takes you on an incredible emotional roller-coaster ride, ending on a cliffhanger. In today’s world of streaming, you can’t just end on something being revealed. There has to be something impending – to pull the audience in.
How do you know if it’s blazing hot? If your trusted associates, not your family, but people in the business, say it’s blazing hot, that’s how you know.
Today a writer needs 2 pilots in their portfolio, one a high concept (noisy and sexy to stand out amongst the 500+ TV pilots per year), the other beautifully written with well-developed characters.
Personal PR Strategy
Your personal PR strategy is about your brand and how to market yourself. When you have a meeting, it’s as much about you as your material
- Your personal conversational logline, 30 seconds long, answering the question, “What do you do?”
- Your personal nuggets, the anecdotes/stories from your life. You are storytellers. The biggest sin in Hollywood is being boring, punishable by non-employment!
- Your personal A-story, about a minute long, a chronological narrative, with you as the protagonist. The narrative drive is where you started, what you had to overcome, where you are and what it is you want to do; your personal hero’s journey. Talk about your successes, without sounding like a jerk.
When sending cold emails to agents, managers and producers, be brief. SUBJECT LINE: Quick Question (because nobody minds answering those). You need an opening line that grabs people. Then say why you love that particular company, what you have to offer, and if they’d like to read it, that you’d be happy to sign a release.
A comprehensive and ever-growing community of mutually beneficial relationships
Be genuinely interested in people! The people who have the most friends are those who think about what they can do for others.
If you meet somebody at an event, follow up. Never ask someone to read your script that you don’t have a genuine connection with.
Don’t waste people’s time. If you haven’t been in touch with someone for a while, reach out when something good happens to them, or to you.
The people that are successful understand what’s going on in their part of the industry
They know who the players are, what the trends are, what pilots and series are getting picked up, and they have some theories about it.
Stay on top of developments by reading Deadline Hollywood and other industry press, and by listening to podcasts. Recommended are Jen Grisanti; Pilar Alessandra – On The Page; Jon August — Script Notes; Nerdists; Happier in Hollywood; Dead Pilots Society, and Children of Tendu.
Reach out to lower level writers on shows and congratulate them when their episodes air (don’t ask them to read your script); once you’ve established a relationship with them, ask them to tell you their story and get their advice. They’ll be show-runners one day.
Sounds like a plan! Thank you, Carole, for such generous advice, and to Mai Davies for her brilliant interview.
I write stories for children. Novels for grown-ups. Screenplays for laughter and tears. I enjoy travel, both in this world and in those created by books and films. I am also passionate about Art and Photography.
