TWBookmark: Welcome to Time Warner Bookmark. Warner Books is proud to introduce our special guest Max Adams, author of "The Screenwriter's Survival Guide -- Or, Guerrilla Meeting Tactics and Other Acts of War." Max is also the screenwriter of "Excess Baggage," starring Alicia Silverstone.

TWBookmark: From finding (and firing) your agent to maintaining 'voice' to pitching and getting paid, Max is here to talk about how to sell and get your screenplay made.

TWBookmark: Welcome to Time Warner Bookmark, Max.

Max Adams: Thank you.

Musgrave: How did you yourself get involved in screenwriting, and what made you decide to follow this profession?

Max Adams: I became involved in screenwriting by accident. I was supposed to be a novelist, but a friend of mine took a screenwriting class, and I went along, just sort of to see. I fell in love with screenplays and never looked back. So I still have an uncompleted novel, but I have done several screenplays.

TWBookmark: What was Max Adams like as a boy? Hobbies, interests?

Max Adams: Well, um, surprise, I was never a boy. I was a girl, much to everyone's chagrin. I was skinny, knock-kneed, tall, sarcastic. My aunt tells a story about when I was three and she was saying something to me. I gave her a haughty glare and I said, "Please, do not harass me." That was me as a child. I drew a lot. I made up stories and drew pictures to go with them. Everyone thought I would ultimately be an artist and do drawing, but what they didn't get was that the pictures were just to tell the story, so it's just as well I fell into film. I rode my bike, I roller-skated, I took ballet. I usually had scuffed knees from falling down. I liked to explore and I read a lot.

Fortified: If you are a struggling screenwriter, would you say your best bet would be to geographically relocate to Hollywood in order to get your career started?

Max Adams: I would not move to Los Angeles to get my career started. I would write a lot of scripts and work on making contact with producers so that before I got to Los Angeles, I really had a strong handle on my writing and people knew my name. Los Angeles is a very large, harsh city with a million people trying to get in the door. Without connections, and without having established some rapport with producers, it doesn't make a difference whether you are in Los Angeles or Iowa -- you are still outside the door knocking to get in. If you are already in Los Angeles that's a plus because odds are you will just run into people in the industry socially, but I wouldn't move there just for that. I would try to make connections before moving.

Great Gates: Would you say your book is targeted more toward an audience of screenwriters who are just beginning, those that have made a few contacts in the business, or both?

Max Adams: I would say both. The book covers a broad spectrum of stuff, about six years of my life. Some of it's very basic, things as basic as addressing letters to a person. Don't write to "Dear Story Person" or your letter will just go in the trash. But it also covers being in the entertainment industry, situations that arise that can get you into trouble and how to stay out of them, and how to avoid some of the pitfalls that can happen once you have broken through those doors and start making connections. I'll give you some examples. In the early days, I took jobs which became problematic. I took one job because I liked the story a great deal and I wasn't considering the setting of the story, which was one house. It was a really hard script to write when you just had six people in one house. Things like that you learn as you go, as you take projects. Another project I took was a rewrite of an adaptation. I was in love with the book and felt that the script had strayed from the book too far and needed to go back to its origins. Everybody in the meeting appeared to think that was a great idea and I was hired for the project. But I discovered later, much to my horror, the director had never read the book. The director really liked the script. And when I started putting more book back into the story, he didn't like it. If I had been a more seasoned screenwriter I would have learned to look out for things like that, to say casually "You've read the book, right?" There are things like this that come up, that help if you are aware of them in advance and you don't find them out post the fact. A lot of that is in the book as well, which I think would be good for writers who are trying to maintain careers, and not just to struggle their way in.

Werner: Would you consider your book to be more of a tell-all of your time in the trenches or a manual of extensive advice to screenwriters everywhere?

Max Adams: I would consider it extensive advice to screenwriters everywhere. The basis of the book is advice I have given people. It is all taken from questions people have asked me in email or on electronic bulletin boards. The entire book is actually six years worth of advice I gave people. People kept telling me that I had written a book and I said that was great, but I hadn't saved any of it. So people I knew started sending me back advice I had given them that they had saved. And when I had filled up three discs and had to buy a zip drive to hold it all, I realized they were right, there was a book there. So this book is advice I gave other people that they felt was worth saving. I give examples from my experience to demonstrate why I have the opinions I have when I give people advice. But it is advice, not tales from the trenches.

George: Your book, "The Screenwriter's Survival Guide," is your first book. In it, you mention the difficulties that you had in Hollywood getting started and how you were able to make a name for yourself. Were those your deciding factors in why you made the choice to write a book on screenwriting?

Max Adams: No. The deciding factor to write the book was when I got snowballed by people who thought I should write the book and started receiving all the stuff people had saved. This book would never have been written if it weren't for other people pushing me to do it and sending me back things I had written to them. It was also very educational for me because in the process of reading all the things people sent me, it reminded me how hard it really was in the beginning. You forget some of that over time; it gets left behind. If I had sat down to write a book from scratch, there are things I wouldn't have remembered to put into the book. But because the material I was getting sent back spanned six years, it was really like reading a diary, and it really brought home to me just how hard it was in the early days. And that kept me going when the book turned into real work.

Sylvia: Max, did you have a mentor or anyone that inspired you to become a screenwriter?

Max Adams: Nobody specifically inspired me to become a screenwriter. Like I said, that was an accident. Unless you could say Frank McAdams, my original screenwriting teacher, who first showed me what a screenplay was. That was the beginning of my love affair with screenplays. While pursuing screenwriting, I have had mentors. Certainly Kurt Leudtke, who I met at the Austin Heart of Film Festival in 1994, has been a patient and wonderful mentor and given me enormous amounts of good advice. And every time I've taken it I've been glad. Greg Beal, who is the program coordinator for Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, has been a wonderful friend and mentor, from the day I arrived in Los Angeles and couldn't find the mall to my second week in Los Angeles when I had to find a dentist for an emergency to just giving me advice on the business and being there as a friend. Gale Anne Hurd, who is on the Board of Directors for Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, has been a good friend and mentor and has also given me wonderful advice in times of crisis, and also made the transition to Los Angeles much, much easier. I showed up in Los Angeles so alone and the first thing that arrived was a welcome basket from Gale. I never will forget that. It made Los Angeles a lot less scary.

Lisa: How does screenwriting differ from writing a novel?

Max Adams: Well, screenwriting is a medium that deals with movement and time and those are the medium's strong points. You do not have the ability to convey internal thoughts and monologues in a movie the way you do in a novel. So in a novel, the sum of your strongest attributes in telling a story will be the ability to exercise voice, because voice on the page in the novel is apparent, but voice on the page in the screenplay will never be seen on screen. Novels have past, present and future tenses, whereas screenplays have only one tense--now, the present. Novels have interior monologues and thoughts expressed on the page, and many extra pages for extra detail and descriptions. Screenplays are much like present tense poetry. When you write them, you must be so direct that someone can't misunderstand your meaning in only a very few words. At the same time, you must be ambiguous enough that you can bring many, many more images than the one thing you are saying into your reader's head, so that they will carry those images and feelings and emotions throughout the entire filming process to ultimately put them up on the screen. So they are very different. And screenplays are much more similar to plays than they are to novels. But again, you have a large difference between plays and screenplays because plays are static, as far as setting. With screenplays, the sky is the limit as far as setting. You can move between worlds very easily in a screenplay -- you can go from Mars to Earth in the space of a second. And you cannot depend on dialogue to carry a screenplay, whereas stage plays are dialogue-driven.

Gripper: William Goldman once said in an interview that he preferred writing novels, but since he seemed to be so good at screenplays, he figured it was how he'd make a living, even if it wasn't his favorite writing venue. How do you feel about that?

Max Adams: I think a lot of things that William Goldman says are tongue in cheek. He is a very funny man. And while he may have been serious that he prefers novels, I think the rest of that was a little joke.

SbQ: Who best to ask to review a prelim draft of a screenplay before you get it polished and ready to submit? Friends? Family members? A former teacher?

Max Adams: Well now, right now, my managers. Before I had a manager, other writers. I would workshop my material with other writers. I was part of an online writer's workshop on Genie, which is no longer there, but it was a pretty powerful workshop with some smart, talented writers in it. I ended up a film major in college and would be in screenwriting courses where we would workshop material with fellow students. I would give scripts to teachers for their opinions and ultimately I would send screenplays out to producers and get their opinion (which was the final opinion.). I also entered competitions and when I started doing well in competitions, I knew I was getting there.

Finney: Is there a great market for screenplays, given the amount of movies and television being cranked out these days, especially with the cable TV boom?

Max Adams: There is more of a market for television because television is the monster that must be fed every day of every week. Television stations have to put something on the air or people won't watch them and then people won't buy advertising space. With feature films it is a much smaller market and recently studios have cut back on the number of movies they are actually developing which is a big blow for feature film writers. At the same time, however, cable networks are expanding and developing more new material.

Unfortunately at the present time, right now, there's a possible strike looming come May 1. Because of this, there is a panic in the industry and a movement towards reality programming, which is a dent in the television market for writers because reality programming does not require writers. But "Survivor" was a huge success and the networks are trying to duplicate it, looking ahead to a time when writers may be on strike and they will need shows with new content that are not writer-driven. The repercussions of this will be felt whether or not there is a strike because reality shows in development will exist regardless, and will cut into shows that are written by writers.

Haley: Your book classifies itself as "the definitive how-to guide to getting read, sold and produced in Hollywood." Can you reveal to us some of the secrets behind getting noticed as a screenwriter in Hollywood?

Max Adams: Well, first, the book doesn't classify itself that way. That was the publicist. That's ad hype. I would never say that about my own work, and it doesn't say so in the book. It might be true though, you never know. . . .

Secrets to breaking in. People in Hollywood work long hours and assistants go home at around 5 or 6, so when you are cold calling agents and producers (and I'll probably get shot for saying this), if you call after 5 PM, you are more likely to get them directly and not fight your way through an assistant.

When you call an agent, the kiss of death is to say you are a new writer looking for representation. Those are two big red flags -- "new writer" and "looking for representation." You always want to ask agents if they are looking for new clients. And you don't say you are a new writer, you just say you are a writer.

Seriously try to avoid negative comments about movies in conversations you have with people. Because the second you say something off the cuff unpleasant about a movie -- maybe not the first time you do it, and maybe not the fifth time you do it, but sooner or later -- you will discover the person you are talking to produced that movie. And it's not a good idea to hurt people's feelings when you want to work with them.

That's a hugely important subject. Many people feel intimidated approaching the industry and the people in the industry, and so they approach people with a sort of bluster. They will make comments like, "Well, I know that you don't like this kind of material, but..." or "I didn't really like your movie, but..." They will avoid saying nice things for fear it will be perceived as (for lack of a better phrase) kissing ass. And they are really ready to say negative things, hoping that if they say them first, the other person won't get the opportunity. It's sort of a "knock yourself first, and then no one else can get a shot in" approach. It's driven by fear, and it's a bad approach because it's negative and it hurts other people's feelings. There is nothing wrong with telling someone you like their work -- that's not kissing ass, that's a genuine compliment. So I would say if there is one secret to getting in, it's be nice. Oh, and read the book. (smile)

Robbie: There are several books on the market right now about screenwriters and about screenwriting itself. How would you say your book is different?

Max Adams: That is the most difficult question to answer because it almost requires I say something bad about other people's books to make mine look good. "Oh, my book does what that other book doesn't." And I don't like to do that. I think there are many very good books on the market and they all bring something valuable to a writer. And, if you are embarking on this as a career, you are going to need to read more than one book. My book is about marketing yourself and, once you break in, surviving the monster that is Hollywood; knowing the ropes, knowing the ins and outs, knowing the pitfalls to avoid, and knowing ways of operating that work. Because if they worked for me, they will work for you, and if they worked for other people, they will work for you. So it's a market and stay alive book. There will be other books that will tell you more about craft and more about skills, and you need to read those too. There are fascinating books. William Froug has books out that are interviews with screenwriters that are great reading. There is another book, "Conversations With My Agent" by Rob Long that I just think is required reading -- one, because it's funny, and two, because it perfectly documents a relationship with an agent and it shows you the world and the relationship in reality terms. Linda Seger has wonderful books out. "How To Make A Good Script Great" is particularly good, and it's about craft and storytelling. Richard Walters has good books out, as does David Trottier. William Goldman's books are always entertaining. What my book does do is tell the truth from a writer's perspective.

Any time you are being told the truth from an agent's perspective or a producer's perspective, it is not coming from someone who has seen it from the writer's side of the desk. Agents especially are nefarious in the advice they give. Agents will tell you things like, "Don't send your scripts to anybody but agents. I want pristine, unread material." Well, that sounds really good, except then they won't read you without a referral. So it's a Catch-22. If you don't send your material to anyone else, ie producers, you will never get a referral to an agent, and agents are dogs about only taking material on referral. They give lots of advice like that, that in reality doesn't work. So maybe that's what the book has going for it. I've been there, I've done that, I bought the T-shirt. There may be other ways to do things, but at least I can tell you the things that worked or didn't, and I will tell you why.

Thunderbird1: Okay, so reality shows are in. But we can only take so much of peering at other people -- when will networks figure this out? Or better yet, will networks go broke if they do that, then everyone gets wired and uses webcams to do their own peering?

Max Adams: Boy, I just can't answer for networks. There are a lot of things we are waiting for networks to figure out, and I just can't predict when, or if, it will happen.

Kujira: Are screenwriters employed on a steady basis, or is it a rush, rush, rush, and then wait for months?

Max Adams: Ohhhhh, it's more rush rush rush and then wait for months. You get paid pretty well, but you are always looking for your next job and you don't know when it will come. So when you make that first sale don't buy a Ferrari. Television writers go on staff, and when they are on staff, their employment is steady for 13 weeks or for however long the network has contracted for episodes of the show. So in the long run, television writers get paid less per project, but more over time, just because they work steadily; whereas feature writers get paid more per project, but work fewer projects in general. Unless you are like Aaron Sorkin, who probably works every day of the year.

Rosie: Are there certain truths that are universal to all good screenplays?

Max Adams: Yes, there are. They are all written by incredibly talented people at least initially. And they all address on some level the human condition. When writers write, I believe that they write because they have a perspective on the world that is worth seeing, because in some way or other, watching their perspectives and their stories gives our life more depth. Great screenplays can be simple comedies or great big dramas, but something in the stories, in really great screenplays, examines the human condition and gives us something to take away with us after we have seen the movie. I think of it as truth through fiction. The stories are made up, but the truths within the stories are universal and world-encompassing. They unite us, the audience, in an exploration of our world.

Thunderbird1: Do screenwriters fraternize? Do you ever have drinks with Stephen J. Cannell, or talk shop with William Goldman? *grin*

Max Adams: You know, that is a good question. Screenwriters in Hollywood are not encouraged to fraternize. It is actually sort of discouraged because when writers get together, we can gang up on people and tell tales, tell each other what we are getting paid, and tell secrets out of school. Combined and united, writers would be a very scary proposition for networks and studios to control. So that's not really encouraged. Writers go out with producers a lot for lunches and meetings. Writers meet with agents a lot for meetings and certainly talk to their agents a lot on the telephone. But it isn't often you hear someone say, "Hey, I know this writer that you should get together with." So when we do fraternize, it's either in secret, or it's public and a political statement. Which is not to say writers don't meet and become friends, but I know an awful lot more producers and studio executives and agents than I know fellow writers.

Kip: I understand that the "Star Trek" series has always been willing to look at unsolicited screenplays. Why is this unusual in Hollywood?

Max Adams: It's unusual because nobody else does it. "Star Trek" is famous for that. Although they do look at unsolicited screenplays, one of the problems is that a lot of writers get into a misperception that, because "Star Trek" will read scripts from unknown writers, they should write "Star Trek" episodes and that will help them break into the industry. This i