Screenwriting Contract Basics (Part 1)

Recently, most of my articles have been on the craft of writing and creativity, and quite frankly, I’ve been neglecting an important aspect of screenwriting—the business side. So this week and next, I’m going to fix that in a two-part post.

Whenever I’m giving live seminars at writers’ conferences, I almost always get asked by novice writers what are the top five things they should negotiate for in their writers’ agreements and what should they look out for.

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That’s a complex question. First off, I’m not a lawyer and have no business giving legal advice (hint: please don’t construe any of what you are about to read as anything remotely close to legal advice). And it should be stated upfront that after having had more than 70 of my screenplays produced, I still send every contract to my attorney to review.

But what I can do, thanks to those 70+ contracts I’ve signed (yep, there were a few that weren’t produced), is give you some information that will help educate you on wha…