Posting it here since it may help others too. Any advice is very welcome.
I have an idea that I'd love to see become an original series. I read that "if your show idea can be done without you… or if you worry your show can be done without you… you haven’t done your job well enough. You haven’t expressed your unique vision in a way that makes you indispensable."
But! While I'm absolutely convinced this particular treatment could not be done without me, and I'm typically not afraid of discussing any ideas in the open, this time I do have some concerns based on what I also read in the same article (http://www.scriptmag.com/features/primetime-the-truth-about-protecting-y...):
"A few years ago, a friend of mine, a TV writer working on a fairly popular show, spent months slaving over an original pilot she was excited about. Days after finishing her final draft, Showtime announced they were doing a series with the exact same premise— and almost the exact same title– from a high-level showrunner! Although my friend was never able to sell her pilot, it was such a good illumination of her voice that she used it to land a job… writing on Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
Well! The thing is, I'm not interested in landing a job or having "a" script developed; my goal is to tell this particular story I have in mind that I worry could be killed if someone created a similar plot line.
I'd be fine if that happened because someone developed a story with the exact premise totally independently. I'd hate though to lose an opportunity to tell a story about a strong female role model with principles and conviction because someone saw my treatment and decided to run with it in another direction, causing other studios to pass on the idea because in the surface it looks like a copycat.
So, here are my questions:
1) Is it silly of me to try to protect my project? Does it make sense for me to get a WGA registration number for a treatment as an attempt (weak, I know) to protect at least my execution of the idea?
2) Any advice on how to give this idea / treatment the best shot at finding a producer?
3) Would it be entirely off-putting to the people being pitched the idea / treatment to know that I'm not a prolific writer or someone who likes to come up with millions idea to write or sell, but rather someone who is interested in developing this idea?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
Networks buy Writers and their team. They buy people who can deliver week after week, year after year. It's a job.
If you don't want to write, maybe seek a job as a TV Exec. Hire and fire people to do your ideas.
Dan MaxXx Hmm... I probably wasn't super clear on what I was asking.
"If you don't want to write" <-- I love writing and will never stop writing.
What I don't want is to develop a career in screenwriting, nor as TV exec or anything of this nature because I have a career in data science consulting and am pretty happy with it.
I'd be happy to deliver week after week for a series that brought my idea to production, but definitely not year after year, as I wouldn't want to see a good storyline dragging out forever :-).
In any case, thank you for the tip. "Network buy writers and their team" <-- good starting point for me to see if I can find a great team of writers looking for a promising idea to develop.
Jeff E. Gregory Thank you so much for the suggestions! They make perfect sense, and I'd never have thought on my own to look for a writing competition, so your help is much apppreciated.
The blog post you suggested was just bookmarked (for others reading, https://www.stage32.com/blog/Seeking-an-Agent).
I promise to keep you posted :-).
Thank you for checking in, Jeff! I think I have good and bad news to report.
On the positive side, I still feel I have a strong idea for what could be a highly successful Amazon or Netflix series, and I'm doing work in Artificial Intelligence that counts as research for the story. On the negative side, non-creative work commitments makes it difficult for me to dedicate time to learning more about storytelling and script writing.
What I wrote here is still true: "I'd be fine if someone developed a story with the exact premise totally independently. I'd hate though to lose an opportunity to tell a story about a strong female role model with principles and conviction because someone saw my treatment and decided to run with it in another direction [perpetuating some annoying-to-me stereotypes about women and in particular latino women], causing other studios to pass on my idea because in the surface it looks like a copycat."
I don't think this is an immediate threat, but it helps keep me alert to the fact that I shouldn't wait forever to stack the deck in my favor :-).
You can't copyright ideas. I had the idea of a guy that could magically transmit himself anywhere at anytime. Before I got my project completed, Jumper came out and I saw everything I'd thought of in it so had to abandon it. It's called "Steam Engine Theory". There were several steam engines in construction but Stevenson's Rocket is the one remembered because it was the first one to have success, despite there being others,and in some cases them being better, being developed at exactly the same time.
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Jeff E. Gregory Yeah, I'm thinking that a treatment might not help much, and might make something like David E. Gates described even more likely. Let's say my story was about a woman who becomes the first Mars resident to prepare the planet for future human colonization. I write a treatment in which the protagonist is smart and funny and goes into interesting adventures that showcase her almost infinite scientific resourcefulness.
A studio hears about it and says, "Hey! that's a great idea, let's create a TV series about a woman who becomes the first person to live in Mars!". And then uses their own team to develop their story, making the protagonist into a dim-witted female scientist who is only saved from dying stupid deaths in each episode with the help of a robot with a male voice, heh. That would make me wish I hadn't helped them develop a bad concept, especially if it meant my treatment would be ignored because someone else used the same premise first.
I'm thinking that the best way to mitigate that risk might be to partner up with a talented team who would want to pursue the original idea and produce it quickly enough to make it the first "steam engine" out there...