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Writing to House Style

If you are getting paid to write - even if it's as little as $500 for a script - you are probably going to be working with a script producer or script editor - especially if it's a TV show with episodes. That's because - whoever is giving you the money - is being told to deliver a certain thing to the broadcaster and your script needs to bend like a reed, Grasshopper in an effort to make it consistent with other epoisodes.

This is writing to house style. More often than not, the script editor (and sometimes the TV producer) will rewrite your piece wholesale. It's not a bad thing - but a lot of people don't know this going in and new writers get burnt (read hurt).

House style means to a writer pretty much the same thing as result-oriented direction means to a director. At some point, you are going to be told what to write. You are not going to be left to your own devices a you are when writing your feature film screenplay.

If you're writing TV, you can bet someone is reading your screenplay - regularly - and really closely. Getting somebody to even read your feature screenplay is the hard part. And for the most part you don't get paid!

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