Commissioned writing · Less obvious
Scriptwriting for screen, radio and stage
Dialogue, format, and a different set of doors: commissioners, producers, and the writers' room.
Scripts are writing, but they are not books. Television, radio, film, and theatre each have their own rates, unions, and ways of saying no. A produced episode can pay more than a novel. An unproduced script is a calling card, not an income. The path is credits, relationships, and the willingness to rewrite until the colour of a sofa has been notes-ed into submission.
- Typical pay
- Union minimums (Writers' Guild, in the UK) set floors for TV, radio, and film once you are in the room. Spec scripts pay nothing. A children's series, a radio play, or a soap can be a living.
- Ceiling
- Uncapped
- Speed
- A long game
- Effort
- A job in itself
- Needs
- No book required
How it works
- 01
You write spec material, get it in front of a producer or agent, and, if the planets align, you are commissioned.
- 02
A commissioned script is paid in staged fees: treatment, first draft, revisions, production polish.
- 03
Residuals and repeats, where the agreement includes them, are the gift that comes after broadcast.
How to start
- 01
Write a spec that could actually be made by the people you are sending it to. Read their slate.
- 02
Radio is still a way in, in Britain, and it pays. Children's television is an industry, not a sideline.
- 03
Join the relevant guild when you are eligible. Minimum terms exist because writers before you were hungry.
Watch out
- 01
Unpaid 'write us a pilot and we'll see' is the spec-work problem in a nicer restaurant.
- 02
Credits are fought over. Get the order of names in writing.
- 03
A produced short is worth more to your career than three unproduced features.
I have written for television and radio, for Pokémon and for a Ricky Gervais theme song, and I can tell you that a script that is made is a different object from a script that is admired. Chase the made. The admired will not heat the house.