I mean, I don’t know how detailed you want because technically this is a journey 18 years in the making …
2001: Watch LOTR: TFOTR. Fall in love with it. Decide this is what I want to do. Not sure what this is but know it has something to do with films. Director? Writer?
2001-2009: Write constantly. Write badly. Write badly, constantly. Act in all the school plays because it’s the closest you can get to film as a 13 year old. Join the media club at school and make shitty short films. Direct two theatre shows as a 17 and 18yo. Write and direct my own play at 19. Join the National Youth Theatre in London and work backstage on a West End production of Mamma Mia.
2010-2013: Go to university for English Lit. Harass the Creative Writing Dept. until they let me into their creative writing classes, even though they have a stupid rule about them not being available to English Lit students. Take two screenwriting classes, alongside a prose class. Graduate and win a UK screenwriting competition with a script I wrote while in undergrad.
2014-2016: Work in an office doing boring office stuff. Work as a PA on British TV show. Work at film festivals. Take an Oxford Uni DfCE YA Literatue class. Take a few meetings in London. Take a UCLA Professional Program year-long class in Screenwriting. Apply to the only two UK film schools worth bothering with. Get accepted immediately by one but it’s the one I’m least impressed with so I don’t accept. Get waitlisted by the big name school who talk about how much they love my script but say it’s too American. Cry. Have an American friend tell me if they say I’m too American then I should just come to America. My Dad says “fuck these UK film schools” and says he’ll help me apply to America.
2017: Can’t just move to America (visa issues!) but can apply to US film schools. American education is very stupidly priced compared to the rest of the world, so apply for a Fulbright scholarship ($50,000). Get the scholarship. Move to America to attend UCLA for an MFA in Screenwriting.
2018: Write a pilot I love with a professor I love. Hear about the BAFTA Scholarship ($10,000) and apply. Get accepted. BAFTA holds an event for their scholars, which includes meeting managers. I meet a manager who asks for a sample. I send the pilot I love. Turns out he loves it too. He asks for a second sample. Loves that also. He sends me a contract. Yay! (Also turns out I was the only person who signed with a manager after that BAFTA event, which shows how tough it is, even when you reach that level.) We work on my samples and continue to polish them ready to send out to the industry.
2019: Scripts get sent out. Start going on generals in March. My second (possibly first?) ever general is with a company who decide they really love me and want to attach me to one of their properties. It’s a book-to-TV adaption. Spend months working with them and a larger studio on that pitch. Start taking the pitch out over the summer. At the same time, I meet with Blumhouse. The meeting is going okay until they suddenly latch onto an idea I mention. They want it, but I don’t really have it. The script’s in terrible shape. I only mentioned it because they weren’t resonating with any of my other ideas and I was getting desperate. Panic-write the script in 3 days. Sell the script. Yay! On another general with a big company. They tell me they love me and were looking to staff me but the diversity hire has gone to someone else. Not willing to give up, I mention an idea I’m working on. They like it and want me to come in and pitch it. Start working on a pitch for my own, original work for the first time. Manager starts sending out the pitch to companies to see who’ll take the meeting with me. Meanwhile, my other scripts are still going out. Warner Bros is interested in one of those other scripts and has me come in for a meeting. They pass on that project but, while we’re talking, I’m determined not to walk away empty-handed. So I mention this other project I’m taking out as a pitch. They really respond. Ask me to come back in and pitch it. Pitch is arranged.
& voila. That is my detailed journey as to how I got my second meeting at Warner Bros. & I’ve actually been on the Warner Bros lot plenty of times before, taking meetings with other companies that have first-look deals with Warners and so have office space there.
I really hate the idea that any of the success in this industry is overnight. Like, everyone I know has put in blood, sweat, and tears. But also, a lot of people (for understandable reasons) aren’t willing to be open about all the failures they had along the way. When I was still at UCLA, I didn’t post about my pitches and generals because I understood that I was very lucky and I didn’t want to make anyone feel shitty about not yet having those opportunities. (And I say ‘yet’ because they’re all talented fuckers and it definitely is just a question of time and access before they do get them.)
But now I’ve graduated and people back home don’t really know what I’m doing any more so I’m being more open about this shit. Partly so people back in the UK recognise that I’m still doing stuff, I swear and also because I don’t want to contribute to the unhealthy idea that you graduate from film school and are suddenly a success. So I post on my insta stories every time I have a pitch or a general, and I’m trying to make it more natural to talk about it on here too. I try to make it clear to people that 99.999999% of pitches don’t go but that it’s okay and doesn’t mean shit about you as a writer. Failure and struggle is part of this damn industry and people need to be more open about that instead of acting like their success just magically happened. So yeah, sorry if you follow me on insta and are sick of the pitch posts but I’m trying to do something mentally healthy.
I have no idea if any of this helps for your inspiration, but basically: stick at it, realise it takes years of work, but eventually skill and persistence will win out. (And also know that even if you get a meeting at Warner Bros you’ll still feel like a nobody and a fraud so you may as well enjoy every little part of your journey along the way.)