How One ScreenStyle Customer made it to Hollywood

In the Beginning

Shawn Lawrence Otto lives on a 30-acre horse farm near the St Croix River in Minnesota. His wife serves in the Minnesota state legislature and they have a son in elementary school. Just a few years ago, he'd never written page one of a screenplay.

Though his youthful success once included commercial painting and real estate, Shawn always loved great literature and writing. "You only live once," he said in a recent interview, "and for me success and money only go so far. In the end, your own life is your most important creation, and your greatest gift. I felt like I'd been selling myself short. I had to follow my heroes, or at least to try." Easier said than done. Shawn's heroes were writers like Chekhov, Tolkien, Dumas, Shakespeare and Fitzgerald, and also genre writers such as Scott Turow, Arthur Conan Doyle, Frank Herbert, John LeCarre, Steven King and Kurt Vonnegut. "I didn't know if I could come close to anything any of those guys had done, but I knew I had to write."

He'd been writing all along, but not fiction. "I started working on a novel, but my story structure needed tightening, and I saw this class on this weird thing called screenwriting, and that name kind of intrigued me, so I read the class description. It said you can't hide story problems behind narrative in a screenplay, and I thought, that's one for me. I need that to build my fiction muscles. I enrolled, and I was blown away. I fell in love with movie writing and the dramatic form, and I never looked back."

Story Poetry

"That's a term I use for it," says Otto from his writing study in the home he designed and built with his own hands. "It's the most difficult, disciplined form of writing, with not a wasted word or moment. Everything has to do double or triple duty, but the coolest thing for me is the story isn't really there on the page; it's in the tone you create in the white space."

Shawn's critically acclaimed film, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, adapted from the novel of the same title, has won Oscar nominations for actors Ben Kingsley and Shohreh Aghdashloo, and composer James Horner. How does one start where he did, and a few years later have a produced film with three Oscar nominations?

"Commitment," he says. "Some luck. A passion for the art. There's so much that goes into it. I think you really need to make a ten year commitment. It's like anything else; it just takes years of practice to get to the point where you can play professionally. You just don't know until you put your time in, and make it your lifestyle. It requires that kind of commitment, that passion," he says.

"You can't do it to make a killing, or your work won't sell, because it won't come alive. You have to do it for love. One thing I think is helpful in the beginning is a writer's group." While he doesn't belong to one now, in the beginning Shawn says he was "avidly passionate" about getting group feedback.

"While we write alone, writing is really a social activity. It's not what's in my head that matters - it's what I get into yours."

Shawn wrote and met with his writing group for about a year before he received his first break. His second script, "Shining White", won several major screenwriting contests, including the McKnight Fellowship, the Barry ("Rainman") Morrow Fellowship, and was named Best Screenplay at the IFP Market in New York City. Later it won the Minnesota Independent Film Fund. Ironically, though, it wasn't any of these wins that got Shawn his first break in Hollywood - it was an Honorable Mention in a little contest in Texas.

"Shining White" was named Honorable Mention at The Texas Film Institute Competition. A producer happened to see the logline (script summary) and was interested. After reading a copy of the script, he contacted Shawn and asked to option it. Shawn agreed and a professional screenwriting career was born.

"Don't think you have to win. You just have to get attention. Placing in a contest is just as good, and it helps build a reference list of people who have proclaimed your writing 'good'. A growing reference list makes it more likely others will see it that way too."

"Going with a younger producer with contacts, taste and passion was a terrific way to go for me, especially since I don't live in Hollywood. I need someone to advocate for me."

One of the first things Shawn's producer did was get the script to Mel Gibson's Icon Productions. At the same time, he sent it to ten or twelve major talent agents at various agencies. "This was a much better approach for me because he has established relationships with a number of top agents. Back then, I wouldn't have known the difference, and they wouldn't have known me from Adam."

Even though he now has professional representation, "it is still up to me to make things happen. I have to advocate for myself, make my own introductions, pitch my own ideas, move my own projects forward. An agent opens doors, but their job is just to make connections and negotiate deals, not get you into the club," advises Shawn. "The only thing that will do that is persistence, dedication, and integrity to your vision and your craft."

Next, Shawn and his producer started contacting directors and production companies to get "Shining White" actually made into a movie. They met with such names as Michael Keaton, Michael Bolton, and William H. Macy. Finally, they signed a deal with the production company arm of Digital Domain, an effects company co-founded by James Cameron and Scott Ross. Like so often in Hollywood, "Shining White" has gone through various stages of development and remains in pre-production.

Shawn's next big break happened when his spec script "Shining White" fell into the hands of TV commercial director Vadim Perelman. Perelman had the rights to the best-selling book House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III, and wanted to use it to break into directing features. After meeting with "twenty or thirty" more established writers, Perelman selected Shawn largely because of the passion and understanding he had for the project, and the fact that Shining White had a "not so dissimilar" protagonist.

"What I've found is really important in Hollywood, is that you find your own unique voice. They already have Shane Black. They already have Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio. They don't need another. So don't copy anybody. Be you. Put your own bleeding heart there, beating on the page. Expose your humanity. Make them feel happy, angry, sad and afraid all in one script. Make them love the leads, and you'll be a star."

The business of writing

Beginning screenwriters usually can only sell spec scripts to break in. A producer or agent is rarely interested in your script based on your "great idea", "pitch", or "first ten pages". Producers and agents want to see your complete screenplay. "I would say they are NEVER interested in your great idea," says Shawn. "A great script needs a great idea, but really, great ideas are a dime a dozen in Hollywood. It's all in the execution."

On a writing assignment like "House of Sand and Fog", a writer is usually hired to write a first draft, a rewrite, and a polish. "You usually get about 12 weeks to write the first draft after which there is a 4 week reading period," says Shawn. During this time, producers, directors, and studio executives assemble notes on the script. Then the writer is given 6-8 weeks to rewrite the script followed by another reading period. Finally he or she is usually given 4 weeks to polish the script into a final draft.

"A lot of writers don't think about how much time you have to put into the business side of screenwriting. A successful screenwriter probably only spends 20-25% of his or her time actually writing, and that's being liberal. The rest of the time is handling all the demands of their career - meetings, phone calls, agents, travel time, set time, reading new material, negotiating deals, trying to get paid, trying to regain their perspective, and everything else that goes with working a normal 12 hour day in Hollywood," says Shawn. "So there's no reason to think that working writers somehow have more time than someone writing at home after their day job is over. It's just a matter of doing it."

Shawn originally wrote "Shining White" with ScreenStyle, our $29.95 add-on for Microsoft Word. Later he upgraded to Final Draft for its ease of use and added features, "and because I found that most people in Hollywood have Final Draft and can read stuff I send them electronically. Living where I do, that's very important to me," he says.

What's the most important thing for aspiring writers to remember? "It's possible," he says. "Put in your time, and be passionate. It will happen. Cream does rise to the top."