electronic first rights....

[preyer]

not sure if i got that term correct. essentially, editors of fiction want, if not insist, on electronic first rights, that is your story hasn't been splashed on a hundred different message boards and appears prominently on your blog for the world to see for free.

from a technical standpoint, posting a story in 'share your work' violates the story's warranty, so to speak. is this an issue for a production company, if your script appears online, or do they even care to have those first rights?

[dpaterso]

This might not answer your question, but everything is a work in progress until it's optioned or sold.

I notice the Share Your Work forum is now password protected. Technically speaking that means it's no longer an open access (public) forum. This is something that's been debated by writer and editor groups for years. If it's not open access then the material therein hasn't been "published on the internet" which by definition means open access.

-Derek
Derek's Web Page - stories, screenplays, novels, insanity. (http://hometown.aol.co.uk/DPaterson57/scripts.htm)
"I'll bet any quantum mechanic in the service would give the rest of his life to fool around with this gadget." ~Chief Engineer Quinn, Forbidden Planet

[Joe Calabrese]

The only thing an agent or manager cares about is whether other agents, managers, studios or producers have read it. This is called "shopped around" and an agent may be wary in repping you if it has been all around town for a year and on dozens of desks with no interest. It is a good indicator they won't be able to sell it.

As for a few hundred people on message boards who have read it, an agent or manager could care less, unless those people were all producers, which goes back to my earlier point.

The only thing a studio or producer cares about is whether he/she loves it and thinks they can make money from making it.

As for a few hundred people on message boards who have read it, no producer would care because it would be a very small percentage of the paying and viewing audience and if anything those who read it and find out it is playing in their local Cineplex would most likely go and pay to see it because they read it and can say "Hey! I know this guy!" or "Cool! He took my suggestion about tightening the 2nd act."

Now you may say, what about a Star Wars, where they want to keep plot points a secret? True for sequels and BIG box office films (which in that case you won't be putting them on a message board because... well... your RICH and FAMOUS now!), but even the first Star Wars or any of the like was read by many in various ways. You think 20th Century Fox would care that Lucas's college buddies read the first draft?

Rock on and don't sweat the small stuff, focus on writing the best you can and marketing yourself the best you can.

[preyer]

thanks for the replies, gentlemen.

my thing is i don't want to have to say to an editor, 'this isn't on the web, other than i e-mailed it to some beta readers,' when, in fact, in one form or another it has been. that's for fiction. now, of course, i'm a dude, so i can lie and through the wonderful art of semantics can convince myself that by changing a few words around then, no, no one else has read it.

on the surface of things, i wouldn't think a script was under the same rules, per se. i think it was one of dp's links i followed that lead me to a pro writer's board (forget his name), where people share stories, but only the first 13 lines, then it's up to them to e-mail it to interested parties. this protects their editor's electronic first use rights, apparently.

i wondered if by having passwords that put things in a different light. were i an editor with a hard-on for these things, it wouldn't make a lick of difference to if a password was involved or not. other than registering to be able to read the stories, there's no real protection there. my biggest argument as a writer would be these are workshops and as such should be protected. that is, even as a relatively private forum (as private as you can reasonably be without having to pay for a subscription or otherwise have any qualifications to enter), what the writer is really doing is asking for comments and suggestions in a critical manner.

still, that's for fiction. i had the impression it didn't matter much if at all considering all the screenwriters' sites i've visited who had for sale up to about ten page samples of actual scripts.

as an aside, i read the first draft of 'the star wars.' ouch, yikes and yuck. at the time, you'd *have* to have a buddy read it, as few others could have suffered through it without being paid.

i guess this lax attitude, for lack of a better term here, is yet another reason for me to write scripts, eh? cool. :)

[Joe Calabrese]

Stop confusing editors with producers and you'll be fine.