How
to Tell a Rewrite from a Revision
By Susan Solomon
Whether
client feedback makes dramatic enough script revisions to label the new
directive a rewrite or a revision will impact the show's budget. So how do you
diagnose? Then what do you do?
Writers
tend to have various proposal styles. It can vary from a chat with an old
friend to write their parent's 50th wedding anniversary show, to a formal
proposal complete with creative treatments, time lines and all related project
parameters including a percentage down. And much in between. So how do freelancers, pounding away at their trusted keyboards in office
towers and homes alike determine when the client has gone beyond wordsmithing and expounding to a redirective?
We
asked a few tenured and award-winning members of Atlanta MCAI writing community
and here's what we found:
Martha
Denton of Scripts Unlimited said this: "If for some reason I miss
the boat, I will do a wall-to-wall rewrite for no extra charge. If however
there is a major change in strategy, direction, or approval personnel we will
have to renegotiate cost."
Example: When
someone's VP suddenly walks in and asks for fundamental changes, that's a
rewrite. It usually means somewhere upstream a different player got involved,
wants his or her thumbprint on the project and was never consulted in the
beginning.
There
are things you say verbally and things you put in writing. Denton describes
herself as the "Queen of detailed treatments. My treatments have, from
time to time, exceeded the length of a finished script. When I have run into
trouble, it's when my client says let's just skip the treatment," says
Denton.
Denton
considers the treatment part of the project, in fact a very important part of
documentation. In each, she establishes on what basis she came up with the
approach and what her assumptions were. "I always try to be fair and
reasonable according to established industry standards. I tell clients, you can
take one objective to multiple audiences; multiple objectives to one focused
audience; but you can't take multiple objectives to multiple audiences. To do
so is an attempt to make one script everything to everybody. It will mean
nothing to anybody."
Billy
Pilgrim of Billy Pilgrim Productions said this: "In
general, a revision is a correction to existing information to accommodate
something on a current project . A rewrite is a total
change in something fundamental."
Example: A recent
example is a script I recently completed. During the second draft revisions
they decided, for production purposes, they wanted a more straightforward
approach. They asked for a rewrite using two primary hosts instead of the
characters I created. "Straight narrative was the new direction. An extra
day of writing was my response." Same content but I had to go through
everything and rewrite to the new voices. A couple rules of thumb are if the
revisions exceed a 25% content change, it's a rewrite. Plus anything that
represents new content or creative direction will be a new negotiated fee or an
automatic pay by the hour.
Phil
Jones, Scriptwriter: "I'll work with any client as long as they want.
Five minutes. Five hours. Five days. But the meter is always running. It's a
business proposition."
Example: Jones says,
"If I screw up it's on me. If they change their mind, it's a rewrite. If
the change takes 5 minutes or 3 hours, the meter is running. We're hacks. The
meter is on. And tip us please."
The
pros have spoken. So, if a client changes any of the fundamentals agreed to on
the written creative proposal, it's a new show with a revised budget.
