The short answer is yes.
Here’s the long answer:
You should specialize because...
Most Professionals Specialize
Top-notch practitioners in most professions specialize. Doctors don’t dabble in brain surgery and
also try their hands at arthroscopy. Elite
law firms divvy up their attorneys into highly specialized practice groups. Even NBA players, as good as they are, need
to focus on a particular position. Well,
LeBron James could probably play any spot, but he’s not human. If you have “inhuman level” talent like
LeBron, then go ahead and write whatever you want.
For the rest of humanity, there are very good
reasons for specializing in every profession, including screenwriting. One of them is:
You Can Master Your Niche
If you write in a particular genre, you have a
chance at learning nearly everything you can about that genre. You can conceivably watch almost all the
movies in that genre. You can focus your
screenplay reading in that genre. You
can put your energies into one place and eventually cultivate the deepest
possible understanding of that place.
I specialize in animation and family projects,
and I remember meeting with an executive at IDT Entertainment (now part of
Starz), to discuss possible assignments.
This executive brought up the old movie Hercules, and I made the mistake of admitting I hadn’t seen
it. She looked at me like a kid who
forgot to do his homework and said, you’ve gotta know this stuff.
My point is:
Executives want you to specialize and want to know your genre very well. They want you to know everything that’s
already been done so you don’t repeat it unknowingly. They need to feel like they’re in the hands
of an expert. And only then will they
give you work.
How can you achieve that if you don’t have a
specialty?
It’s really more of a moot point than you
think. Whether you know it or not, you already
have a built in specialty because...
You Have A Particular Voice
We’ve all heard the idea of an actor being
miscast. Writers can be miscast
too. Each writer has a style. Each writer has certain things that he or she
does particularly well. And those traits
usually translate into success in a particular genre. Writing in a genre that doesn’t suit your
voice can sometimes result in a feeling of being seriously miscast.
It’s up to you to figure out what your voice
is. Once you do, your genre of choice
should be pretty obvious.
If you have difficulty deciding, don’t
worry. The industry can be very helpful
in that regard. Whichever script you
write that first gets the industry’s attention, the genre of that script is the
genre you’ll be known for.
****
All that said, as in everything to do with
screenwriting, there are no absolutes.
Sometimes you can succeed in
more than one area.
How?
You can write a new spec. The very talented Susannah Grant (writer of Pocahontas and Erin Brockovich) once said to a group of us at dinner: You can reinvent yourself; all you have to do
is write a great spec in a different genre.
Suddenly execs will see you as a different kind of writer. As with all screenwriting endeavors, it’s not
easy, but it is possible!
