₦airaland Forum

How much are you paying for these inspirational stories?

If you're asking if I'm serious about the importance of scriptwriters, I am. The scriptwriter is the one that puts words into the mouth of the actors and actresses that we admire. No script, no story. The script is what tells actors what to do and when to do it, what to say and how to say it. No story, no movie!

Our copyright laws are fine. We just need to have an efficient judicial system that can be relied upon to compensate creaors whose works are stolen.

is it for pry or secondary school students or even tertiary

Junior Secondary School level. JS1, JS2 and JS3 students. Or Primary 4-6 level students.

do you think i can send a script on trust to you?

Yes, you can. I have no interest in stealing someone's script when I'm going to be selling the result in public!

Then do you want to buy the script with the copyright or u just want to direct the script?

This one is tricky. The minimum I need is the right to create photocomics based on your story and sell them. The maximum is the complete ownership of the story. It depends on which one I can afford and how consistent you are.

Here's what I wrote to another interested writer today:

[b]Hello C,

I'd love to have a character-driven school drama which can be used to
make 3 to 12 self-contained photo-comics of 50-80 pages each.

The stories should be such that school-age children will want to read
them and their parents will be happy to let them do so. I expect that
it would be educative, humorous, and very addictive. In particular,
it should be relevant to school-age children.

For now, I think I'm willing to pay 20,000 naira for 3 episodes of
such a story (to create 3 self-contained photocomic books of 50-80
pages each using the same characters)

The story should take place within a school compound and involve
students and teachers interacting in class, at the playground, and
various venues within the school premises before, during, and after
school.

Can you do this and do you have any demonstrable experience with
writing? On one hand, I'm willing to pay for something that's good.
On the other hand, if I overpay for a script I might not be able to
make any profit to reinvest in future stories that you may write.

Cheers,
Seun Osewa.
http://www.seunosewa.com/[/b]

However, I'm also working on my own story about an interesting family with a magical stone.

N20,000? for a whole drama? That's very small compared to what you would likely make when you finish with it.

This logic is faulty. Does a landlord have the right to charge 100,000 naira per month for a 2,000 naira per month appartment because the occupant is making millions? Do rich people buy pure water at a different price?

So the price of a script sold to a director is about the effort involved in writing it. How many hours does it take to write a small play that will make it worth more than 20,000 naira? That's half a month's salary!

The fact is that most stories do not more than 0.00 naira in the market, so why should I pay through my nose when I don't know whether it will be successful or not?

Bear in mind that after getting the script I have to adapt it to photocomic format, hire models to pose for me, trim the pictures to the required size and add dialogue, advertise, and then attempt to sell the product. The more expensive the script, the greater the likelihood that I won't make enough profit to continue the project. Once that happens, then the writer can forget about making any money.

Isn't it better to make a humble amount of money from your story than to die with it?

Ok, Nairaland members. How much can you write for 20,000 naira? I need a good school drama.

dennylove, let's see what you've got. Let's see the stories you've written for friends and family.

I'm writing my own family adventure drama, of course, but I'd also like to publish a school drama because it would be easy to hire students to model for a photocomic based on such a story. My business model calls for a variety of stories to be published instead of just the one I'm working on.

davidylan, do you have any drama you want to sell? For how much? I probably can't afford writers - like you- who are based abroad. Unfortunately it seems that Nigerians at home are not very creative. The story idea itself is nothing - I can come up with a story idea as easily as breathing, but it's the development and promotion that matters.

The way things are, I might have to write all my stories myself, hire models and take the pictures myself, layout the photocomic myself, print and promote it myself, then squeeze money out of it myself. I feel a little shy to be doing all this in the eye of the public, but I think obscurity is worse than looking silly.

If you win the nobel prize and the average American can't appreciate your work, then there's a problem with the nobel prize! It doesn't take an "artist" to write something that no-one wants to read. Anyone can do that.

If your writing is such that only highly educated people can pretend to understand it, then you're not being artistic, you're just obscure! The whole point of art is not to prove intellectual superiority, but to pass a message accross!

Nobody? Is it that Nigerians living in Nigeria absolutely can't write or what?

I'm not a natural writer; for me it takes more effort than other tasks.

If I post something of a lower standard, people will be more unhappy than they are now.

But I'm working a nw story that borrows some ideas from this one. Stay tuned.