Who Gets Story Credit?
by Jaden
photo credit: jumpinjimmyjava – iKIVA …. you can KIVA too
Writing should be a fun, but sometimes, when you involve other people, it becomes legally messy and confusing as to who holds the rights to the story.
Story credit is not what you might think.
Per the WGA, here are some important points on which I will elaborate below with a fictitious scenario.
Story
The term “story” means all writing covered by the provisions of the Minimum Basic Agreement representing a contribution “distinct from screenplay and consisting of basic narrative, idea, theme or outline indicating character development and action.”
It is appropriate to award a “Story by” credit when:
1) the story was written under employment under Guild jurisdiction; 2) the story was purchased by a signatory company from a professional writer, as defined in the Minimum Basic Agreement; or 3) when the screenplay is based upon a sequel story written under the Guild’s jurisdiction. If the story is based upon source material of a story nature, see “screen story” below.
Screenplay
A screenplay consists of individual scenes and full dialogue, together with such prior treatment, basic adaptation, continuity, scenario and dialogue as shall be used in, and represent substantial contributions to the final script.
A “Screenplay by” credit is appropriate when there is source material of a story nature (with or without a “Screen Story” credit) or when the writer(s) entitled to “Story by” credit is different than the writer(s) entitled to “Screenplay by” credit.
“Written by”
The term “Written by” is used when the writer(s) is entitled to both the “Story by” credit and the “Screenplay by” credit.
This credit shall not be granted where there is source material of a story nature. However, biographical, newspaper and other factual sources may not necessarily deprive the writer of such credit.
WRITTEN MATERIAL PREVAILS
Decisions of Arbitration Committees are based upon literary material. Claims of authorship must be supported by literary material appropriate for submission to the Arbitration Committee. In the event of conflicting claims, literary material always prevails.
No Other Credits Approved
Any form of credit not expressly described in this (WGA) Manual shall be used only upon receipt of a waiver from the Guild. Fewer names and fewer types of credit enhance the value of all credits and the dignity of all writers.
Are You A Professional Writer?
If you are selling material to a signatory company, you must be considered a “professional writer” to be eligible for writing credit. The MBA generally defines a “professional writer” as a person who has received employment for a total of thirteen weeks as a television or theatrical motion picture writer; or received credit as a writer on a television or theatrical motion picture (including series); or received credit for a professionally produced play or a published novel.
To make story credit easily understandable, let’s use Alfred Hitchcock as our character in this fictitious story about story credit.
Alfred Hitchcock is sitting at his table one morning reading the newspaper. His wife brings him coffee mixed just the way he likes it. “Hey, honey, listen to this,” Alfred says to his wife. He reads the paper: “Crows, seagulls, and other birds rain from the sky all over Capitola. Unexplained, authorities say it may be related to poisoned shellfish. Before dying, the birds are reported to have gone crazy and attacked people.” Hitchock puts the paper down. “Wouldn’t that make for a unique movie, darling, don’t you think? Birds attacking people?”
Alma Hitchcock agrees and throws out some ideas. Alfred takes note of them. She’s always full of good ideas.
Alfred then calls his long time friend screenwriter Bob and tells Bob about the story. “So what do you think Bob, you want to work on the script with me?” Bob declines and says he is too busy, but agrees it is a great idea.
Alfred then talks to an old friend Charlie that he hadn’t talked to in a while, someone who has nothing to do with the film industry at all and has no experience. Out of normal friendship and conversation, Alfred tells Charlie about the new movie he wants to make in full detail, including the story arch, all the main characters, how the story will end, and what is the theme.
Loving the story, Charlie gets excited and starts throwing out all kinds of great ideas to Alfred. Alfred never thought of Charlie as a potential writing partner, but his ideas are so good, he says, “Hey Charlie, you want to work on this script with me?” Excited, Charlie says yes and starts researching real incidents right away.
Alfred writes a treatment based on his initial ideas and registers the story idea with WGA.
Charlie and Alfred have many talks about the script and start to flesh it out. Alfred writes out thirty pages of the script based on his own and Charlie’s ideas.
Alfred also finds this great book The Birds by Daphne du Maurier, which he incorporates into his overall idea.
Alfred then gets sidetracked for many months by his other film projects, including one script that he wrote from scratch beginning to end with Charlie that was rejected by producers. After a while, Alfred tells Charlie, “Ok, let’s work on the birds script again.”
Charlie says, “I’m not working on it with you unless you re-register the story credit to my name too.”
Alfred feels uncomfortable by this new demand from his old buddy, since it was indeed Alfred’s own initial idea. Alfred tells Charlie, “I can’t worry about this right now, I am too busy. Can we talk about this later.”
Charlie then says, “Well, it’s not your story idea. You read it in the newspaper. And you read that book. They should get story credit, not you. I gave you a lot of ideas and I want story credit.”
Alfred excuses himself from the conversation and hangs up, but Charlie calls him back 10 times in a row, insisting Alfred immediately change the registration of the story.
Alma asks Alfred, “What’s going on?” Alfred tells her. Alma says, “Goodness, I think I gave you more ideas than Charlie did, might as well give me story credit.” Alma and Alfred laugh.
The hostility and ignorance coming from Charlie makes Alfred not want to work with him at all, so he decides to shelve the project all together. Angry, Charlie never talks to Alfred again.
A year later, still too busy but still loving the story idea, Alfred takes out The Birds treatment and hires Evan Hunter to finish it. Evan re-writes the initial 30 pages that Alfred wrote, plus another 70 pages.
Five other writers are also paid and add substantial lines of dialog and story structure changes.
The Birds movie comes out in theaters and immediately, a series of lawsuits come down the line to Mr. Hitchcock. There is the one guy who wrote a similar story about birds attacking people and he mailed the script to himself in a sealed envelope. There is another guy who copyrighted his script about birds attacking people. A third guy read the same news articles and books as Alfred did and he also registered a very similar script. Then there is Alfred’s good ol’ friend Charlie.
Alfred, of course, never heard of these other guys or their scripts, but now they all want a piece of his pie and everyone is suing him. Did they do the work and bring their own scripts to the movie screen? No.
WHO GETS STORY CREDIT? Who gets screenwriting credit? And who gets paid?
1) The Wife?
No.
The wife gave lots of good ideas and support right from the beginning, as did lots of Hitchcock’s friends. Do they get credit or paid? No.
It was still Hitchcock’s initial idea to move forward and write a script and make a movie. Without Hitchcock telling people, “I want to make this movie about birds attacking people,” it would not have been made. People can offer Hitchcock ideas at their own discretion.
Hitchcock may decide to pay them or give them some kind of credit, but it is not mandatory, it would just be a consideration based on how much a person contributed to the final product. Over three screenwriting credits is frowned upon and generally forbidden by the writers’ guild.
Yes, the wife would get credit if…
Had the wife, in the kitchen that morning, said to Alfred, “I would like to write a script about that story,” or they had the idea at the exact same time and she then wrote a treatment or a first draft screenplay for Alfred, which she has in the past, then she would get a story or screenwriting credit, depending on what role she played and how much she contributed.
Giving ideas over meals or for lengthy periods of time does not earn story credit or screenwriting credit.
2) The buddy Charlie?
No, Charlie does not get story credit.
Charlie had lots of good ideas and they were going somewhere with it together, but it was not Charlie’s initial idea. As much as Charlie contributed, maybe 15 pages worth of ideas at most, the overall story arch that Hitchcock had in mind and pitched to Charlie in the first place, is still in tact and still the same. For Charlie to claim it as his own now, just because he worked on it and helped flesh it out some, is wrong. Charlie was working on the screenwriting phase and he did not carry out his part of the verbal agreement to write a full feature script together.
As time revealed, Hitchcock just had someone else write the script who was less confrontational and more pleasant to work with and who did not erroneously make a fuss about story credit.
Without Hitchcock, Charlie would never have had the idea to make a movie about attacking birds and was not even in the industry to do so. For Charlie to pursue the birds story any further as his own, would be fundamentally and legally wrong.
Since Charlie did not contribute a substantial amount of material to the final script and is not a professional writer, Charlie gets no credit.
3) The unknown Screenwriters from outer space?
No.
Alfred never heard of these guys and never read their scripts. Many people around the world may write similar screenplays — that does not give them the right, just because of coincidence, to get a piece of Hitchcock’s pie. People all live in the same world and have access to the same inspirations. No one lives alone in a vacuum of genius ideas that no one else had ever considered. We are all on the same vessel here, seeing and considering the same things. What matters is whether you take your idea to a finished product or not.
4) The Newspaper or its writers?
No, not usually.
Fiction stories usually do not give story credit to the non-fiction sources from where they may have initially been inspired or researched.
An extreme example of this, that I found highly strange at the time, was Elephant (2003) by Gus Van Sant. Not long after the real crime occurred in Colorado, this movie emerges depicting an almost identical version of a high school shooting, yet the movie is categorized as fiction and Gus Van Sant is the only person noted for writing credit. So either he was having a psychic experience and wrote the story before it happened, or he quickly turned it out afterwards. Either way, this is a major news story turned “fiction” with one writer receiving credit.
Usually, writers will fictionalize their fiction stories that were inspired by true stories, but even in this extreme case where Van Sant’s story perfectly mirrors the true story, he still takes all writing credit.
News and true stories are public domain, available for everyone. Hundreds, thousands, or millions of people may read or hear or relay a true story, a crime, a natural disaster, or a news story. Therefore, pin-pointing one source for credit becomes difficult and unnecessary.
Yes, story credit…
If a substantial amount of information is taken from only one specific written source about the true story, with very detailed and specific information that only one writer attained, one may give story credit to the source. A good example of this would be a non-fiction movie based on an expose story produced by 60 Minutes, Vanity Fair, or a book like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1965).
Usually only non-fiction movies will give credit to their non-fiction sources, be it an expose or a book. Fiction movies usually do not give credit to their non-fiction sources.
5) The additional paid Screenwriters who worked on the script?
No.
The paid screenwriters do not get story credit, even if they rewrote the entire script and the new version is essentially all attributable to one of the paid writers, they still may not get a screenwriting credit and definitely will not get a story credit. They are paid to do a job: write.
6) The Author of the Book The Birds or Alfred Hitchcock?
Yes. Both are eligible for story credit.
In this case, and often is the case, whether the book was the initial inspiration or not, story credit will be given to the book (fiction or non-fiction) that most closely resembles the final film because of its firm and indisputable existence in the world.
Let’s say that Alfred read the news article that inspired him. Had he written a fiction script entirely without any research other than the one news article he read, Hitchcock would take the Story By credit or Written By.
Since Alfred (in my fictitious example) proceeded to research the topic and read the book The Birds and he liked lots of the scenes in it and he wanted to use them, he and his lawyer decided to give credit to the author of the book.
Let’s say the author of the book The Birds was inspired by the exact same news article as Alfred and Alfred is not even using very many details from the book, Alfred’s lawyer still may choose to give story credit to the author just to get rid of the heat by all the other people who wrote similar stories and seek payment and credit. If you can point to a source and give credit, lawyers usually choose to do that as a technicality to alleviate pressure from other claims, and appease a judge or arbiter.
Paying the author of the book for story credit, whether it was the true inspiration or not, is like buying story insurance in Hollywood. Whether the book is the main source or not, it gives a safe legal place to say is the source.
STORY CREDIT versus SCREENWRITING CREDIT
Written By credit means that the writer both came up with the story idea and wrote a first draft of the script alone. Written By is a combo of both Story credit and Screenwriting credit.
Story By credit will go to the person who has the initial seed of an idea and the most tangible material to back it: that may be a screenwriter inspired by some observation in the world or it may go to the author of a book.
Story credit does not go to the many screenwriters and people with good ideas who helped develop the script along its journey to the big screen.
No more than 2 people may receive story credit.
Screenplay By credit will go to whoever contributed the most to the final script, or whoever had the best contract. Often there may be 20 writers on a blockbuster movie. How many credits do you see on the screen? Usually just one to three screenwriting credits will appear; they are:
- The initial writer, the person who wrote the first draft or whose story idea it was
- The writer who physically wrote the most material in the script
- The writer who has the best lawyer and agent who best negotiates on his behalf for credit and royalties
If the movie is a WGA sanctioned major movie, the other screenwriters will get paid to union writers’ scale, but they won’t necessarily get a credit, even if they worked a year on the script!
It is impossible to give credit to every single source and every single person who offers ideas on a script. Giving too many credits is considered tres gauche and unprofessional. Whoever had the initial idea that got the ball rolling is obviously key and essential. Beyond that, credit is debatable.
This article provides fictitious scenarios based on some real people to give you a general idea of how story and screenplay credit work; please consult a literary entertainment lawyer if you have real concerns and require legal advice.
Sunday Picture Post 39 — Pet Peeves
SCREENWRITING TIP OF THE DAY: PET PEEVES
Let your pet peeves (something that annoys you) add humor to your script or inspire an entire movie built around your pet peeve.
One of my biggest pet peeves are mosquitoes. In the Disney movie Lilo & Stitch, there are some aliens who want to save the ‘endangered’ mosquitoes in Hawaii. We humans watching the movie think this is humorous because we all hate mosquitoes. There are probably species we try to save, like sharks or whales, that other sea creatures are probably not too stoked to keep around. The irony of all this makes for a good joke.
Taking something that everyone hates and making it special, lovable, or important, is funny. Or maybe it is something that only you hate, but everyone else loves it, that makes for humor too — being the oddball out.
For today’s creative writing practice:
1) Create a story or some comedy based on one of your pet peeves.
2) Using the image of the man above, follow the instructions underneath it to do a writing practice in brevity — keeping it short! Write a Title, a Word, a Sentence, and a 2 sentence Pitch inspired by the image. After you make up your own story (don’t cheat), then click on the image to find out the true story about the man. It is quite fascinating.
If you already know the true story about the man, please try to do this exercise with the idea that you are writing a true story movie: you still need a catchy title and all the rest; you still have to pitch true stories to executives and make it sound intriguing and do it quickly!
Bonus Points: If you can combine your pet peeve with a story about the pictured man, you are really good at this!
For fun: What actor would play this guy?
Good luck!
HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SUNDAY PICTURE POST
For The Sunday Picture Post, we flip upside-down the saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Thousands of words are great if you are writing a novel, but if you are writing a screenplay, you need to do the opposite and be as concise as possible.
For your screenwriting practice in brevity, in the comments section, using the image above, please post one or all of the following:
- A title for this movie
- 1 word describing the theme, mood, or scene
- 1 sentence to describe the scene
- A pitch to sell the entire movie
The more colorful and creative you are, the better! Use any genre.
A good screenwriter is laconic, using a few words to say a lot.
