Become an Author

Hollywood cranks out shitty movies so fast, it’s difficult for us to keep up. If you’d like to help and you enjoy mocking movies in a needlessly self-limiting format, there just might be a place for you here on the site.

This page explains how to pitch a movie, submit a contribution, and possibly become a regular Author. Please read the whole thing before sending anything. Yes, even the parts that seem obvious. Those are usually the parts people skip right before creating avoidable work for everyone involved.

Selecting a Movie

Start by choosing a movie that makes sense for the site and for a first submission. The goal is not simply “a movie you have opinions about,” because everyone on the internet has opinions and somehow civilization continues anyway.

Do not pick a movie that has already been abridged, generally. Previous contributions are fair game for a new version, but don't steal jokes. Older contributions, especially pre-2001 ones, are usually better candidates.
Franchise gaps are useful. Bond movies, Star Trek movies, Paranormal Activity sequels, and other series where the site has some entries but not all of them are generally good places to look.
Underrepresented genres are welcome. The site has plenty of sci-fi and action movies. Dramas, romances, and other neglected genres are often more interesting than another two hours of robots punching blue lasers into the sky.
Comedies are usually poor choices. Too many comedy scripts become "this joke happened, but it was not funny," which is criticism, technically, in the same way a receipt is literature.
Avoid controversial movies and movies built around controversial issues for your first submission. Established Authors can sometimes pull those off because readers already know their voice. Your first script is your first impression, and "hello, I brought a discourse grenade" is rarely ideal.

Before You Write

Before drafting, send an e-mail to Rod, The Editing Room proprietor, with the movie or movies you’d like to abridge. A short list is better than a single title because it makes approval easier and reduces the chance that your brilliant plan dies because someone already has dibs on Transmorphers 9: Legal Department Pending.

Do not write the script first and ask afterward. The movie may not be a good fit, it may already be reserved, or it may be the kind of idea that sounds better before anyone has to spend a week staring at it. Getting approval first saves everybody time, and as you might expect saving time is fairly high priority for a guy who made a site squishing 2-hour movies into screenplay-formatted summaries.

Authors take priority over first-time Contributors. If an Author claims the same movie before your contribution is finished, you may need to choose another title. Recent and popular releases are the riskiest for this, because apparently other people also notice the movies with giant advertising budgets.

Writing the Script

Once the movie is approved, write the script. Before doing that, read How to Write an Abridged Script. It covers formatting, general advice, and the most common reasons submissions are rejected. It is long as hell, which is unfortunate, but so is receiving a script that proudly ignores every suggestion already written down.

Revise before submitting. Trim fat, tighten jokes, check formatting, and make the first draft the best version you can reasonably produce. The more drafts a contribution needs, the less likely it is to be accepted. Also, do not send a “better” version five minutes after the first one. That mostly proves you knew the first one was worse and sent it anyway, which is a bold strategy for people who enjoy immediate distrust.

By submitting a script, you agree that it may be published on the site, and that it and any other scripts you submit are published under a Creative Commons license.

The Review Process

After you submit the first draft, you may receive a rejection or a list of revision notes. The rejection may be polite. It may be less polite. This is a movie-mocking website, not a graduate workshop with herbal tea and feelings vocabulary.

If you get notes, revise the script and send the next draft. This may happen more than once. Eventually the process ends with publication or rejection. The first Contribution is written on spec, which means it is unpaid. The site does not have enough money to pay first-time contributors, because the site is about fake scripts for bad movies and not a site for videos where a billionaire makes people live in a grocery store for clicks.

If you do not receive a response, be patient. Scripts can take a long time to review. If several months pass without a reply, you can probably treat that as an impolite rejection. Please do not take rejection personally. Plenty of people love the site and still are not especially good at writing for it, just as plenty of people enjoy restaurants without being trusted near the fryer.

Becoming an Author

If your first Contribution is published, readers will be asked for feedback. The important signals are a strong average rating and constructive, positive comments. If the script does well, you may be invited to write a second script.

The second script is different. You write it without revision notes or training wheels. You may choose any released movie that has not already been abridged and is not listed on the Coming Soon page. Once you have a draft, that movie is reserved for you. The script is published without pre-publication feedback and scheduled in the middle of the week alongside regular Author scripts.

Reader feedback is collected again. If the second script does well, you will be invited to become an Author and paid retroactively for that second script. If it does not do well, that is probably the end of the process unless there is a very good reason to try again.

Only the final qualifying script, the one that actually leads to Author status, is paid retroactively. We do not want to string people along for free spec work. There are plenty of better ways to exploit writers, and most of them have streaming services.

Payment and Expectations

Apply because writing Abridged Scripts sounds fun, not because you have discovered a clever substitute for employment. Authors are paid from Patron support, divided among the scripts published that month. The amount varies, but it is usually around $30-$35 per script.

You likely won’t get rich writing Abridged Scripts. You are welcome to promote your other projects in your author bio, though, which may be worth slightly more than the money, depending on your tolerance for optimism.