| How To Become a Hollywood Screenwriter, The Internet Way Posted: 21 Mar 2012 09:33 PM PDT 
Yesterday I came across a mind boggling article on Wired titled How One Response to a Reddit Query Became a Big Budget Flick. It tells the story of James Erwin, 37, who used to write software manuals for a living and within two weeks managed to become a Hollywood screenwriter, all thanks to the Internet. The story took place on Reddit, which is the social bookmarking site that managed to outplace Digg as the most popular online. Here’s a quote from the article: Erwin, who studied history at the University of Iowa, had been posting on Reddit for about five months. He used the alias Prufrock451, a dual reference to the schlubby protagonist of a T. S. Eliot poem and the Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451. Prufrock451′s contributions were all over the map. One day he wrote about the historical roots of the civil war in Liberia; another day he told a funny story about a shooting range in Iowa. He also uploaded a few pictures of European forts that he thought looked cool and a quote by Voltaire. In his atypicalness—Prufrock451 was pretty clearly a quirky character—he was entirely typical of a habitual Reddit user, and like many other redditors, as they are called, he found the site addictive. More than just a creative outlet or time-killer, Reddit was a game. The object was to amass points—"Reddit karma." Every time Erwin saw his karma level increase, he felt a little squirt of adrenaline. "People are sweating to make you laugh or make you think or make you hate them," Erwin says. "It's the human condition, plus points." Now, in response to The_Quiet_Earth's question about time-traveling marines, Erwin started typing. He posted his answer in a series of comments in the thread. Within an hour, he was an online celebrity. Within three hours, a film producer had reached out to him. Within two weeks, he was offered a deal to write a movie based on his Reddit comments. Within two months, he had taken a leave from his job to become a full-time Hollywood screenwriter.
This is a small excerpt though. The article has thousands of words and plenty of interesting facts and insights, so do yourself a favor and set 10 minutes aside to read it. Link is above. 
Original Post: How To Become a Hollywood Screenwriter, The Internet Way |
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