Here's how you can become a successful film screenwriter.

When I was in college, I found a paperback of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and thought it was a novelization of the hit film that was then playing in the theaters. It turned out to be William Goldman's screenplay, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay that season. I must have read it until the binding fell apart. It taught me screenplay formatting and how to tell a tight story, which has influenced my writing style -- say more with less. Find your William Goldman and study (but don't copy) his or her style.

'Write daily' is the worst advice you can ever be given. Write consistently, yes, but daily? Seriously? To be a professional writer you will need a body of work, so that means writing more than one script ... scripts that people will want. So if you write daily, you'll just end up writing mediocre trash, because that's not how creativity works. Write great scripts and do it on a very regular basis ... but don't flog yourself silly trying to do it daily - the results will be pants.

Feedback is essential ... and the best way is via (trusted) script reports/evaluations. For each script, we recommend getting script reports from three different sources. Here's why: 1. If all three highlight the same point, then that point definitely needs addressing. 2. If two out of the three highlight a point, then you really should take a long look at it. 3. When they highlight points that only they pick up on, then you should consider them, but also consider that perhaps they just didn't 'get it' (which can happen), but at the same time work out how you can make that point stronger or clearer, because obviously they missed it.

First you should understand a difference between the commercial work and quality work. Commercially optimised work can earn you good money. And quality work can give you work satisfaction. Film Writer has to create balance between these parameters of success. Following a trend is always safe for new film writer. But again there is a competition for popular trends. So within the frame of trend there has to be some out of the box idea to make your Script salable. Always mail your registered synopses to producer's and directors. Normally productions prefers to be genre centric and create there brand in market accordingly. Make sure your Script genre matches with the productions preference.

Registering with the WGA is one, very expensive, way of over-protecting your script, especially as the WGA only registers that draft of the script. Any future drafts have to be re-registered, so you can imagine how expensive that can become. The best way is to put all your drafts on a memory stick and keep it safe - the time/date stamp creates proof of when each draft was written. But at the end of the day, all of this is redundant, because most producers would rather buy your draft from you at a knock down price and then get their pet writer to rewrite it than steal your script and risk the consequences. In addition, consider this: if a producer does steal your idea, how are you going to afford to take them to court to prove it?

Successful screenwriters writing their own scripts are as rare as rocking horse dung. Take a look at all the successful screenwriters and see how many of their own scripts have been produced. For Aaron Sorkin it's about 12. After that it tails off to about 6, then 3 or 2. All civil engineering students think they'll end up building bridges, dams and other sexy structures, but the reality is that they will end up resurfacing highways for the rest of their lives. Same goes for successful screenwriters - they'll spend the rest of their lives rewriting other peoples scripts. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that and it pays really well, but that's what it means to be a successful screenwriter.