The tone of your OP suggests someone who is purposefully making outlandish, hyperbolic statements in an effort to attract attention. I'm not going to condemn that out of hand, because more than likely it means you care about writing and just want to talk about it. So yeah, that's the upside. Unfortunately, nearly everything you said can be refuted (and has been by other posters in this thread).
I am utterly baffled why so many would engage in the raw evil of encouraging new writers.
Why is it wrong to encourage someone to pursue their dreams? The majority of people who try screenwriting will make a half-ass attempt and fail miserably, then go about their lives. For them, dreams of being a writer are a temporary diversion from life's monotony, and soon enough they will be on their way. Others will try very hard, but just not succeed. Some of those people will be destroyed by the process and failure; others will learn from the experience and use it to make their lives better in a different capacity. And then there are the lucky few, those who get to spend their days doing the very thing they love -- crafting stories that move and touch other human beings.
Whether one succeeds or fails in screenwriting is entirely dependent on the effort they put into the endeavor, and whether or not they have a compelling story to tell. Kill the ego. Learn the craft. Tell the story.
There are four very, very good reasons why one should never encourage new writers:-
Four? Are you sure it's not three? Or five? What about zero?
1. Encouraging new writers is the equivalent of trying to popularise taking up Russian Roulette as a sport. It is going to be an utter beating out there. 250,000 screenplays arrive each year in Tinseltown, of which just 600 are made and about 200 provide a sustainable living.
Almost all of those screenplays are not worth the paper they are written on. They are written by people with outsized egos, who put little or no effort into learning what it takes to write a good story. Often, they don't even have a good story to tell. In fact, almost all failed screenplays fall into one of two categories:
1. The egotistical person who fills pages and pages with delusions of their own grandeur, some contrived writing exercise meant to show off how great they are, with the full expectation that everyone reading their story will feel the same.
2. The person seeking a shoulder-to-cry-on script. These people want an outlet to vent their mundane frustrations in life, and let's face it, we hear sob stories all the time. They might be interesting to you if they are your own problems, but nobody else cares.
Invariably, the people writing those scripts fail, but because they can't imagine the fault is their own, they blame the system for keeping them down. Their problem is that they overvalue themselves, as they probably do in all walks of life, and they soon move onto some other hobby in their quest for adulation or sympathy, whichever the case may be.
The serious writer, on the other hand, will accept failure as a consequence of one of two things: either they didn't have a compelling story to tell (yet); or they weren't able to tell it effectively. In the first case, they will keep searching for truth and beauty in life. In the second case, they will put forth more effort into learning the craft and improving their writing. You can cite large numbers in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of scripts per year if you want, but the fact remains that a really good script is up against almost no competition in the marketplace.
2. In an already crowed, packed field, encouraging someone talentless undermines hard working talented people, struggling to make ends meet.
Again, that "crowded, packed field" is filled almost entirely with bad scripts. If a talented writer is struggling to make ends meet, it means they either don't have a good story to tell and/or they haven't taken the time to learn the craft. In either case, perhaps the problem is that they value their talent too much. Kill the ego. Learn the craft. Tell the story. That's my motto.
3. In encouraging talentless people to take up writing, one is, de facto, encouraging them NOT to do what they are actually talented at, deriving them of a living and the world of whatever they are actually taleted at.
Talented ... you keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means. Writing is not monolithic. There are innumerable aspects to writing, from word choice, to style, to pacing and rhythm, to humor, to ... I mean the list goes on. Even someone generally considered a talented writer will have their strengths and weaknesses. The ancient Greeks, including Plato, were famous for the saying "Know Thyself." An aspiring writer will figure out their own strengths and weaknesses, through trial and error. If they truly know themselves, they will subsequently make a good choice on whether they should give up writing or continue to work harder in pursuit of their dreams.
4. People generally work hard for their money. It is disgusting to see audiences waste their hard earned dough of watching utter crap produced from someone's bad screenplay.
Depending on the economy, there are X amount of dollars each year that investors are willing to pour into movies. Believe it or not, the ones that get made are (mostly) the best scripts that year. In the case that well-connected people get their bad films made, it's because there is a lack of good scripts, and the investors latch onto names with a good track record. It's all about dollars and cents.
If you think it's disgusting that people waste money on bad movies made from bad screenplays, the solution is simple.
Write a good screenplay.
)
) But seriously, I believe you have experience and insight to contribute. Everyone here has seen movies and television so has something to contribute, even new writers.
