293 | The Wild World Of Verticals Feat. Shelby Farrell
With the industry in a contraction, writers are trying to figure out how to find steady work.
ENTER - VERTICALS!
Lorien is joined by writer and creator Shelby Farrell who has developed numerous features and verticals. She offers a premium program, Flipping The Screen, teaching writers to write for the new medium.
Shelby walks through the pros and cons of the space as well as the keys to writing a successful version of one.
Looking for more support on your writing journey? Join Meg and Lorien inside TSL Workshops.
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For more information on Flipping The Screen and to sign up for the workshops, email flippingthescreen@gmail.com
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The Screenwriting Life is produced and edited by Alex Alcheh.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Lorien: Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Lorien McKenna, and today we're gonna be talking about what a lot of people in the industry are a bit skeptical of, curious about, and probably don't know a lot about, vertical micro dramas. And our guest today is Shelby Farrell. Shelby is a screenwriter from Memphis, Tennessee with over 10 years of storytelling experience spanning, several formats.
After graduating from the American Film Institute with an MFA in screenwriting her first film, Netflix’s. Deidra & Laney Rob a Train premiered at Sundance in 2017. Her skills as a writer, director, and producer can also be seen in the short films, Hit it and Quit It, starring Mia McKenna-Bruce and Her Body, which she collaborated on with her husband, Venezuelan writer-director, Juan Avella.
While building a career developing features in television for Netflix, Sony, Lifetime, Fabula, and many others, she continuously experimented with other formats. She wrote for mobile games, numerous shorts, developed a vertical series for SNAP originals, and recently developed several vertical projects in the emerging micro drama market.
Now she's using her array of experience to teach other writers how to bridge the gap between traditional film and television writing and the vertical space through her program, Flipping the Screen. Right now, the industry isn’t at the sort of major inflection point. Writing jobs are becoming more and more scarce and verticals seem to be a potential solve for those looking for work, and I think this is a very important conversation that I'm really excited to have.
Shelby, welcome to the show.
Shelby: Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you.
Lorien: Oh, good.
Shelby: Yeah, and I was survived till 25 and now reinvent 26 and whatever catch phrase we're gonna come up with next year for this ever shifting industry.
Lorien: Yes. It's super fun, right?
Shelby: Yeah, it's great. Never having a, well, let me tell you, when I started, when I got out of my MFA, like immediately.
I started getting work and then it was like, fire your agent, and then it was COVID, and then it was strike, and then it was contraction. I've never known a normal industry, so when people say contraction, I'm like, ah, that's just the flavor this year.
Lorien: Right, and even before then. It was, I sell a pilot. It doesn't go to series.
It's the wrong time. It's too soon, it's too late. There are other shows like it or, yeah, it's, I don't think it's been stable for a very long time, but I did get to experience a little bit of like, oh, you could pitch traditionally, right? I wasn't doing pitch decks or any of that. I think for one show I sold, I brought like, an eight by 10 color of Michael B. Jordan.
And I was like, he'll be in it. And they're like, sold. That was my, that was-
Shelby: Now you would have to bring him himself Yes. Into the room attached.
Lorien: Yes.
Shelby: And they would still be like, let me run this up the flagpole.
Lorien: Yes. Yeah. So that was my big, I'm lo-fi, I got to be lo-fi. So that was fun.
Shelby: I know. Now we all have to be graphic designers.
Lorien: I don't do pitch deck. I can't, I'm just gonna bring that picture of Michael B. Jordan, wherever I go now. I'm just gonna say. Here's my pitch deck. It's Michael B. Jordan.
Shelby: Sold.
Lorien: All right, so before we dive into talking about verticals, vertical micro dramas. We do Adventures in Screenwriting, which is, how was your week?
I'll start. So my week has been mostly at my daughter's school. She's in eighth grade. They're doing a production of Frozen, the whole production, not the teen version. And I was like, “I'll volunteer for costumes backstage.” So I've been going every day this week. It's at from like 2:00 to 8:30 and it's great.
But, like I love hanging out with the moms and dads backstage and helping all the girls and getting to know all the girls. It's from fifth grade to eighth grade and all the many costume changes, but it is exhausting. Like I get home and I'm like everybody to bed, I gotta go to sleep. So I'm working, I have a deadline and I'm like trying to cram in as many hours as I can in the morning.
I don't know how teachers and school administrators and all the people who work at schools function when they get home from school. It's so much like, and I'm used to working alone too, so it's different, but. Wow. It's a lot.
Shelby: It is a job that is overstimulating all the time. Like I compare working in schools to like working in an ER.
If you leave people screaming in the background all the time, that must, like that must be where you're at. And most of us send our kids to school to have a break from that.
Lorien: Right. I actually love it, but I'm glad I've only done it this once. I've learned a lot.
Shelby: My week has been fairly tiring. I feel like I side quest too hard at times.
I think you know this. Where it's just like, how many jobs am I supposed to have at any given time in this industry? Because I am, you know, talking to different vertical companies, I'm also running this vertical class, and I also teach at the New York Film Academy. And then I have my own writing projects that I expect to fit in there at the same time as being the mom to a 2 and a 5-year-old.
So I just, it's just one of those weeks where I wanna clone myself. I just need like some extra Shelbys running around.
Lorien: Yeah. Is it that we wanna clone ourselves or is it that we just wanna get into bed and pull the covers up over our heads?
Shelby: I want, or maybe if I just have the like gonads to say I quit to a few different projects and say, “Hey, I don't wanna do this.”
But the thing is, I do wanna do all of it. I wanna do all of it. These are all things that I'm like, “Oh, I wanna do.” I just need more hours and less. Sleep and, but also I want the sleep and I want to sit on my couch and eat chips and watch tv.
Lorien: Yes. And what I've realized about how busy I am this week, right?
I get up, I am, I'm talking to my husband. I'm trying to remember to eat and do my work, and then go to the school and stay present and alert and awake, is that I could be doing a lot more than I'm actually doing. Like I, 'cause I'm doing a whole day, whereas when I'm not volunteering at the school and doing all that, I can waste some good time that I need to sort of reprioritize a little bit. I think is the lesson that I've learned from this week is that I do have the time.
I just have to repurpose my energy in the right places. But I do love being busy. I love going from like, and I have, actually I just remembered I have another deadline. Oops.
Shelby: Maybe your answer is to take your laptop to the school every day and just work there so that you feel like, feel that energy.
Lorien: Maybe it is cloning.
Shelby: The answer to all of this. Cloning. Yeah.
Lorien: All right. Let's talk about vertical micro drops. First of all, what are they?
Shelby: So verticals are essentially any media that is created to be watched. Mobile first vertical refers to you, put your phone vertically as you watch them. Or in the nine 16 aspect ratio, a lot of them are shot vertically specifically to be watched this way.
Some are shot horizontally and then cropped so that the editors make both versions of it. I was corrected that on that, and it was a class, I was saying verticals are anything filmed in the 19 6 9 16 aspect ratio? And someone was like no. They filmed their horizontally too. Certain companies do.
And they have really blown up in the last. Probably two years in the US with the influx of a bunch of companies that started out in China making these micro dramas. And I say the difference between a vertical and micro dramas. A vertical can be kind of any genre, whereas micro drama does pretty much indicate that they are these Chinese made articles that are originally based off of Chinese web novels.
So they are. Kind of like soap operas. They're high emotional impacts. They are character and emotion first and plot second, they move very fast. An episode of a vertical can be one to two minutes with about, you know, 50 to 70 episodes port per series that you're going to watch. And essentially, yeah, they are, that they're soap operas for your phone.
They're meant to be consumed. On the go Mobilely typically alone because you interact with your phone alone and they're very fast-paced, very emotional, and they give you that dopamine hit that you want every minute to two minutes. So that's what essentially they are. And if you've never seen these things, if you've never been scrolling through TikTok and gotten an ad for one of these, essentially download.
If you look up the entertainment apps on your phone right now, the top entertainment apps tend to be vertical apps right now. Real shorts, drama box, good shorts, like look at that category on your phone. It's no longer. Netflix is always number one. A lot of times one of these apps is number one, so you download it, look at a bunch of them, get sucked into my world.
Lorien: So, verticals are different than vertical micro dramas?
Shelby: I just make the distinction between the term vertical and micro drama because a lot of content that is not necessarily the dramatic soap opera type shows that we've been seeing is now starting to rise. People are starting to make comedies and reality, and I think we're gonna see a future with a lot more genres at play besides the traditional micro drama one.
So that's why I'm just like trying to split the terms. But often on deadline or Hollywood reporter, when you see them reporting about this industry, they'll use vertical and micro drama pretty much interchangeably.
Lorien: Yeah. So they, so in China, I've talked to you about this before I actually took your class, which I loved.
You're an amazing teacher. You're so patient and thoughtful and thorough. And I took your class because I was like, “well, what is it?” Because I keep seeing them like on Facebook and TikTok and I didn't know what they were. And it's like watching a pimple popping video. I can't, like, you can't stop.
Shelby: You can’t look away.
Lorien: And you get like a certain number of episodes for free and then it's like, “Hey, you have to…” You talked about it in your class, like they're gamified it.
Shelby: Yeah, they're gamified. The way you keep watching is either you have to buy coins, which is, you know, casino tactics that's essentially made to distract you from how much money you're actually spending on these things.
Or you have to watch an ad. A lot of the apps have aversion where you can watch almost the entire series or the entire series just by watching ads, and you get to watch a new episode that way. Or they will allow you to subscribe and the subscriptions are at times crazy expensive. It's like per week, $20 to subscribe to some of these apps.
Yeah. Or they have a yearly subscription which ends up being much cheaper and that's how they get you.
Lorien: When I first saw them, right. I was like “What even is this?” And what I've noticed over time, not subscribing or anything, just seeing them. 'Cause once you watch one on any social media, they now all of a sudden, like you watch a billion of, they keep showing up, right?
Like you buy one toilet seat and then all of a sudden they're like, “Hey, are you a collector? Here are 13,000 other toilet seats.” And you're like, “I'm good. I just needed the one.” They have, the production values have gotten better. I've noticed the acting has gotten better, the lighting, some of the sets are bigger, and so that's what I'm so curious about that, you know, and stuff like this.
Everyone's like, “Oh, poo poo.” Right? It's tricky, right? 'Cause it's non-union. Right, which we're just gonna be very honest about this, right? I don't think…
Shelby: Yeah, the majority of them are non-union. Some of them say they're talking to SAG right now. There's a lot of questionability about like with the budgets they're making them on, is union even possible from them?
A lot of the side letter say like, “Oh, yes, it is possible.” But you're also talking about producers who are working on razor thin margins and unions add an extra complication to that. So we're hoping more of them become union. But reality, some of them may never become union because the budgets are $150,000 to $250,000 per series. And a series is essentially a 90 page script that they shoot over this span of seven to eight days.
Lorien: So would you say it's similar to when reality TV showed up on the scene in terms of how it's perceived like, “Oh God.” Right? It's your guilty pleasure. It's no one really admits it and it's sort of the production values were shoestring budget, all of that?
Shelby: A hundred percent. Like I think there is similarity to be drawn there and the way that.
Everyone within, at least the Hollywood framework is like, “oh no, this is just to fill the gaps while we're in the contraction.” And then it starts to actually get fans and it starts to actually show that it can make money. And all of a sudden you're like, “Ope no.” And I think it's a, you can't put a genie back in the bottle type situation where once you have a dedicated viewer base for these and there is a very large dedicated viewer base for these, they're not gonna stop making them.
It's not gonna disappear once TV jobs come back.
Lorien: Right. And what I've noticed too is they go in these cycles. So they're the Chinese ones that are dubbed or they have subtitles, but you see the same story in a different package. So right now it's all women who've been like killed by a past lover and then they are reborn the day of the day they were like gonna, who they were gonna marry that day.
And then they get their revenge. But almost every single one that pops up is that particular storyline.
Shelby: So, the rebirth trope is a lot of fun. Verticals do. Within the companies and also across companies, work within the same tropes and genres that a lot of them come originally from these web novels because the web novels, if you think about the way they're written with very short, fast-paced chapters, it's very similar to how.
Vertical viewing works. And so they'll take tropes from web novels and basically if something is a hit on one app or platform, all of the other apps or platforms will be like, okay, time to promote our next like rebirth one. So I think right now, if you look at the top 20 ish vertical series for like last month, it was all like dark, CEO, billionaire.
So now every platform is like, okay, what's, what do we have next in the platform? For a pipeline for dark CO billionaire. So you have to look at what's hip. And the vertical world moves very fast. So if something was a hit six months ago, we don't want that. Forget that trash that can go up on YouTube.
Nobody's coming to the app for that anymore. I would say vertical series stays fresh for tops a couple months if it's like a mega, mega hit. And then. People are kind of moving on to the next thing, but you will see these tropes come back again. So rebirth might go out for a while and then it might come back or it might come back remixed with something else.
Like strong heroines are really big right now, so if you take a rebirth and mix it with a strong bam, and especially like you said, if you click on one on TikTok, they're not only gonna advertise you more verticals, they're gonna advertise you more of that vertical. The vertical that fits that pattern.
Lorien: Oh, like more rebirth? More rebirth. 'cause they're like, “Oh, you like it.”
Shelby: The estimates are that real short spends almost as much as they are making in revenue on advertising, for TikTok in these platforms. They're very, they cut multiple trailers per vertical. They're ab testing them to see, you know, pushing a certain trailer for one audience, a certain trailer for another audience, and then seeing which one gets the most clicks and going with that.
It's like a constant tech machine working behind the scenes to get these verticals in front of you and to constantly be drawing in the new viewers that they need to make this profitable. So the big question that I think the industry is going to have to ask in, you know, the next little bit is, “Is this actually profitable if you are spending that much to attract the viewers they need?”
Or is there a type of vertical coming up which is going to attract more, say, repeat viewers, people who come to the app and stay on the app and watch more than one series and can become a revenue stream without actually having to advertise more and more. We will see. We will see.
Lorien: We'll be right back.
Welcome back to the show.
Lorien: So how many of these companies are there that are making content in the us?
Shelby: So, I… I'm a member of one group that has a list of who tries to keep a list of the vertical apps. It is never completely up to date because every, like, there are apps launching constantly and it is over 200.
Wow. I would say the major players there are probably, you know. I could narrow it down to probably the 20 apps that you see their names coming up consistently. And they are consistently making product and there are. Quite a handful, like, I can't put an exact number on it. American Apps launching like either that have launched or are in the process of launching this year.
2026, we're gonna see an explosion of vertical apps, and a lot of these are going to be American run companies with American executives behind it. Making content specifically for the us because a lot of these companies came in originally from China. Some other places, like there's one from France, there's one from South Korea.
But they realized that America is where a big chunk of money is. So a lot of them are coming over here to try to get this market, which made a lot of people in Hollywood be like, ah, we gotta jump on this right now. So now we have all of these American apps starting up and they're gonna be launched and.
We're gonna see what happens, you know, some of them might never make it to launch. Some of them might launch and then like, you know, converge and eat each other. Like a Pacman situation. We might end up with, you know, one great big Fox, Sony, Disney, a b, c conglomerate app. Who knows what's gonna happen.
And a lot of. The studios are exploring the world at least. But Netflix is getting into verticals. They've already been working on producing some and acquired one, I think it's called Simon, and it's from France. It's an animated one that did, I haven't looked it up yet, so don't quote me on all of this, but yeah, they have some vertical content already.
Lifetime announced that one of their movies is gonna have a vertical companion. I don't know if they're gonna launch on the Lifetime app. That's, I don't, I have no clue where they're actually going to show that. And. Disney is exploring verticals. They put out some things on YouTube in conjunction with their Disney Channel movies.
Fox has a stake in my drama, which is run out of the Ukraine. Their production quality is actually really good. And this is something to, you know, when you said that the production quality in these has. Improved in just a year. It's not just the talent they're getting to work in the US on it, but also how the producers are getting more skilled and more versed at doing this.
You had a few production companies specializing in verticals a year ago who now, because a year in vertical land is a lot of work, have 50 verticals under their belt, so they know really what they're doing and how to run these sets.
Lorien: So who is the audience? Primarily?
Shelby: Primarily the current audience for verticals is women 35 to 50 in the middle of the country.
I always compare it to like, you know, growing up and your auntie always had a stack of romance novels on her bedside table. I worked at Barnes and Noble when I was a teenager and like, you know, those aunties come in and they buy a big stack of romance novels Friday night and like that's their weekend.
I always think of that is now the vertical audience and then I realize I'm that age now. I'm auntie. So yeah, essentially, and it's romance forward very almost like comfort food media. For essentially middle aged women. There are more apps trying to expand into different markets. In China, everybody watches verticals, and there are a lot more types of verticals than we have here.
They already have horrors, they have actions, they have animated verticals. Here we're really still in the romance geared towards women, and what people are trying to do is expand into the male market and a younger demographic as well.
Lorien: I've seen some of the animated ones and it's, it feels almost like they’re real time game engine where it's like maybe actors were doing it, but it's AI voices.
You can tell 'cause they all pronounce the words differently it seems like. Are they AI generated animation?
Shelby: I haven't watched many of the Chinese animated ones. I just kind of heard tale that they have, everything that you can imagine in vertical form is already launched in China. Essentially they're five years ahead of us.
But gen AI is something that almost every vertical company is playing around with. The big question is how do you make that profitable? So, I can't say if those animated ones you work, you saw were working with Gen AI, but there is definitely a push to figure out how to incorporate Gen AI into those so that you can make, you know, higher quality stuff in worlds that normally wouldn't be able to afford to ever shoot a vertical and make it profitable at the same time.
Lorien: What's interesting for me in terms of the, like, it's late, it's like everyone's in bed for me. I understand why it appeals to that demographic, right? When your family finally goes to bed, nobody needs you for anything. So you have that time when you can do whatever you want. You know? You've done all the stuff you wanna do around the house, you're in bed and it's like either like read or listen to an audio book or scroll on Instagram and the scrolling on Instagram has, it feels icky now.
I don't feel like the, I’m getting the dopa, it feels icky and I'm wasting time. And it's like the just blah. So if I find these, you know, and I just watch 'em until the… It says you have to pay. And then I'm like, “I don't wanna, I don't wanna, whatever.”
Shelby: So I get hooked in and watch the ads all the time.
Lorien: Yeah.
Shelby: In order to like, go a little further.
Lorien: But it's, they're so quick that it feels like, “Oh, I'm not wasting that much time and I'm, and I actually might be feeding my brain and I'm thinking about things.” When, you know, I… who knows, I'm super tired. I'm a little spacey, but just in terms of like the dis disassociation survival mode, you know, it's like 15 minutes later and then I'm like, “Okay, well I gotta go to bed now.”
But I understand why it's appealing to us and…
Shelby: Well, it's appealing in the same way any romance novel or romance movie or you know, other genres too, where you are going into it knowing what you're gonna get. When you sit down and you watch a romcom, you know that couples gonna end up together. What you're not watching for is like some surprising big artistic shock reveal.
You're watching for the couple to end up together and there are going to be some hows along the way that you don't know, and that's kind of. The most surprise you want, but you want your kiss moment. You want the couple to end up together. You want, you know them to have some fight in the middle type situation.
Exact same things with verticals like vertical viewers. Enter into a show knowing exactly what they want that show to be. They click on it because they already know I like billionaire romances or I like a good werewolf story and I essentially know how this is going to play out. But I would still like, you know, some interesting story.
Maybe a smidge of character development, a sexy protagonist male lead. Like just give me the stuff that's comforting. Yes. Right before bad. It is very much these traditional VER verticals are. Comfort free food viewing, much like a Hallmark movie or a lifetime movie or romances. A lot of writing that a, the traditional industry looks down on because they feel like it's cheap or easy, but at the same time, that has an important place for us.
I feel like it's necessary. It's the stuff we wanna consume after a long day, and it's extremely popular for that reason. And you can foo foo this all you want, I think… It's not gonna go away.
Lorien: Yeah. I do like it because I'm not, my story brain isn't activated in the same way as when I'm watching a traditional TV show and I'm trying to figure out who did it, what's gonna happen next.
Like, I can't, it's work sometimes to watch a movie or a TV show. This isn't work. This is like-
Shelby: Yeah. They specifically make it not work.
Lorien: Yeah.
Shelby: Like your dialogue has to be very clear and on point. You don't wanna confuse anyone. Your, the pace is so fast that the images have to tell a lot of the story for you.
And one of the biggest challenges to developing something for this field is that, yes, your viewer is right there on that phone, which has a million different and temptations. They could scroll away at any second that they lose them. So you're delivering information, you're delivering it very fast, and you're delivering it very clearly. Because the moment the viewer gets lost or confused, the thumb goes and they're gone.
Lorien: Yeah. What I've noticed is, and then I wanna talk about the craft and developing and how you put them together. I'll watch… I'll watch the ad for one, it's like eight episodes or something like that. And then it's like, you know, buy coins. I'm like, “No thanks.” And then I'll be scrolling, whatever. And then the same show comes up and it's a different trailer.
So you can, I can kind of put together a little bit more. And then another one comes up and I have to decide if I'm gonna watch the third one. Because I know if I watch the third one, I'm gonna be like, “All right, am I gonna do it?” Right? Because I know myself. But it's like the way they tease it together, even in your scroll it's very strategic.
Shelby: It is a very sophisticated algorithm.
Yes. Like you don't get how governments can control people through their TikTok stream-
Lorien: Through verticals.
Shelby: Because you have this little vertical app that knows exactly how to sell you this show. Don't give
Lorien: Don't give anyone any ideas, Shelby Shhh. No ideas.
Shelby: They already know.
Lorien: I know.
Shelby: You know yeah.
Lorien: All right, so let's talk about the craft. So it's 90 Minutes, which is a traditional movie length, right? So how is the structure of these in, when it's done, how is it similar to or different than traditional three act structure? Or five act structure?
Shelby: So the mistake, a lot of people coming from kind of traditional writing drops in Hollywood would think is like, “Oh, this is just a 90 minute movie divided up into one minute scenes or one minute episodes, and I just need to sprinkle in some clip favors into my existing script.”
But no, there's actually a very different structure with these. Verticals are all arranged around a core expectation, which for more traditional writers is the equivalent of what is the dramatic question of your story. But definitely make sure that your core expectation is embedded in a deeply felt emotion. Whether that is a form of dramatic irony.
Will he realize that it's his baby or not? Will they realize that she is actually the crown princess of Romania or something like that? Dramatic irony works really well. Shame and humiliation work really well.
Lorien: There's a lot of slapping. A lot of slapping.
Shelby: Currently, verticals are trying to get away from that because there has been some fan research done to say that American audience at least don't want as many slaps.
They don't want their protagonist to be sexually assaulted-
Lorien: No.
Shelby: As much so. We are attempting to pull away from that a little bit. But what they do find is shock, shame, anger, or even just thinking your protagonist is really really dumb. All of these negative emotions are actually very effective hooks to keep your viewers watching. And that will feed into whatever your core expectation is.
And then after that, verticals work on a kind of a loop or a cycle system where instead of three acts, you'll have probably about five cycles within the vertical, where each one is building your emotions about to answer that core expectation, and then pulling back. And they'll do that about five times throughout the vertical before at the end, it's finally resolved.
We finally, he finally finds his baby. They finally find out she's the princess.
Lorien: You get to the midpoint, the stakes raise, but then you pull the, you just go back to act one and back to act one, but in a different sort of plot.
Shelby: A little bit.
Lorien: Right?
Shelby: Yeah, a little bit like you, you almost answer the question posed by your core expectation, and then you're like “Wait, we're gonna hold back on that.”
If, if you're watching a romance vertical and the core expectation is, “Will they, won't they?” It's like, are they gonna get together? Like, I think that's the most understandable for traditional writers. So, each one is a little bit… They're almost gonna connect. No. Almost gonna connect. No. Almost gonna connect. No.
And your cycles do, even though there's five of them, they do, they should escalate the plot a bit. Oftentimes you will see verticals that feel very repetitive because there's not a plot that's escalating throughout them. Like I said, verticals are character and emotion driven first and plot second. So some of…
Lorien: What was that? What was that? They have no plot. Did you whisper that?
Shelby: They don't have a plot. They don't have a plot. You could write a vertical without a plot. This is something I should. Screen to the rooftops to American companies, “Plot come second!”
Lorien: Which is so hard because that is the thing that is hammered into screenwriters. What does your main character want?
What is the plot goal? Like, you gotta have narrative drive. Agency.
Shelby: The plot is what drives their emotional journey. Like, I get it I teach traditional screenwriting at NYHA too, and I'm always like, okay, whatever the plot is, has to be the thing that forces your character on this emotional journey. Like Moana would've never learned to be herself if she wasn't forced to do all of that.
Wipe that away from verticals. Okay. There is a bit of plot, it should escalate throughout, but really you're asking that core expectation That core dramatic question each time, and it's escalating just enough. Usually the biggest plot verticals will get is usually there's a kidnapping towards the end.
We love a good kidnapping where the hero has to come in and rescue her, or she has to rescue the hero. You don't know. And then, you get the answer. They can be together. It's his baby. She's the princess.
Lorien: Happily ever after.
Shelby: However, you're answering the question happily ever after. Again, you knew how it was gonna end.
You just didn't know all of the ways we were gonna get here.
Lorien: But there is craft in it and what I've heard people saying is, well, it's, you're asking a writer or someone who's developing the content to basically write a movie, like you said, and break it up into tiny bits.
But in creating a show, how are you actually, or developing it, How are you actually approaching it?
Shelby: So you're approaching it again, not as, not within movie structure. You're not gonna define three acts. You're not gonna define, you're gonna define a character's want and need, or at least I do when I start to think about these things. But you're not gonna think about like, okay, what's our big escalating, beats at like page 75, and you know what's my low point? You're gonna more craft those in after you've already defined what this core expectation is and what genre and tropes that you're working in. I think that's one of the most important things for non vertical writers to learn about when they come over, is just like, what are the worlds that these companies want to set these stories in?
So you're defining your genre, your tropes, your core expectation. And after that, you craft cycles that continue to test that core expectation, that relationship between your characters. Where in one character, both characters cannot get what they want without, but heads, even if they do want to be together.
It's, it is different. And I think the hardest thing for. One of the hardest things I've seen for people coming from our side of writing to step back from is like, let's stop trying to make the plot so big. Because one, these are also shot on very limited budgets. So no, you cannot have that third act explosion.
No, you can't even have more than four locations. No, you can't have that many speaking characters. You can have a banquet scene, but all the background people are gonna be crew people who just weren't busy at the moment.
Lorien: And there's like five of them.
Shelby: Yes, there's five of them. A lot of banquets that only have five people in.
The number of banquets people go to in verticals is just like, “Oh my gosh, if I went to this many banquets in real life, I would never have to cook at home.”
Lorien: Right? But they never eat anything.
Shelby: It sounds really nice.
Lorien: There's no food at the banquets. They never eat anything.
Shelby: There's no food at the banquets.
The plates are clean if they're at all. It's often just an empty table. Maybe they'll put a flower in the middle, but production quality's going up.
Lorien: Yes, definitely. And I see the same actresses. It's almost like how when I, 'cause you know, I'm not, I've been very vocal. I love Hallmark movies for what they offer.
That sort of like mashed potatoes. Like I know what I'm gonna get it. There's a rhythm to it. But I really have actresses or actors that I like. And it's the same thing now with vertical dramas. You know, when I watch the first 8 episodes, I'll be like, oh, I recognize her. I like her. She can act.
Shelby: Yes. Yes.
Vertical famous actors and actresses. I won't say their rates are as high as they could get in like a regular SAG production, but they're even paid based on, “Hey, this is a very popular person.” They can end up being booked solid, making a vertical a month, all year long. And because a lot of these verticals, a lot of them are filmed in LA, a lot of them also will film a lot around the globe.
They're flying these actors out to Istanbul and Ukraine and you know, wherever else they're filming at. But I think there's some being filmed in London, Canada, definitely. They will fly an actor out if it is someone that people will click for.
Lorien: We will be right back.
Welcome back to the show.
Lorien: It's interesting. I'm curious about it. It's exciting. They're everywhere, but what? What are the, without just poopooing it because it's cheap and new and you know, for women, right? The easy write offs. What else is going on in this world that is actually a concern?
Shelby: I would say because of the budget, you're not getting as quality protections on set.
I do hear a lot about, you know, especially at first when actors kind of came into this field and realized how many, like slaps and things like that. Like it was, honestly, you're working on a script that. Functions and hooks people via abuse. A lot of actors, you know, felt uncomfortable with that. A lot of writers feel uncomfortable with that.
And hopefully some of these new companies are peeling away from that. Also, the rates were just too low to fit within the traditional Hollywood system right now. Like there's no point in agents and managers really getting involved unless you're one of these big name actors who's booked constantly because how can you take 10% off of your clients, you know?
$6,000 check for writing a script. And there's a question of same for most traditional producers as well. Like really the producers who are working in this field are people who have set up vertical production companies, have specific deals set up with the apps, and are producing multiple at any time.
Like they'll have, you know, five or six shooting in a month. Wow. In order to make their overhead, because it's, you're working on such razor thin budgets that it's not profitable for production companies to make these unless you can make them at volume. So I think at some point it has to recalibrate.
How like we have to say like, Hey, we know this is a form people want. We have this many million viewers. We know people are willing to pay a decent amount for them because verticals, the US market makes up 80% of the revenue stream for verticals despite being 20% of their viewership. So. It is worth something here.
How do we make that work within our Hollywood ecosystem? And also how do we catch more viewers, right? Because we have a lot of viewers like you who will watch up into the paywall. How do we create a system where you don't have that paywall kind of, barrier. For viewers, I think we're gonna see more ad supported content.
Also, brand partnerships have started to become a thing in verticals. I think I showed during my class to you that Native. The deodorant people funded an entire vertical.
Lorien: I think the thing about it is because I know what's gonna happen because I know I don't feel like I need to see the whole thing.
Right? And I have watched one, I have watched one in entirety and what I notice is that, I don't know, 'cause of the cycles. Right. Because it, it moves locations and moves a little-
Shelby: It’s gonna essentially repeat the same situation-
Lorien: Yeah.
Shelby: Yeah. In a different location or with a different antagonist.
Lorien: Well, if they want, you know, I can come in for a focus group, honestly.
Shelby: Yes.
Lorien: Kidding.
Shelby: How do we keep Lorien watching?
Lorien: Yes. Yes.
Shelby: Well, as a creator of course, I wanna see also more story changes like, and I think that is happening. A lot of these American companies, or even companies that are not American, but are realizing that there's more of an audience to be caught there, are looking to come in and say, Hey, let's build off of this Chinese playbook that's already working.
Like, let's take what's, you know, working about these and just turn up the quality of story a little bit. Like give them something a little bit more unexpected, give them more of a character arc, give them maybe more interesting plot beats and see if we draw in a different audience than these other apps have.
Like without completely throwing out the audience that's already there. Like these are still built on the tropes that we know are gonna work. But just, you know, elevating the forum just a little bit because that's what I think. That's how I think you can do it. There are some companies that are also like, oh, we're gonna completely tear up the playbook and make our own thing.
And it's just like, that's really great. Where are your viewers gonna come from? Because you already have these people primed to watch them. So I'm, I am looking for like, I think these will only get better. Like if you look at the early days of tv, even people thought that was a less than medium that was not worth writing for and that everything was cheap.
And then all of a sudden we started to get the prestige dramas and then it became everybody wanted to write for TV and wanted to develop for tv. So. I say this like we're writers. Everything you come to as a writer, you are going to, even if you know it's not supposed to be particularly good, you're gonna try to make it better.
You're gonna use your creative brain. You're gonna write a story you would want to see. So I think as more people get involved, as there are more voices in this space, we'll also see more variety. I know a lot of people who are doing really interesting things with horror and thrillers in this space, so that's something to really look forward to because this, I feel like the vertical structure.
Will translate to horror very well. But it's just how do we tell the horror viewers where to go to get their horror verticals.
Lorien: Right. So you develop an idea, and a writer is writing it. How long do they have to write these 90 episodes?
Shelby: For a typical vertical app? So I'm gonna say they're doing like the very traditional Chinese pattern of things, and working along that timeline.
A writer would turn around a script in about a month. And that is from either getting the outline from the producers and working off of that outline to sometimes even completely outlining themselves from just a log line they've gotten. They'll do outline stage and then, you know, maybe the first 10 episodes up until the paywall, because that's the part that they really.
These apps take seriously up until the paywall is what hooks people to actually pay for it or not. So that's very important. After the paywall, they pay significantly less attention. So, then they'll do, so they'll do a chunk up until the paywall, get a lot of notes on that. Do the entire script, get probably a fewer notes on that, and probably a rewrite all within a month's time.
The apps are reading them over the weekend, turning around notes very quickly, and for what they're paying for the script, which on the low end starts about $5,000 and can go be negotiated up. From there, depending on how seasoned the vertical writer is, that's about all the time that a writer can afford to dedicate to it.
So one of the things I would love to see in this space is one WGA contracts and two better paper writers so that they can spend more time actually doing these rewrites and developments, and then turn around those better scripts. Because it's kind of the same as production when you only have eight days to shoot, what you get is what you get.
When you only have a month to develop and write an entire script, what you get is what you get. And so quality really does come with time and time costs money.
Lorien: And if the WGA can get involved, if these companies would even sign the new media side letter, you can get your P and H.
Shelby: Mm-hmm. Yes.
Lorien: You can stack up money for your health insurance. Like, it, it seems like an opportunity. I know things are far more tricky. I am not on the WGA board. I don't know all the things that they talk about and do, but like-
Shelby: Yeah. Everyone's debating it all the time.
Lorien: Yeah.
Shelby: I would say on the WGA side, the new media side letter exists.
Vertical companies should know it's not that much more expensive to get a WGA writer. You just have to make that P and H contribution, which honestly just writers will accept if you take it out of the payment. Just, you know, pay your writers 20% less if that 20% is going to P and H writers would be happy for it.
Also offer existing vertical writers away into the guild because wouldn't it be great if there were more working members of the guild right now? We would love that. And for the guild side of it, don't count on these companies to come to you begging to use your writers, because one, they really do believe that they have a completely different structure that guild writers, you know, need level one training on.
And so they're not like begging to use your writers. You have to like find a way to come to them and say, “Hey, let's make this work” So both sides have to want this. And that's where I'm just like, do they want it? Please? Something happened.
Lorien: So, say you're a writer who's non-union and you're like, “I wanna try this out.”
How does someone like someone listening who's like, “Well, I'm non-union. I would love to write professionally in any capacity.” Which means getting paid for it. Right?
Shelby: This is great training. Yeah. This is great training. You write so much, so fast.
Lorien: How do you start? Where do you go? What do you actually have to have?
How do you get in touch with somebody? Right? What are the gatekeepers of it?
Shelby: Number one thing to do is become versed in this world. They have a lot of writers the major apps will tell you they have a lot of writers approaching them, union and not union saying, Hey, I wanna work in this. And they've never watched a vertical.
They don't have any vertical samples. They just assume, Hey, I'm a writer and your stuff is this quality, so you should just take me. No, this is actually. Fairly competitive field. What you wanna do is you wanna watch a lot of verticals, watch a lot of the top verticals do take the medium seriously, watch a lot of them, do breakdowns of them, like sit down at your computer and as you're watching them, write just a sentence for what's happening in each episode.
And you will see the cycles sub emerge. You will see what structure they're following and then. You practice writing, you take the breakdown you did. Look at your tropes and genre list, you know, just flip through the app. See like, oh, I like billionaires, I like hockey. I like, let me see what I can do. Apply that to your outline and write at least up until the paywall of a sample and then you can go out.
And where vertical companies really live not exclusively, but the most accessible ones is on LinkedIn. Because they're at the end of the day tech companies they love LinkedIn. You can start looking up the vertical companies. They are, sometimes they'll have job postings for contractors.
Sometimes you can find out who works for which company they are fringe, those peoples start conversations. There are also now vertical mixers happening around town all the time. I never go to them because I have two little kids at home and bedtimes at 7:00, but meet people in this space. That's my other advice.
It's very like traditional Hollywood advice of like learn the craft network your way in. And the only difference is instead of getting an agent and manager that specializes in this, 'cause like we set, the rates are too low for reps. You go to LinkedIn and you are your own manager.
Lorien: And I think it's important to say, and I really believe this, that shame doesn't have a place in this Writing space.
That writing and getting paid for it is the best because you're a professional writer. And I mean, since before I moved to Hollywood way in the back, I've always wanted to write a Hallmark movie. And you know, this is when I was like a playwright and in the theater and doing all the fancy intellectual stuff, and it was like, “Oh no. I know their value.”
They saved my life when I had a newborn, you know. Like napping, she’s, napping, I'm drinking a glass of wine and watching a Hallmark movie. And like, just like that was my 20 minutes. You know? So, I really think that we need to take that out of all these conversations.
Write a horror movie. Write a vertical. Write commercials. Write re for reality tv. Do the things that you're gonna learn something because I think that there is something valuable in every opportunity we have. You're working with a producer, you get to see how actors execute your words. You… I think it's hustle, do things.
The more people, you know, the more times you put yourself out there. And, you know, I, you know, Shonda Rhimes wrote, you know, Prin… what is it with the Anne Hathaway?
Shelby: Princess Diaries,
Lorien: She wrote Princess Diaries. She also wrote Crossroads, the Britney Spears Murray movie, Britney Spears movie. Right?
Shelby: That's one of my favorites. Shonda Res. Right. Crossroads. I do work in vertical.
Lorien: Right? Like,
Shelby: There's no shame at any day. You are a working writer. You have won.
Lorien: Yes. Yes.
Shelby: You have won.
Lorien: Yes. And, you know, be, and I, especially if you're, I mean, for me it's tricky, right? With the WGA of it. So I don't wanna, be… I don't know how to quite navigate that.
Right? I'm curious about this world and I think it's amazing. It's a new format. I wish that it was an opportunity that more WGA writers, especially women, so many of us are out of work right now.
Shelby: So what I'm seeing is that there are a few companies starting who are willing to do WGA contracts, and that is coming from having executives who have done it before in the past.
Like if you have an American executive who's worked with a side letter in the past, it's less intimidating to them versus these big Chinese companies who think that if they give any one person on set a union contract, it's going to blow up their entire model. I think there's, you know, people here who know that it won't.
And so am I gonna say that they're all gonna go WGA? No, but we will see some that go WGA for sure. And we have seen that already. There have been them. You have to be, you're not gonna find those jobs on LinkedIn. You have to be a little more connected into the ecosphere. But I think it's coming. And I also think that this medium is becoming big enough that traditional spaces are also looking on how to do that.
And at the end of the day, having a writer who is both WGA and trained and versed in the vocabulary of this medium is just, it's gonna be what they need. They're gonna want, you know, the professional writer they're used to working with.
Someone who can hold their hand and also say like, “I also know what this is. I got you boss.”
Lorien: Thank you. This has been great. I've learned a ton. And you're so knowledgeable and you know, and you're lovely to talk to. So we have four questions we ask at the end of every show. So are you ready?
Shelby: Okay.
Lorien: Okay.
Shelby: Yes.
Lorien: What brings you the most joy when it comes to your writing?
Shelby: I think the actual process of writing itself relieve so much of my depression and anxiety,
Everything else related to writing, like any email I have to send any deals I have to, like, anytime I have to talk to a producer it is just the weeds. But when I sit down and I am just thinking of funny dialogue and funny, like moments that happen, I feel my brain a lot and ease.
And so yeah, I would say psycho psychological medicine. Maybe?
Lorien: Yeah. I love it. So it's your psych med. I got it.
Shelby: It's my psych meds. It is.
Lorien: And what pisses you off about writing?
Shelby: Literally everything else. The fact that we have to sell our writing, the fact that we have to sell our writing to people who don't write.
Oh, that's the worst. That's the worst,
Lorien: Right? But then if you sell it to someone who does write, you run the risk of a shadow artist underwriting and rewriting you. Right?
Shelby: This is true too.
Lorien:There are brilliant executives who know what they're doing and producers, but I hear what you're saying that like there is a, you get that note, well just here are the notes, but it shouldn't be too big.
It shouldn't take you that long. And you're like, well, that's-
Shelby: It shouldn't take too that long.
Lorien: That pulls a thread.
Shelby: “Like, I know what I want here, but I don't really know what I want here, so just figure it out for me.”
Lorien: Yeah, you're the writer.
Shelby: You can do it. And so it's like you're getting a note.
That's not a note. Yeah. You know, and a lot of times it's how you vibe with the executive. Like either you're speaking the same language or you're like just totally off, but you still wanna make the deal work. You still wanna like figure out something to do. So you're just like trying to twist your style into their style.
That is always horrible and awkward.
Lorien: Okay. So if you could have coffee with your younger self, what advice would you give her?
Shelby: Keep going. No advice. Like no advice, because everything that's happened in our career, our life has been very unexpected. And it's all about how you respond to it in the moment and you can't attempt to control it.
That's the thing. I know my younger self would wanna control it and she can't.
Lorien: Well, she thinks there's an answer, right? There's a solution.
Shelby: Yeah. She think there's an answer. There's not an answer. I would say just use the writing as your meds. Use the writing to make yourself happy and whenever you're too down, just try to go brush it off.
Lorien: And also meds if you actually need it.
Shelby: And meds. Meds too. Yeah. Maybe I would tell her that. I would be like, you know what? Get on those meds a little sooner than you did. You don't need to wait that long.
Lorien: Yeah.
Shelby: To be functional.
Lorien: Okay. Last question. What's your proudest career moment to date?
Shelby: I had a movie premiere at Sundance and I thought that was the biggest thing ever.
But now looking back, I think just the fact that I am still here after COVID and strikes and every single thing that has happened since then is actually the thing I should be proudest of. Like there's the moment and then there's surviving, and ultimately surviving is a lot harder. Because if I look back at my film school and I look who's not working in the industry anymore or who's, you know, working, but you know, they're having to do so many other things. The fact that I'm still here is I think what we all should be most proud of.
Lorien: I love that. That's great. Surviving
Shelby: Surviving. Yes.
Lorien: Well, thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. I have a lot of fun talking to you and yeah, watch verticals and…
Shelby: Yeah.
Lorien: You can hate watch them too just to learn, right?
Shelby: You can hate watch them. Hate watching them is one of the joys of watching them.
Like I said, the can these characters be so stupid that he doesn't realize that's his wife is a genre. It's a genre. And if you wanna know more about this, you can also take my class. I do an entire class where I just babble at you about verticals in my Southern way.
Lorien: You're not babbling. It's incredibly organized with lots of material that you share.
It was, I felt like, “Oh, I actually got so much out of it.” And yeah. Well, I love taking classes, but yours is, it was really great. It was really great.
Shelby: Thank you. Thank you so much. I organize it for, if you are coming in with absolutely no knowledge of what a vertical is, but you wanna know, or if you're like, this is, you know, potentially my next pivot, I wanna know how to write them.
I tell you that stuff too. And I spill all the dirty secrets I know. And I just can't, you know, shut up. So it's a fun time.
Lorien: And what's the name of your company that you do it under?
Shelby: I call it Flipping the Screen. We're going to run another session on April 12th, and then I'm probably gonna be running it about once a month.
From here until I get bored. And side quest, another thing.
Lorien: Well, thank you so much.
Shelby: Thank you.
Lorien: Thank you so much to Shelby for joining me today to talk about verticals. And if you're interested in her class, Intro to Vertical Scripts, she'll be hosting two on April 12th and May 3rd through her company Flipping the Screen. And if you're interested, you can email her at flippingthescreen@gmail.com.
The Screenwriting Life is produced and edited by Alex Alcheh. For more support, find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and you can also head over to thescreenwritinglife.com to learn more about TSL workshops, where we have a growing library of prerecorded workshops covering everything from core craft like character want, and outlining a feature, to the business side of writing, including how to navigate the elusive general meeting.
We also host two live Zooms each month where you can talk with me and Meg about what projects you're working on. The link to sign up is in the episode description, and if you have any questions, you can always reach out to thescreenwriting life@gmail.com. Thank you for listening, and remember, you are not alone and keep writing.
