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Culture.I’m Albanian ethnically; I live and work in London and have done reasonably well for myself at 27. I visited Albania many times to see family. I have spent the majority of my adult life contemplating this question. A lot of people will give you specific reasons for it like ‘corruption’ or ‘emigration’ or ‘crime’ or whatever. These are all true but they are only symptoms of the reason. The reason is actually culture. We have a degeneration in culture which makes it incapable of producing a first-world economy. BUT, that is changing quickly and will be fixed to some extent once the communist generation dies off. Allow me to explain.THE COMMUNIST ERAAlbania is a former Communist country. Communism there only ended in 1991. Prior to that, it was under the most extreme communist regime in Europe for 40 years. So an entire generation was raised under it.The communists were led by Albanians who had seen the world - Enver Hoxha lived in Paris, and Mehmet Shehu fought for the Republicans in Spain… they were well travelled, sophisticated men who knew how to dismantle a culture 4,000 years in the making. They systematically killed and destroyed the upper land owning class, the professional class, the clergy and the intellectual class so there would be no competition to their vision of hell. They exterminated them entirely, but that is not the tragedy because though a man may lose his life, his soul lives in the words and wisdom he leaves behind. Hoxha and Shehu knew this, so they banned most Albanian literature that wasn't praise for the party. I’m not kidding - every literary book/poem etc had to at least implicitly praise the Party and obedience to the Party and leader to stand a chance at being published. Most of the population was not literate, so they did not object because they did not know what was being taken away from posterity.Albanian poetry (and even culture) pre-communist times was really advanced - I sometimes read some of the works of Fishta and I also read Shakespeare in English. Trust me when I say this, Fishta’s epic poems are equal if not better. And the communists banned his works. There’s many more examples of the communists’ destruction of Albanian culture but the gist of it is they destroyed it and reformed it as just another branch of propaganda for the party and distorting reality so that it constantly praised the Party.They also collectivised the economy and all property so that any semblance of competence and entrepreneurship that existed before (which was a lot by the way - Albanians were known to be highly renowned traders in the Balkans having benefited from centuries of trade with the Italian city states, the Byzanines and later the Ottomans) was systematically destroyed both physically (with executions) but also culturally - to have been a go-getter/ wealthy/ capable person or family was a mark of ‘bourgeoisie’. The communists co-opted some elements of the culture like family ‘honour’ and perverted it so that the communist families were made into the local honourable families whereas the children of previous entrepreneurs (traders/merchants etc) were considered ‘kulaks’. Kulaks were basically forbidden from doing anything worthwhile - they couldn't go on to higher education or become anything but the lowest shittiest job the government had - usually a farm worker doing the dirty work. They were also socially ostracised so that to marry a kulak was unthinkable. That was the fate of the entrepreneurial families and their values. They were replaced in the high esteem of the general population by communist functionaries - to aspire pre-communism was to seek to become a tradesman, craftsman, writer etc… to aspire during communism was to seek to become a communist functionary, a bureaucrat. Even today, to work for the state is one of the most sought after career paths in Albania.In addition, when the Party took people’s lands and property, anybody who had the balls to speak out against it was also killed, imprisoned and/or made into a kulak. Not just that - my dad recalls as a very young child when the Party (having already taken their land) decreed that their livestock would also be collectivized and the farmers had to take their cows signing and dancing to the collective farm… if you did not show joy during the procession of handing over the last of your wealth, you were deemed a ‘reactionary’ and could be imprisoned or interned to concentration camps deep into the mountains. He tells me his mum wept when they lost their livestock because she knew that milk, cheese and meat were now a rarity (issued by ration, heavily watered down, only). Think about that.Anyway, the result was the systematic destruction of those who carried our entrepreneurial spirit, our cultural spirit, our ferocity of heart that kept the Albanians so fiercely independent for centuries. In the end, what was left was a two tier society, the workers (mostly people (as in more than 90%) who lived and worked on collective farms , depots and factories with little prospect of ever being anything more than a farm labourer, until death) and the Party.There was no point in working hard, or planning to save money or starting a business because it was (1) culturally degenerate so people even stopped thinking about it (2) not do-able. The best you could hope for was to be a member of the Party and get a cushy job managing some sort of state-run enterprise, usually a collective farm or bakery or some nonsense. This went on for 4 decades and got worse every year. Entire generations were raised in this... The party even issued food rations so that you couldn't buy what you wanted or eat what you wanted - you had a food ration and that was it. For decades. Entire generations grew up in this reality. Free thought was non-existent.The Party was always right, no matter how bad things got. The Dictatorship of The People they called it. Also, there was nearly constant wartime propaganda about ‘the enemy of the people’ which was always looking to invade etc. So more than 20% of the country’s economic output went to war production - building bunkers, buying expensive Soviet and then Chinese weapons. Everybody — I mean everybody — had to train for military service, such that even my mum as a teenager was trained as a light machine gun section leader. Constant paranoia. Foreign radio and TV were also illegal. Complete and total isolation for decades. It resembled North Korea. The Party also taught kids to spy on their own parents and turn people in. They provided extra rations to people who would spy on their neighbours, so that every village had dozens of informants who turned people in for ideological offenses, such as complaining about the bread or rations the Party provided, etc. As a result, there was a complete breakdown in social trust: Nobody could be trusted. Even your neighbour could condemn you - it created the most vicious form of suspicion about your neighbours and family so that people were incapable of organising outside of the Party. No matter how bad things got, people couldn't organise. The odd person would occasionally go insane and say or do something like shout about having sawdust in the bread ration, and they would be informed on and disappear. Their family would be interned in labour camps located in the mountains. Eventually, those in the Party made sure their own family members were in the Party also so that a weird new caste developed of inner Party members who ran everything for their own benefit. This continued for four decades. We endured a viscous state who not only took out lives, our property but the most scared thing any Albanian possess - our honour and culture.DEMOCRACYIn the 1990’s the Communist government came crashing down with the jubilations of the people - but the Communist culture that had developed under it did not. Instead, the culture persisted. Even in the 1990’s, to be a ‘kulak’ was a mark of shame in much of the country. To be a trader was still seen as suspicious, almost dirty, and something done by the dodgy dishonourable types. ‘Good families’ didn't go into that. There was also the question of dividing the land again after decades of collective ownership - few people recalled where the land boundaries were, and what’s worse, the government of students decided to pass a law splitting the land equally amongst the people with no regard for which family had owned it pre-communism… and who gets what land would be decided by some ‘commissions’. Naturally, these commissions opted to give the best land to whoever could pay decent bakshish or their own friends and family… A lot of people were not happy and they seethed until 1997 (the year of the calamity)… There was also extreme poverty - I mean like people going hungry and malnourishment in the 1990’s, in a European country - when the government rations stopped coming, a lot of people didn’t know where to eat and they had no jobs as many government run entities simply closed…So, to recap, Albania came out of communism with extreme poverty, hunger, no education (except basic arithmetic and party propaganda), no levels of social trust or social capital, and with the apparatus of a former police state with a Cult of Personality of the former leader. The population was also young - more than 70% of people were below 40 years of age, because the Communists hadn’t allowed birth control. My paternal grandma had had 12 children, my maternal grandma had had 9 and that was the norm. To top it off, the ones who drove the fight against the Communists were the students… and when communism fell, they largely went into government. Students, many in their 20’s were running the country during the decade after Communism fell… imagine that. I mean, really think about it. And they were socialist students to boot!The country was a mess, badly overpopulated, with little culture or entrepreneurial spirit and being run by students educated in socialist universities who literally got into fistfights in parliament and even shot each other now and again, in parliament. Meanwhile, just across the border, the collapse of Yugoslavia was raging with full blown war and genocide. All the ‘socialist workers’, being exposed to capitalism for the first time, started taking part in pyramid schemes, so whatever savings they might have had, or whatever they could borrow from friends and family, were pumped into pyramid schemes... which promptly collapsed in 1997. First a run on the banks. Then riots against the government (who people blamed for everything because they still thought the government ran everything!). Then looting of government institutions, including the army depots. And the soldiers? Well they packed up and went home as they were all conscripts anyway. At the same time, Kosovan refugees started pouring over the border, initially in trickles and to pick up weapons from the now open Albanian army depots and then 500,000 women and children fleeing the genocide of the Yugoslav Army’s spring offensive in 1999 [i think]. The Albanian currency went into hyper-inflation because the university students who ran the government had no idea what they were doing - they figured they could just print money to pay salaries - it was their only choice as there was virtually no tax base. The cities had no industry that could compete with foreign imports, so people left the cities and went to villages or took shoddy boats across the water to Italy or Greece - about a quarter of the country’s population left, including my parents and me, when I was still a child. The government collapsed totally. Teenagers looted machine guns and even tanks, rocket launchers, etc. I vaguely recall some teenage boys joyriding a soviet tank and some men from the town shouting at them because it was damaging the asphalt - told them to take it back to the army base and joy ride it there. Highway robbery and armed robbery by teenagers with machine guns were the normal state of affairs - all serious trade between cities and even within cities ceased. I remember my dad and my uncles organising, getting AK47s, traveling with the men from the village to a market town in a convoy, just to buy flour for a few months which was being sold at famine prices. The flour was by that stage being provided by international aid relief. This is 1997-1999 in Albania - 20 years ago. I remember it. Whatever faith people had in democracy was lost here. Foreign media refer to this time as a ‘civil war’ but it was just chaos.THE RECOVERYAs you can imagine, in such an environment, the most amoral among us thrived - often they went into business, usually doing illegal things alongside legal stuff (not that anybody cared about the difference by then), and making decent hard currency money in the process. Mainly selling oil to the Serbs and guns to the Kosovans and looting whatever they could from the remnants of the state - my cousin bought ancient statues from the Albanian national museum and sold them in Greece... he only accepted Deutche Marks as payment though. Criminal syndicates (basically vicious mountain clans) eventually formed and working alongside local governments joined various political parties and helped bring the government back into some kind of control, just enough to allow business to be conducted and national resources to be looted in an orderly manner - after all, once you’ve looted and sold the stockpiled chrome etc, you needed to organise labour to mine more and to do that you needed some semblance of order. If you wanted to go into business you had to bribe the local politicians, police captains etc. Salaries were (and still aren't) enough to live on in Albania, so everybody (nurses, doctors, police etc) supplemented them with bribes - it was and is so endemic that it’s just part of the culture. It’s called ‘bakshish’ - there is no shame in taking ‘bakshish’ and it’s expected that you pay it. Even to see a sick relative in hospital, you have to pay the hospital security guard ‘bakshish’. This goes from the top of the political ladder like the ministers getting ‘bakshish’ for giving planning permissions or granting monopolies over things like import of medicine etc, to your everyday government worker. It’s just how things are done. To do anything in Albania, you pay ‘bakshish’. So, a good portion of the economic output of the country now goes into paying ‘bakshish’. My dad once paid huge bakshish to judges and to the police to get out of prison because he was caught importing bananas without a license… A neighbour paid bakshish to the police to let him off for machine gunning two guys on a public highway in broad daylight in front of many people... To be fair, though, they had raped his niece and by then, the police were mainly there for the salaries and the bakshish and a new perverted form of customary law had developed which regulated violence and retaliation, loosely based on the various ‘Kanuns’ that existed pre-communist times. My cousin had to pay a big bakshish to a director of nursing to give her a job as nurse. You can pay it to get a good degree as well, get the top marks in class. It’s in EVERYTHING.Because half of the working population left the country (with thousands drowning in the sea crossings), a lot of money started flooding back to Albania from abroad, like hard currencies, dollars, sterling, Euro, etc. The country experienced a few economic booms in construction and asset values driven by billions in remittances from abroad, especially from Albanian criminals who took Europe by storm in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. You have to understand that for people who grew up in the hell of communism in Albania, being jailed in Switzerland was like going on a mini-holiday in a catered hotel-resort. It was no deterrent. And shooting people was easy as they had been trained in the army (like everybody) and they witnessed violence by Party security all the time. Every once in a while, when the Party felt insecure, people (including my dad and his classmates) were forced to watch political dissidents being hanged - the bodies were sometimes strapped to a truck and driven from village to village with posters saying ‘enemy of the people’. My dad says it was often some poor guy accused of ‘sabotage’ when old Soviet machinery had broken down or some guy who tried to make a run for the border and was shot (one of my uncles did his national service on the border and some guy tried to run across to escape and he had to shoot towards the guy but deliberately missed - if he didn’t shoot, he could have been court martialed. Thankfully the runaway guy made it). People were expected to spit, insult or throw things at the corpse of the ‘enemy of the people’ that was paraded, if you didn't, well then you were probably a sympathiser, and you’ll be watched closely. I wonder if the communists realised the irony of executing many of the people in the name of the people. The police tactics in European countries focused on catching somebody and making them snitch against their fellow criminals (for Albanian criminals their fellow criminals were members of their own clan!) … without using torture or terror. Hah. The Albanian clan system survived the Communist Party of Albania which would make Kim Jong Un blush so these early attempts by civilised Western police to break Albanian clan crime syndicates were laughable. Most guys who got caught did their time, whilst their wife and kids were maintained by their clan. No problem. Even now billions in hard currency continue to flow into Albania - we have a massive official balance of payments problem because we hardly export anything, but unofficially we are probably an export economy - we export criminal services and commodities like weed, heroin etc. So the official balance of payments problem is never a problem because so much hard currency comes in from crime syndicates. Major transactions are done in Euro’s now (the new Deutche Mark that my cousin used to insist on).The people now in government are basically the extended family of the ex-Communist leaders or the students who took over in the 1990’s, with some fresh blood coming from the organised criminals who did well in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. I’m not kidding here. The current president [as of 2017] was on camera taking Euro500k in as bakshish. YouTube it. The Prime Minister is the Nephew of some communist big wig.Car bombings of business rivals or rival politicians are relatively common. Weed is now grown everywhere, under the protection of the local police commanders and politicians. To start a business, you need to pay bakshish to various people for licenses, to get a job in government - bakshish. To get good grades at school or university without any effort - bakshish. To get a government contract to repair a road - bakshish.Skimming off the top and doing a shoddy job are also still culturally acceptable - a fall-back from the communist times when people pretended to work and the Party pretended to pay them. My family in Albania also asks me about my salary in London and when I tell them, the older folks then always ask, ‘and how much do you make in bakshish’ - it’s just normal and expected that people do that. When I say I don't, they see it as some kind of mental retardation. Almost like ‘Poor guy, he can’t get any bakshish from his job, he must be slow or something. And I thought he was smart’. I would never take bakshish, it’s sickening, I was educated at a great UK university by gentleman scholars with ethics and I intend to try and live forthrightly.If you want a takeaway from this sad tale, it’s this - Albania is completely and utterly f****d up on a fundamental psychological level. It was deconstructed at an atomic level by Albanian Communism, the most efficient and brutal deconstructionist ideology on steroids. It can’t be rich, because the energy of the people (that which creates wealth) is not directed towards producing wealth, but rather in grabbing as much as they can for oneself at the expense of everything and everybody else. For instance, there is a lake near my town in Albania. Its fish stocks have plummeted to extinction levels and most of the fishermen are now unemployed. The reason? Fishing with electric generators, which destroys the fish’s eggs so they can’t reproduce, plus pollution (judging by the levels of trash, the lake must be used as a waste dump by some towns and villages). The fishermen don't seem to care enough to do anything - their attitude seems to be, ‘Oh well, the fishermen using generators are certainly bastards, but they paid the police bakshish, so that’s just how it is’. The impotence produced by culturally accepted degeneracy. People sell their votes there too - it’s not a mark of shame. Most people have done it. The ones who don't usually have a family member in the sitting government administration and they know that they would lose their job if they lost the election. That’s another problem - each election cycle removes guys who have got rich from corruption (and as a byproduct, got some experience in running things well enough to fleece the system) and brings in a new set of guys who are from the new winning party… and they are inexperienced and ravenous for the bakshish money. Their economics or finance ministers release the budget for those years and they get to work pilfering it whilst also learning their jobs. Every 5 years. Rinse and repeat. There is usually a small bidding war for votes - last year, they got paid £12 per vote! Tidy sum [measured as at exchange rates in March 2018]. And every month more and more people leave. From my family, only 3 young men are left. I sat down and counted once. From about 100 people in my family [my grandad has 13 kids], about 70 are abroad - scattered to all corners of the Earth. America. Britain. Italy. France. Our motherland will not have the benefit of our life’s labours - it will only have our bodies when our bones are sent back to wait for judgment day next to our ancestors. Last I checked the population had gone down from 3.6m in the 1990’s to 2.8m now. And it’s declining every day. One of my older uncles tells me on skype that the trees and nettles have started to overrun the fields now - he says he might live to see the village overrun by nature.I will grow old, my bones will turn to dust, and yet my motherland will still be relatively poor. But money isn’t everything - we were never a nation that craved wealth… the tragedy is we will not be what we could have been for a long, long time, and as I write this answer in a language that is not my own, breathing the air of a land that is not my ancestors, it breaks my heart.Shekul mas shekullit vujti Shqiptari,tuj i tregua bishes barbare,se kurr nuk humb liria en male!

(Answer edited with more information Sept 2020)Yes, once.A little history here - back in 2011, two of my colleagues and I decided to leave the sinking ship that was our former employer; officially, as stated in our exit interviews, it was because our teams clients (we were a bespoke service for large corporate private medical claims) had been ring-fenced so the future of our role was tenuous to say the least. Without actually looking, we were contacted by a recruiter who knew the changes being made by our former employer, and we were lucky enough to be picked to start up a team launching a brand new product for what was at that time a very small company.This was a huge gamble for us despite the situation with our former employer, to leave a relatively secure job for a start up company we knew little about. Our decision was spurred on mainly due to the fact that our former manager was bullying me and another person on our small team in a well covered but very nasty manner, and despite my careful detailing of the incidents in a diary and email printout evidence on behalf of myself and the staff member too scared to speak up herself, the company effectively closed ranks and ignored my allegations. Not particularly relevant, but if anyone's curious, the bullying manager was fired less than a year later due to the slew of bullying/harassment claims made against her from the 8 people they'd hired to replace my friends and I - without us there the rest of the ‘old’ team left quickly, but the manager obviously felt she was bulletproof since my allegations caused no consequences for her and was either stupid or just inherently cruel enough to continue her bullying with new victims. Thankfully, my actions DID end up helping others even though I don't know the individuals involved, I'm thankful that what was a very difficult and frustrating outcome for me spared others having to go through the same. I heard from another person who left my former employer for my current one that the reason the manager was fired was because HR could no longer ignore the claims made against her. The area of the UK I live in hosts the majority of jobs in this particular industry, and it's no secret that the former manager is blacklisted amongst other future employers. Apologies for the digression, but it does explain somewhat how much it meant to me having a new boss after the awful experience with the former one.So, other than my best friend and I, only one person was recruited for that team at our new company before us, our manager, let's call her Anna. She was and is an incredible manager, a very inspiring person and a wonderful friend. We all formed a great bond in those early months particularly, the level of work gradually increased so that we went from having so little work that we were assisting other departments with basic tasks, making umpteen cups of tea and coffee, cleaning out stationery cupboards etc, to having to put in 12hr days and Saturday overtime to cope whilst new staff were trained. It was a stressful, but incredibly exciting few years, and very gratifying to see our hard work pay off and our company as a whole make an impressive name for itself in the industry - the gamble had paid off beyond anything we could have imagined!In early 2018I had an attempted gallbladder removal which failed but left me with a severe infection causing cellulitis in both my legs. I was off work for months, the infection caused my legs to swell to about 4x their size and constantly leak fluid. Without going into graphic detail (I have some horrific photos from that time!) the skin on my legs degraded to the point where there was no longer any actual skin below my knees. I did receive home nursing care throughout this by the way.One morning I went to the bathroom, walking was a huge struggle and I used a stick. I fell and was trapped with the stick tangled up with my legs, and no strength to get up. Luckily I had my phone in my dressing gown pocket and called for an ambulance and then for my best friend (one of the colleagues who moved to the new company with me) as she had a key to my flat. Unfortunately the communal entrance door was locked and my vile, drug dealing ex neighbours upstairs saw the blue flashing lights from the ambulance and wouldn't answer the door thinking it was the police. My friend was frantic, trying to get builders down the street to break the door in, shouting for the neighbours to open up, meanwhile I had passed out. I was there for 3 hours before the fire brigade managed to climb in through my first floor window and let the paramedics in. I was delirious by that point but as they brought me out my boss was there, having sent my distraught friend home, and she reassured me that she would contact my family who live abroad.I spent about 6 weeks in hospital, I was in a coma, suffered double pneumonia, multiple organ failure and sepsis and several times was not expected to survive the night. My boss visited me regularly on her lunch breaks even when I was unconscious and after the coma when I couldn't communicate verbally but only write.I did return to work briefly about 6 months after the accident but as I have been left with a brain injury causing partial paralysis and epilepsy I currently am unable to work. She still meets with me regularly to keep me updated on developments on our team (now grown from 3 people to over 100!) and has reassured me that my job as a senior member of staff is still there for me when I'm able to return even if it's part time. I couldn't ask for a better, more supportive boss, in fact the company itself has been incredible, they are still paying me 2 years after the event, still paying my pension, share scheme and for my private medical insurance.I'm currently waiting to be rehoused by my local council in an adapted property. Once I am my employer has already made preparations for me to work from home and visit the office as much or as little as I want. I appreciate very much how lucky I am to work for such a genuinely caring company and that has only made me more loyal to them. I am desperate to get back to work and start repaying some of the incredible kindness they have shown me.Edit: I originally put this in a response to a comment but thought it would be appropriate to add it to my main post and with a slight expansion.Since writing my initial post I have completed the ridiculously complicated and unnecessarily difficult process of being assessed by the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) in order to receive income support whilst I am unable to work. Due to the particular situation I am in I am in the somewhat unusual position of actually receiving about 30% more ‘take home pay’ than I would if I returned to work in the same position I previously held. Despite this, largely because my employer is so good and I genuinely love my job, I am anxious to return to work as soon as possible. To me, my quality of life will be better working, being productive and able to socialise with my colleagues, even if it is mostly working from home and part time at that.The alternative is doing nothing but stay at home. I still fill my days with reading, learning, writing, finding new hobbies etc., but I can see how easy it would be for someone in my position to just stagnate in front of the TV all day and become a shut in. I survived for a reason so I'm certainly not going to let that happen!If anyone cares about the numbers side of it, here's a brief explanation of how the (ever changing!) benefits system currently works in the UK.Universal Credit (UC) is based on your age and relationship status. As a single woman aged between 25 - 64 with no children I am entitled to £317 basic UC, £336 Limited capability for work and work related activities, and £535 housing costs per month.Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is comprised of 2 components, Daily Living and Mobility, each paying either a standard or enhanced rate if you qualify for either. This benefit is notoriously difficult to get and a huge percentage of people have to appeal decisions, 73% of appeals go on to be successful! After my successful appeal I receive the standard daily living rate and enhanced mobility rate which equates to £519.56 a month. Receiving the enhanced mobility rate also entitles me to access the motability scheme where a portion of your PIP (no more than £61.20 a week) can be sacrificed to lease a brand new car for 3 years, inclusive of tax, insurance for up to 3 drivers and maintenance. I can't yet take advantage of this as my epilepsy isn't sufficiently controlled but by June I am looking forward to having the freedom to get out!So if I didn't return to work I'd receive £1709.53 (I'd left off some penny amounts earlier if anyone's checking my maths!)In work full time I was taking home after tax, student loan repayments, national insurance and salary sacrifice for pension and the tax - not capital - on my company private medical insurance ~£1,450. On that wage I had to also pay my rent of £600 pcm, utilities, living costs etc and council tax of £1176 in 10 installments a year.Now I am exempt from council tax and I need to move to an adapted property, this isn't something I can do privately as you can't modify a rented home, so I'm on the housing register. The average rent is around £240 pcm, so I'll be saving a massive amount.Until I can legally drive again I can use my PIP to pay around £12 a week for a mobility scooter, but as I also have a free bus pass I would rather wait until I can get a car since I want to be able to transport my dog, do shopping, travel outside of my local area if needed.There are many flaws in the system and a lot of people would think that I am lucky to receive so much in benefits when most struggle on them, but the reason my allowances are higher than normal is because of my disabilities and the chronic pain and fatigue caused. As I said earlier I will be returning to work God willing, and whilst my UC will be affected I won't lose the other benefits. The affect on UC is that for every £1 I earn I lose 60p of UC, so I'll never actually be losing money.Yet another thing I have to be very grateful for as a UK citizen. The application and assessment process is stringent and very flawed - there are articles in the news daily about corrupt assessors and a system designed to make it as difficult as possible to claim, it's taken me around 8 months from my application to being awarded the entitlements I've listed which entailed filling in multiple forms and attending 5 face to face interviews along with submitting all my medical records for the last 2 years. I'm glad it's done now (for another 3 years anyway) but I'm also very grateful that our welfare system will provide assistance when its needed.Update September 2020: I'm now back at work part time!! I am so very happy about this, as you can imagine I am working from home and this is going to be the case for the foreseeable future, regardless of the COVID situation. As I am considered ‘highly vulnerable’ due to my medical history I have been, and will remain, in isolation for at least the next 6 months as the UK enters its second lockdown. I'm very sad that I've not been able to see my mum for over a year now, but the good news with my new arrangement for home working means that by using a VPN I can work anywhere, even abroad, without a problem. I am very much hoping that once life has returned to some form of normality I will be less restricted than before with trips to visit family abroad given that I wouldn't have to take time off work in order to do it!ANOTHER UPDATE: DEC 2020: Well, despite the utter shitshow this year has turned out to be, I'm now on my new 14 hours a week contract and whilst waiting for arrangements to be made for me to complete my FCA mandated 50 hours of annual training as well as the necessary medical retraining and department specific exams I'm beginning to work through the 40k odd emails accrued in my absence! Only a couple of people on my team actually know that I'm ‘back’ (um, working from a laptop in PJs on my sofa with a cup of tea!) so it's been rather fun observing my team working without knowing I'm there! I'm INCREDIBLY happy to be able to say that I'm now only receiving about 30% of the Universal Credit support I was previously on - whilst I certainly couldn't have survived without the government assistance, I am lucky that with the support of my employer I am regaining at least my financial independence.Unfortunately, my health has deteriorated significantly in the last few months. I have 3 vertebrae in my lower back which are pretty much shattered from a combination of trauma, stress fractures and bone degeneration (I've suffered malnutrition on and off since my teens/early 20s, and certain medication I've been on has contributed to early onset osteoporosis) and despite beginning treatment with Fentanyl patches in July this year, I am unable to do anything that involves bending, twisting, standing for longer than 10 minutes - and even then if I can lean on something like the kitchen counter. So I am going to have to continue claiming PIP in order to pay for the lady who comes in to clean and tidy my flat for me, I'm unable to even go down the 7 steps to the street to put out rubbish! Again I am very lucky though, she goes far above and beyond what most cleaners would and does things like arranging the tins in the cupboard by type and taking a photo so I'm not hunting for things, she brought little cardboard boxes to make ‘drawers’ in them so I could easily reach small packets on the shelves, she is a god send - quite literally as I was put in touch with her through a mutual acquaintance at our church! Since I'm getting worse though I need her help more often, so much as I'd like to go back to being financially independent I need to continue claiming PIP at least - but it's not something I can change and I know that I needn't feel guilty over a genuine need, hopefully one day I'll believe myself!!

What are the pros and cons of each genre that screenwriters need to know?While screenwriting is certainly an art form, with respect to a writer expressing themselves by telling a fictional story, there is no escaping the business end of this chosen career pursuit.With novels and the publishing industry, there’s more freedom when it comes to genre primarily because it doesn’t take tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars to release a book.The literary platform has plenty of room for any genre book and the costs to release those books pale in comparison to what it takes to develop, produce, sell, and market a feature film.In the film industry, genre matters more.The business end of screenwriting can’t be overlooked by screenwriters. While some of the pundits — as well as seasoned, acclaimed, and award-winning screenwriters offering advice from the comfortable seat where their hindsight is 20/20 — often proclaim that a writer should write whatever they want and just find that perfect company to produce it for that niche audience, it’s terrible advice.If you want to work in this industry, at one point in time, you’re going to have to understand that the business end of screenwriting is something you can’t escape.Yes, you should write those passion projects without worrying about who is or isn’t going to buy it. But that art-minded side of you needs also to make way for that business-savvy side.Here we share the general pros and cons of each genre in hopes that your business-savvy screenwriter can use the information to pick and choose what calculated risks — or safe bets — you make in your screenwriting.Action/AdventureAudiences love a good rollercoaster ride filled with action, suspense, adventure, and thrills.There’s a reason why the Fast and Furious franchise is so successful. The acting doesn’t seem that great because the dialogue and characterization are secondary to the stunts and special effects. It’s a calculated decision on the studio’s part to worry less about the critical acclaim of those elements — or lack thereof — and more about the innovative action sequences that will keep audiences on the edge of the seats for two hours.Rollercoasters don’t take riders on an educational tour in between major drops, twists, and turns, do they? They don’t slow down for a Shakespearean Review, right?No. Instead, the best rollercoasters go as high and fast as they can because that’s what the riders want — the thrill.That’s what an action adventure movie offers. If you can through in some compelling story and characterization, great. The Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible franchises have often excelled at that compared to other action and adventure offerings.But they always deliver on innovative and visually enticing action sequences.So if you’re writing in the action-adventure genre, you need to be sure to offer creative sequences that take what audiences have already seen and evolve them into something new and different. That’s what you’re up against when you write in the action-adventure genre.But when you do that, you need to be aware that this genre is also costly for studios to produce. Any action sequence or stunt is going to cost money. A lot of it. And that is a red flag that plagues undiscovered screenwriters trying to sell scripts on spec.One way around this is to create a contained action-adventure piece that doesn’t involve multiple sets, location, stunts, and special effects. When you condense that action and display it within a contained location, the budget goes down, and the Hollywood eyebrows go up in interest.ComedyWhile comedy is perhaps the most prolific genre in Hollywood, it is also one of the most difficult to sell on spec.Back in the days of video stores, the comedy section always had the most titles. When you visit streaming libraries in these contemporary times, the same can be said.So you should be writing comedies, right?Well, the truth is that it’s a tough genre to sell on spec. If you’re not an established comedy writer, auteur, or popular stand-up comic, those scripts are going to be very difficult to sell.Why?Comedy is very subjective. What may sound hilarious to you may read as bland to a dozen script readers. You may love slapstick comedy, but that script reader may prefer the dry humor of Wes Anderson.Action concepts and clever use of thrills and explosions are relatively universal whereas types of humor can be very niche.“But look at the dumb comedy in those Adam Sandler movies!”Well, Sandler’s movies make money. He has a niche audience. The average Adam Sandler movie is produced for $70-$80 million, but worldwide they pull in $200 million or much more. Even his moderate hits are moneymakers. But that’s beside the point. He’s Adam Sandler.So the struggle with writing comedies is that you face the barriers of subjectivity. While every script struggles with that, comedic scripts take it to the next level.You overcome this by focusing on the core concept. Most successful comedies are “fish out of the water” concepts. You take a character out of their usual surroundings and throw them into places that are unusual to them — and hilarity ensues. The comedy is driven by the conflicts the character faces as they acclimate (or don’t) to their new, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable surroundings.Big (a child in an adult world), Tootsie (a man in a woman’s world), Liar Liar (a lawyer who cannot lie), and Crocodile Dundee (an Australian bushman visiting New York) are perfect examples.Those small, quirky comedies or those slapstick romps that the spec market is saturated with usually never see the light of day unless they are produced through the independent market.But the big concept comedies are the ones that draw interest on spec.DramaDrama movies are complicated to market. Most people don’t want to spend their time and money on a weekend night watching melodrama. When they do, it’s usually to see an acclaimed actor or actress.For screenwriters writing on spec, drama just doesn’t sell. Yes, there are anomalies, but you can’t bet on anomalies.The one true exception is dramas based on true stories. Hollywood loves true stories, as long as they are compelling and cover subject matter that piques the interest of the audience’s curiosity.If you have a drama that is based on a true story, your odds of it drawing interest skyrockets, especially if it is military-based or True Crime.“But hey, dramas are always nominated for Academy Awards!”Yes, that’s true. But most of them either come from the independent market or are developed by studio specialty companies. And more often than not, again, they are based on true stories or acclaimed novels.So what can you do with your powerful fiction drama?You can make the film yourself in the independent market (easier said than done, for sure) or you can market the script directly to those studio specialty companies or the production companies owned by acclaimed dramatic actors looking for a great role.The contest, competition, and fellowship market is an excellent place to go for those scripts as well, especially if they have a specific Drama category. Great writing is what gets you noticed in that respect, opening possible opportunities for your other scripts that may have a more marketable genre or concept.FantasyFantasy used to be considered a dead genre. And then Peter Jackson made Lord of the Rings. And another book series adaptation debuted under the moniker of Harry Potter.But those franchises were developed from highly successful intellectual property. And those fantasy films that came after them were as well.So if you’re thinking about developing your version of those types of fantasy films, you’re going to be facing an uphill battle — especially if you’re not adapting an already successful series of novels.Fantasy is expensive. Worlds must be rendered. Fantastical sets must be designed. Otherworldly creatures and clothing must be created.HorrorSome development executives, managers, and agents will say, “Horror is easy money.”It’s the most profitable genre because most horror scripts cost less to produce. And audiences love a good scare.Much like the action-adventure genre, horror movies offer audiences a thrilling experience. For whatever reason, people love to be scared. Primarily because they get that adrenaline rush knowing that, in the end, it’s all fake and they’re not going to suffer any consequences from the horror they’ve just experienced. Beyond sleepness nights and apprehensive walks in the dark.The original Halloween had a production budget of just $325,000. It made $47 million. Adjusted to inflation, that’s $181 million.Get Out was produced for just $4.5 million. It went on to gross $255 million worldwide.Split was produced for just $9 million and garnered $278 million worldwide.Horror is easy money compared to other genres. Scares cost less because audiences are more afraid of what they don’t see in the dark, as opposed to visual spectacles of CGI.But that doesn’t mean you can just write the latest haunted house flick and expect it to scare people into buying it. The horror spec market is both concept-driven, like comedy, and it’s also driven by new and different takes on familiar horror tropes.And because this market is so popular, with everyone trying to get in on the action, you have to stand out with a strong, compelling horror concept or a new and original take on what’s already been produced.Science FictionScience fiction is a difficult genre to pin down.On the one hand, you can successfully write a contained science fiction concept script and pique the interest of readers. But on the other hand, many science fiction scripts are full of concepts and sequences that need to be rendered via special effects, which are costly.Science fantasy films, which are represented by space operas like the Star Wars franchise movies, are box office poison. Studios have tried and failed to create their own franchises. But contained science fiction thrillers like Source Code, Looper, and Ex Machina have proven to be successful.So when it comes to this genre, it’s all about context.Don’t try to write your version of Star Wars. If studios have tried and failed, they’re not going to want to gamble on expensive investments with your script. Instead, go write a series of science fiction or science fantasy novels, which is a hot genre in the literary platform.Instead, find creative and more contained science fiction concepts that explore possible futures without the need for studios to spend $200 million realizing your vision.ThrillerThrillers give viewers heightened feelings of suspense, excitement, surprise, anticipation, and anxiety through the numerous and overlapping subgenres like mystery thrillers, suspense thrillers, horror thriller, psychological thrillers, etc.These types of stories hinge on the tension that is created, accompanied by the anticipation of how the protagonist is going to prevail over the seemingly constant thrashes of conflict being thrown at them.Whether it’s The Fugitive, The Bourne Identity, Memento, Rear Window, or The Davinci Code, the thriller genre — and its many subgenres — are huge draws for the audience.But if you plan on competing with the best, you need to craft a script that has ongoing conflict and ever-evolving twists, turns, plants, payoffs, and reveals every few pages.Thrillers put the audience on an emotional rollercoaster ride, as opposed to the more visceral rides that action-adventure take the audience on. They challenge our intellect, rather than our senses.They’re the best scripts to read, but only when done right. So you need to be ready to bring your A-game to keep readers interested, invested, engaged, and compelled.WarWar or military driven films can often be better categorized as a subgenre within the action, comedy, and drama genres. But here we’ll give these films their due as a single genre.War movies are always popular in the theatrical market. Most of them are based on true stories, which again, Hollywood loves. There is a current trend of fact-based military stories in both the spec market and at the box office.Fictional war tales have their place as well, thanks to the fact that writers can tell compelling fictional stories within the context of real past and present war conflicts.However, war films can be expensive. Especially if they are period pieces. Period pieces, no matter the genre, are costly because they call for a larger budget in terms of production design, wardrobe, movie extras, and special effects needed to augment or outright generate realistic battle sequences.There is certainly a market for war scripts, but screenwriters need to also understand the possible limitations they may face when marketing such scripts.The element that could tip the scales in the writer’s favor is having a true story to tell. Something that isn’t overly derivative of the war movies we’ve seen before.Don’t Worry…In the end, nobody knows anything. Your quirky comedy or beautiful fantasy might prove to be the next big thing. But it’s important to know the business end of every major genre.The purpose is to use this information to gauge where you should and shouldn’t be marketing your scripts. And it should be used to temper your expectations when it comes to gauging the odds of your script’s success in the current spec market.And even more important, this information should be used to help you create a business plan approach to your screenwriting. Your stacked deck of scripts should contain those passion projects, accompanied by a few screenplays that are more desirable to managers, agents, development executives, and producers.Your screenwriting career is never about one single script. You need to be able to showcase a body of work that’s intriguing to anyone you showcase it to.Know the genres. Know what you’re up against with whatever script you choose to write. And then just write the heck out of it.Read ScreenCraft’s How to Choose the Right Movie Genre for Your Concept!This Answer was adapted from an article I wrote at ScreenCraft. CLICK HERE for more!