David Self was born in Texas City, Texas on January 8, 1970. He was raised in Danvers, Massachusetts, where he graduated from St. John's Preparatory School. He received his bachelor's degree and master's degree in English literature from Stanford University. He moved to Los Angeles, California, after graduation; he had no contacts and got an entry-level job at Walt Disney Pictures in 1994.
His first script was a spec script titled Dawn's Early Light, a thriller about a terrorist attack on the White House. It was not produced, but it circulated widely in Hollywood. His first commissioned script was Firestorm, a dramatic film script based on the documentary film Fires of Kuwait. The script was purchased by Avatar Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, but the script went into development hell and was never produced. His second script, a 1996 or 1997 adaptation of Joseph R. Garber's 1995 novel of corporate espionage and assassination, Vertical Run, was commissioned by Warner Brothers, but it, too, went into development hell and was never produced.
His third script was Thirteen Days, based on the memoirs of John F. Kennedy advisor Kenneth O'Donnell. The semi-fictional script (which showed O'Donnell counseling Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis) was commissioned by producer Armyan Bernstein, who had read Dawn's Early Light. Bernstein initially approached Self with the idea of a love story set against the background of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but Self convinced him to jettison the love story and write a straightforward history picture with O'Donnell as the "everyman" stand-in. Self began writing the script in the spring of 1997. Self worked closely with director Lawrence Kasdan on the script (Kasdan hoped to direct it). It was the first script of Self's to go into production, although it would be the second of his films released.

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