So your script bounced back to you six months late with no comments and a tyre track across the title page.
I’m sorry that you are in pain, I really am, but I have to say, it’s your fault. You’re doing one thing very wrong here:
YOU ARE SENDING YOUR SCRIPT OUT!!
(What? How the heck are you going to get anywhere if no-one is reading your script?)
Well, first let me talk about what you should do if you do still insist on sending your script out. In the first ten years I was trying to sell my writing I think I sold perhaps three short stories, and got myself close to 100 rejection letters.
Conventional Wisdom is Wrong!
The way I learned to deal with it is this:
- Just the minute it comes back through the door, don’t even think about it, don’t worry, just get the next address on your list and send it out to them.
- See it as a numbers game. The more lottery tickets you have the more chance of winning, right?
- Every month or so take a look at the script and see if you can improve it.
- And then start your next piece of writing. Your aim should be: a) to always keep the things that haven’t sold out there with production companies, and b) to always have a new thing you are working on.
- Remember – if you give up now, one thing is certain. You will never make it. If you keep on sending your script out, well, you’re still in the game.
That’s the conventional wisdom. OK, it may not be completely wrong – but I believe it is almost completely misguided. It really does have about as much chance of getting you success as a lottery ticket.
Sure, always keep your stuff out there, I can’t see it hurting, (apart from the tedium of doing the mailing) and it may just pay off.
But look. The SMART thing to do, the really smart thing to do, is dedicate yourself to making contacts.
That should be your number 1 marketing activity.
Know The People Who Are Reading Your Script
Get out there, to conventions, to seminars, to local theatres, to lectures, film groups, screenwriting groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, everywhere – and MEET people. Meet all the people with an interest in the industry you can find initially; then, using the Six Degrees of Separation, home in on their friends’ friends who are script execs, producers, showrunners and executive producers eventually.
But never think of it in terms of networking. That doesn’t hold up in the long term. Think of it in terms of finding new people to be friends with.
Knowing the people I was pitching to, and them knowing me, was of the two most important factors in me going from the kind of writer who was selling one short story every three years to the kind of writer who was working full time writing TV drama.
The other factor was really understanding screenplay structure, but that’s not for here. If you need help with that then you should definitely take a look at my step by step guide to writing a screenplay. It takes you step by step from blank page to first draft.
Download your copy here!