Advice on Pushing Your Screenplay
As I am currently going through this myself, I thought I’d share my experiences.
Here was my process. First you have to make sure your script is ready.
1) Upload it onto Triggerstreet.com, a website where other readers will read and critique your work. Get at least 10 reviews per draft. Do another draft. And another. Triggerstreet will make you read scripts to get “credits” to assign reviewers, which is good since you need to read screenplays to improve at screenwriting.
Triggerstreet is certainly not the word of God, but it is definitely useful. A caveat is that sometimes more commercial work may not get the highest rankings on Triggerstreet but could still sell.
That being said my personal feeling is your script should be ranked at least under 1,000 (out of 3,000+ scripts on the site) with numerous reviews (around 10) on the site before you even consider sending it out.
2) Get some sort of professional coverage, be it Scriptshark, ScriptPimp, or even a literary agency which provides coverage.
3) Decide your personal standard.
What do I mean by that? I mean decide how good you want your script to be before you send it out. People will tell you not to send it until everyone is telling you it’s awesome, until it’s won some contests, etc.
I certainly don’t have the patience for that, but if you do God bless you.
Now You Feel Ready to Send It Out
Great, so what can you, assuming you’re just some dude without great connections, do to send your script out?
1) Enter it into contests. Some of the bigger ones are probably your best bet.
-Nicholl Fellowship
-Scriptapalooza
-PAGE
-Bluecat (though some have criticized them for poor coverage)
2) Send it to agencies which accept either unsolicited submissions or queries.
-Get the Creative Screenwriting Directory, which lists some of those agencies.
-Go to the WGAWest website (I’d check WGAeast as well) and look up their list of signatory agencies. Google ALL of them. Oftentimes they’ll have a website with an email for inquiries.
3) Use Rosa and Ashley’s Message Board for Writers, Screenplay section. Rosa and Ashley’s is a website where you can find calls for scripts. It’s like Inktip, only free.
4) Use Inktip website. They have something called a Preferred Newsletter (I believe that’s the name) that sends you leads from companies looking for a certain type of script. I have personally gotten script requests from this method. I’ve also heard people have had success posting their work on the site itself.
5) Cold-call? Doing this scares the hell out of me and is probably insanely awkward. But if you have the stones for it, good for you.
Advice on How to Do Some of this Stuff
From what I’ve understood and common sense, a good query letter should be short.
Get in, get out.
If you have some credentials, brag your heart out.
As far as cold-calling/Inktip/query letters/any of the above, you can head on over to Triggerstreet and hit the message boards for more advice, indeed, that’s what I did to get a lot of this knowledge.
Then What?
You tell me. Seriously, tell me. I’m currently trying to think of new avenues to get my scripts out.
One Last Thing
Don’t hold your breath. People will usually not respond to your emails. Even if someone requests your script and you send it to them, you may never hear from them again.
Just keep pushing, I think that’s all any of us can really do.
Good luck
-Dan Benamor