Is Your New Year's Resolution to Sell Your Script???

New Years is a great time to renew your resolve to sell your script. Here’s a couple of tips to keep you from getting taken to the cleaners on the way to the red carpet:

Requiring money up front – SCAM
If ANYONE tells you they are interested in your script but they need you to pay ANY kind of fee up front to represent you or your project, run to the nearest exit. The most common one I’ve heard of is when an agent or manager requires you get your script covered by a “certified reader” for a fee. I’ve been doing this a long time and I’ve never heard of such a thing as a “certified reader”.

It’s not unusual or out of line for an agent or manager to ask you to give a synopsis of your script before they’ll consider your material. They may even give you a few names as suggestions of readers to use. What a legitimate company WON’T do is refuse to consider a synopsis SOLELY based on the fact that it doesn’t come from a “certified reader”. If they do run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit.

Asking for a free option – NOT A SCAM
It’s perfectly legitimate for a producer to ask for a free option on your script. Just be sure to give them a LIMITED free option – 6 months is a typical amount of time but you may want to make it shorter. For instance, if it’s about the Olympics or a “true” predicted natural disaster, then time might be more of a factor. If they want to keep pitching the script after the option runs out, make them pay some kind of fee.

The producer may also want you to address notes for free. That gets into sticky territory. They are honestly trying to get the script in the best possible shape to sell; you have to decide if their notes really make it better. If so, you’ve just gotten free script notes, be happy. If their notes don’t make any sense, it’s time to consider whether they’re the right people to be involved in your script in the first place. Even if they sell it, will they keep your vision of the story or turn your brilliant take on “Santa Clause V” into a horror movie? Are you willing to go there for mere money? Only you can decide....

THE LOGLINE

A client and I were having a discussion back and forth about the best logline for his script and it made me realize how very hard it is to really write a great logline. Here are some suggestions to get you thinking in the right direction.

1) It’s called a logline for a reason – it needs to be one line. It’s not referred to as a log paragraph or log couple of sentences. Yes, if you are an Oscar winning writer you can take as much room and time as you like describing your latest epic but if you’re just a regular writer trying to sell a script then knuckle down and figure out how to describe you script in one sentence. If you absolutely can’t, then maybe it’s time to re-think whether your script is such a good idea anyway.

2) Yes, a logline’s main purpose in life is to sell your script. If you are content just sitting alone in your writer’s garret slaving away at a work that no one will ever see then fine. Ignore the rest of these tips and just keep pleasuring yourself at your computer. But if you mean to do this for a living, you’re going to have to face the fact that some small part of writing involves selling. Get over it.

3) Ideally, you will e-mail, fax, call or snail mail the agent/executive/or whoever your logline and synopsis. They, in turn, will tell their friends and co-workers over coffee, water, drinks or lunch the oh-so-memorable script they were just pitched. Make it easy for both of you and give them a logline that any human CAN remember. They may have only glanced at it once so make it something that’s easy to spit back out.

4) Be ready to BRIEFLY pitch your script in a pinch. For instance, let’s say you’re skiing in Aspen and realize the person on the chairlift next to you is Robert Redford. You’re writers, use you imagination. You need to have a simple enough pitch that you can spit it out before the chairlift reaches the top. Or, in more mundane terms, it’s known as the elevator pitch – you get the idea. That’s why it’s best to be one line – something you can remember at the moment when you really want to do is vomit.

5) In a perfect world, you would have figured out your script’s logline BEFORE you finished it. You should write out the one sentence that best describes what your script is about and keep it on a post-it on your computer, your mirror or wherever else you look at every day before, during and after you write. Keeping a constant reminder of what your script is about will help you keep it on track.