Character + scenario + conflict needed to be resolved.
Examples:
Peter’s Ponzi Predicament
Peter Mathers doesn’t want to be a Starbucks barista for the rest of his life and becomes involved with a group who promise him he’ll make money fast. Things are going well until he realizes it might be too late to get out of being dead center in one of the world’s largest Ponzi schemes.
Within this example, a dramatic premise is presented. Included in this idea are two scenarios that are prominent within the current time frame of the project being pitched. Including these types of scenarios answers that “why make this now?” question.
A young man is tired of working a mediocre job (Starbucks barista) and seeks out another way to make money, falling into a potentially bad financial scheming process. Ponzi schemes have been in the news, and in a world that is economically striving, they aren’t going to go away very soon. You would defend this logline with other texts that include young people taking risks to better themselves (a typical scenario) such as 21 (2008), Oceans 11, 12, 13 (2001, 2004, 2007), Rounders (1998), and so on. This pitch includes the research you’ve been conducting throughout the book. You’ll be prepared to state why your idea is better than the others and why your idea is necessary in today’s marketplace due to the relevance of the subject matter. This research gives you The Writer’s Advantage.
Another example:
You can also incorporate your genre knowledge composing something like this:
Lire’s Library
In the spirit of famous libraries, little Annie Lire stumbles upon a secret library that holds the interactive manuscripts of the sequels to all of the world’s great children’s books. Annie, with the help of the world’s famous literary characters, wants to ensure that the sequels are made available to all children, but a powerful publishing conglomerate has a different idea.
This idea is exploding with excellent tropes of pop culture from a number of different points. Think of all of the famous libraries in literature — Hogwarts Library, the library used in The Breakfast Club, The Jedi Archives, the Beast’s library in Beauty and the Beast, the libraries in Ever After, and Clue, and so on. Take those great visual scenes and combine them with children’s classics such as Mother Goose and Winnie the Pooh and Alice In Wonderland and you have an idea that explodes off the page. As your main character navigates her newly found world of the interactive characters (think what Shrek did when referencing Disney characters) and add the urgency of an evil corporation and you have a winning idea. This idea could easily shine as a new classic children’s franchise — perhaps one to replace Harry Potter? It is truly evergreen. All development departments and editors/publishers are on that search — why not be the one to fill that void?
Be ready to use the research you’ve completed within your Genre Toolkit when you defend your work within your query letters/emails and all pitches in general.
SYNOPSIS
A synopsis is a one-page summary of your project. Think about all of those book reports you wrote in grade school. Essentially, you are telling the potential buyer what your manuscript, script, webseries is about via a one page, single-spaced document.
Many writers find it difficult to reduce their complex storylines into one page. Nonetheless, you’ll need to do this. This is a document that will precede your completed manuscript or script. The potential buyer must be able to comprehend your storyline and see the overall scope of your project within this one page document. It leads, hopefully, to their wanting to see the entire manuscript or script.
The secret to writing an effective synopsis is simple. Write three paragraphs:
— the first paragraph is your first act or set-up of your story.
— the second paragraph is your second act; the conflict.
— the third paragraph is your plot’s movement towards
resolution.
Tell your story fast and sure. Establish the basics and get through your plot points. It is that simple. Over and done.
GOING OUT
Armed with these tools that represent your work, it is now time to begin to shop your project. The first item of business is to register your work with copyright.gov (if you have a completed manuscript) and/or the Writers Guild of America at wga.org for ideas and completed scripts. The fees are minimal and you will receive a registered number that proves that your work is yours should there ever be a question about plagiarism of your work in the future.
With a manuscript or book proposal you can query agents who work within the genres you represent and you can query publishers directly.
With a script, you can query agents and production companies and producers directly.
No matter what media you are working within, you should send out as many queries as possible at one time to as many places that you feel represent similar subject matter.
You’ll do some more research here. There are excellent resources for literary agents such as imdbpro.com for production companies and producers and the Writer’s Digest List of Literary Agents for manuscript submissions. In today’s world, most legitimate agents and production companies have websites that instruct you as to how to submit your query information. Follow those instructions exactly. Do not deliberately leave out an item they request or submit a manuscript when they ask for only a logline and synopsis. This is a long process, practically a full-time job, actually. Most folks who take on the process of shopping their project set aside one or two hours a day to send their queries and continue along that path until they sell their work.
Keep a clear and concise paper trail of where and to whom you are sending your work.
You’ll need this in case you find that someone has ripped off your work later on in the game. Record the company, the person you are sending your work to, their assistant, and date/time. Also have a column for the result of that query. Maintain this list throughout your shopping process.
The next steps are to embrace the rejections (every rejection leads onward to the next door that may open with a resounding “yes”). Study the rejections — you can learn a great deal about your work through the information received via rejections. Yes, they are not what you are expecting, but it doesn’t mean your project is bad or wrong, it just means you haven’t found the right place for it to grow. This process is as complicated as finding the right job or right romantic partner... and yes, you have to kiss a lot of frogs, so to speak, in order to get to your princely publisher or production company.
PITCH FESTS AND CONFERENCES
In addition to cold calling/emailing your work, you can also attend any of the many annual pitch fests and conferences that are scheduled year round. These are excellent arenas to meet with agents and potential buyers via a 3- to 8- to 10-minute meeting where you pitch your logline and then go into your storyline (synopsis info). If the potential buyer is intrigued with your idea, they will ask to see more.
These events are held for both literary writers and screenwriters.
Literary events can be accessed through Writer’s Digest at writersdigest.com.
Screenwriting events can be accessed through The Writer’s Store at writersstore.com.
In many cases, you can pitch manuscripts at screenwriting events also.
MASTERING YOUR GENRE
Congratulations, you mastered your genre! You’ve completed the research and have your selling materials in hand. You are light years ahead of most writers marketing and pitching their work for the first — or fortieth — time. The research you’ve uncovered arms you so you’ll be able to answer most questions about your genre and your project’s place in the transmedia marketplace. You’ve proceeded to move ahead of the others. You now have The Writer’s Advantage.
EXERCISE
Write your logline and synopsis
Based on your research, construct a logline and synopsis that attrac
ts the potential buyer into wanting to see more — and eventually publishing and/or producing your work. (If you want to stretch your wings, write your own synopsis for Lire’s Library.)
CHAPTER 14
WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU GOT?
I spent about a year and a half writing my first novel. It was the usual “here’s the story of my first major romantic love-affair-post-break-up” novel set in Los Angeles in the 1980s. After many queries I had garnered the attention of a major book agent in L.A. We had a meeting at his office in West Hollywood. I was ecstatic, to say the least, feeling nervous and awkward as every first-time novelist does. We had a long conversation about the book, about how he was going to send it to some New York folks for their perusal and then his agency, along with a New York based agency, would figure out what publishing houses to present it to.
Heady stuff. At the end of the meeting he asked me, “So, what else have you got?” I gasped a bit, and answered with total honesty. “Nothing. I’ve spent the last two years of my life on that manuscript you have in your hands. I haven’t had time to write anything else,” to which he responded with the absolute best piece of advice I have ever received in my career overall.
“My dear, never answer that question again in that way, ever.”
Little did I know that I had already lost the publication deal at that point. There were a number of other hoops and barrels that I had to jump through during the evaluation process of that first project, and in the end it never found a publishing house. I know in retrospect that I lost a great deal of credibility when I answered that golden question with “Nothing.”
By answering “Nothing” it meant that I was not an established writer, and that is sometimes all right if your first effort is something of a rarity that blasts on the scene for whatever reason, resonates to an audience, and locks into a successful sales run. However, in most cases, these agents are looking to represent a writer who has a body of work that will prove to be a cash cow. The selling of one first novel was going to garner him enough money to pay for a nice lunch, not the amount he would have made if I would have had at least one more manuscript in the hopper and two or three more ideas ready to be written. Instead, he had a maybe-writer who would see if her novel would sell and then maybe-possibly write another one and that added up to only maybe-possible money.
I was writing as a hobby — or at least it looked that way. I wasn’t a serious writer. I wasn’t a player. Basically, I wasn’t bankable.
PLAYERS VS. PIKERS
The responses you give to questions asked during your exchanges to sell your material will be the difference between your career as a writer who is to be taken seriously — a player in the industry, or your being seen as what we call a piker. A piker is someone who is just pretending to climb up the mountain and isn’t really planning to, or going to, actually reach the peak.
This search for materials to be published and produced is not a hobby to these skilled professionals. They are listening to your pitch, evaluating your query letters, and weighing the profitability of your manuscripts and scripts with precise expertise and sincere intentions. It is for this main reason that you will need to have at least three to five additional projects ready to be pitched. That is, have at least one other project near-to-completion and have loglines and synopses for at least four to five projects. Now, you may not have any materials to back these up and be in the same situation that I was, having devoted all of your precious available time outside your job and personal life to writing your first manuscript, but you must still present yourself as someone who has a body of work.
Additionally, by flexing your muscles and composing other selling materials for future projects, you begin to see your brand. You begin to see where you might want to go with your work in the future. As you completed the exercises of Chapters 5 through 12, you gathered some other thoughts about potential additional manuscripts and scripts. These will be your answer to “What else have you got?”
DON’T BE A TEASE
Do not query agents, publishers, production companies and/or producers unless you have entire manuscripts and scripts to show them. This is a hard and fast rule. There are always those writers who fall into the “wanna be” category. I say “wanna be” because they will never move past that level of being unknown to being published or produced if they do not have completed projects to present after they’ve pitched them.
Wanna-be writers make the statement “I’m going to pitch this idea and if they like it or buy it, then I’ll write it.” I’ve seen this happen over and over. A writer will attend a pitch fest, pitch their idea, and the potential buyer asks for the manuscript or script. The writer emails or texts me in a “high importance/frantic” mode asking what to do. I respond with “Write the script. Now. Immediately. Don’t go to sleep until it is finished. If you do not send that material to them within a 24 to 48 hour period, they will forget about the idea, and worse, know that you are an amateur, a piker, a wanna-be.”
AUTHENTIC WRITING
As a writer who has now been introduced to The Writer’s Advantage and to the necessary tools you need to use to create material that will represent your genre in a new and improved way, here are three standards to follow:
Do not pitch your projects until you have completed the Genre Toolkit List research found in this book.
Do not pitch your projects until they are completed and ready to be seen in a professional marketplace.
Do not pitch your projects unless you have additional follow-up material to present as part of your work as a writer.
You want to be taken seriously — and you will when you present yourself as a vibrant creator of content that offers something new to these potential buyers.
WHAT NOW?
You’ve organized your research for one project and you can use that same method over and over again for your next projects. If you work within the same genre, then you’ll be building upon the research you completed for your first project. Mastering one genre can also help as you master another.
NO FEAR OF SUCCESS
Know what you want as you go out into the world with your material. Know what you want to ask for. In other words, do you want to sell your material straight away and receive a lump sum payment, or are you thinking that you would like to be involved as a creative producer should, say, your manuscript be picked up as a TV series with the WB or on Netflix. You can ask for whatever you envision.
Know this. Too often writers are a timid type who do not think that they deserve the success of selling their work or posting their work digitally and finding a following. You’ll never know until you do this (note that I didn’t say “try this,” because in this world, as in Yoda’s world, there are no “tries,” only do or do not). You’ve racked up a number of hours performing this research, writing your manuscript or script, and prepping your selling materials. Don’t stop there.
Too many writers have a fear of success. Yes, I said success. Why? Because they know that when they sell their material their life is going to change. And it is going to change, and you’ll have control over that also when you reach that level.
For now, believe that you will sell your work, if that is what you want to do, and know that it is not a matter of “if” but “when” you find a way to distribute your work to those audiences who will benefit from your work.
You are now an authentic writer. You’ve crafted a project that reflects your own voice, your vision. You have something new to offer to the marketplace with valid, solid facts to back up your project. Your confidence level is high because you know where your material fits into the marketplace. This information will assist you throughout your writing career.
This method works. It shares the insider knowledge found in development departments and editors’ offices with you, the writer, so you won’t look like an idiot when you go out with your work. You also won’t be pitching an idea that’s been heard
and done a million times over — you’ll be pitching a new, authentic text.
You have not only mastered your genre, you’ve mastered The Writer’s Advantage.
EXERCISE
Keep writing
Write loglines and synopses for at least three to five of your additional projects and keep writing forward....
A FEW LAST WORDS
I have worked with many writers who have been successful in their own right in the entertainment and publishing industries. The most joyous texts, emails, and calls I receive are those from writers I’ve worked with who have achieved their goals. Their goals vary. One could be that of completing their manuscript/script, and another could be that of selling their work as a three-book franchise or feature deal. Progress to me means any step along the way, from completion to sale, and I happily applaud their achievements. If they followed my advice and incorporated some element we discussed into their work, I am thankful and consider the news to be a tiny bit of a success on my behalf also.
I have always felt that this is information that is my duty to share, information that was passed down to me from my mentors and colleagues, along with my learned experience throughout my two career paths.
There is a saying in the entertainment industry: “You’re only as good as your last movie, or book, etc.” In my case, I’m only as good as my last successful student(s).
Long ago I wished that I could be available to assist as many writers as the number of shells that appeared on the beach I had been visiting in Ventura, California.
I have met many, many of those lovely shells and have been fortunate to work with them and I look forward to meeting the others, thanking them along the way for seeking me out at the right time and right place and for taking the time to learn The Writer’s Advantage.
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