Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds

by Michael Hauge

  or producer. Your time to get the big money is when it actually sells to a studio.

  Socialize. Sometimes it is best to get to know a person before getting straight to business. If an executive or producer likes you before hearing you pitch them cold, odds are they will look at your stuff — even if its a simple exchange of a few sentences that develops some common ground.

  Recognize when to pitch and when to wait. Don’t be so excited that you are standing next to someone you want to pitch to that you launch right into your pitch. It might be better just to socialize or ask a question. Then, a couple of days later, follow up with a call or a letter including your pitch.

  There are no set rules of how things get done. You will find advice about what to do and what not to do, but there are numerous ways that things can work. Vary your strategy and find what works best for you.

  If someone follows the rules that I outlined above, then I’ll generally take a look — assuming the “hook” is something that excites me, and makes me think the property has a chance in the marketplace.

  Pamela Jaye Smith

  Writer, Consultant, Award-winning Producer-Director

  Author: Inner Drives: How to Write and Create Characters Using the Eight Classic Centers of Motivation Founder: Mythworks

  Too much time setting up the story and/or the main character. Too much about why the person wrote the story (me, me, me). Too much about how much I’m going to like the story, or why it is so commercial.

  Basically, too much information that is not specifically about the story itself.

  Three different approaches I like come to mind:

  • A provocative conflict. Pairs of opposites (man vs. woman, white vs. black, hobbit vs. wizard, fisherman vs. storm, rebel vs. establishment, etc.) in precarious situations (during the plague, in an election, a war zone, a depression, a space flight, etc.)

  • Identification plus alienation. An every-person characteristic (rejected lover, grieving widower, ambitious high school grad, talented slacker, commitment-phobe, etc.) confronting the terrifying prospect of change (opening to emotion, taking responsibility, sacrificing for others, risking rejection, etc.)

  • An intriguing, engaging personal question. “Have you ever wondered what would happen if …?” “You know how sometimes you think, ‘If only I could go back in time to …’?” or, “What if your deepest wish came true?” “What’s your favorite myth? What if you got to live it?”

  Rob Tobin

  Award-Winning Screenwriter, Script Consultant, Script Doctor

  Author: How to Write High Structure, High Concept Movies; and Screenwriting: The Secret Formula

  As a former development exec, and as someone who is invited to sit as a panelist at pitch fests, the most common weaknesses in the pitches I’ve heard have to do with the writer not really knowing his or her story well enough to convey it clearly and succinctly. More specifically, the writers

  don’t know the essential elements, and how to incorporate them into a pitchable log line.

  “A calloused radio psychologist starts experiencing the neuroses of his call-in patients.” Though this script has yet to be produced, it sold to a studio the first day it went out to the town. I read it because the pitch had built-in conflict, I knew who the hero was, what the end-of-act-one event was, there was an implied second act, the hero’s flaw was in the log line, and all of that in a very short, easily spoken and easily remembered sentence.

  Dave Trottier

  Author: The Screenwriter’s Bible; Dr. Format Answers Your Questions

  First, the failure to focus on the character and story. Second, a pitch that is too general. Example of both weaknesses: “My story is about a Mafia family in turmoil and transition.” Better: “When a powerful Mafia don is shot, his reluctant son takes actions that elevate him to become the next godfather.” A third weakness is trying to force too many subplots into the pitch, rather than focusing on the core story.

  I don’t have permission to share the pitch, but my reaction was, “Now that’s a movie!” In other words, the pitch presented a clear, focused and unencumbered story concept that naturally translated to the silver screen.

  Irena Tully

  Managing Director, Impulse Productions

  Lack of contagious passion about one’s own script, and an inability to convey its clear message and magic. Writers’ visions are often diminished by rambling about

  commercial prospects, or making statements like, “It’s going to be one of the best films ever made.”

  This pitch has worked for me: “I have worked on this story since I was born — I felt through it, lived through it, dreamed through it, laughed and cried through it, and now I’d like others to share my journey. It’s about a …”

  I always appreciate a polite yet confident approach, while striking an emotional cord without being familiar. If the pitch comes from an agent or executive, the fact that A-list talent is interested/attached to the project helps in deciding to read it. You want to find out what the others have seen in it and compare that with your own perception.

  Mark R. Turner

  Above the Line Media

  Producer; Board Member: The American Screenwriters Association

  A common mistake occurs when people try to sound too much like other, existing productions. Simply saying, “It’s like Old Movie A meets Old Movie B in outer space,” pretty much means you couldn’t think of an original way to pitch your story. Use those points of reference, but don’t rely on them to be your entire pitch. Otherwise you’re telling me that you’ve basically just re-written a picture or combined two other pictures into something you think is new.

  Another common problem is mistaking passion for a good story. Just because it happened to you doesn’t make it interesting. Just because you feel passionately about it doesn’t mean that it’s going to put butts in the seats. It is important to believe in what you are writing and pitching, but always keep in mind that producers and distributors are going to need to sell it to the general

  public. So tell them what the selling points are. Help them to see why the movie-going public is going to embrace your screenplay as a picture they want to see.

  Sometimes a great title will generate enough interest for me to want to read the screenplay. At Austin a couple of years back, a writer gave a quick sentence that summed up the story and then told the title. I started laughing, and I knew, even before she went any further, that I wanted to read that screenplay. She used that quick overview as the setup, and the title as if it were the punch line to a joke.

  Rodney Vance

  Screenwriter: Conspiracy Café Operation Babylift; UnderCover of Darkness; Raven Chase

  Head Writer: The Evidence; Lifestyle Magazine

  When I ask screenwriters what their script is about, they often launch into a (potentially) lengthy listing of events which are too detailed to keep in my head. If I have time, I ask questions. “Who’s your story about? What is the one thing he/she must achieve in this story? Does he achieve it? Everything else is detail that quickly becomes confusing.

  A screenplay pitch I really liked was, “(Title) is a quirky comedy about a mortician who is kidnapped by a conspiracy of beautiful women, falls in love and saves the world from a nanovirus intended to make men nice.“ I liked the pitch because it was funny, told me the essence of the story, and sparked my curiosity about the details. That curiosity made me want to read the script.

  Michael Wiese

  Michael Wiese Productions

  Publisher, Filmmaker

  The weakness most pitches have is that they don’t connect the concept to the market. Regardless of the length of the pitch, the listener should — almost immediately — be able to ascertain the budget level, the marketing elements (cast, genre, hooks) and the market potential.

  When I was an executive at Vestron I bought over 200 videos and heard 3000 pitches a year. The worst pitch I heard was an oldie 60’s music compilation that the pitcher played as h
e “acted out” every shot. When he did “Splish Splash, I was takin’ a bath …” it was time to end the meeting.

  I was pitched a video in an elevator in NYC once and bought it. But pitching at urinals or slipping scripts under bathroom stalls is unacceptable. Instant pass.

  Either the project “made some kind of difference” in the world — it would have a powerful effect and change lives — or it was commercial. Or once in a while, both.

  If pitchers were buyers, they’d know how to construct a pitch. Writers know their own needs: Sell the script, the book, the movie. But they need to know the buyer’s needs and address those in the pitch. That’s why the buyer is listening.

  I remember pitching Don King on a boxing video series. I got the art department to mock up a video box that had Don King’s picture on it under the title Don King Presents Boxing’s Greatest Hits.His picture was much bigger than Ali’s or Foreman’s. In the meeting I had an assistant count the number of times that King glanced at the box (15 times in one minute!). We met the needs of the person we were pitching!

  Here’s what I consider just about the strongest pitch you can possibly make: “Hi, my name is James Cameron, and I have a new screenplay.”

  Of course, you can’t make that pitch, because you’re not James Cameron. But you can be, if you write enough good screenplays, and enough of them get produced, and enough of those make a lot of money. Even James Cameron had to convince people to read his stuff once upon a time.

  So what’s my point?

  My point is that the best pitch you’ll ever give is the one that results in a deal. And that will only happen when you can back up your pitch with a great screenplay or a great novel.

  Getting your writing read is terrific. It’s the only way to advance your career, and the only way you’ll ever achieve money, success, acclaim or fulfillment as a writer. But it’s only a step towards those goals. The real obstacle, the real work, and the real reward come with the completion of a novel or screenplay that people want to buy.

  Getting anybody at all to read our work can sometimes be so difficult and discouraging that it becomes our sole focus. But even persuading a hundred people to look at your screenplay or book proposal isn’t worth a hoot in hell if they all pass.

  This is not to say that pitching skills aren’t important. Buyers are so jaded by the countless crappy scripts and manuscripts they’ve had to read that simply getting them to consider you is a challenge. And I don’t want your voice to be silenced just because you can’t penetrate the filtering system created by the film and book industries. That’s why I wrote this book.

  But the truth is, a weak pitch of a great story is far more valuable than a great pitch of a mediocre one. Because even if you stumble and mumble and go on too long and say all the wrong things, some buyers will see beneath the weaknesses of your pitch to the potential of your story. And they’ll agree to read it.

  And if they read it, and it’s terrific, they’ll like it; and if they like it they’ll recommend it; and if they recommend it to enough other people who read it and like it, you’ll have yourself a deal, in spite of the fact that your pitch was less than dazzling.

  This certainly isn’t something I would have said in the introduction to this book. I mean, get real — I want this book to sell, and saying up front that a great pitch isn’t the most important asset a writer can have could have cost me a bundle in lost royalties. Plus I truly believe that developing your ability to pitch will accelerate your career and make it much easier for you to succeed.

  But deep down we both know that the one essential commodity you must have, that you must always have, is a great story. So focus on that; strive for that; master that. Everything else is secondary.

  As writers, it’s hard for us to accept the fact that great writing rises to the surface. It’s much more comforting, and a much better excuse for failure, if we can blame it on readers and agents and producers and executives who can’t be approached, and a system that’s designed to exclude us. This belief may not make us happy, but it keeps us safe. As long as we’re convinced that success is impossible, and that everyone’s out to stop us, we can avoid taking any risk.

  I’m not denying the difficulty of a writing or filmmaking career, or the obstacles that must be overcome. But I am saying that if hundreds of novels and plays and movies and TV shows are published and produced every year, it’s not impossible.

  If you’re absolutely committed to working every day, and to perfecting your craft, and to putting yourself out there in whatever way is necessary to get your material read — no matter how terrifying that is — then success, and fulfillment, and a chance to be heard and to touch people’s lives, will truly be yours.

  a

  About a Boy

  A colades

  acknowledgments

  Act 1

  Act 2

  Act 3

  advice

  agencies agents

  Agents Directory, The

  Agents, Editors and You: The Insider’s Guide to Getting Your Book Published

  Air Force One

  Aladdin

  Amazon.com

  American Pie

  American Screenwriters Association

  anecdotes, use of

  antecedents

  anticipation

  Arch, Jeff

  arena

  Armageddon

  Arthur, Art

  As Good as It Gets

  Ashley, Adryenn

  asking for the sale

  assistants

  Association of Authors’ Representatives, The

  Authorlink.com

  Awakenings

  b

  Bad News Bears, The

  Bad Santa

  baseball card story (See Last Mickey Mantle, The) Beautiful Mind, A

  Bel Canto

  biographies

  blockbusters

  Blockbuster Video

  Book Expo America

  book fairs

  book stores

  Book Wire (bookwire.com)

  Bookpitch.com

  Bourne Supremacy, The

  Boxoficemojo.com

  brainstorming

  Brokeback Mountain

  Brooks, Stanley M.

  Bruce Almighty

  budget

  Burgess, Philippa

  Burns, Ken

  business cards

  c

  Cairns, Diane

  Cdla, Deborah

  Cameron, James

  Capote

  Chalberg, Terra

  character arc

  character names

  Cinderella Man

  Civil War, The

  clone factory

  close the deal

  clothing

  Coach Carter

  coaching. See also consultation

  Cobb, Sharon Y.

  Collateral

  Combined Personal Experience/Fictional Story and Genre Template

  common experience

  compliments. See acknowledgments

  conferences

  confidence

  conflict

  consulting. See also consultants; coaching consultants. See also consulting, coaching

  contacts

  contests

  contracts

  copyright

  cover letters

  Crash

  Creative Screenwriting

  credits

  CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

  cue-cards

  Cutler-Rubenstein, Devorah

  d

  Da Vinci Code, The

  Dawn of the Dead

  Day After Tomorrow, The

  degrees, academic

  demographics of the audience

  desire

  development

  deals

  executives. See executives, development

  of story

  Die Hard

  Dinas, Paul

  directories

  documentaries
>
  Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

  Don King Presents Boxing’s Greatest Hits

  DoneDealPro.com

  e

  Earle, Ginger

  editors, book

  Edwards, Rona

  8 Steps to a Powerful Pitch

  Elf

  Elliot, Ted

  email

  emotion, eliciting

  empathy and identification

  empty lead-ins

  endings, story

  endorsements

  Erin Brockovich

  essence of your story

  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

  executives

  on pitching

  development

  f

  Faber, Steve

  Fahrenheit

  Fast Times at Ridgemont High

  fear

  feedback on your pitch

  fees

  Fever Pitch

  FictionAddiction.net

  film festivals

  financier

  Finding Nemo

  Fisher, Bob

  flaws, character

  follow-up with buyers

  foreshadowing

  40-Year-Old Virgin, The

  Forwriters.com

  Fridell, Daniel

  Friedmann, Julian

  Friends

  g

  game shows

  Genre Film Template

  genre

  geography following structure

  Girlfriends

  goasa.com. See American Screenwriters Association

  Godfather, The