Recommended Screenwriters
Why Most Query Letters Fail, Part 2
- June 13, 2011
- Posted by: HalCroasmun
- Category: Articles
See Part 1 of this Article here.
Imagine this: An assistant at a production company is on lunch break. On one side of him is a box with 150 query letters. One of them is yours. On the other side is a trash can.
He does this routine twice a month. 150 letters in 30 minutes. That is five letters a minute.
Guess how much of each letter he'll read? One, maybe two sentences. If those two sentences don't intrigue him, he moves on to the next letter. When he finishes his sandwich, chances are that he'll request two or three scripts.
Hopefully, your script will be one of them.
KEY TO YOUR SUCCESS: Have him get it in a glance.
Get what? My story? No. What he needs to get is that a wide audience will be attracted to your movie.
Don't worry, there are ways to give him that message without saying "This movie will gross $100 million at the box office."
In the last issue, I presented the first two reasons that query letters fail. They are:
PROBLEM 1: Writing a book report.
PROBLEM 2: Lack of Clarity.
Those are easily solved, but the next two are where your creativity will really pay off.
PROBLEM 3: Not discovering the "marketing hook" of your story.
What's a hook? In the movie world, it is the thing that causes audiences to flock to your movie.
When people have a choice between 500 TV channels and leaving their house to go to a movie, there needs to be something about that movie that will cause them to make the special effort.
Your job is to identify that hook and present your screenplay through it. Do that and producers will gladly read your script.
How do you find the hook?
Look for the thing that will be most interesting to a wide audience. You aren't looking for a general answer like "My characters." What you are looking for is the single most interesting thing about your STORY.
It might be the dilemma your characters are in. Or maybe it is the 2nd Act conflict. Or maybe the 1st Act setup. Or it could be the unique environment you are exposing to the audience.
Whatever it is, you need to do two things. First, clearly identify that overall hook. Second, you need to focus your query letter to make sure it creates as much curiosity as you can about the single most interesting thing about your story.
PROBLEM 4: Not writing dramatically enough.
Once you have a hook, now the focus should be on writing in the most dramatic way you can.
First, that means you need to constantly engage our curiosity. Start by selecting ONLY the most interesting, unique, strange, or surprising parts of your story to write about.
Second, deliver emotion whenever possible. Shock us. Surprise us. Make us laugh. Make us sad. Scare us. Etc.
Third, write in the "setup / punchline" fashion that is standard in stand-up comedy. Instead of saying "Then, Johnny's mom turned against him," write something like "Then the one person that Johnny always trusted turned snitch on him — his mom."
See the difference?
Every sentence in a query letter should be dramatic in some way. Your job is to grab our attention and never let go. If you have a dull sentence, rewrite it.
I know this seems like a lot of work, but it is absolutely worth it. You spent six months writing your script. Don't let your ship sink to save a few hours of work.
If you put the same amount of creativity into your query letter as you do with one of your lead characters, you'll be in that top 2% that consistently get their scripts read.
And if you need help or want to make sure your script gets read, take a lookt at our Marketing Your Screenplay Class.