Correspondence with a Teenage Screenwriter | New Writer Seeks Agent

November 26, 2006

The following is an e-mail message I received from a 17 year old screenwriter and my response.

Hi my name is Bridgette, i’m a 17 year old high school senior, and i wrote nine screenplays. I have completed and have copy written one of my screenplays. You were right about the screenplay agency. Can you help me or recommend a real agency i can send my work to, and agency that will accept new writers.

My response to the previous e-mail was:

Hi Bridgette,

There are a lot of agencies that accept new writers; of course you can’t just send them an unsolicited screenplay. The first step is the query letter or letter asking for permission to send them your script. As I haven’t sold any scripts as of yet, I ‘m not really qualified to give advice on pursuing the art of screenwriting, but with that said, I’ve read some excellent guides and resources on how to find an agent.

Last week I sent out my first round of query letters for a horror script I spent the last 8 months re-writing, re-writing- and re-writing. All of the agencies I queried accept new writers, don’t charge any upfront fees whatsoever, and have major movie sales. I got this list from the 2006 Guide to Literary Agents, a book you can purchase for $24.99 or less from any bookstore or via amazon.com. Besides having some good info on the role and job of an agent it contains a nice list of agencies categorized by what genre they accept and the best form of initial contact (usually the query letter though the mail). I think this is a good place to start. Also note: in addition to copyright most screenwriters register their work with the writers guild of America for around $15,00. I registered my script there.

If you are relatively new to screenplay writing and the business end of it, you may also want to brush up on a general guide to screenwriting. I personally like The Screenwriter’s Bible. It’s a very quick read and offers tips from a pro. I used this as a guide when writing my initial query letter.

I would recommend you make absolutely sure you’re screenplay is ready for this step before you submit it. At 17 it’s outstanding that you enjoy writing and have a work of that magnitude completed. However, it would really suck to get a bunch of script requests out there and then have nothing happen. Have you let anyone read your work? Maybe an English teacher or someone with professional writing experience?

I have seen a few movies that written or co-written by a female your age. Check out Thirteen and Havoc. They’re really intense and well done. Jessica Kaplan (the writer of Havoc) actually sold her first screenplay to New Line Cinema at the age of 17.

My next step in seeking a commercial deal for my script is to query more agents, submit my screenplay to a few key screenwriting contests (list of good ones are available online and in the books I mentioned above) and then finally pitch my script directly to independent producers.

I’ll keep everyone notified of my failures and successes via my blog. Thank you for writing and I wish you the best of luck and don’t let rejection discourage you. Screenwriting is a lot of fun.

thanks for writing,

Solomon

[tags]screenwriting, movie script agent, unproduced screenplay, screenwriters[/tags]

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