33 Ways to Sell Your Screenplay!: How to Get Your Screenwriting on the Market and Start a Career as a Screenwriter by Hal Croasmun

Author:Hal Croasmun [Croasmun, Hal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ScreenwritingU Press
Published: 2015-03-12T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four:

Strategies to Assemble Your A-Team

Why assemble a team? Because it takes a team to get a movie made. It is part of what the movie business is about. You can apply this set of strategies to create a team to get your script sold.

In general, having a team gives you an advantage.

Strategy 16: Get a Script Consultant with Connections

There are two great reasons to use a script consultant who has connections. The most obvious one is the hope that they'll recommend the script to agents and producers. But the other reason may be even more important. It is...

Consultants with real connections give very different feedback!

Make sure you understand that. I've seen consultants who unknowingly killed the most marketable parts of a screenplay. They truly don't understand what will sell a script, so they don't know that they just destroyed the writer's chance of success.

If you are trying to break into the industry, you need a reader who needs to maintain their REPUTATION with producers and agents, as well as screenwriters.

I'm not saying that consultants without connections don't provide value. Many are very good, and provide excellent notes on how to improve a script, but if you are ready to sell your screenplay, get consulting from someone who is connected.

Choosing a Script Consultant

The first step is the most important—get clear on your own needs. Are you looking for encouragement? If so, ask your network to recommend an encouraging consultant. Are you looking to improve your lead characters? Find a consultant who specializes in characters. Do you want to increase the marketability of your script? Then look for a consultant that focuses on marketability.

If you know what you need, you can find a consultant who specializes in that area. Or you can directly ask the consultant to focus on that area. But you're better off finding a specialist because they know that skill set inside and out.

Then get recommendations. Someone in your network has used consultants before. Ask them who they recommend... and who they don't recommend.

Here's a few questions to ask a script consultant:

- What are you best at? (Hopefully, that matches up with what you need.)

- Would you be willing to focus on ___(your primary need)_____ as you work with my script?

- What is your process? How do you give notes?

- Can I discuss the notes with you to get clarification?

Once they've done the job, then go through their comments and select the ones you want to apply to your script.

Remember, there are plenty of people who can point out typos and formatting problems, but a script consultant should add serious value to your script. You want them to discover important problems in a script and provide valuable solutions.

And if the consultant loves your script, they may recommend it to their contacts!

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