How to Get Your Screenplay Read from FADE IN to FADE OUT

The first time I walked into my agent’s office I was floored. The office itself was nice, windowed, on a corner, had classy furniture, leather chairs.

I’d just been flown in from the Washington D.C. area. I slowly sat in my leather chair across from my agent, who had my manuscript on his desk in front of him.

But my eyes couldn’t stop scanning the room:

Almost all of the floor was covered by stacks of scripts! I’m talking each stack was at least 3-dozen screenplays high. And the stacks of screenplays not only covered the main floor, they lined the perimeter of the entire room.

There was no order, no filing system. There were already new, smaller stacks forming in the middle of the floor. But the only system for tracking these screenplays was that on the spines of each screenplay some dutiful assistant wrote in bold black semi-permanent marker the title of the screenplay.

I knew that I was looking at a Black Hole that ate up screenplays— and that Black Holes just like this one could be found in every other agent's, manager's, or producer's office!

Let me remind you that I knew no one, so my script had at one point occupied one of the leaning towers of manuscript pizzas.

Here is the truth I learned in that very moment inside my agent's offices:

Getting your script read is great. It’s a major achievement. It's the first big chance, first big break, you've been working so hard to get. And this opportunity will be TOTALLY BLOWN FOREVER if you submit a mediocre script or a script that shows even one of The 7 Deadly Sins of the Amateur Screenwriter!

When I cover your screenplay, this is what I will give you—

EVERYTHING I’VE EVER LEARNED ABOUT HOW TO KEEP A PRODUCER— OR AGENT— OR FAMOUS ACTOR'S PRODUCTION COMPANY IN SEARCH OF A GREAT SCRIPT— READING YOUR SCREENPLAY FROM FADE-IN TO FADE-OUT!

Know How Good Your Screenplay Truly Is—And How to Make It Truly Better!