I've heard that before you look for an agent you need to have your script polished to perfection. Is it the same way with looking for a manager? Should you look for a manager with just one script completed or should you have a variety? Tell what you think, thanks!
When to start looking for a manager?
- Thread starter curious1980
- Start date
You should have at least one script ready to sell. If you can't prove that you are up to par as a writer, they aren't going to waste their time trying to get you there.
Managers, etc....
That one script better be pretty darn great if you're going to garner the attention of an agent and/or manager. They need to know you're able to produce material and that you're not simply a one-shot wonder.
My suggestion: Have at least two or three top-notch scripts ready to go.
To find managers and agents, pick up a copy of the Hollywood Creative Directory (HDC), the edition for representation.
Good luck!
That one script better be pretty darn great if you're going to garner the attention of an agent and/or manager. They need to know you're able to produce material and that you're not simply a one-shot wonder.
My suggestion: Have at least two or three top-notch scripts ready to go.
To find managers and agents, pick up a copy of the Hollywood Creative Directory (HDC), the edition for representation.
Good luck!
And don't forget HCD online, which is paperless and consistently updated (it's more expensive, of course - $200 a year). But you can browse every management co worth submitting to.
Re pitching just one screenplay, you can try. If you've got at least a dozen full crits and a dozen more on the intro, and you've rewritten it twice and proofread it and so on. But the more you have the better your opportunities for getting an agent or manager. And it's cool to be ready when they say "No, but what else do you have?" Which they will ask, TBC.
Re pitching just one screenplay, you can try. If you've got at least a dozen full crits and a dozen more on the intro, and you've rewritten it twice and proofread it and so on. But the more you have the better your opportunities for getting an agent or manager. And it's cool to be ready when they say "No, but what else do you have?" Which they will ask, TBC.
If all you've got is a single diamond, however finely polished it may be, that doesn't make you a gemologist.
And managers aren't in the business of selling diamonds -- they're in the business of managing the careers of gemologist.
That requires not *one* diamond (and that presumes the monumentally unlikely proposition that the very first gem you cut and polish will, in fact, be even up to industrial grade, never mind a gem of museum quality) but a body of work that demonstrates your ability as a someone who can cut and polish gems consistently, to order, and on a timely basis.
So what I tell anybody who isn't already a professional writer in some other area (that is, unless you are already a professsional working novelist or playwright or journalist) is that if all you've done is finish one screenplay -- or if you haven't even finished one, then you shouldn't be thinking in terms of agents or managers or query letters.
You should be thinking in terms of your next script, because the chances of this first script of yours, or anyone's first script, being good enough to sell are, if not nil, then virtually nil.
And the last thing you want to do is to burn a bunch of bridges -- by which I mean potential contacts -- by sending them an unsaleable script now, when a few years from now, after gaining a lot more experience by writing a lot more screenplays, you will be in a far better position to make those contacts with some possibility of a successful outcome.
NMS