How do you make contacts when you are really shy?
I actually wrote a rather lengthy reply to this a little while ago which, I'm afraid, failed to show up.
So I'm going to try it again.
While it may not be immediately obvious from reading my posts, I am an exceptionally introverted person. Very much so now, even more so in the past.
I am the kind of person who doesn't want the waiter in a restaurant to introduce himself and chat. My feeling is -- I don't want a relationship with you. Just take my order. If I want something else, I'll gesture. Come find out what it is, bring it. Go away. Don't even make eye contact with me. I don't want to know your name. I came in here for dinner. Not for a new friend.
I once attended a talk given by a writer I know, David Morrell (who wrote the original First Blood novel among many others), and he spoke about the difference between introverted and extroverted people -- because, of course, many writers fall into the former category.
So what is the difference? It's not that introverted people can't spend time with other people, that they can't work with them or have relationships, or what have you.
The difference between the two kinds of people is that, for an introvert, dealing with other people, even when it's a pleasurable encounter -- is work. As David Morrell described it, it "drains your batteries."
When you've spent a lot of time dealing with other people, whether it's been a positive or negative experience, you're desperate to get back to base -- back to your room, back alone. Back with books, your movies.
Because that's how you recharge. The introvert is re-energized by being alone.
It's exactly the opposite with the extrovert. He's somebody who spends all day at work, and when he's done -- he wants to go out with the guys, and then he gets home and he wants to turn right around and go out somewhere again -- more social interactions.
That's because those social interactions charge him up. It's being alone that, for the extrovert, takes work. For him to have to sit down a desk, by himself, and finish a report, or read a book, or anything that requires him to be alone and not interacting -- that's what drains his batteries.
The point is -- there is nothing "wrong" with either kind of person. There is nothing that needs to be fixed or that can be fixed.
This pattern -- introvert/extrovert, is identifiable very early in childhood and it doesn't change throughout your life. It is fundamentally part of who you are.
So it is important to understand this aspect of yourself but also to understand what it is.
It isn't that you can't deal with people. It just means that it will always involve work for you. On the other hand, there will always be things that will be easy for you -- like closing the door, sitting down, by yourself and working for eight or ten hours, that is likewise, almost impossible for a lot of other people.
So you next question is how do you *do* that work of dealing with people that we all obviously find so stressful?
Now, I can only give you partial answer because there is no magic solution -- there's no way that it will ever truly be easy.
I did it myself for years because I had to. Did I ever do a great job? No, honestly. I'm ultimately, very far from a great salesman. And there have been things that I've learned since that I wish I knew then.
So what do you do? Well, first, knowing that this is a high stress process, you need to try to lower the stress of these encounters so that you don't do what I often did -- which is to completely choke up and sound like a blithering idiot.
I mean, I would get on a phone call and I would have to not only write down the name of the person I was going to talk to and the name of my script but my own name because I was so rattled, I would literally forget my own name.
And part of what you need to do is to just step back. Part of doing this is to try (and this is hard) to think like a salesman. This isn't about selling one thing to one buyer.
Your goal is to be a screenwriter. You will write many scripts. This is just one. Most won't sell. You will make many calls. Most times, you won't get through. You will talk to many people. Most times, it won't be a good match for any number of reasons.
But every script you write, every call you make, every time you talk to somebody -- that moves you forward.
And that process of "moving you forward" -- that is your goal.
Your goal is to always to be moving yourself forward professionally.
Write the script. Rewrite the script. Prepare the call list. Make the calls.
Talk to the assistants. Introduce yourself. Ask their names. Write their names down. Try to find something to chat about with them. Assistants are always abused and ignored. Even if you just talk to them about the weather -- Gosh it's been raining here for three days. What's it like out there?
And here's the thing. There's no such thing as a failure. Every time you make a call, it's a success. You're moving forward. So reward yourself.
Even if that means -- thank god, no more calls today. I only make one call a day, or two calls a day. Then no more calls. I can recharge.
Or if you get through and actually talk to somebody -- great. No calls the whole next day. If that what it takes -- or if you want to buy yourself a sundae. Be willing to reward yourself when you keep moving yourself forward.
The pitch -- you may have heard about this. This is when you actually get on the phone with somebody (which can actually happen) who wants to hear about your movie.
Okay, tell me about your movie.
You'll probably have about five minutes. Make it good. Start now.
This would be around the time that I would forget my name.
But -- here's the point. Everybody in this business talks about "passion."
"We want the writer to be passionate."
"We want to see your passion for the project."
"Are you passionate about this project?"
And my tendency, generally, when I hear things like this is to say -- what bullshit.
But it's actually important to understand what they mean, what they're talking about.
They want a project of some kind that gets them excited. Just like when I recently saw the trailer for "The Hobbit." Now, I have no idea whether anyone else around here is a fan of the Lord of the Rings movies. I sure was -- and all I can say is, when I saw that trailer -- I am just freaking dying to see that movie.
I am just incredibly excited at the prospect of seeing that movie. All it took was around two minutes.
And there have been lots of trailers like that -- just give me two minutes and that's it -- those two minutes just make me crazy to see the movie.
That little sample of the movie, that generally includes the premise and some glimpses the main action sequences, and a few key lines -- give me a sense of what the movie is going to be.
And that's enough to make me desperate to see it. I want to see it. I'm excited at the prospect of seeing it. Show me that movie. Get me into that theater.
Now -- think back to when you first had the idea for a screenplay. Maybe you didn't have much more than the idea, or a scene or two. Obviously, those little bits and pieces must have been, for you, back then, the equivalent of a mental "trailer" for a screenplay and for a movie that didn't yet exist.
It must have excited you so much that you said to yourself -- I see this movie that doesn't yet exist and it excites me so much, this idea, these characters, these moments I see in my head, that I'm going to sit down and spend however many hundreds of hours of my life, committing it to paper (or bits and bytes -- whatever) and then spends still more hours of my life to try to get it sold and made.
So you see -- somewhere inside you, you really do have that excitement and that passion for your screenplay.
That is what you need to convey.
They're not looking for a book report. They want to see what was in your head and in your heart that made you write this screenplay.
You're a storyteller - but the story that you're telling isn't the "story" of your screenplay, because you're only going to have around five minutes or so.
No, you have to tell the "story" of how you came to write this incredible, unbelievable idea for a story, these great characters, and for instance, this set piece, where this happens, and he says this, and she says that.
That's really what you're pitching -- a verbal "trailer" for the movie.
Now, you may be asking -- how is it that I even came to be on the phone with anybody?
I've actually gone over this procedure in other threads and it probably makes more sense for you to check back on those threads rather than for me to prolong what's obviously already a very long post.
There are ways to do it. You can try the query route, or e-mails, or what have you.
At a certain point in my career -- and I did have a career that I managed to achieve through doing this sort of thing -- not hugely successful, because as I said, I didn't do it terribly well.
On the other hand, during my early years, I had both an agent and a manager and they literally never sold anything that I wrote -- and I did.
In fact, my agent literally quit the agency where she was working and I only found out about because I tried to call her one day and the agency told me that she wasn't working there any more.
And I finally fired my manager because it was, from my perspective, becoming an unhealthy relationship. It was just too easy for me to think that, because I had a manager, I didn't have to do anything myself to move my career forward. After all, didn't I have a "manager."
The only trouble is -- he wasn't doing anything to move my career forward. So having him was not only not moving my career forward, it was hurting me because it was giving me a false sense of "doing something" when I was actually doing nothing.
So I fired him and got back to doing something.
Ultimately, I did get myself a new manager who did do quite a lot to move my career forward.
My wife had worked in sales for years before she decided to stay home to raise our kids. She (unlike me) is an extrovert. She loves talking to people. I would home. She'd be on the phone with somebody for a half hour. She'd hang up. Who was that? Oh, I just called up to order something -- and she'd get into a long conversation with the woman on the other end of the line.
And I thought - this is really all you need to be a manager. Just a list of people to call (which I had), and the ability to connect to people (which she had).
So I ultimately managed to convince her to manage me, which she did, under her maiden name. And after a year or so, she was able to get one script of mine optioned by Fox (they ultimately bought it) and a year or so later, we sold another to Dimension for mid-six figures, at which point my career sort of took off in a big way and after that I got an agent.
And while I don't have to cold call the way I did before, I still have to get on the phone and I have to take meetings and pitch -- both my own stuff and also on assignments -- in some respects, more than I did before.
So however your career goes, these "people" skills are always going to be part of your professional life.
NMS
