Reader Question: If a manager passes on you, does that hurt your chances of getting read by them in the future?

From tilleryjohnson:

Does querying managers, agents, etc, hurt your chances of getting read by them in the future if they say no to you now?

Perhaps somewhere in Alhambra, there is this seemingly innocuous building… no names on the front… windowless… but if you were to sneak inside, you’d discover it is filled with massive computer main frames… housing a dedicated database of all aspiring writers who query managers and are turned down… providing Hollywood lit reps an instantaneous read on every single email they receive… equipped with a ‘search-and-destroy’ function which obliterates each rejected user address… thereby separating the virtual wheat from the virtual chaff…

But I doubt it.

Whether you have contacted a manager or not, been turned away or not, my hunch is there are three things they look for in any query:

1. A great logline.
2. A great logline.
3. A great logline.

The film business is built on great scripts which are built on great story concepts. So just in terms of getting a potential rep to rouse from a stupor created by the unending pile of crap scripts through which they routinely slog, if you have a great story concept articulated in a great logline, my guess is they could have turned you away a dozen times before, but now they would welcome you like a [insert appropriate simile here because I’m too lazy to come up with one].

Two more things. First, my subtext detector indicates a slight case of “I’m nervous about querying managers” in your question.

Don’t be. Your strategy should be somewhere between these two broad options: selective and carpet bombing.

If you have a small, character-driven script that requires a certain kind of reader to ‘get’ it, then do some research on comparable movies, find out who manages those writers, then target them.

If you have a mainstream, commercial high-concept popcorn movie script [It’s “Chronicle” meets “Caligula”!], go after everybody. I mean, if you query two dozen managers, that is nowhere near enough. You should be thinking hundreds of queries.

I keep going back to an interview I read with Seth Lochhead who queried 500 reps with the logline in the subject heading: “Girl trained to be an assassin.” That’s how he get his spec script Hanna read, how he got signed, and eventually how the movie got made.

The other thing: Before you go to all this trouble, make damn sure your story concept is a great one and that your script is a great one. In other words, don’t do like I did once and send out a script before it was ready. The path leads to a dismal little corner of the universe known as Epic Fail.

Fortunately the inverse is true: If you write a great script… Hollywood will find you. And not just anyone in Hollywood, but established, well-known, top-notch managers, the kind with whom you want to be in business.

But make sure your story concept and script are great. Or else, we’ll send out the Script Cops to take you down!