Reader Question: What ways are there for a writer to market and promote him/herself?

From Liz:

I hope this doesn’t seen too random. My sister and I are writing partners. We’re getting ready to attend a few events this summer, and we’d like to carry business cards with us. Since we write together, should we have just one card we give people with contact info for each of us, or is that totally weird and we should each carry our own?

I guess that depends. Do you write everything together? Do you feel confident your writing partnership is solid enough so that if you sell a spec script or what not and break into the business, you will be able to work together professionally full time?

If so, why not have one card with contact information for both of you? Simplifies things and underscores the fact that you are a writing team.

This raises a larger issue about a writer marketing and promoting him/herself. I tend to be pretty old school about this sort of thing, basically with a starting point that the scripts you write are your single best marketing tool. One example can be found here in a post I did on Michael Arndt and Pixar:

In a strange twist of fate, Michael Arndt found himself in a position enviable to any writer. The New York-based screenwriter was in Los Angeles for the production of his first screenplay, the indie dramedy Little Miss Sunshine. Unsure of his next career move, Arndt received a call from his agent with the surprising news that Pixar principals wanted to meet him. “It was like being summoned to Mount Olympus,” he says.

It turns out that Pixar’s story department head, Mary Coleman, asked Sunshine producer Ron Yerxa if he knew any great up-and-coming writers. Yerxa gave Coleman Arndt’s script and she was blown away. The amazing thing about this story is that despite the fact that Little Miss Sunshine would eventually go on to become a big indie hit — and win Arndt an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay — at the time Arndt was interviewing with Pixar, Sunshine didn’t even have a distributor.

Based on the strength of his script for Little Miss Sunshine, even before the movie had been released, Arndt attracted the attention of Pixar and eventually went on to write the screenplay for Toy Story 3.

But Arndt had his foot in Hollywood’s door. What about for aspiring screenwriters?

I’d reiterate the point: Your script is the single most valuable marketing tool you have. The story you craft and what’s on the page are a reflection of your creativity, your ability to write, your voice, everything that is, at the end of the day, most essentially important to a manager, agent, producer, or studio executive.

So always keep your focus on writing a damn good script.

Now I know there is a lot of emphasis placed on query letters. And yes, they can be important. However after your script, I would argue that the next most critical component of how to market yourself are the loglines for your script. Story concepts are the lifeblood of Hollywood, hugely important to the success or failure of a screenplay. If you have a great story concept and craft a terrific logline, that can open doors perhaps better than anything else. An example, which I posted about here is what happened to screenwriter Seth Lochhead and his spec script “Hanna”:

Lochhead shares an interesting anecdote about how he got his script in front of buyers: He sent out 400 emails to people in the business:

“A lot were one-sentence emails. A girl is trained to be an assassin; would you like to read my script.”

Based on a stripped down logline, basically the story conceit, Lochhead was able to market his script, eventually getting it produced into the movie now in release.

Another thing: If you’re a writer, why not show off that skill by blogging? While the days of mumblecore blogging are fading, if you have a distinctive, fresh voice and you can convey that in daily blog posts, who knows what can happen? All you need is the right set of eyeballs to stumble on your site. That’s what happened with Diablo Cody, something I posted about here:

Mason Novick is a manager (MXN) whose clients include screenwriter Diablo Cody, who as the story goes he discovered via her blog. Novick was a producer on Cody’s scripted projects Juno and Jennifer’s Body.

Beyond that, I’m going to rely on the expertise of GITS readers to chime in because I’m sure you folks have a lot more — and better — ideas than I do. So writers, PR people, marketing experts, what suggestions do you have to help market and promote yourself — both as an aspiring writer and once you’re a professional writer.

Tomorrow’s question: When can you stop tinkering with a script and finally say “done”?