The bottom line on query letters

Scott from the fine blog Screenwriting from Iowa had this recent post about query letters. You should read the entire post, but let me excerpt the response Scott received from Chris Lockhart, Story Editor at WME and host of the blog The Inside Pitch:

Your query letter: This is just my opinion. Others will have different reactions.

I think it’s too long. Personally, I don’t want to know anything about you until I’ve read the logline. If the logline excites me, then I’ll want to read more about the mind behind this great idea.

If this came to me from someone I didn’t know, I probably wouldn’t read much beyond the first few lines.

The Emmy detail is interesting, but I’m not sure if anybody other than me would care. I keep a semi-blog, so it has personal intrigue. (And I like to brag to myself that I could be the only screenwriting instructor nominated for an Emmy for teaching screenwriting. Suck on that, McKee!)

We get lots of e-mails a day. Hundreds. And those are business related. And then there’s the query letter. Hundreds of those too. Many companies will not accept unsolicited query letters to avoid liability issues. (I often get query letters that solicit whether or not the writer can send a query.) So, for many, unsolicited queries can be trouble or, at the very least, the lowest of priorities. (By the way, I would never put the word “query” in the subject line of a query letter. Just use the script title.)

No one has time to read through a query. Keep it fast and simple. Evelyn Wood should be your muse. We’re on a search and destroy mission. If I can’t pinpoint the logline amongst all the writing, I’m out of there.

You letter has way too much to say. Don’t sell yourself. Allow the concept to sell itself. When the logline is buried alive in the letter, I figure it may not be all that strong. If I had an awesome concept, I’d put it in the fucking letterhead — not bury in all that black.

So what of your pitch?

I think it’s too long. And, boiled down to it’s most fundamental state, it’s the story of a cop who has to solve a murder.

The hook is that it’s the first murder in the town’s 137 year history. I’m not sure if that’s all that much of a hook. Or if it’s enough of a hook. I kind of like it. But it’s not likely to bowl people over.

Remember, a “hook” is what takes an ordinary story and gives it that spark of originality. That dash of taking the familiar and making it unique. Hollywood likes unique — but familiar. A hook is built into the concept. It’s not a twist. The idea of a hook is to hook the reader into the story. So it’s found earlier in the script. A twist is an unexpected plot turn. For instance, in THE SIXTH SENSE, the hook is the boy sees dead people. The twist is Bruce Willis is dead.

If you going to offer up an archetypal story (and what isn’t archetypal) then you need a strong hook to compete in the marketplace.

I’ve read tens of thousands of scripts. How many scripts have I read that sound like the one you’re pitching? Thousands. There isn’t anything that allows me to say, “That’s a good spin on a tried-and-true formula.”

Referencing THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and SEVEN is a noble effort, but there isn’t anything in what you’ve pitched that allows me to agree. So I blow it off as hyperbole.

In your pitch, you make the fatal mistake of offering up a book cover synopsis. In other words, you deliver it with mystery, explaining some things but leaving more to one’s imagination.. I don’t want fucking mystique. I want to know the story.

So if you’re going to offer up more than just the logline — tell me the story. I don’t need the theme — which you sort of deliver here. (Don’t tell people what your script is “really” about. Let them decide for themselves. It’s a personal journey. Telling them what they’re suppose to derive from it makes it your journey. If a reader cannot personalize the experience, the script fails.)

The pitch is vague in telling me what the cop is up against. He’s investigating this terrible crime. He suspects the criminal is a townie and not an outsider. And…then what? Your pitch goes off base at that point with theme instead of telling me the actual drama. You lose focus. For instance, when he suspects it’s a townie, how does that impact the investigation? What does that mean for him? Is the town trying to cover it up? Protect the real culprit and allow an outside to take the fall?

I should understand this from the pitch.

But you evade the important stuff that I have to know and offer up inconsequential stuff. A good pitch should intrigue — not frustrate.

Give me the story points that make me want to read this script. Give me the conflict. Give me the drama.

GIVE ME THE MOVIE!

Think of pitching like house selling. In terms of the marketplace, you want to show off the pitch’s assets and minimize the elements that could turn off reps, producers and execs. At this point, the goal is to get them to read the script. If you don’t succeed at that, they’ll never know that you’re a brilliant writer.

My suspicion when people query me and they go on and on is that they don’t really know the essence of their story, hence their tendency to talk around the subject, not drill down into the heart of it. Which basically boils down to “less is more.”

So in terms of writing query letters, print out these lines and tack them up on your desk:

Give me the story points that make me want to read this script.
Give me the conflict.
Give me the drama.
GIVE ME THE MOVIE!

If you have anything to add about query letters, please do in comments. If not, I will now refer to this as the officially sanctioned GITS take on query letters.

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