Here’s How to Query (and Not Query) a Hollywood Agent
Three examples
In blog posts and podcasts and elsewhere over many years I have examined a number of Hollywood hoaxes and myths.
Preeminent among them is the notion that success in the movie business is all about connections, not what you know, but whom you know.
After a half century in The Biz, however, and forty years teaching screenwriting, I can say with assurance that Hollywood is in fact a meritocracy.
I know oodles of well-connected people who cannot get arrested.
And I have seen countless numbers of newcomers who, wholly lacking family and other sorts of connections, have succeeded big-time exclusively on the basis of their talent and discipline.
That said, Hollywood can be an equal-opportunity offender. My own (now former) agents would not respond even merely to a query regarding my new novel Deadpan, released just now. It was through an old fashioned query letter, sent directly to its publisher Heresy Press that resulted in its sale.
If it’s that difficult for an established writer, how does a newbie break in?
An agent I admire argues persuasively that it’s a wise strategy to try to develop some sort of advocate, someone who is herself well connected, and…
