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177 Afterword You’ve finished. The bound script lies on your table in all its pristine glory. Next to it is a glass of wine. For once, your wastepaper basket is empty. The title in the middle of the first page says To the Penal Colony. Directly underneath it are the words “A screenplay by Irwin Nailer.” In the lower right-hand corner of the page you’ve put your address and phone number. You feel proud. Exhausted. But what do you do next? My own method is to have a gin and tonic, put the script aside for a few days, see a good film, and generally knock off for a while. Then after about a week, I look at it again and give it to a few friends to read, whose criticism I trust. When I read it this time, I am trying to read it as an outsider. I look for flaws, problems, inconsistencies. I look at ways to improve the dialogue, which I now see is clunky in places. I tighten up the scenes, increase the tension, and overall try to make the drama work even better. I also listen very carefully to my friends’ comments. Some I reject, but those that seem reasonable I try to incorporate into the script. What I am trying to do is make the script as good as possible before I send it out, because I know I have only one chance with each producer who reads it. agents The best way of getting your script read is to have it submitted to a producer by a good agent. Finding one can be as difficult as getting a good cup of coffee in the Sahara in the middle of a drought. If you contact the Writers Guild of America, East or West, they will send you a list of agents who are signatories to the artists-managers agreement . This means they are authorized agents, and producers are willing to read unsolicited material from new writers if it comes through them. The ones who are open to new talent are marked with an asterisk on the guild’s list. Under the guild’s rules, an agency cannot contract with a writer for more than two years at a time; neither can its commission exceed 10 percent. 178 Afterword However, getting your script read by an agency, and signing a contract with it, are two different things. But at least the guild’s list provides a first-attempt plan. Apart from working from the list, you use whatever friends and contacts you have to get yourself an agent. This is a process full of many letdowns and disappointments. Nevertheless, once you have a decent agent, you’ll find that your script is given much greater consideration than if it were submitted out of the blue by yourself as a lone-star writer. script subMissiOn How you present your script to a would-be agent is of vital importance. It must make a terrific and professional first impression. It should be bound, clean, and made up of fresh A4 sized pages. Sounds obvious doesn’t it? Yet many scripts are turned in stained and dog eared, as if proof of the burning of the midnight oil. Well, that’s the road to immediate rejection and disaster. Generally, the script should stand by itself. It should not be accompanied by masses of pages of explanation. However, two things are now acceptable after the first page title. If you want you can put in a log line. This is a dynamic one- or two-sentence explanation of the film. You can also provide a three- or four-paragraph synopsis of the film. As I say, these are possibilities, not prerequisites. Also feel free to send your script to as many agents as you like at the same time. No rule says you have to send the script out to only one agent at a time. lOcale While there are a few writers who work best far from the madding crowd, this is not really possible for you as a beginning TV or feature scriptwriter. You must be at the heart of the action, which usually means New York or Los Angeles, or London or Manchester, or Sydney or Melbourne. The rationale is simple. You have to be around to talk, to consult, to talk, to modify, to badger, to schmooze, and to pitch—and to rewrite. And you can’t do that from the heart...

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