The Query Letter

The query letter can be your ticket into the golden gates of Hollywood. Sure, a great screenplay must follow, but the query will get you the read.

The query letter serves several functions. It tells perspective agent or producer that you want them to read your screenplay. It contains the logline of your screenplay. Simply put the logline is the TV guide description of your screenplay. And if you have placed or won a screenwriting contest or have any professional accolades, be sure to list those as well. The query letter should be no more than a page long. And always include your contact information. I know a lot of this info will be old hat for many, but I didn't have old hats when I started out, so bear with me.

Does the query letter work? Yes. Do you have to send a lot of them? Yes. How can you tell if your query is working? 30% request rate is pretty good. At least that's how I judged my returns. For my first screenplay "Lucid," I sent out tons of queries and got a lot of requests. This can be good and bad. Good because you're getting reads. Bad because you're saturating your own work. But it helps to be a little young and dumb when you're starting out. And don't worry about the odds. Remember it only takes one YES.

I talked a little bit about "Lucid" in an earlier post. This was my first screenplay. Back in '97 being young and dumb the logline read something like this:

In this Usual Suspects-style thriller, Peter Seven is a collector for the Boston Mob looking to change professions after Chester Scanlon, a new and detrimental addition to his collection route, kills an upscale investment banker. This attempt to change his line of work leads Peter Seven to Hans Sai, an eclectic French painter/professor
at Boston University with his own dark past.

As things go from bad to worse for Peter, he's forced to kill Chester Scanlon only to find him alive a day later, and it seems to have everything to do with Sai's mysterious artwork.

About my third query, I found a producer ectastic about this story. If I remember correctly, he even paid the postage so he could read it the very next day. That doesn't mean a hell of a lot now with pdf files and gigs of email, but then it meant about seventeen bucks. Like any newbie I fired it out there at a whopping 132 pages. It should've fallen somewhere between 90 and 110, but what the hell did I know. All mistakes aside I almost sold my very first screenplay three months after completing it. But that's another story and another soapbox.

Queries do work. I prefer email queries because you generally get a quicker response and don't have to deal with the should I SASE or not argument. Postage is a lot more expensive now. Be selective and do your homework on a production company. There are many examples of query letters out there on the net and in the screenwriting books. If anyone would like to add to the discussion feel free. And if you want to know what not to do, check out Query Letters I Love.