It took me many weeks to write that query letter. My script was about a vampire whose family fears he'll be outed by a scandal rag, so first I wrote the newspaper articles to produce the scandal rag. Tilted it onto a page and cut out an empty space for my query letter and worked within that. I followed form perfectly, trying to be brief and clever. Sixteen agents asked to read the script. Six offered to represent it. I went with John Grisham's NYC literary agent, who subcontracted me out to Writers & Artists for a 2 year/no way out contract.
I did write another script that they liked better than the first, but I was still hearing nothing about either of them. One of the agents I'd turned out became a best friend and he offered to get the Forever Knight people to read a TV script for me. We contacted my NYC agent and got permission for him to represent me for a TV script. Then he got Parriott to agree to read a script between seasons. Once I got the go ahead, I started planning the script.
TV is VASTLY different than movie. Whole different structure. But easier in that you have all the previous seasons to use as models. I did 2 things to prepare: first, I transcribed between 5 and 10 episodes. Word for word. I'm a speed typist which helps immensely. I used a stopwatch and that gave me the range of structure for each part of the script. As long as I worked within that timing, I figured I'd be safe. Then I purchased a bunch of scripts for the same episodes. That gave me the exact words they used for everyone for descriptions. Because I had both the planned speech and the transcribed speech, I could tell how a particular actor preferred to say lines and could adjust to be natural for the actor.
Then I went through the exact same process I'd used for the movie script, working down from the single sentence. My friend expressed my script to Parriott on Tuesday and Parriott contacted him on Thursday to ask about my credits. Unfortunately, he was looking for a Canadian writer to meet the balancing act the contracts required of major people for an episode, and an American didn't help him. He had also tossed all the characters I'd used, though I didn't know that until the new season started.
I really don't like writing fiction because I love the script form so intensely. Whenever I start to write novel-form, I find myself slipping back into script-form. I use writing to deal with emotions. And a music video lets me deal with that emotion faster than a story does. A friend lost her son this past year and she wrote me that one of my Sherlock Holmes songs was wiping her out and she was playing it over and over again. She was using it for what she emotionally needed just then, and that's how my videos have been used from the beginning.
I never use credits on any of my videos because they're not about me. They're about emotions. And I want nothing to get between that emotion and the viewer. Not even me.
I'm very excited about watching your video and will write by tomorrow evening. I never watch other people's videos, and yours will be the first I've watched in decades. But your style is so different than mine that I think it's safe for me to watch, so I'm thrilled. Thanks for that wonderful description of your working style. You've given me such great pleasure with it.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 08:45 am (UTC)It took me many weeks to write that query letter. My script was about a vampire whose family fears he'll be outed by a scandal rag, so first I wrote the newspaper articles to produce the scandal rag. Tilted it onto a page and cut out an empty space for my query letter and worked within that. I followed form perfectly, trying to be brief and clever. Sixteen agents asked to read the script. Six offered to represent it. I went with John Grisham's NYC literary agent, who subcontracted me out to Writers & Artists for a 2 year/no way out contract.
I did write another script that they liked better than the first, but I was still hearing nothing about either of them. One of the agents I'd turned out became a best friend and he offered to get the Forever Knight people to read a TV script for me. We contacted my NYC agent and got permission for him to represent me for a TV script. Then he got Parriott to agree to read a script between seasons. Once I got the go ahead, I started planning the script.
TV is VASTLY different than movie. Whole different structure. But easier in that you have all the previous seasons to use as models. I did 2 things to prepare: first, I transcribed between 5 and 10 episodes. Word for word. I'm a speed typist which helps immensely. I used a stopwatch and that gave me the range of structure for each part of the script. As long as I worked within that timing, I figured I'd be safe. Then I purchased a bunch of scripts for the same episodes. That gave me the exact words they used for everyone for descriptions. Because I had both the planned speech and the transcribed speech, I could tell how a particular actor preferred to say lines and could adjust to be natural for the actor.
Then I went through the exact same process I'd used for the movie script, working down from the single sentence. My friend expressed my script to Parriott on Tuesday and Parriott contacted him on Thursday to ask about my credits. Unfortunately, he was looking for a Canadian writer to meet the balancing act the contracts required of major people for an episode, and an American didn't help him. He had also tossed all the characters I'd used, though I didn't know that until the new season started.
I really don't like writing fiction because I love the script form so intensely. Whenever I start to write novel-form, I find myself slipping back into script-form. I use writing to deal with emotions. And a music video lets me deal with that emotion faster than a story does. A friend lost her son this past year and she wrote me that one of my Sherlock Holmes songs was wiping her out and she was playing it over and over again. She was using it for what she emotionally needed just then, and that's how my videos have been used from the beginning.
I never use credits on any of my videos because they're not about me. They're about emotions. And I want nothing to get between that emotion and the viewer. Not even me.
I'm very excited about watching your video and will write by tomorrow evening. I never watch other people's videos, and yours will be the first I've watched in decades. But your style is so different than mine that I think it's safe for me to watch, so I'm thrilled. Thanks for that wonderful description of your working style. You've given me such great pleasure with it.
Best, Mary