What Should The Query Letter Say When You Have No Screenplay Credits?

Mike said:

Hi, Ashey!

I have another question.  This time, about query letters.  The example you gave on your website shows someone with an experienced background in writing screenplays for movies and shows your past history of works.

But what if you don’t have an experienced background?  Would you explain in your letter that you’re a “novice” or a “first-time” screenplay writer “looking to get published”?    How would you write a query letter in that sense?

Thank you!

Ashley Scott Meyers said:

If you haven’t read my full post How to write a professional query letter for your screenplay you should check it out now.

As I mentioned in How to write a professional query letter for your screenplay if you don’t have any experience you don’t want to point this out you simply want to try and come up with something positive to say about yourself and your writing skills.

Really this is just “Sales 101.”  Use common sense.  If you’re trying to sell something you might use testimonials about your product.  But if you have no testimonials yet you might try and find specific things to highlight about the product.

One question I would ask myself is this:  why did I write this script?  The answer will hopefully give you some good fodder for your query letter.  For instance, if your story is a cop drama and you worked as a cop for twenty years you might want to mention that.  You might say something like:

My script Eastside Strangler is an inside look at how the police track down and arrest serial killers.  As an LAPD officer for more than twenty years I was involved in several serial murder cases and participated in the actual arrest of one mass murderer.

Okay, so maybe you don’t have any real world experiences as interesting as being a serial killer arresting police detective.  Use what you do have.  Years ago I was kicking around ideas for a script about a professional tennis player.  I played tennis in college and knew the tennis world very well.  That was something I would have used in my query letter.  I would have written something like this:

I wish to send you my screenplay Big Serve, a comedy about a tennis prodigy who was born with an extraordinarily long arm allowing him to hit some of the biggest serves ever seen in the tennis world.  As a successful junior and college tennis player I have a lot of firsthand knowledge of how the tennis world works – there’s a ton of fresh comedy in tennis that has never been mined before.

Many screenwriters (and directors and producers and all people involved in filmmaking) are quite often film geeks with no real world experiences what-so-ever.  So if you have some real world experience which adds authenticity to your script I think that can be very powerful.  A development executive might really respect the fact that your script is actually written from the point of view of someone who actually knows how the police operate instead of written from the perspective of some film geek who knows nothing about police procedure except what he learned from T.V. and movies and is only able to regurgitate the same nonsense that he say in an episode of Miami Vice.

I knew a television writer who was a lawyer and wrote a spec Law & Order script and ended up getting hired on a law-type television series.  Real experience in a field can add some legitimate credibility to your story so use whatever you have.

If you can’t find any angle where your own experiences don’t give you some advantage in writing this story I do have one last idea for your pitch (although you might want to seriously consider writing your next script based on something that you know a lot about).  When I had zero experience and my story really didn’t relate to anything I had ever done I simply made sure my synopsis was around a half page long and then combined the query letter and synopsis onto one page.  So you would introduce yourself and get right to the point and never even mention anything about your experience (or lack of experience).  I mentioned this method last because I think finding an angle with your background is a better way to go, but if you can’t find it, this one will work well.  I think development executives probably like the fact that everything is on one single page so they can quickly and easily pass judgment on your project.

Here’s an example of that style of query letter / synopsis:

Notice how I never even mention any experience (or lack thereof).  I just pitch the script and wrap things up.  The synopsis literally becomes the query letter.

One other point I want to make.  I use MS Word’s Header/Footer function to put a nice “Ashley Scott Meyers” header on the page and I put in my contact information including address, email, and phone number in the footer so that it’s easy to find and not just wrapped into the query letter.  If this were an email query I would have added that information to the bottom of the page.