“Your Query Sucks:” 10 Reasons Why Your Screenplay is Being Ignored by Readers

The query is often the only way unrepresented, and under-represented, writers are able to attract attention to their script.

Via email, a query is an inexpensive avenue for contact. The greatest complaint you hear from writers is that no one pays any attention to their concepts or scripts. Managers simply don’t respond to queries, producers and agents ignore emails. Our company, Montivagus Productions, has received countless queries over the years. And we’re only a tiny company. Can you imagine the number of inquiries filling the email boxes of the large production companies, agents or managers?

I am here to level with you, though: The radio silence is not because of the bludgeoning volume of so many queries. It’s because your query sucks.

There should be at least as much advice out there on how to write a query as there is on how to write a screenplay. The query is the first step in a long and arduous process. It has one job—to get someone to request your written material—by presenting the logline and a little info about you. So let’s talk about the query and the adjustments you can make to get it read.

Some of the following missteps may seem painfully obvious, and yet they turn up in queries over and over again. Any one of these 10 gaffes in a query letter will make you look amateurish—or, worse, delusional.

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