• Act 1 (the first 1/4 of your screenplay 25 – 30 pages) – This is the setup of your story where your characters are introduced along with the basic direction of the story. This first Act must contain a Hook in the Set-Up to keep the reader, whether it’s a literary agent or producer, riveted to your screenplay.   In particular, the first 5 pages of a screenplay should totally hook the Hollywood movie executive.  If it doesn’t, they will read no more than 10 pages hoping it will get better and will then toss it in the trash.

• Act 2 (the middle half — roughly pages 27 to 87) –  Now that the story is Set-Up with the basic characters and the challenge of the story, you have to focus on creating lots of Conflict and Increasingly Difficult Obstacles for your main charactet to overcome. This is typically the hardest part to write because you have to makes sure that it builds upon itself and doesn’t become repetitive.

• Act 3 (the final quarter of your screenplay – roughly 85 or so to page 100 or so, and up to 120).  Your Third Act starts with a turning point and builds to the Climax of the story with the big confrontation between your main character and their opposition.  This is where your character either achieves his or her goal or fails — usually it’s best to have them win.  After the climax, then you have the Resolution to show how it all works out and things get back to a basic, simple life again.

Your plot is essentially how you put the basic pieces of your story together to make it interesting.  You should write out the basic beats of it at some point in your writing, whether it’s to do it before you start or at some point after you get some of your story down on paper.  The main thing is that while writing itself is often a right brain/creative process, working out the plot itself requires you to sit and think about it at some point and to really structure it for maximum effect.

This will be one of the biggest challenges you have, so stay at it, study it, and work on it till you feel in your bones that it is as good as it can be.

Proofread again. It’s important to make sure that there are no errors in your screenplay.   A literary agent will get a very bad impression if your script has errors, so before sending it out, proofread it one more time.  If you know your grammar or formatting has problems, hire a professional proofreader to review your screenplay.  Be sure it is someone who knows proper Hollywood script formatting.

Once it’s ready to go, you must learn to pitch your script.  As I like to say, “If you can’t tell it, you can’t sell it.”   Whether you write a query letter or pitch verbally, you have to develop a pitch of your story, which is simply telling a very short version of it to get someone interested.

When you pitch verbally to a literary agent, you have only a few seconds to hook them, so make the most of it. Practice pitching to your friends and family, or even in the mirror. It doesn’t matter where you practice, just keep at it.  See if their eyes glaze over or if they light up.  That should be your feedback.  You can also work with a professional pitch coach in Hollywood to help you prepare it. 

It can be challenging to get a chance to pitch verbally, so another option is to write a query letter to sell a screenplay. It will most likely be the first thing seen by a literary agent so it’s imperative that you impress them. This is your only chance to convince them that your screenplay is unique and great, so be sure that your query letter presents your script in the best possible light.

If you aren’t sure about the query letter part, that is another area that you can get a professional to help you.  Or even if you simply don’t have the time to mess with it and would rather work on the script itself, then you may want to hire someone to help you with the pitching and marketing.  Some possible places to get help are QueryLetterMailing.com and The Great American Pitchfest.  At the query letter mailing site, they will help you put together a query letter to go out to production companies and literary agents.  The Great American Pitchfest is an event that happens once a year where you can pitch in person to your choice of as many as 100 different Hollywood professionals. 

The main thing after you write your screenplay is to make an effort to sell it.  Don’t hold back and sit on it for years like some aspiring screenwriters do, get a pitch ready.  Then try to get your screenplay read by Literary Agents, Literary Managers, and Producers in Hollywood — any way you can!