How to sell if you have no agent

So, okay, how do you get a script read?

The best way is having an agent and an agent who can actually get your script to a company.

I can tell you that it took a long time for me. But before that I worked at a TV station across the river from Detroit. I was going to college in Detroit and needed a summer job. I saw a job opening at the TV station. I always liked movies so I thought I could make a few bucks on that. I asked for the job and they said okay. So I would have a summer job.

But when I went to work the first day, I was taken. I saw video cameras in the studio and people enjoying their work. I stayed longer and learn how to edit video. After a year, I was promoted to working on a TV news crew. I knew this was it.

After the local station I bumped along to other TV studies, shooting video, editing and also producing. These were small TV stations but I learned. It carried me to get a friend and we managed to make a ghost movie for about $500,000 with a producer who got the money.

So I was a writer director.

But being in a small market, I was far away from making another movie and my life seemed to be finished. Then I made a few really low-budget films around $100,000 which were really bad. But I was always writing new scripts, at least two or three a year. They were getting better. Then I got a job on a series in Vancouver but it didn't last.

Then, a break came along. I was at a festival in Toronto and met a director who had heard of me from a successful writer. The writer was on that show that they passed on me and said I was pretty good.

Then, the director asked me if I had an agent. Naturally I didn't. So he said he'd get one for you when you come to L.A.

Sounds easy but, I was broke and barely able to drive to L.A. But I did, and I met the agent the director had. I had an agent. But he wasn't a very good agent. I didn't get any work but one of my scripts got a producer but he wasn't able to get the money. 

Being there for almost two years, I learned a lot about agents. If you get a good one, it's great, if not you might as well not have an agent. And I learned that I could work my way up quite easily.  I found another one who was better, but still b-level. 

I went through 4 agents until I got a real agent who took me on. He was a reader for the previous agent and liked my work. He also found a new agency. This began to work in that I could take meetings. This was something I didn't really know what happens. My new agent had a good agency that helped.

This was a mid-agency, not small and not giant. But that's coming. I began to get writing jobs as well as selling a few scripts. Small money but work and attention. Then my current agent quit the agency and went to what I couldn't believe.

He was now with a major agency, the big guys. One of a handful of real agents. From then I felt like I had a real agency. And I was.

But, this is just the beginning in terms of you. Yeah, I gave you my how/I/got/there in more development. Things that give you deeper ways of how you can write or learn to write.

Remember that I did teach on-line for UCLA for 5 years.

So stick around, you might have questions. Personal or everyone.