Tweetstorm: Ed Solomon on Pitching

“We are the world’s FOREMOST AUTHORITY on OUR OWN TAKE. On what WE love about something. And that is unassailable. Meaning: it can never be taken away. And so now, when I go into a room, I simply focus on what gets ME excited about something; what *I* like.”

Twitter can be a gold mine for writers. Case in point, when pro writers generate a tweetstorm about the craft. A few days ago, screenwriter Ed Solomon (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Men In Black) picked up on a series of tweets he did back in February 2018 about pitching and expanded it into a must-read for screenwriters. Reprinted here by permission.

A lot of takeaways from Ed’s tweetstorm. Let me zero in on one point he makes about a writer’s passion for their story.

As Ed says, an exec won’t remember the individual beats of your pitch, but they will take away a feeling about you. If you come into the room and you convey an authentic, palpable passion for the project — the way you talk about the characters, how you tap into the emotional meaning of the story — that’s a big deal. Not the only thing, mind you. The story has to be great, you can’t just sell a project by hopping around the room like an overwrought kangaroo.

But they DO want to see that you are passionate about the story. Why? Because it’s so fucking hard to get ANYTHING made in this town. Any project which DOES get produced has almost certainly got key people attached to it who have a strong emotional resonance with the story.

That’s why I tell writers to start the pitch with a short intro about why you are compelled by the story, what inspired you to develop it, what your passion for it is.

If you’ve got a good story, hopefully that and your enthusiasm for it will spark something in the exec… and they’ll get passionate about the project themselves.

You may follow Ed on Twitter: @ed_solomon.

For more screenwriter tweetstorms, go here.