How do screenwriters break into Hollywood?

Traditionally, screenwriters write a handful of screenplays and then start begging agents, producers, and managers to read them - a process called querying. Once a screenwriter has at least three scripts that are objectively better than anything they've ever read, it's time to start sending out letters and e-mails to potential representation and production companies.

Those query letters should contain a one-sentence description of the plot, two sentences on the screenwriter's accomplishments, and nothing else. Reading a query letter should take less than thirty seconds, and feel at least as good as getting Starbucks for free. Successful screenwriters send out around twenty queries a day, every day. Anywhere from three months to four years, the rejection letters will start drifting in, mixed with a few requests to read your script.

Does that work? Not really. At least, it doesn't work as well as it did before the studios and networks closed their doors to new writers and fresh content. What's more, it was a notoriously competitive business back when those doors were open. At the same time, it's what screenwriters do. If you want to score, you've got to play the game.

Right?

My advice is to start thinking like a producer, and find ways of getting the stories and worlds you've created in front of people through transmedia exploitation. How can you use social and alternative media to build your more marketable ideas into full-bodied brands?

Get yourself an audience, and you won't be waiting 12 months to hear back. What's more, you'll be in the financial and creative driver's seat. Maybe you won't even need those guys anymore.

In my opinion, querying is just not the most effective use of a content creator's time - especially in this day and age, with nobody taking risks on new content and the franchise reservoirs running dry. Sure, we can all compete for the writer's job on Monopoly the Movie.

Or not. I'm leaving that job to someone else and finding better things to do. Writers, just keep in mind that the industry is changing. While the old ways of doing business can still produce results, they don't necessarily produce the same results they used to. To those willing to see past convention, those same changes can offer an easier, faster path to the things you really want.

Know what it is you really want, and let go of any ideas you have about how those things are supposed to be achieved. Then, you'll start seeing all the different ways you can cultivate your success and share your stories. Follow those impulses, stay open to change and new ideas, and "breaking in" will happen all on its own.