As a screenwriter, crafting scripts isn't the only thing you have to do to succeed in the great story aka dream factory called Hollywood. There's the pitch or a pitch meeting to sell your awesome idea/story. Many writers, naturally, are less inclined to be good oral storytellers. It’s probably wound up tightly in our DNA. Ignoring our natural impulses, a pitch requires the screenwriter to set aside the word processor, in favor of simply telling a good story to a network or production company executive.
Honestly, the whole process can be slightly nerve wracking no matter how verbally inclined one turns out to be. There is no set way or protocol to the pitch, however, keeping things basic and simple is really the way to go.
I pitched several times in Hollywood - in person and also over the telephone. No matter what way you hold a meeting with TV show producers, you must sell your ideas and also yourself. My meetings include: Star Trek: Voyager on the upstart network UPN, Deep Space Nine in syndication & Stephen King's The Dead Zone on the USA Network. Although the Star Trek franchise is globally well known, pitching to a Stephen King intellectual property was equally as thrilling and perhaps kept me even more on my narrative spinning toes.
Check out my video on my Hollywood pitching highlights:
Sci-Fi Guy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thanks!
I have no direct experience of Hollywood, but I have plenty of experience with pitching - and I have to say, I'd hate to do it over the phone. Despite being frequently told 'that was the best pitch I ever heard', I never managed to sell a game from my own pitches (I have, however, set up others to pitch successfully). The reason is simple economics: I've always been pitching from zero, and in games it is now basically impossible to get publishers to sign over money for an idea. The last such pitch I know of anywhere in the games industry happened in 2015. The latest trend in videogames is that you don't even get to pitch - publishers will say 'send me your pitch deck', as if what you yourself had to say was irrelevant. How the business has changed in the last thirty years...
I have no direct experience of Hollywood, but I have plenty of experience with pitching - and I have to say, I'd hate to do it over the phone. Despite being frequently told 'that was the best pitch I ever heard', I never managed to sell a game from my own pitches (I have, however, set up others to pitch successfully). The reason is simple economics: I've always been pitching from zero, and in games it is now basically impossible to get publishers to sign over money for an idea. The last such pitch I know of anywhere in the games industry happened in 2015. The latest trend in videogames is that you don't even get to pitch - publishers will say 'send me your pitch deck', as if what you yourself had to say was irrelevant. How the business has changed in the last thirty years...