Writing a Non-Fiction Proposal

By Laura P. Valtorta

www.gattafilms.com

Laurapv.wordpress.com

Next week I have a meeting with a publisher. My goal is to pitch a non-fiction project about filmmaking. The publisher does not know me. I need him to sit up and take notice.

Aside from eccentric clothing and hair, my best bid for attention will be a non-fiction proposal that makes sense. In the publishing world, making sense means making money.

Everybody is a filmmaker these days. The ease of digital filmmaking means that there’s a lot of junk out there. On the bright side, artists are freer to express themselves. What makes my filmmaking different is that I have a message rooted in reality: change your community by praising it. When I see a modicum of strength, I pick it out of the surrounding pile of poop and blow it up into a film.

As an attorney with an exciting clientele (tough survivors), I have access to a smorgasbord of material. Illness, injury, psychosis, and reliance on family. Society can’t stop this train by throwing the passengers in jail. Brilliance and beauty are the results.

Sarcoidosis: a chronic illness will be the subject of next week’s proposal: how to make a film about it. Which doctors and researchers to bug. How to crack the organization of survivors in Orangeburg. Describing prejudicial assumptions about the disease that the folks in Orangeburg say are false. Interview subject, camera, sound check, action.

A synopsis, an outline, a sample chapter. These are the basic tools I plan to bring with me to the meeting next week.  The synopsis will state my premise, even though I seek interview subjects who may belie that premise. The outline will be detailed, even though I plan to veer away from it whenever necessary.

Only the sample chapter will describe my uncertainty. Can this project work? Can we raise production money? My cinematographer, Lynn Cornfoot, and I will get some raw video to send along with grant proposals. Can we get butts in the seat to view this film? That’s the ultimate question.

Illness can create strength: look at Dallas Buyers’ Club. This is the message I must convey to the publisher next week. Every human has an interest in that.