The Palm Springs International Film Festival begins Jan. 4, which means filmmakers from all over the world will converge on the valley with their life's work stored in film canisters, and dreams of stardom.

Are you one of them? Or dream of being one? We've got advice for you, straight from the experts.

Make it a page-turner Kenneth Atchity, chairman of Atchity Entertainment International, is a literary manager and a producer with 26 films to his credit.

He advises budding screenwriters to register their work, make contacts within the business and be persistent:

1) Protect your screenplay or treatment by registering your idea with the Writer's Guild of America. (www.wgawregistry.org).

Registration is $20 and provides five years of legal evidence for your material.

"This is my most frequently asked question - how a writer can protect their work," Atchity said.

His book, "Writing Treatments That Sell: How to Create and Market Your Story Ideas to the Motion Picture and TV Industry," contains more details on how to protect your intellectual property.

2) Read screenplays.

Download scripts off the Internet, order them online or borrow some from the library.

"You can't send in something that doesn't look like a screenplay," Atchity said. "This is a very serious profession, so take time to learn its terms and formats."

3) Write your screenplay using Final Draft, the same software used throughout the industry.

"We can immediately tell if it's a professional writer or not, depending on the format," Atchity said.

4) Enter screenplay competitions to give your script exposure.

Among the most prestigious are Nicholl Fellowships in screenwriting, sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (www.oscars.org/nicholl)

"Contests are one of the best ways to get people in the business to notice you," Atchity said.

His company signed three Nicholl recipients this year.

5) Find representation.

"The Hollywood Creative Directory," published three times a year, contains contact information for entertainment professionals, including agents.

6) Attend writers' conferences and festivals to make contacts with people in the industry.

(For some Southern California gatherings, check out www.writersconference.com. Next up is the San Diego Writers' Conference from Feb. 16-19.)

Atchity said the writer should be professional in both appearance and presentation of their work.

7) Write a great novel or non-fiction book.

Atchity's company is currently producing "Demon Keeper," which began as a script by Royce Buckingham.

Atchity urged the author to first write the story as a novel - the industry prefers to adapt high-budget, action films from books rather than work with original scripts.

The movie will be released in 2007 by Fox 2000.

8) Have a catchy title to garner extra attention.

"If you have something high-concept, you've hooked us to begin with," Atchity said. "If you have a clunky title that lies flat on the page, we question your dramatic insight."

He said good ones include: "Bruce Almighty," "Splash" or "Unfaithful."

9) Length: Don't go overboard - or under, for that matter.

A script under 90 pages or over 140 is the sure sign of an amateur, Atchity said.

The magic number is somewhere between 105 and 155 pages, and that's using Final Draft software.

"If you're using Word Perfect to cram in as many words on the page as possible, you're not fooling anybody," he said.

10) Talent is only part of the equation.

"If you have enough persistence, sooner or later you're going to make it, regardless of talent," Atchity said. "The clients who are the most productive have their own vision and are determined to make things happen."

Prepare for the pitch Beverly Gray spent nearly a decade as story editor for legendary producer/director Roger Corman.

Gray is the author of "Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers."

1) Make sure your script is ready. Make the dialogue snappy, keep the scenes tight and punchy, and carefully sift for typos.

"Sometimes people write a script and think they're the next Billy Wilder or something," Gray said. "But then they have a ridiculous amount of mistakes in their script."

2) Pitch to the right people.

A lot of companies don't accept pitches from writers without representation.

"Don't waste your time pitching to someone who doesn't want to hear you," Gray said.

If you don't have an agent, a shortcut can be an entertainment attorney, she said.

3) Use every connection you've got.

"I've had scripts referred to me from my allergist's daughter's boyfriend," Gray said. "Be persistent and be creative."

4) Be prepared to make a presentation.

"It's got to be the smartest, most intelligent casual speech you can imagine," Gray said. "Practice sounding natural."

5) Summarize your script in one or two perfect sentences.

Gray once held a party for her screenwriting students, which was attended by George Hickenlooper (director of "Factory Girl").

The director asked one of the students what she was working on. The student proceeded to give a long, rambling explanation of the entire script.

"He was in the mood to listen," Gray said. "Had the student had one smart sentence, he might have taken her up on it."

6) Know the company.

Find out who you're pitching to, what they do, what kinds of films they make.

"You could bend over backward pitching a frothy family company to someone who makes horror films," Gray said.

Also, spell the company's name correctly on all correspondence.

7) Forget hyperbole.

Don't make promises about your work that you can't keep.

"If you say this is the best script in the world, there's going to be some natural skepticism about it."

8) Leave the casting to the casting agents.

Again, don't make promises you can't keep, Gray said.

Unless Brad Pitt is your next-door neighbor and has officially signed on to make your film, don't even go there.

9) Mind your manners.

10. Have a second lightbulb.

Have another idea ready, just in case.

"You want to show that you're versatile," Gray said. "And if they're not interested in this, there's always that."

Make your ideas stick Chip Heath, business professor at Stanford University, is the co-author of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die."

He says the key to a winning pitch is transmitting as much information with as few words as possible:

In Hollywood, people use "high-concept" pitches - simple and concrete ideas that can be visualized immediately.

Examples: "Speed" was pitched as "'Die Hard' on a bus." "Alien" was pitched as "'Jaws' on a spaceship." "13 Going on 30" was "'Big' for girls."

"People in Hollywood already have an idea of what 'Die Hard' is like," Heath said.

"So when you take that and put it in the claustrophobic setting of a bus, you're taking everything that is already in somebody's head and making it useful in another context."

Heath said: "What I find really powerful in these short pitches is how much information you can get across in one sentence."