You'll never be in this room, so this is what gets said.

The buyer asks what else is on the slate. The agent says the number. Then the buyer asks the only question that matters, which is who else is looking. If the answer is nobody, the price drops before lunch. If the answer is two other companies, the agent doesn't have to say another word about how good the script is.

Nothing in that exchange is about your writing. Your writing got the meeting. What moves the number is heat, timing, and whether the buyer thinks someone else will take it if they wait. When Apple paid just over 25 million for CODA at Sundance in 2021, they weren't paying for Sian Heder's draft alone. They were paying because Amazon was in the room and the audience response had already happened in public.

The part writers get wrong is thinking the agent is arguing for the work. The agent is managing scarcity. Your job is to give them something scarce to manage. A script with a director circling is scarce. A script with an actor's soft yes is scarce. A great script sitting alone in an inbox is just a great script, and there are hundreds of those.

So when your agent goes quiet for three weeks, they're not ignoring you. They're building the second bidder. And if there isn't one, they're deciding whether to go out anyway or wait until there is.