One of the toughest things about screenwriting is including the audience.

By that I mean “letting them in on what they need to know.”

You can’t just tell them directly like you can in fiction. They have to learn by what they see and hear.

Mostly by what they see. That’s what “show, don’t tell” is about: characters can’t just speak information in dialogue for the purpose of explaining something to the audience. It will come off wooden and unnatural.

And the audience won’t really take in the facts and remember them that way anyway.

Instead they need dramatic scenes of conflict that get and keep their attention. Meaning characters trying to achieve things, with something in the way. Scenes where, without the audience realizing it, they’re also learning some key facts they need to know.

“But can’t we just trust the audience?” you might say. “Isn’t it better not to spoonfeed information? Let them figure things out over time? Or keep certain things mysterious?”

If you’re aiming for commercial storytelling (i.e. not arty/experimental indie work), I think mystery works best when it’s a mystery the main character is trying to solve, with high stakes.

I do not recommend “mystery” about how the world works, the key back story facts, the main character’s situation, and especially what they feel and want. Rather than withholding that, reveal, then complicate.

Because you want the audience to enter into the story. To feel emotionally connected. To not just be interested in finding stuff out but knowing enough to feel something about your main character’s problems.

To do that, it helps to have the scenes predominantly be from that character’s subjective point-of-view, ideally focused on them trying to achieve some intention and encountering obstacles to it.

Starting as soon as page one.

That gets readers’ attention and draws them in: someone is trying to do something that matters to them, and much is in the way. Will they be able to achieve their intention? It can be fun to watch them try.

What are they talking about?

Sometimes writers who want to avoid expositional dialogue err in the opposite direction. 

They write scenes of characters doing things and talking to each other about situations and people the audience doesn’t know anything about.

Such dialogue might feel real. But if the audience is left wondering too much about what’s going on, what’s being said, and why, they feel left out.

That can mean detaching. Disengaging. Not wanting to watch more. Or, if it’s a professional reader, wanting to read more. They don’t feel invited in and included. It doesn’t feel like this is being written for them. Where they’re being presented a story to invest in. 

Group scenes of more than two characters can be extra deadly in this way. Especially early in scripts. The reader is trying to keep up with who is who and looking for something to latch onto that they understand, can relate to, can feel something about.

If the scene is about your main character (or a team) trying to do something, that’s important and clear, then it’s okay to potentially have multiple characters on their side or that they have to deal with to try to get what they want.

But if there’s no strong want driving the scene and just several people kind of exchanging information and opinions, talking about the past, talking about other characters the audience hasn’t met… readers really tend to check out.

So I say avoid that. Passing “insider lingo” within a scene that otherwise has clear drama and intentions is okay. As long as the audience gets what’s at stake and the dramatic point of the discussion.

Focus on clear intentions and emotional POV

Ultimately we’re asking strangers to understand what’s going on and care about it.

They are not up to speed about anything. We have to take them by the hand and show them everything that matters for them to be able to get it and engage emotionally.

They need to care. And for them to care it usually means caring about a particular individual human they get to know well, with a major problem/goal that they’re actively trying to do something about. 

The audience “rides on the back” of such characters and learns about their world through their experience of it, through what they’re doing to combat problems and reach goals. Through their relatable emotions.

That doesn’t mean you can’t “hand off” point of view from one character to another.  But I would say do it intentionally. And only hand off to another “main character” (of their own story/subplot) who is engaged in pursuing their own clear, relatable and important objectives. Not to characters that don’t have an ongoing narrative.

Writers tend to underestimate how much they know that readers need to know to engage. And also how much they’re leaving unclear in their scenes.

And they tend to overestimate how hard a reader is willing to work to keep track of characters and information, and how much you can grab them through scenes that don’t do what I described above.

Of course we need to know far more than what’s on the page. But we also have to know what we’ll have to make clear on the page for readers and an audience to feel included. To care. To want to keep going.

(And that doesn’t mean telling the reader facts in scene description that the audience watching the eventual movie or episode wouldn’t know from what they’re seeing. That’s a no-no.)

You’re writing it for them

The difficult balance is that on one hand you’re writing for yourself, something you’re interested in and want to explore, told in ways that you think work, that you like. That’s where the best work comes from.

But if you’re looking to engage other people, from contest readers to agents and managers, to producers, actors and ultimately audiences… then their perspective becomes the priority.

What do you need to give them so that they’ll feel up to speed, engaged, and caring about what’s going on — and entertained by how it’s playing out?

It’s often hard for writers to think about that, and get out of their own perspectives. To know what’s needed to elevate a script from something that’s engaging to the writer to something with the capacity to impact millions.

Like any small business where the customer’s wants, problems and experiences are foremost in the founder’s mind, a script really is like a business proposition, where you’re trying to deliver something fresh and new that makes their lives better, that they really want to consume, that fulfills their criteria for a great way to spend an hour or two, in a particular kind of story and genre.

If you read professional produced screenplays, the kind that really move forward in the industry, I think you’ll find one commonality is that their writers are focused on giving the reader a clear, compelling, emotional and entertaining experience from page one. That’s the priority.

If you make it yours, too, and can execute that, you will tend to get the attention of readers in a good way, as a writer who “gets it” and is looking to reach them, include them, move them and entertain them. 

We writers often get hung up on conflicting advice about what to write.

On the one hand, there’s “write what you know” and “write what only you could write.”

This is important, because your original voice is your best selling point.

On the other hand, there’s “write something commercial and high concept, with a strong logline.”

I don’t know about you, but personal stuff from my life doesn’t tend to result in that.

So what is one to do?

Think in terms of metaphors

Instead of literally writing something from your own experience, with all it’s “non-commercial, non-high concept” elements…

What about taking what’s deeply personal to you and then looking for a bigger premise in a commercial genre that explores that?

I was inspired in this regard by this YouTube video I recently discovered:

Would I call TAXI DRIVER commercial?

No. I would not. So let’s get that out of the way immediately. That’s not an easy kind of movie to write today and find funding and an audience for. So it’s a very different animal from Gravity.

But…

I think the video makes a very solid point that in both cases, the writer took something they were going through that had deep feeling and specificity for them, then created a situation/character to explore that which was completely outside their experience, yet could express and explore it.

In one case, it results in a very commercial type movie in a space/action genre. (I’d call Gravity a Dude with a Problem/Nature Problem in Save the Cat terms, alongside films like Apollo 13.)

In the other, you have more of a critic’s darling type film (Taxi Driver) that had a huge cultural impact and has stood the test of time. It’s not in a commercial genre, per se, although it’s got an intriguing thriller-y tone that ultimately climaxes in violence (spoiler alert!).

So it does “entertain” in its own way, and is obviously a huge success. Even if my headline of “commercial” doesn’t 100% apply to it.

Don’t do JUST personal or JUST commercial

When you just go for commercial, you can end up with something soulless that doesn’t seem to come from you as a writer, in a way that only you could’ve or would’ve written it.

I think it’s tougher to get positive attention from the industry that way. Because they’re looking for “voice.” They’re not in all honestly even looking for new writers in general, but the ones that can excite them usually have some very particular individuality to what they write and how they write it.

But at the same time, it also has to fit within a recognizable commercial genre. Action, horror, thriller, mystery, comedy… Or drama, but as I talk about in my book The Idea, it helps to add other elements to “drama” to elevate it as an entertainment vehicle, as Taxi Driver does.

So when you write something that is “what you know” and comes from you, but lacks that “commerciality,” it can also tend to struggle on the business side.

So the sweet spot is to try to do both.

Your life and emotions are a goldmine

Of course not all stories are a kind of therapeutic navel-gazing on the part of the writer.

But… the strongest ones do tend to come from a deep place within them. Something they’ve felt passionate about in some way. An experience, relationship, obsession, or base of feelings that could be translated into a character and story in a wildly different arena they’ve never experienced.

So I think it’s helpful to see your stories and characters as extensions of yourself. Looking to imbue them with you, in some way, so that they’re not just narrative pieces to move around but living, breathing representations of your inner life, albeit probably disguised by different specifics. 

Certainly it’s helpful to do this with your main character if you have just one. But I think having a personal hook that you can deeply relate to with each character, even villains, can be useful.

But the principals of writing and story are still worth studying

At the same time, very few writers can get away with writing something that ignores the foundations of drama and how to communicate with an audience, in favor of just personal expression.

Especially in screenwriting where it costs a lot to produce and market a project, there tends to be a strong need for elements within any script that could appeal to masses of people.

The tools that people like me teach and advocate for are all just methods for trying to achieve that. Which don’t tend to come naturally to most writers. (And didn’t to me.)

But the interesting thing is that the more specific, detailed and personal you are with your characters and emotions, the more universally relatable they often end up being. Because others can relate to what you have gone through. And your sincere exploration of that can win them over on a feeling level.

If at the same time you’re entertaining them through a premise and story that fits a genre and offers them a “ride” that’s enjoyable as escapism in some way, then you’re really doing something.

Writing a short film can be a great way to see your work actually produced.

Whether you raise the money and direct it yourself or hand it off to others, it’s a cheaper and easier endeavor than getting a feature or series made, and to show what you can do.

I wrote and directed a 22-minute short, I Got This, a few years ago, and it was a great test run for later making my first feature film.

So what should you keep in mind as you come up with a concept for a short, and write it?

Do the same principles apply as in features?

Yes and no.

The first thing I would say is that my short was longer than most would recommend, and I made the “mistake” of trying to cram a 3-act “mini-feature” story into it.

I knew this going in but decided to do it anyway. I had my reasons!

But the conventional wisdom is to stay under ten minutes, making it much easier for film festivals to accept and program it. 

I think generally that’s a good plan, and of course it can be easier to finance and produce something in the 5-10 minute range, compared to what I did.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy to make it stand out and win awards at major festivals, though, or develop a big following online. Like everything else in this business, there’s a lot of competition.

But putting aside all of that, and just thinking about story and writing in the short film space, I would make three main suggestions.

1. Clear conflict, relatable emotion

A short can have a much simpler “story” than a feature, and can make a strong impression if it’s really well-done even if it doesn’t have a conventional narrative.

But usually you still want to establish a relatable character with a problem/goal of some kind, and to focus on them pursuing intentions in the face of obstacles. I see that as pretty essential.

So ideally someone has a conflict/difficulty that powerfully affects and drives them. Their strong  emotions and actions they take to try to solve it, then, is what usually grabs and holds viewers.

It doesn’t have to be a lengthy complicated process to achieve whatever they want, and you don’t necessarily need typical three-act structure. Maybe you don’t have an on-screen “catalyst” or “inciting event” and open with them already in the midst of whatever it is. And there’s not necessarily a Midpoint or an All is Lost moment, and probably not space for any sort of “B Story.”

But typically something is wrong and something is being done to try to address that. Whether it’s one extended scene or a series of them.

Ideally the “thing wrong” has sufficient stakes to feel potentially life-altering, and what they’re faced with is punishingly difficult. While perhaps quite brief.

2. Entertaining while believable

Genre still applies in a short. There are horror shorts, comedy shorts, action shorts, etc. The genres I love in Save the Cat probably don’t apply, but traditional entertainment categories do.

People generally remember if something was fun to watch. If it engaged them emotionally. If it was escapist in some way. If it made them feel. And usually that’s consistent with a particular genre.

Even in shorts, straight dramas can struggle to do those things. Unless you add other elements that make it extra appealing to experience. (I list some ideas for that in my book and course.) Dramas can feel flat unless extremely well-executed and emotional, and with a stand-out topic.

But as always in the quest for entertainment (or originality, or high conflict), there’s a risk of verging into the unbelievable. Meaning things that are just hard to buy into or understand.

I would still avoid that. And I’d still say that a sense of authenticity — a “realness” to what’s going on despite whatever exaggerated elements are also there — is key to being impactful.

You want to make it easy for the audience to suspend disbelief, by not giving them a lot that is hard to believe. If anything. And being upfront with what you’re saying is fantastical. Defining it.

If you haven’t seen the pilot for Pluribus on Apple TV, writer Vince Gilligan puts on a master class of how to do this sort of thing. 

3. A memorable take-away

Lastly, it really helps if there’s thematic material in your short script for the reader to take with them, that goes beyond its surface plot. A deeper meaning or relevance.

Ideally it explores an aspect of the human condition in some small and fresh way that feels like the “why” of the project. The reason why you decided to write it.

And the more what it explores is personal to you, that you have some unique or original take on, the better. It’s yours, after all, and if it has your individual voice, that’s a good thing.

Only you could or would write this, the way you did. Lean into that.

That doesn’t mean the story or situation has to be so amazingly original (that’s always hard to achieve). But putting your personal and specific spin on what may be familiar elements.

In conclusion…

Just as with a feature of a pilot, none of this is easy to do really well. The relative approachability of attempting a short can mask the fact that the ones that rise to the top are still… special.

And for them to really affect the reader/viewer, as I’ve indicated, they would likely still have all 7 elements of a “viable story” that I wrote about in The Idea, using the acronym PROBLEM:

PUNISHING

RELATABLE

ORIGINAL

BELIEVABLE

LIFE-ALTERING

ENTERTAINING

MEANINGFUL

If you can deliver that somehow in 5-10 pages — and then turn it into a movie with a strong (ideally SAG-Aftra) cast, and high production value — this is no small achievement.

Is the world of your project different from the one we live in? Or that people ever lived in?

Are there special beings, powers, fantasy elements or futuristic sci-fi in it?

If so, you’re involved in “world building.”

Meaning: your job as a writer has an extra dimension. You’re not just writing a great story. First you have to decide on all the key elements that make its world different.

Then you have to make all that clear, coherent and believable to readers.

How does one do that?

First let me admit that the stuff I personally write usually doesn’t involve world building. But what I’m writing now does: it’s set in a very different future society.

And there has been a lot of world building in the hundreds of projects I’ve helped writers develop.

Along the way, I’ve seen many examples of “worlds” that were unclear, and/or hard to buy into. The “rules” of how everything works and is different are often murky.

This usually means that the writer hasn’t fully figured out all of it themselves. They only decided on what they needed for its specific scenes.

So that’s my first piece of advice:

World building first, story second

Scripts are always stronger and the reader can feel it when the writer has thought through the story and characters far beyond what appears on the page. The “iceberg below the water.”

This is especially true when there’s world building involved.

You might have an idea for what happens in the story and who the characters are, but before getting too deep into plotting that out, I suggest first “plotting out” how your world works.

Pretend the pitch of your world is its own story. With its own logline, its own 1-2 page synopsis, its own fully conceived contours that you could explain to someone to get them up to speed.

You might be thinking your world building is pretty simple, especially if it’s something we’ve seen before, like vampires, aliens, or superheroes.

While I do recommend fantasy elements like those that build on familiar references for readers, I would still say your specific version of that needs to have its own complete internal logic.

In other words, if someone asked, “How do super powers work in the world of your project,” you wouldn’t just say, “What do you mean? They’re super powers. Just like in any project that has them.”

That doesn’t tend to work so well. Because yours is going to be a fresh and original world with those elements. It’s not the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s your take on superheroes. And readers won’t just go with it and fill in the blanks mentally because they’ve seen superheroes before. They will instead want to get how all that works in this project.

And ideally, you’re bringing something fresh to that element that hasn’t quite been done before. Like Twilight did with vampires, perhaps. (Or What We Do in the Shadows.)

With my own project, I’ve spent quite a bit of time coming up with a 1-2 page pitch of “the world” that barely mentions the characters or plot. Partly because I need to fully understand it and make all the key decisions about it in a pretty detailed way before I can create a story set in it. I have a rough idea of what that will be but it’s very rough, and on pause while I “world build.”

Only when satisfied with what I’ve come up with (and a little hint: ChatGPT can help in this process!), and having written that up to my satisfaction as an explainer, do I move on.

Don’t overcomplicate

Figuring out all the details doesn’t mean your world needs to be hard to understand. Ideally, it’s pretty simple. You want a situation to put relatable humans in (or stand-ins for humans that readers will relate to), with a compelling and emotional challenge and palpable stakes.

Ultimately the reader isn’t looking to fall in love with your world, and the world isn’t the story. It’s the backdrop for a story, with elements to it that help create story, which is the whole point.

In other words: characters trying to solve problems that the reader cares about. Through a process that’s entertaining to read/watch, consistent with an established genre.

When in doubt, I always try to “start and end with the real.” Meaning primal human difficulties. Let how your world works come from a “real” place that’s easy to buy into and believe, that forces your characters to have to battle with something real and emotionally resonant.

When George Lucas came up with Star Wars, he created a lot of fun details around wookies, droids, light sabers, etc. But at its core it was a primal, human story rooted in myth. A young potential hero rising up. Rebels against a tyrannical evil. Saving a princess. Father issues.

So your story is not the droids and wookies. Your story is that other stuff. The world details are icing on the cake of that. And ideally they aren’t super complicated to explain or have twisted logic in order for you to include things you want to include.

Instead, it’s ideally a world that is simple to grasp. If you can tell someone how the world is different in a sentence or two, and then in a page or two explain that in such a way that it answers any questions that might come up, you’re on the right track.

Explain the world early

When I say “explain,” I don’t mean in dialogue. Generally speaking, you want to “show,” not tell.

My main point is to make clear to readers how the world is different at the very beginning.

If you’ve got world building in a script, you have an extra job in your opening pages. You’re not only illustrating/dramatizing your main character’s status quo life. You’re also showing how this world works, ideally with scenes of them interacting with it that make all that understandable.

So the reader very quickly gets comfortable that they know enough about the story’s world and how it works that they can then relax into the story you’re telling in it.

I don’t suggest letting key details come out over time. Or making it a bit murky. To my way of thinking, clarity is usually the writer’s (and the reader’s) friend. Especially when there are elements that might be puzzling and not relatable to them, not being from that world.

Again the key is knowing your world backwards and forwards, more than you think you need to know it to write the actual scenes. It means focusing on the “idea” longer than you might think you need to, until it’s really solid. Not just the idea of the story, as I always talk about, but the core ideas about the world the story is set in.

And this can be a process of fun discovery and exploration. I know it has been for me. First I get to create a world. How might that work? And how do I justify and make believable those elements? And have them clearly challenge characters in it?

Because that’s kind of the point: the “world” creates a built-in source of conflict once I turn to story. Just operating in it is difficult for my main character(s) because of how it functions.

And whatever their specific goal is going to be, this world is going to make that extra challenging for them — and hopefully more fun and impactful to read about and watch.

One thing I encourage all writers to do, with every scene, regardless of genre, is this:

Make sure each scene has some central tension to it that the audience can feel.

That tension comes from a conflict or problem that a particular character is grappling with.

In other words, even on page one, ideally, “someone wants something, and there’s something in the way.”

But that alone is not enough…

Ideally that character is also doing something to try to resolve this. Which doesn’t instantly work.

What do we call that attempt, that conflict, and what instantly follows as they revise and “battle” in some way?

We call that a scene.

Okay, here comes a name drop:

I once worked with Sally Field who was directing an episode of the HBO series From the Earth to the Moon that I helped write.

She commented on a certain version of a scene that several of us were working on by saying, essentially, “That’s not a scene.” Or maybe she said, “Okay, yeah, but what’s the scene?”

Now it had a location with a scene heading. It had description and characters and dialogue in it. Those characters were talking to each other. And doing stuff. It had a beginning, middle and end, of sorts.

What it didn’t have, yet, was conflict. It didn’t have tension. It didn’t have someone wanting something, and something in the way, and a process to try to address that, which followed.

Many scenes in scripts I read have this same issue.

Characters are talking about something, doing something, observing something. Maybe they’re sharing opinions or other kinds of information. Or bonding as they get to know each other.

Oh the bonding. It can be deadly to show too much bonding. Audiences get bored, because they are essentially sadists. They can’t wait to get to the next problem and only care when someone has one that they’re trying to solve.

So usually in the best scripts that kind of happy or neutral stuff without strong “want pursuit” is kept to an absolute minimum. Things going well, people not conflicting, information being explored or shown, and anything without a clear problem and point-of-view. (Meaning it’s written in a way that focuses on the perspective, emotions and actions of that character who wants something.) We limit that, greatly.

You can get by with brief information exchange or things going well at the very beginning of a scene, before the conflict kicks in. Or brief interstitials between scenes. But if that’s the main thing that’s happening, over the course of a page or more? I think Sally Field would tell you that you don’t have a scene.

Aaron Sorkin would agree

Ever since I blogged about Aaron Sorkin’s “religion” of focusing on “intention and obstacle” in his writing, it’s become the blog post I share the most with people. Why?

Because it’s maybe the most basic and universally agreed-upon principle in dramatic (or comedic, or action, or thriller, etc.) writing: someone pursues a want and encounters difficulty. Then tries to deal with that.

But… it’s also not the way so many of the scenes and scripts I encounter work. So it’s the #1 thing I point out. The basic foundation to rewire one’s approach to writing around.

It took me a while to learn this myself. Quite a while. My early scripts “lacked conflict.” So I get it. There’s a lot we might want to do in a script, and a lot that’s appealed to us in others’ work that seems like the main event, the thing to focus on in writing.

In other words, it doesn’t jump out at us, initially, that virtually ever scene of everything we’ve ever loved has these core elements.

We notice other things about them and strive to do our own versions of those other things. All of which are important: good dialogue, distinct character voices, snappy description. Action and spectacle. Entertainment of one kind or another. Themes we want to explore. Being original. Being authentic.

I’m here to say all those things matter, but scripts and scenes tend to fall flat with professional readers (and audiences) if they aren’t powered underneath by a story and scene approach of “desire pursuit-obstacle-improvisation.”  Where said desire is clear to the audience and has relatably important stakes to the character pursuing it. This is what tends to make the reader/audience lean in, to be intrigued, and to care.

When a scene or section of a script (or movie or episode) seems slow, I think it’s almost always because there’s a lack of this. It doesn’t engage the audience because the desire/pursuit/conflict/adjustment mechanism isn’t keeping it moving forward.

Sometimes there are other issues with other of those elements mentioned above. Like it maybe doesn’t seem believable, or it’s confusing, or the dialogue is wooden, etc.

But first and foremost, as you conceptualize your stories and then break them (i.e. outline them scene by scene) I suggest that your intention is fixated primarily on this:

“Who is the main character here? What do they want and why is it important? What’s in the way? What do they do to try to solve that?” With each and every scene. 

And when you have a clear answer to all of that, it’s time to write that scene. Or move on to outlining the next one. I believe your stories regardless of genre will probably greatly benefit – as will your readers and audiences.

If you’ve been writing screenplays for any length of time, you’ve probably heard of The Black List.

Chances are you might also not really understand what it is – or think you do, but don’t.

That’s very understandable, because it’s two very different things with the same name run by the same company.

Both are of potential interest and value, but have little to do with each other.

Let me explain…

The Annual List

The Black List started as a way for “development executives” (the people you ultimately want to impress with a script, who work for production companies, studios, etc.) to rank what they think were the best unproduced scripts they read that year.

That list still exists. And every year you can find out which scripts were voted in, on their website. Here’s 2024’s list.

You’ll note that the list includes the logline for each script. This gives a good sense of the kinds of projects, ideas and genres that are making it far enough in Hollywood to be read (and liked) by development execs. They’re not always the perfect logline that completely sells and explains the project and weren’t necessarily created by the writer, but they give you a sense of the concept.

You’ll also see the names and company names of the writer’s manager and agent.

That’s right – this list consists almost entirely of scripts from writers who have already broken into the industry in the sense that they have both a manager and an agent.

(In fact, it’s the managers on this list and others inspired by it that I considered legit enough to be on the list of managers I provided here.)

There’s no way to directly try to get on this original Black List, to apply to be on it. You generally have to have representatives (managers/agents) who are able to circulate your script all around Hollywood.

Chances are those reps developed it with you, gave you feedback on multiple drafts, worked with you for years on various projects, and made it their goal to get you on this list. Because it is a big feather in the cap of both writers and reps.

It’s almost like the Academy Awards for screenplays that haven’t been made into movies yet. The best of the best, in the opinion of the professionals.

Or at least the most memorable and/or fun for them to read. That doesn’t necessarily mean they have a great potential to sell or be produced. But it’s almost as good, in that the writers got important fans within the industry from these scripts, who will want to work with them.

(For a fun critical analysis of the loglines and scripts that make the list, check out Carson Reeves’ Script Shadow site.)

What value is this to writers who haven’t broken in yet?

The main value of this list to writers who haven’t yet secured managers or agents let alone gotten development execs across Hollywood to read their scripts is this:

It can tell you what’s popular. What’s working. What sells, even if they haven’t sold yet. Because many of them soon will. (And many of them have gone on to become movies you’ve seen.)

Not only can you read the loglines, but sometimes actual PDF’s of the scripts become available online, particularly on the R/Screenwriting subreddit on Reddit. (You might search something like “black list script pdfs.”) Then you can actually read the full scripts and get a sense of the kind of material that is impressing the industry these days and considered really good by those who matter.

This is no small thing, because there tends to be a big gulf and disconnect between what aspiring professional screenwriters think commercially viable scripts (and concepts for same) look like and what they actually do.

So it can be a real education.

The Coverage Service

Some time after the list had been going a while, the folks at The Black List came up with a second “product,” if you will, perhaps confusingly given the exact same name, and on the same website.

This second “Black List” is a place where any writer at any level can register, pay to “host” their scripts online, and pay for written evaluations. 

For the latter, anonymous professional readers will read their script and provide a brief analysis indicating how they think the script would be received by the industry in terms of potential strengths and weaknesses. With an overall numerical score from 1-10.

Scores of 8 or above (especially multiple 8+’s) unlock some special benefits, most notably circulation to the network of industry professionals who pay attention to such things. And some really do. For instance, manager John Zaozirny at Bellevue Productions has written about using this as a filter to find scripts worth reading from writers he doesn’t know, sometimes leading to signing them.

The problem is that it’s rare and difficult to get 8’s or above. And to get them consistently. And sometimes the same script will receive very different scores and feedback from different readers. Some writers get frustrated by this. And by continuing to spend money on the hope of getting those magic 8’s.

So is it worth doing?

I think it can be, with the rare script that has the potential to achieve that. Which the writer, perhaps too close to it, often doesn’t really have a clear sense of. 

Another coverage service called SpecScout (affiliated with Slated, which is involved in independent financing and networking between professionals and projects) does a similar service, only they offer three reads at once with arguably more substantive and longer feedback. I’ve often recommended them, and full disclosure, know one of the founders and have collaborated with them in the past.

I have found their coverage anecdotally more useful to work from than The Black List. But their marketing reach and visibility (in terms of high scoring scripts getting real industry attention) is seemingly lower. But if a script does really well there consistently, it might be a sign that it’s ready for The Black List’s service.

I’ve blogged in the past about these coverage services and also competitions, and would say the hard truth is that the pro screenwriting world is an almost lottery-like tournament where only a very tiny percentage of scripts at any given time do really really well to the point where they could lead to sale, production or professional steps forward for the writer (like securing reps).

Every writer has to decide for themselves how much time, money and energy to put into their writing and trying to advance it, and what is worth doing, on a particular script or with a particular service. There’s no one answer for all.

My intent here is to simply illuminate how these things work as I notice there is quite a bit of confusion out there, especially around the “two Black Lists.”

Feel free to comment with your (respectful and constructive, please) experience with any of this below, so others will get a broader perspective on the pros and cons.