Writing an “audience draft” to kick your script in the pants

Is your screenplay about the audience?  Or is it all about you? My company has read a lot of scripts. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands!  (Okay, well, not hundreds of thousands, yet.) Good scripts, bad scripts, mediocre scripts.  And they’ve all had their positives and minuses.  And super-minuses. But there’s one major commonality across all less-than-stellar spec … Read more

How to write script coverage for your own screenplay

Have you ever considered giving yourself script coverage? Have you ever considered reading your own script and providing script coverage for it? Lo, and yea, and verily, the benefits can be massive, not just for the script itself, but for a screenwriter’s long-term ability to distance herself from her own work.

Writers groups — the pros and cons for screenwriters

I’m a huge fan of writers groups. Screenwriting, like all writing, is mostly a very lonely endeavor.  One woman.  One word processor.  Or two, if you’re collaborating.  But ironically, the end goal of all screenwriting has traditionally been a stack of pages that get turned into a film that’s projected in front of a room … Read more

Give yourself better script notes

Sitting down to do your screenplay rewrite? Awesome! Do you have some notes to go on? No? Alas, script notes are valuable, right? Getting anybody to read your spec script is often a bit of a challenge, but trying to get script notes on it can be twice as hard. Folks like me and my team … Read more

What’s the difference between script notes and coverage?

Script coverage and script notes are two different beasts , but are really not all that far apart. Here are the primary differences: Script notes = MRI. Script coverage = checkup In a nutshell, script coverage is 2-4 pages of synopsis, comments, logline, and header information. It’s a quick doctor visit.  Is the patient’s pulse … Read more

How do I know when my screenplay is finished?

Ah, your screenplay is finished. That “Save as PDF” command is just dying for you to click it. Getting your script out there is you’ve been working years toward. It’s that final moment when you can say “I’m finished with this screenplay.  Time to move on to the next one.”  But how do you know when … Read more

Screenplay Readers