Does Black List script coverage even matter? Or Black List score or other screenplay scores from other companies?
The Short answer: Heck no.
Congratulations. You can stop reading. Or, you can move on to my Medium-Sized answer, and/or even my TLDR (too long, didn’t read) Answer below.
The Medium-Sized Answer
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a script reader or consultant or company providing script coverage or assigning an arbitrary score or rating, using any rubric, to a submitted script. It’s only wrong, in this script reader’s opinion, when that score and script coverage is aggregated publicly with those of other scripts and scores on a platform that either promises (or even vaguely alludes to) the furtherance of a writing career via career-making personalities or entities supposedly browsing the platform for new material and talent.
Even worse? When the platform requires payment for the writer to access or host her material and receive a score to begin with.
The TLDR Answer
Assigning a “score” to a screenplay has always, always been a part of reading a script and providing script coverage, in at least one small sense: PASS, CONSIDER, and RECOMMEND. Remember those?
That classic rubric, in one form or another, has helped script coverage become more useful and more meaningful for countless screenwriters, producers, and reps for decades. Really, the PASS / RECOMMEND rubric is the de facto coin of the realm when it comes to communicating a script’s commercial value or artistic value or both.
And numerical “scoring” based on categories (plot, character, etc.) has always been commonplace as well, though it must be emphasized that both the PASS and the numerical/categorical scores have almost always been, and largely remain aspects of typically private, in-house systems of scoring spec scripts that each individual studio or producer not only does a little differently, but keeps within the confines of their own company.
In other words, most script coverage throughout Hollywood’s history has been internal. (And it must be said that the only script coverage that really matters still is that internal, studio/producer script coverage. But that’s a story for another day.)
Yet things started to change as the internet blobbed onto the scene. The Black List and Inktip saw financial opportunity in script scoring and pitting script coverage results of your screenplay against the script coverage results of the other guy’s screenplay.
Before we go any further, we need to distinguish The Black List from The Black List script coverage and scoring service, because they’re two different things the company does and therein lies the problem.
The Black List is a list of scripts, curated by Franklin Leonard and his contacts already working in the film industry, then published. That list represents what those folks consider to be the best un-produced scripts of the year and is populated with the scripts of many already-working screenwriters, as well as newcomers.
The Black List service is a service offered to the public and offers to read your script and provide Black List script coverage, and/or Black List score, and/or hosting of your script on The Black List public website. So when you’re buying that service, you’re essentially paying because you think your work will be associated with The Black List when it’s actually just under the The Black List service, which is a completely different thing. The list is hand-curated. The service is: anyone who pays can get on the “list” aka the website.
And so the Black List script coverage service, and the business model targeting hopeful, aspiring screenwriters, was born. Screenwriters could now pay to submit their scripts and get The Black List script coverage, but also receive an official “The Black List score.”
And the higher the score, the greater chance of your script being read by a producer or agent, supposely.
So essentially the Black List is conflating for new screenwriters its popular and genuine Black List (a curated publication of recommended scripts, assembled by actual people working in the film industry) with its Black List service, a pay-to-play script listing website.
And in the years since its founding, for better or worse, thousands more screenwriters have become convinced that the only way to make it as a paid screenwriter is to pay money to the Black List and land that perfect Black List score.
But what’s so wrong with that? Nothing, if The Black List service is truly helping new writers with good material to get their scripts in front of Hollywood producers.
If that’s the case, then paying a few bucks a month could be a worthwhile investment in one’s screenwriting career, right?
Okay. Sure.
The problem, though, isn’t that services like The Black List and Inktip and the Red List or Brown List or Mauve List exist. Or that writers flock to them. And the problem isn’t that these companies profit off providing feedback or scoring screenplays.
The problem is that they’re essentially cashing in on the renown of the popular The Black List by offering the Black List Service, with the dubious premise that Hollywood execs are trawling the internet for scripts to produce.
So to that end, they regale their potential customers with a litany of marketing: “success stories” with some even showing faces and names of “top Hollywood execs” who they claim are frequent browsers of the scripts on the Black List or Inktip service.
And why that’s a problem. These companies know very, very well that (a) the vast, vast majority people with greenlight power get scripts sent to them by recommendation only, and that (b) the writers working in the film industry got their start via traditional means such as working, interning, and meeting people and making friends in the industry, not by lucking out on the Blacklist or some script contest or by paying any $X/month to host their script on a website that gave it an arbitrary score based on the half-baked opinion of a distracted college kid who skimmed their screenplay.
Not to mention The Black List also knows very, very well that the spec script market continues to tighten up as the major players and the studios rely more and more on established intellectual property (Marvel, Star Wars, popular novels and comics, et al) and not newbies with spec scripts.
Not to mention, The Black List also knows very well that the way they’ve set up their service and their scoring system encourages / entices / dangles the carrot in front of writers to get them to pay for more and more reads, in pursuit of a higher score, with the implied promise of being discovered by a studio executive. And that. That is the problem.
So screenplay scores in general are bad?
If they’re dangled like a carrot to get writers to spend more money? Yes.
But a screenplay’s rating or numerical score in script coverage, such as what Screenplay Readers provides, can genuinely help a writer or producer gauge progress in their developmental process. A numerical score assigned to categories such as plot, character, conflict, and other key criteria of a script can help guide a writer’s next draft, and the next one.
But the important distinction is: unlike The Black List script coverage scores, the scores in our script coverage are kept private, just like internal studio coverage and scores. Any score or rating we provide our writer and producer clients is for their eyes only.
But are screenplay scores always helpful? Even from companies like mine, Screenplay Readers? No.
Some of our clients, for example, will receive coverage where Reader A gives their plot a score of 96, then two weeks later when Reader B reads the new draft, that new reader scores the plot a 55. And such disparity can cause heads to spin.
So by any objective measure, even a score from my own company is absolutely not always helpful. That being said, objective measure doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with subjective critique. But we keep providing scores because our clients over the last few decades have demanded them. And that’s because they genuinely find them more useful than not, even when they vary wildly.
But we don’t use those scores, or indeed our PASS / CONSIDER / RECOMMEND to encourage our customers to purchase more reads. Blech.
What we do do is go out of our way to encourage our clients to not keep buying one coverage after another in pursuit of a higher score. What’s more, we encourage all variety of free feedback, from writers groups and cohorts, before our customers even purchase from us. Then if they do purchase script coverage, we simply provide honest and constructive feedback on their screenplay. That’s it. No games. No contests. No promises of Hollywood glory.
The Black List and other hope-peddling services aren’t going anywhere
The sad truth is that the path to becoming a paid screenwriter is only getting narrower and narrower, and it was narrow even before the rise of these script listing / hope-peddling services. So as long as there are dwindling avenues to success in the film industry, aspiring writers who can afford to take a chance will continue to use these companies.
But alas, don’t read just one man’s opinion. Poke around the internet and talk to other writers and ask them what they think of The Black List script coverage and what kind of luck they’ve had using the service.
Dive in and find out any names of the writers and scripts that may have had success there. Then do the math. If you figure the odds are decent for the price you’re paying, take your chances.
But at the very least, know that creative executives real-world green light power aren’t exactly falling over themselves to chase scripts and writers on The Black List, and are definitely not hanging out on The Black List service trying to discover writers and material. Why would they? Material comes to them.
