How many chances do you get to make a first impression? Whether it’s walking into your job interview, the first date with a new potential loved one or showing an important person your new screenplay, you’ll get just one chance to make a positive impression. Experts say that we make up our minds (whether rightly or wrongly) about someone within the first couple of minutes of meeting them. The same goes for the person reading your screenplay. Your screenplay can’t be just good; it’s got to be smoking hot.
Before you go on that first interview you do your research on the prospective company. Before that first date you check with your friends as to what you’re wearing, where you might go and whether you should be early or late. Before you show the studio producer your new screenplay you get it checked for quality first, yes?
Unfortunately, most newbie screenplay writers don’t realize that if they fail to make the right impression, the reader of their treasured work of art will aid global destruction by filing your screenplay in the trash can before getting to page ten.
Your work of art must meet industry standards for format and presentation or they’ll know you’re a new writer. You may think that it’s great to use a special color cover with dazzling sprays of glitter, but the industry will sense your amateur status and may not even open the front cover of your last six month’s work.
That’s why you need someone to analyze your screenplay correctly before you present it. You need to make sure your first impression has the best possible chance.
A script ‘doctor’ will start by looking over your format. Is it exactly as required by the industry? Is the length right; is the indentation correct? What’s the grammar like; what’s the editing like? Did you mean for a character to change their political preference half way through?
The doctor will check for weaknesses and strengths checking your story structure by checking the plot, the theme, the protagonist, the antagonist, the dialogue, the characterizations, the tension, the character arcs, the resolutions, the conclusions, the commercial potential, and whatever you specifically ask for. You might want the ending to be stronger; just tell the screenplay analyst what you want looking at.
General coverage gives the writer a single sheet in the Hollywood standard; all that studio executives will see after staff readers will have analyzed the screenplay first. If it doesn’t pass this stage it won’t even get read by someone higher up the food chain that counts. It’s usually backed up by a couple of pages of useful notes of how to make some suitable changes to improve the overall quality.
Extended coverage provides the same as general coverage, but then takes the comments much further with in-depth notes and suggestions concerning story and plot, structure, characters, action, dialogue and writing.
You might just need help with your treatment – the document that explains your story in a few pages for the investors. Almost certainly that’s another one chance operation.
The cost of hiring a script doctor isn’t high, especially compared to the returns possible after selling a screenplay. The cost of not hiring that analyst might mean rejection and no financial return whatsoever. In terms of real money, this could be the greatest investment you can make in your profession.
You may not like the opinion the script doctor gives you, but it will a genuine and informed opinion, one to help you move your screenplay from just average to standing a much higher chance of success.
For professional script doctor screenplay analyzing, to see what it’s all about and what it costs go to http://filmandmoviemaking.com/screenplay-analysis/
When you need help with getting your screenplay ready to show to a reader, producer, studio or agent, check out our screenplay analysis services first.
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