Using Script Coverage To Become A Better Writer

I’ve been absent from posting for a while, admittedly longer than I’d like to have been. I love posting, but an important task was at hand. I was a preliminary judge for our annual Fellowship! I read through a lot of submissions, and there was a lot to like! I’m very excited to see how this all ends, and just want to wish all of our contestants good luck. We’ll have the results coming soon. That being said, going through all of these submissions got me thinking about my days doing script coverage.

For those of you that don’t know what script coverage is, it is the analysis and grading of screenplays. Think of it like a book report, but for adults. I have a love-hate relationship with script coverage. I hate doing it, but I absolutely love how much I’ve learned about good storytelling, and what people are looking for when they want to buy a screenplay. I don’t speak much about my experience in these posts, but if I have experience doing anything it would be script coverage. I worked at an A-List talent management company and a production company, and through experience I know what they look for. If there has been any single tool that has helped me understand what good writing is, it would be script coverage.

Luckily, most of what I read at those two jobs were great scripts, and I was just weeding out what would be right for the production company or the actors of the management company. Every once in a while a bad script would come in, and that was when I was realizing how much I had truly learned from coverage.

Let’s get to why this could be good for you. If you perform script coverage on a number of scripts, you could better understand what people are looking for. The advantage to knowing this information is that you can apply it to your writing. Also, I should add that if you truly want to see where your script stands then maybe you should get a professional to do script coverage on a story of yours. You have to pay to do this, but the information could be very valuable in helping you as a writer.

Below is a great article that has a more in-depth explanation on script coverage:

Script Reader Pro: SCRIPT COVERAGE EXAMPLE AVAILABLE: LEARN WHAT READERS ARE LOOKING FOR

Published by Jordan

Thanks for stopping by! A few things about me. I've been an L.A. local for my whole life, and I spend my days working here at front desk of theOffice. My number one goal here is to fill this blog feed full of things that will motivate and inspire writers, and to give you all an occasional laugh. I'm a lover of science and technology, geek culture, and video games. If anything inspires you as a writer, I'd love to hear about it!