It takes an incredible amount of bravery to submit a script to a coverage service. Not only are you laying yourself bare before a potential stranger, you’re exposing your work to someone who should be able to find every imperfection, every flaw, every broken aspect of your work. And to top it all off, if you’ve selected a quality service, you’re paying hard-earned money for the privilege.
You’ve got to be careful about submitting your work to reputable sites, and you’ve got to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. Aside from making sure that the reader knows a thing or two about cinema, and screenwriting specifically, there are three things you should expect from a screenwriting service. There is also one thing you should not expect.
You should not expect affirmation.
You are wasting your money and the reader’s time if you’ve submitted a script and are expecting to receive platitudes. It doesn’t matter if you’re an award winning writer or someone who is doing it for the first time. You want the reader to expose all of the imperfections of your script, because that is the only way it’s going to get better. This might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people think you don’t know what you’re talking about because you don’t see the same brilliance in their work that they see.
So aside from stellar movie and writing knowledge, here are the three things that you want from your coverage service:
Brutal Honesty
Don’t mistake the word brutal for mean-spirited, because that’s not what it should be. You do not, however, want your reader to pull any punches when critiquing your material. He or she needs to tell you like it is because it doesn’t do you any good as a writer for someone to tell you something is great when it’s not simply for the sake of sparing your feelings. Not to mention the fact that it’s a ginormous waste of your money. The reader needs to be able to assume that you’re mature enough to handle critique, and you need to understand that what the reader is saying is not personal. You paid for a professional evaluation and that is what the reader is providing. Which leads us to…
Professionalism
Just as you are paying for an honest evaluation of your work, you’re also entitled to a professional one. There is no room for sarcastic or condescending remarks about your work. The reader should be professional enough to evaluate the quality of the work on its merits. If the work isn’t high quality, the reader should professionally point out the problems and offer solutions on how to improve it. It should be done honestly, but delicately. The reader shouldn’t find it necessary to spare your feelings, but shouldn’t go out of his or her way to hurt them either. Professionalism is an underrated, but essential aspect to screenplay coverage.
Clarity
Another underrated, yet indispensable quality in a script reader. The reader must be able to deliver his or her notes clearly so that they can be easily understood by the writer. Again, this is something that should seem obvious, but it can sometimes be difficult to articulate what you’re thinking when trying to evaluate someone’s work. Something that was very clear in the reader’s head might come out as muddled and jumbled when written out on the coverage. It does the writer no good if the notes that are provided are confusing and/or unclear. The notes and the critique should be as clear as an unmuddied lake (thank you “A Clockwork Orange”) so that the person who paid for them is easily able to understand them.
As noted a couple of times, these points should be obvious, and yet they are missed by both writer and reader. Writing a script is a terrifically difficult endeavor, but honestly critiquing one offers its own challenges as well.
At Monument Script Services, we take all of this into account when delivering out notes. We take great effort in delivering coverage that is an honest assessment of your work, that is delivered in a professional manner and is clear enough to be easily understood.
If that sounds like it would be helpful to you, please visit the following link:
http://monumentscripts.com/service/