Great advice
I’ve recommended two scripts in my entire reading career. Two. Out of thousands of scripts I read for Working Title Films, Pathé, UK Film Council, Tiger Aspect, Miramax, and assorted others when I was an active industry reader betwixt 2000-2010. The pay was £35 for a three-page report, £50 if they wanted it longer. Ten scripts per week, sometimes with books thrown in. One-week turnaround, sometimes overnight. Here’s what I was looking for, and the process I developed over a few thousand reads: 📄 Pick up the script. Note the page count. Anything between 90-105 pages always felt welcoming, like the writer knew what they were doing. Anything longer, not a disaster, but beyond 120 pages and ‘hmm this better be good’. 🫖 Read the first ten pages. Pause. Make a note of how well the script’s started. The first ten pages are vital. If I wasn’t hooked here, I worried the audience wouldn’t be either, and I was reading in silence with a cup of tea. They’d be in the dark with strangers, having paid for tickets and parking. 🗒️ Read to page 30. Pause. Take notes on the first act because I’d need to write a synopsis later. But mainly I was checking: do I understand what story’s being told and why it matters? (character goal, stakes) 📈 Continue to page 50 or 60. Another pause for notes. By now I usually had a sense of whether the script was working or struggling. That sounds harsh, but pattern recognition kicks in after you’ve read a few hundred. 🧠 Finish reading, pausing where needed to capture thoughts before they evaporated. Then start the report. The front page was straightforward until I hit the logline. If I spent ages trying to write the logline, I knew the script was in trouble. It sounds reductive but if you can’t describe your story succinctly in a sentence, there’s often a fundamental issue with clarity or focus. The logline matters for so many reasons beyond the report itself. Synopsis next. The least enjoyable part of the job, tbh. But if the story was strong and my notes were decent, it became relatively painless. Then the comments. The most enjoyable part. I’d try to be as objective as possible across the key components: premise, characters, plot, structure, dialogue, locations, story, theme. Screenplays are such a unique format. Deceptively simple, endlessly complex in application. But script reading taught me more about writing than any book or guru (though the books and gurus have value too). There’s something about seeing the same problems appear across hundreds of scripts, or watching a great script do something you’ve never seen before, that rewires your brain. You start recognising patterns. What works, what doesn’t, and more importantly, why. If you’re serious about screenwriting, read scripts. As many as you can, from wherever you can get them. The good, the bad, the almost-there. Develop your own insights. That’s where the real education lives. #screenwriting #scriptreading #scriptwriting #scriptreading #filmindustry