My second script, REALITY CHECK, is a distant relative of IPO. I guess that makes it a distant relative, once removed, of my novel. It's counted as a distinct script because it's a page-one rewrite and so utterly different from the original story that you'd be hard-pressed to spot any of IPO's DNA in its pages. Think Madonna's children.
REALITY CHECK took about seven months to write and was guided by an invaluable tool I stumbled on through screenwriting competitions: coverage.
I hinted at this in the last post. How do you get feedback from the business before you send your script out to the business – and bollocks up your chances of breaking in because your script isn't ready for prime time?
Coverage, my friends, coverage.
Coverage is a paid service provided by story analysts (a.k.a. readers) who work or have worked as story analysts for studios, production companies (a.k.a. prodcos) and other entities in the film business. It's not for everyone (coverage, I mean, not working as a story analyst), but I have found it invaluable for gaining an objective, dispassionate opinion on my work.
Readers have tremendous exposure to the avalanche of screenplays that bury Hollywood every year, and I'll bet a month's pay that they've read more scripts than most of us combined. The good scripts, the bad scripts, and the scripts that make you want to gargle with Polysporin® after you've read them.
Readers provide feedback (a.k.a. notes) on story, structure, characters, dialogue and more. They typically summarize the script in a synopsis – which can inform the synopsis that you'll ultimately have to write if you haven't already – and tell you what works and what doesn't... from that particular story analyst's perspective.
And there's the rub. Based on one reader's viewpoint, how do you know if your protagonist really is unrelatable? Isn't it possible that she could be highly relatable to a different reader?
Well? Isn't it?
Get the answer in Part II...
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