“How Data Can Help You Write A Better Screenplay”

The headline is a considerable stretch, however there are some good points in the article and what’s perhaps most important: The Black List made FiveThirtyEight.com.

What makes a screenplay good? What makes it bad? Are writers in certain genres at an advantage or disadvantage when it comes to certain elements like plot, premise and characters? And if so, how can we show this? All we need is a data set to draw from.

The Black List offers aspiring screenwriters the chance to have their work evaluated by professional script-readers who work within the industry. The readers are drawn from agencies and studios. When scripts are rated highly, the site promotes the screenplays to potential buyers.

As a result, The Black List has thousands of script evaluations — grades based on plot, premise, characters, setting and dialogue — from dozens of genres. I asked for a look at those reviews, and they sent over an anonymized record of 4,655 evaluations of 2,784 scripts by 2,221 writers, submitted from March to July of this year. When a script is evaluated, the reader assigns any number of genres to it — from simple drama to prehistoric fantasy — and we can use these to uncover different trends.

Here are some charts for your perusal:

Underdeveloped plot. Underdeveloped characters. In my view, you do your work on the latter, you solve both problems as plot emerges from character.

All sorts of interesting information in the article. Still no numbers are going to do what creativity, drive and persistence can do.

For the rest of the article, go here