BY H.S. FISHBROOK FROM THE ARCHIVES
Chances are you’ve experienced this situation… You’re handed a rough draft of something to read, asked to provide a constructive critique, and when you sit down to start the work, you realize that the story is in a genre that you’re just not particularly fond of. For instance, maybe you love realistic, grounded biopics, but you’ve been handed an epic fantasy project in a sprawling, made-up world. Or perhaps horror content makes you squirm, and a gory slasher script lands in your lap. What then? How do you approach the material with enough objectivity to give it a fair review?
While there’s nothing wrong with having a personal preference for one type of story versus another, there’s real value in acknowledging these preferences and making a point to look past them. No one wants to work with a reader who comes to the assignment feeling resistance towards the text before they’ve even turned past the title page. Instead, it’s the professionals who approach the work in a spirit of service, doing everything they possibly can to help a developing story become the very best it can be, who win the respect (and repeat business) of their clients.
To be clear: a reader doesn’t have to fall in love with every story they encounter. But they should be able and willing to dive into all the glorious details of the material that crosses their desk, avoiding the temptation to skim over it or push back with scant notes simply because their artistic tastes swing in a different direction.
Conversely, there’s another side to this subject that ought to be considered: if a reader holds a bias, not against, but unreservedly for a particular genre, how should that be handled? How do you make sure your enthusiasm for the genre as a whole doesn't overshadow the way you read the specific script on your desk? There’s little business sense in looking at a project in such a forgiving light that it ceases to become polished or truly refined.
In either case, decidedly pro or con, the need is to operate with greater objectivity. Thankfully, there are a variety of resources and tricks available to assist story analysts of all persuasions, most of which can be boiled down into 3 thought-provoking questions.
What are some fan favorites in this genre, and what made them great?
For starters, a reader should get their hands on comparable scripts (and/or books) that fall under the same category. But not just any comparable titles will do. It’s important to find content that was well received, meaning it was either critically acclaimed, made lots of money, won coveted awards, or some combination of the three.
And gaining familiarity with these titles means more than simply scanning summaries of the comps on IMDb or Google. Having the actual text at one’s fingertips allows the analyst to gain a stronger sense of what well-crafted pages, scenes, descriptions, etc., look like in that particular segment of the market. By seeing the raw blueprint for a produced title, it also gives the reader a fuller, more concrete understanding of what worked for individual projects on a case by case basis, and why it worked. This then arms the reader with an expanded vocabulary with which they can speak to the rough draft that’s under review.
It’s also important to point out—particularly for those who are unabashed fans of the genre—that watching comparable films and TV shows is not the same as reading the scripts (or books from which the project was adapted). There’s a difference between the original text vs. how it came alive in a visual medium, but for hardcore fans, that line can become quite hazy or disappear altogether. For instance, does the individual love a certain movie because of the lines a character says, or more because of the way a great actor delivered those lines? Making the effort to exclude any thoughts about how the content was filmed for the camera, and instead getting a more accurate perspective on what was inherently in the story’s textual footprint, will be more beneficial to the client when assessing their pages.
There’s also an advantage to simply consuming a wider variety of content in one’s spare time. The more films, TV shows, and books a person engages with, the more insight they will have into what’s happening in niche spaces. If anything, the individual will learn more about the commonalities that exist in stories that hail from the same genre. Which brings us to the next question…
