Got my ass kicked on the first coverage report for Heist.

Something that I can say that I was expecting, for more than one reason:

- The script is pretty much a first draft.

- I used a bunch of non-standard screenplay style elements. - Mostly because I knew that I wasn't trying to sell the script, and wanted to annotate it as I went for production. This was entirely my fault - I should have let the coverage service know this.

- There were some things in the script that never felt that I handled well and my failure to deal with them resulted in getting nailed for it.

The opening comment was "I liked this script, but I wanted to like it better". So I was encouraged by that. If I went on the story analysis by itself, it wasn't that terrible as all of the problems can be addressed. Another comment that was made which I was very encouraged by was "Characterization and dialog was nicely crafted, your skills here made the story worth reading and was a saving grace."

I think had this reader known upfront that I was not interested in selling the screenplay and was going to be producing it independently, they would have more forgiving on the style points, though they did point out some things that in general I should refrain from, such as the use of ellipses, parenthetical where the emotion or reaction is obvious from the context, etc. However, in an early draft, you're bound to have more in the draft than you need - so I'm not concerned about it that stuff is easily fixable.

There were some things that the reader seemed to miss - some because I did a shitty job writing and others because they weren't looking closely enough - something I've seen before with coverage readers. They got most of it, and provided some good comments. The one thing that I was hoping to pull off was for people to have sympathy for Eddie and Gail. I seem to have done this very well, which made me feel good.

Overall, the report served its purpose, and I'll be sorting through the things that I think I need to fix, and get it ready to go out again.

There's always the "slight sting" ("That's pride fucking with you. You fight through that shit" - Marcellus Wallace - Pulp Fiction) when you read one of these reports for the first time. But the trick is to figure out what you did well, what you did bad and determine if the thing is salvageable. I think that based on the comment that the reader makes at the start - "I liked this script.." Tells me that I did something right so its worth investing more time.

I think that I did overdo the crossovers a bit and made it more confusing that it needed to be. It may be worthwhile to go back to a simpler formula and focus more on the character driven aspects than making the plot so overly complex. I did get pretty high marks for character development and dialog so perhaps differentiating the story by making it a more compelling character piece may be the way to go.