Script readers-- the people who sift and sort the vast piles of scripts submitted to Hollywood -- do they start at the beginning?
The reason I ask is that I know 99% of scripts are awful and just get thrown out after a couple pages....but if that's true, do they even bother starting at the beginning, or do they just flip to the middle for a sample of the writing?
The short answer is, yes, although there's no rule about it, studio readers do seem to start on page one.
Readers looking for scripts for their employers to film look for a lot of things: That there's a basic concept at work in the script, that the three-act structure is being followed... there's a list to be ticked off, and every studio will require their readers look for certain things. But these guys read a lot of scripts and only have so much time in the day. It's generally assumed that they may not even finish reading a script, skimming it or even abandoning ones that are not promising.
While readers not part of a studio may read for broad strokes or even just skim the dialog, studio readers seem to just start at the beginning. Saying that you can tell if a script is bad by the tenth page (and sometimes earlier) seems to be not unusual at all.
There may be some that dip into the middle first; I do this when evaluating manuscripts I may edit, knowing that writers open with a bang and the beginning may be atypical, but if they do, I suspect this isn't the norm. Movies are, by their nature, generally front-loaded, particularly modern ones. So it's never going to hurt to grab the reader up-front, and it's probably expected that you try. Just make sure you follow this through in the rest of your script.
I have no experience with screenwriting specifically, but I see no reason why this would be different from the considerations in the fiction market (where "sending chapters" is always the first three chapters: the reader will start from the beginning, precisely like a viewer would. Why would he do otherwise? That's what makes sense; that's what gives him the best understanding and experience of the work as a whole.
But beginnings are naturally slow and less-exciting? True. Also: tough. Quite simply, there's no good excuse for having a dull beginning. As a screenwriter, it's your job to bring the entire script up to par - before submission. That means you need to overcome the "how do I draw viewers into the movie" problem, just like later on you'll need to overcome the typical problems of a screenplay's middle and end.
Don't think of it as looking for a "sample of the writing," because that's not really what it is. It's "I'm going to experience this screenplay precisely as a viewer would, but if at any point I'm persuaded that it's not good enough, then I can stop." In a vast majority of cases, that point comes pretty early.
That being said, readers know movies and their genres. You don't need to start out with an erupting volcano because the opening of your domestic dramady isn't exciting enough. Lots of movies open with endearing characters, or great settings, or fun dialogue, or whatever. If you know why you would be riveted to this movie from the start, why your expected audience would leap right into this movie as soon as it begins, then you're absolutely fine. But if everybody would be bored by the first 15 minutes before "things get interesting," then that's a real problem - and the reader's quite right to reject your script as unready.
The book "Writing Scripts Hollywood Will Love [An Insider's Guide to Film and Television Scripts That Sell]" is by Katherine Atwell Herbert, an actual professional script analyst; she was the first reader for Robocop and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
The third chapter of that book details how script analysts work, and YES, they read from the beginning to the end; take notes along the way for themselves, and so on.
They may take overall impressions just from the title, page count, formatting and "density" on the page, but they do not read in the middle because they don't want to see any reveals or spoilers: They want to judge tension and open questions as they go, to simulate the experience of a seen movie.
On titles: Chris Meindl, reader for MGM:
"Titles are sometimes an indication that the writer has given this project more than a moment's thought. Good titles will have resonance or call up associations. Too many scripts have two word titles that sum up a high concept story and we already know how the story works before we even read it."
She says nearly all readers look at the length; if it is not between 100 and 130 pages, the reader suspects the writer's professionalism, and assume "the writer does not know how to tell a story in the context of a film".
The script analyst will also notice (and become biased by) any typos, non-standard fonts being used, missing punctuation, horrific grammar. All are unprofessional.
Most script analysts have made much of their judgment within a FEW pages:
For a six year veteran at a major studio the most common script problem is, "predictable people relying on clichéd events." In these scripts, "you know what's going to happen in the story after only a couple of pages," she adds. She hardly needs to read further, but of course, she does.
For some analysts the first few pages of a script are indicative of its overall merit. Meindl has found that, "You know in the first few pages if you're in the hands of a capable writer."
A senior VP of production at Twentieth-Century Fox is concerned with neatness, spelling and grammar and is also put off by scripts that, "are too dense. There's not enough white space on the page." Or as Allen Page, an analyst at Warner Brothers who has also taught various film courses, remarked, "a script should be easy on the eye. It should be script-like rather than novelistic." Being too dense means there is too much description, which means the writer is probably overwriting.
The book is worth buying if you are serious about script writing. Later in Ch3 she says:
Nonetheless, the readers stick with it to the end, and turns each page hoping to find originality, something unusual that will spark their interest, or a creative approach to the plot development, the hero's problem, the description of characters and the theme. Most of the time they don't find it.
