The Script Consultant’s Role
As a writer one feels a huge sense of satisfaction getting to the end of that first draft having wrestled and struggled with it for weeks \ months \ years. But this is only the start. So much of screen-writing is in the rewriting and in maintaining that creative impulse, energy and enthusiasm through each subsequent draft.
This is what I have always aimed to achieve with the writers I work with as script editor and producer, and how I work as script consultant. Each draft that the writer does should be undertaken with the same level of excitement and positivity as the first draft.
Writers in my experience benefit greatly from having someone to bounce ideas off, an objective eye, someone who has not been part of the daily grind of the creative process, who has some perspective on the script and can offer script advice and guidance dispassionately and objectively, helping the writer to unlock problematic parts of the script.
As a writer it’s so easy to lose the wood for the trees, and this is where a script consultant can help. Having said that, there’s never a definitive right answer to how to write a screenplay. And you should distrust anyone who tells you there is. Part of the joy and the frustration of the process is that no two people will feel the same way about the same script. But you the writer should feel as sure as possible when you finally submit that script to a potential buyer that you’ve done the best job you think you can. Good luck!
Regards,
Philip Shelley
Script-Consultant.co.uk
