Whether you’ve created a treatment/pitch or have a completed screenplay, it is critical to get reliable, professional-level feedback to determine if it is ready to take you to the next step (selling to studios, submitting to competitions, or using it as a sample to get hired). The competition in the industry has never been higher, and a great sample means nothing if people aren’t reading it. That’s where WeScreenplay’s Marketing Services comes in.
WeScreenplay offers a solution in our Marketing Services, which differs from our Writing Labs or Coverage Services. WeScreenplay coverage helps you elevate the script from format to script readiness for features, pilots, and shorts.
Marketing Services assist you in understanding how the project is perceived compared to the marketplace, provide feedback on tone/themes/plot, and other critical aspects that make a project compelling, and offer feedback that aids in preparing for professional distribution.
All WeScreenplay Marketing Services come with a 72-hour turnaround time (or 24 hours for an additional fee). Let’s talk about their distinctions.
Treatment/Pitch Coverage
Ideally, we will all reach a point in our careers where we are paid to write scripts. Yes, it’s true! Once given the go-ahead, writers pitch their ideas and then proceed to write the outline and drafts, for which they are paid.
It begins with a strong treatment or pitch. WeScreenplay’s Marketing Service can help you get there.
It provides two pages of detailed notes on your treatment, series bible, or pitch document. This is intended for documents under 20 pages or 12,500 words. The notes focus on characters, tone, voice, themes, and, critically, the current market.
It helps to know from season to season and year to year what different trends exist, what buyers are looking for, who is even buying and when, and so on. If you’ve got a pilot about a well-to-do white male protagonist you think would be amazing on CBS this fall… you’re just going to be wasting your time. CBS didn’t order any new pilots this year. Audiences have emphatically expressed their interest in diverse stories, untold perspectives, and characters resembling real-world people.
With a finger on the pulse of the industry, you can gain insight into how marketable (read: profitable) your project appears and determine weaknesses that might help you shift towards success before you step into your pitch meeting.
‘Promising Young Woman’ (2020)
Proofread
Sometimes, you need a fresh pair of eyes on your project. The proofreading service offers just that. You’ll get a thorough scrub of your screenplay for spelling and grammatical errors, typos, and annotations noting any unconventional or unprofessional formatting.
Maybe you’ve got a lot of intercut scenes or visual effects you haven’t seen in a screenplay before. Maybe you want to go full Oppenheimer and play with the first-person narrative in your action lines (bold move).
The proofreading package will provide notes intended to make your script polished, professional, and concentrated for distribution. Your document contains notes with annotations, allowing you to choose which ones to apply.
‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)
Marketing
The marketing one-sheet is a simple, one-page synopsis summarizing the tone, themes, plot, and characters of your screenplay. Coverage provides synopses that share how your piece was received, which differs from this.
Instead, the marketing one-page helps you put your best foot forward. This document intends to provide you with a polished, professional, and consistent summary for pitching your material. It aims to assist you in developing your pitch.
Here’s an example of how the two could be different:Â
This is a show about surgical interns trying to advance in a competitive environment while navigating their personal lives.Â
Or:Â
Welcome to Seattle Grace Hospital. Where surgery is the game, surgeons are the all-stars, and the interns… well, the interns are exhausted.
The first one is a perfectly accurate description of Grey’s Anatomy, but it does not evoke any excitement and certainly contains none of the heat or drama of the series. The second one is from Shonda Rhimes’s series bible and offers stakes, heroes, and challenges in a catchy and playful way. That’s what marketing can do for you.
‘Grey’s Anatomy’
—
From offering free feedback in every competition submission to designing in-depth Writing Labs to mentoring finalists and participants beyond their program to offering a free blog with a wealth of industry and craft information, WeScreenplay truly tries to serve emerging writers.
A career as a screenwriter means that you must be excellent at the craft of storytelling as well as knowledgeable about the market that buys, produces, and distributes television and film. It’s a lot to learn, but you don’t have to do it on your own.
While you build your network and connect with reps who will be in your corner, WeScreenplay is here. If you have any questions about our Marketing Services or any other programs, please feel free to contact us!
And as always, happy writing!
Shannon Corbeil is a writer, actor, and U.S. Air Force veteran in Los Angeles with appearances on SEAL Team and The Rookie. She was also a 2023 DGE TV Writing Program Finalist and her screenplays have placed in various contests. You can read more about her on her website or come play on Instagram and Twitter!
