Review of Reading Screenplays by Lucy Scher (2011)

Reviewed by Patrick Charsky

10/10/18

Reading Screenplays: How to Analyze and Evaluate Film Scripts by Lucy Scher. Kamera Books, Great Britain. 2011.


Reading Screenplays by Lucy Scher is a concise book about script development. It is one of the few books in the market which addresses the subject of how to write coverage reports. The book is intended to give the reader an introduction or primer on the job of a script reader. It is a quick read but gets the job done. After reading it I came away with a succinct idea of what to do when I read a screenplay and write a coverage report

Scher talks about the main components of a coverage report. She goes into quick detail about conflict, character, story structure, and the difficulty of writing second acts. Her major argument is that a story should have a very strong premise at the beginning. If a story isn’t strong from the outset, then it will, according to Scher, be difficult to sustain.

She also imparts valuable knowledge about the screenplay development process. She talks about readers who are the first line in the development process for screenplays. Toward the end of the book she talks about what it’s like to be a development executive or a “developer.” It’s an interesting perspective that shows how things work in getting a script green-lighted.

The book fills a need in the field of screenplay analysis. There are only a few books that show how to do the job of a reader. Or explain the process of development. It is a very good introduction to the topic and the latest to be released. The passages about conflict and character are excellent and her point is well made about having a strong premise in the film.


Where the book suffers is it’s brevity. There are countless books out there about screenwriting which go into more detail and better explanations than Scher’s book. Sometimes I was lost because the topic changed so quickly. Other times it felt like the book was too simple or presented too quickly. But for an introduction it works well.


I would recommend this book to anyone who wants an introduction to how the screenplay development process works. It presents important information in an easy to understand and accessible way. If you are looking for something with more detail about how to actually write a screenplay it might be helpful as a short review text, but I would look elsewhere for a book about how to write a screenplay.