So you write your check and send your masterfully written screenplay to ScriptShark.com. A couple of weeks later you get a two page document.

"Okay," you think. "This is a coverage report. Seems clear enough: a one or two sentence log line that states the premise, a ¾ page synopsis, a recommendation, and a page of comments."

Like any writer, you skip directly to the comments. After realizing that the reader completely failed to appreciate how your script was trying to reinterpret the Really Big Bug Attacking Cincinnati genre, you look over the document again.

The synopsis leaves a lot out, doesn't it? The subplot has nearly vanished, and the bare-bones way the reader described your lovingly-constructed characters borders on the insulting. Confusion sets in: "What is this thing?" you ask an empty room. "What does it have to do with MY script?"

What you need to understand, fellow writers, is that coverage has nothing to do with the art of moviemaking.

Art is what you do at your desk at home, writing the script, honing your craft. Art is what directors do on the set with actors, what makeup artists do bright and early each morning, and what the FX guys do after shooting is complete.

Art is creative. This is business.

Coverage is a tool explicitly designed to save a Development Executive's precious time. "But wait," you ask. "What are Development Executives and what do they do?" That, dear readers, is a subject so tortuously complex that the Oracle at Delphi would shrug in helpless mystification.

In other words, a subject for a later column.

For the moment, the chief thing you need to know is that the Development Executive is the man or woman who might buy your script.

Here's another thing you need to know: every time these executives sit down to read a script they are praying to whatever deity they worship that YOUR SCRIPT will be their next big project. They cross their fingers, toes, eyes, and whatever other appendages they can cross, hoping mightily that they are about to discover a new writer with a fresh, new, big movie idea.

It only happens sometimes, but Development Executives are optimists. They keep looking, keep reading, keep hoping. Optimism is encoded in their DNA.

But where should they start?

Walk into a Development Executive's office and you will see Robinson Crusoe, cast away on an island of scripts. And this ain't no small island.

Let us suppose that this is a fairly light week. That means that our hypothetical executive has a mere fifty scripts on her desk. Your script is in that pile somewhere, and the executive sincerely wants to read it.

But again, where should she start? Which script does she read first?

At the top of the pile is the spec script: the hot property that some lucky writer's agent has simultaneously sent to a few dozen studios and production companies. Agents do this in the feverish hope that more than one person will be interested, and that a bidding war will start.

Spec scripts get read first. Be both talented and lucky enough to write one.

Next is the script by the award winning writer, then the one by the writer that did the executive a favor once many years before, then the one by the boss's nephew.

Four down. Forty six to go.

Even if the Development Executive was the valedictorian for her Evelyn Wood Speed Reading class, it will still take her about an hour to read a 120 page script. That adds up to forty six hours in an eighty hour work week.

That's right: eighty hours. The typical Development Executive works HARD.

Enter, stage left, the Hollywood Reader. The executive looks at the pile and says "I'll give you fifty bucks to read one of these." The reader replies, "I'll take five scripts--got hungry children at home." More readers come, departing with more scripts.

A few days later, the executive has forty six coverage reports. Even now the executive is pressed for time: more scripts have arrived in the interim, the phone rings, her assistant is out sick, she has four hours of back-to-back meetings, maybe she has to pick her kid up from school. In between, she glances at coverage reports.

The log line for one report reads "A huge asteroid plummets towards Earth: humanity scrambles to save itself while a daring group of astronauts tries to blow up the asteroid and save the planet from extinction."

"ARMAGEDDON," the executive thinks. "DEEP IMPACT too. Why would anybody make this?" At this point, she might turn to the next report. Maybe she works for a company that specializes in sweet little romantic comedies. She already knows that this script is not right for her company, and she's learned this in fifteen seconds rather than an hour.

On the other hand, maybe she works for a company that wants a big-budget, summer tentpole movie. She thinks "maybe there's room out there for a third movie about a big rock." She flips to the recommendation: it reads PASS on the script, PASS on the writer. If the executive is super-diligent then she will skim the comments so that later--when the writer's agent calls asking what she thought--she will have something to say. She might also wait until the agent is actually on the line before looking at the comments.

In this example, that's it. Game Over. The script goes unread.

Most coverage is PASS coverage. A CONSIDER ordinarily gets the executive to read the script, unless the executive hates the log line. A RECOMMEND is rare--for the reader, RECOMMEND means "I stake my reputation on this"--and always gets your script read.

But, does a PASS recommendation automatically mean "end of story?"

Maybe. Probably. Not always. Here's another example:

Our hypothetical executive moves to the next log line, which reads "When he answers the phone in a public booth, a man finds himself taken hostage by a sniper who will kill him if he hangs up." (This, by the way, is one reader's log line for a movie called PHONE BOOTH, currently in development at Fox.)

Our executive looks at the recommendation: PASS. She is about to put it on the NO pile, but then she stops and considers. "This is a new concept. Those are hard to come by." She looks at the first paragraph of the comments, which might read:

Reminiscent of IN THE LINE OF FIRE and NICK OF TIME, the screenplay is a fast-paced, tightly structured game of cat and mouse. However, the concept is far better than its execution. Shallow characterization and weak dialogue make the screenplay less suspenseful than it needs to be.

The executive finds herself intrigued. "Okay," she thinks, "the reader disliked it, but maybe I can work with this." She turns to the synopsis and gets the broad strokes of the plot, then she reads the comments more closely.

Remember: at this point the executive is not thinking "should I buy this movie." She is only wondering if she should spend an hour or more reading the script.

Two minutes later, she makes her decision to read or not to read.

She reads. If she dislikes it, Game Over.

If she likes it, then the script has taken its first baby steps towards purchase, development, and--maybe, just maybe--a life on the silver screen for the script.

For the Development Executive, their first thoughts about your script revolve around the coverage report. Coverage is a tool. Like Cliffs Notes, coverage organizes the time-consuming experience of reading a script into sound bites so that the executive can spend her time strategically.

A final note about coverage: ScriptShark.com provides one invaluable service to new writers that tends to pass unnoticed.

You get to see the coverage report.

Most of the time, a coverage report never leaves the desk of the Development Executive. She uses coverage as a guide for her reading choices, and later as a cheat sheet when she talks with an agent about why she is passing on his client's script.

This can be frustrating for a writer. "But why why why? Where did I go wrong? How can I fix my script if I don't know what's wrong with it?" The executive's comments are filtered through the agent, and tend to be unhelpful in the first place.

When ScriptShark.com mails you that coverage report, they are giving you an backstage glimpse at the inner workings of script acquisition and development in Hollywood.