11 Ways to Spot a Shady Script Consultant

Why all the Script Consultants?

After spending many decades lurking in the shadows of the entertainment industry, script consultants and their services are finally getting some PR (good, bad and ugly) and perhaps slowly overturning the ideology and mythology of the isolated, genius screenwriter, which has dominated the amateur imagination.

But where there’s fresh meat there’ll be sharks, and the lure of the burgeoning script consultant industry regularly attracts snake oil salesmen, chancers, “Fauxpros” and Pied Pipers who are here today, gone tomorrow…

Every week a new service wriggles free out of the internet, covered in ectoplasm and sporting the pearly-white grin of The Confidence Man…

It seems almost anyone’s a “script consultant” now, with only a screenwriting degree under their belt. Seemingly every week a new “service” wriggles free out of the internet, covered in ectoplasm and sporting a Confidence Man’s grin.

These offerings are typically run by someone with little-to-no industry credentials (or vastly inflated ones), and offer absolutely no point-of-difference in an already crowded marketplace.

Let’s be honest – script development is a particularly nebulous area, in which it’s tricky (nay, impossible) to prove conclusively who’s “better” than who.

Like anything artistic, or subjective, or creative this only increases the importance of industry reputation and a demonstrable track record on a script consultant’s (or consultancy’s) resume.

All the nepotism and crafty digital marketing hacks in the world might get a script consultant a couple of decent script reading jobs, but true longevity only comes with sharp development skills, superb script notes and some degree of (main) industry respectability.

So why the high turnover of script consultants?

Why dey come and why dey go?

And – more importantly – as a new screenwriter, how on earth can you sidestep and juke all the myriad charlatans?

Let’s deep-dive in to the list, but first, here are the Article Highlights…

• What does a script consultant do?
• Introducing The “Fauxpro” Screenwriter
• The Review-Less Script Consultant
• How do I become a script consultant?
• and much more!

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