The script reader I use before I give a friend notes

Friends have sent me a lot of scripts this year, and every one of them deserves a real answer, not "I'll get to it." The hard part is the note itself. "Something's off" is true more often than I'd like, and it's useless to a writer who needs to know what to fix.

The tool that helps me do that is a script reader I built with Claude. Give it a screenplay or a treatment and it gives honest coverage in the Story Grid tradition: what works, what doesn't, and why.

What you get back

A verdict first: works, or doesn't work yet. Then what's working, what isn't, and the changes that would matter most. It asks the questions Shawn Coyne's Story Grid asks of every story, like what genre this really is, and whether the ending pays off what the opening promised.

How I use it

I use it to read faster and to write better notes for friends, not to replace reading. I still read the script. The coverage is a second opinion I can argue with, and it usually names the structural problem I could feel but couldn't put into words.

It's also how I look at projects I might produce. Before I spend a month on something, I want to know whether the story works on the page.

One rule: never run it on someone's script without asking them first.

Craftsman Fellowship and Guild members get the build prompt for every tool below, plus the setup guide from the toolkit post. Not a member yet? Here's the Fellowship. Every tool I build comes with it.