Spotting a good (newbie) script

Ellyn Marshall and Maria Nelson, my partners at liberty films, have this knack of separating picking good scripts from the piles of submissions sent to them. They have a reputation for mentoring first-time writer/ directors, and a lot of people want to be either or both. Between them, they look for well written stories that are marketable, have some social relevance and most often a positive message. My job is usually to see how much production would cost and to assess the directorial skills of the writers .

The majority of the scripts end up in the NO pile. Bad spelling and grammar, faulty logic, wooly over-ambitious plots, derivative themes (vampires and horror were all the rage for a while) all are big factors in setting a script aside. Complexity and length - which translate into high production costs, are also factors, especially when newbie directors are involved.

The YES pile: Feature film scripts 90-110 pages long, good stories with credible characters, relevant subjects, a scarcity of car chases.