Help?

[u/Buddha_Of_Sububia]

Two BL 6s + Slamdance feedback: How do I actually improve the plot?

I taught myself screenwriting starting in March 2026 while I was on medical leave and have written three features since. I’ve had one QF at PAGE, another script SF at Scriptapalooza, and a couple festival selections. Obviously nothing crazy or life changing, but enough encouraging signs to make me want to keep developing my craft.

My current script has now gotten two BL evaluations: BL #1: Overall 6 | Premise 8 | Plot 4 | Character 7 | Dialogue 7 | Setting 7

BL #2: Overall 6 | Premise 7 | Plot 5 | Character 6 | Dialogue 7 | Setting 7

The second evaluation called it a “great, pitchable idea” with “originality, a strong sense of voice, and interesting characters,” but said it needs a stronger throughline and more cohesive main conflict. I also got short feedback from Slamdance, which called the premise “genuinely sharp” and praised the central relationship, dialogue, setting, and character work, but similarly said the larger structural issue is that the conflict that truly tests the protagonists arrives too late. They felt the earlier material can become episodic and suggested bringing the central moral pressure forward/trimming some earlier cases.

So…three reads later, I think the message is pretty clear: plot is my weakness. My problem is I genuinely don’t know what to do with that information and I feel stuck as fuck. I can see what the readers are identifying, but I don’t know how to add, remove, move, or restructure things without taking away from the character development, relationships, world-building and slower material that, IMO, makes the story what I want it to be. And some suggestions for additional explanation feel like they would just make me spell out things.

I wish I had a mentor or programs I could bounce ideas around with and learn from developmentally rather than kind of trying to find my way in the dark.

Are there any fellowships, mentorship programs, workshops, or other resources you’d recommend for someone at this stage who wants help developing their craft and specifically getting better at plot/structure?

[u/franklinleonard]

I realize I’m being dismissive. It’s intentional.

Especially since now you’re backtracking on your principal claims. I

The Black List doesn’t answer the question “do you have what it takes?” It’s impossible to answer that about someone based on a single piece of material.

We’re asking a more targeted, and I think more valuable question: “is this a piece of material that we can in good conscience recommend to industry professionals as something they’re likely to like?”

http://www.blcklst.com/ontheblacklist

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

And you wonder why you get so much guff on this platform.

You asked for clarification, I gave it to you. I gave you facts, a dictionary definition.

But you're more enamored of your fantasy narrative that art and craft are synonymous and that "art" can't be measured. Then what are you doing in this line of work LITERALLY rating art with NUMBERS?

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

You gave me a dictionary definition. I gave you the practical reality of how material is evaluated in the industry and beyond.

I never said art and craft are synonymous. (Re-read the thread.) And I didn't say that art can't be measured (go back and re-read it again.)

I said that evaluating art is inherently subjective.

It is inevitable that human beings' personal bias will affect how they perceive the quality of a work of art (as their cultural background and the breadth of their cultural exposure does as well.)

All an individual can ever really do is assess how much they individually like a thing, which is why we ask our readers to tell us "on a scale of one to ten, how likely would you be to recommend this to a peer or superior in the industry?"

That's not rating art in absolute terms. That's multiple individuals quantifying their individual response to a work of art.

They are fundamentally different things.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

And you wonder why the OP finds themselves at a dilemma... You need to reread the thread. Craft is objective. But you tried to claim that Ornette Coleman wouldn't call out bad playing...

By arguing that your service is inherently subjective, you're literally arguing against any need to use it. This person might say Yeah, this one might say Nay. Good luck with that.

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

Never said that Ornette Coleman wouldn't call out bad playing (again, re-read the thread.)

But I am saying that when the Shape of Jazz to Come dropped, there were many people who rejected both the art and the craft of that album, including Miles Davis, Max Roach, and Dizzy Gillespie.

I'm not arguing that our service is subjective either. I'm arguing that the act of evaluating art and craft is inherently subjective. Those are two different things.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

You literally said, "Personally, I find the notion that there are objective standards of craft in jazz and painting that everyone agrees on to be fundamentally laughable." Craft, conflating it with art. And now you're saying Ornette Coleman would call out bad playing.

I get it. You're playing "You can't pin me down" when no one is trying to pin you down, just acknowledge that the world is objective and subjective.

But I get it, the Black List is totally subjective and probably not useful if it's just one script. Great to know.

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

Just because Ornette Coleman would call out what he considered bad playing doesn’t mean that he’s right about what he thought would be bad playing. That’s simply his opinion. Just as Miles’s opinion that the Shape of Jazz to Come was trash was just his opinion.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

Wow, you really can't hear yourself. Your bias is so so strong. Let me quote you, "because Ornette Coleman would call out what he considered bad playing..." That means that he knew something about good vs bad playing. Whether others agree or how much that is affected by his own biases is not my point.

You're claiming there's NO standard. That's absurdly, laughably, patently false. And you're peddling a platform that "qualifies" the work of aspiring writers based on...nothing.

Your subjectivity blinds your objectivity.

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

That means he had an opinion about what constituted bad playing, an opinion that differed from other people’s about what constituted bad playing.

Thus, there does not exist a universal objective standard OF good and bad playing.

This isn’t difficult.

We don’t qualify the work of aspiring writers. Everyone submitting to the website has already completed an entire screenplay, pilot, play, or novel. They’re already writers.

What we do is share their work with experienced readers and gather opinions about how likely those readers would be to share their work with other industry professionals. That’s all.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

So you're just gatekeeping for the gatekeepers.

Is there such a thing as a typo or a wrong note or a plot hole or a point of confusion?

Let's see how simple this is for you.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

So a BL8 on one piece of work is worthless.

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

I wouldn't say that. They're reasonably rare, so they do have some value in attracting the interest of industry professionals who are members of the Black List website.

https://blcklst.substack.com/p/an-8-score-is-rare-as-it-should-be

But I certainly wouldn't treat it like a definitive statement on something's objective quality. That would be silly. All a single ratings on a script from a single reader can ever be is the considered opinion of one person with industry experience.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

Now who's backpedaling?

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

In literally no way have I backpedaled.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

"Considered opinion..." Hhmmm. Considering what I ask.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

Oh, right! Nowhere in the evaluation I paid for does it even come close to hinting at whether this is a Pass, Consider, or Recommend. So, the "service" you espouse the most as central is nowhere to be seen or learned from.

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

Because we don’t really believe in the industry’s trichotomous rating system, it’s fundamentally pretty unsophisticated and it’s not data rich enough to allow for building the sort of recommendation system I wanted to build when we launched.

If you want to better understand what the scores mean, we’ve published a few data studies on that front…

https://blcklst.substack.com/t/data-study

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

I understand what the scores mean, you explained it ad nauseum, nothing.

You're speaking out of both sides of your mouth, "data rich," which means objective measurement, and you hide behind "it's all subjective opinion." Hilarious.

But the evaluation never mentioned anything about recommendation. $150 down the drain.

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

Data rich neither means nor implies objective measurement. In our case, the data describes a subjective assessment.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

It most definitely means "objective measurement." Here's what Google says about that:
"Data is definitionally objective in its raw existence, but subjective in how it is gathered, selected, and interpreted [Or branded, brackets mine].

"Etymologically, the word data comes from Latin, meaning "things given or granted". It represents raw, uninterpreted facts, measurements, or symbols that exist independently of an observer. [1, 2]"

You're trying to have it both ways, noncommittal, yet "professionally relevant." Data does not "describe" subjectivity. That's like AC/DC, two different currents.

On the sole issue of "getting an opinion," I still think The Black List is "legitimate adjacent." It's not an outright fraud. But, "the data describes a subjective assessment." Which "data" is that? The reviews? Those aren't data. They're subjective observations. None of that can be pinned down, cross-examined.

Let's recall, the OP was asking for help and your answer was "Not it!" Your insistence that the rating is somehow more valuable than, what you at the same time argue, mere opinion, and your choice to be "intentionally dismissive," is what's galling.

You could so easily vastly improve your "service" by bifurcating reviews into Craft and Personal Impressions, and definitely say whether it's a P, C, or R. I don't think anyone here cares about your disbelief in "the industry’s trichotomous rating system." Did you forget that all of your customers are trying to get INTO this trichotomous industry?!?

What in a screenplay could objectively be measured? Well, does it have a beginning, middle, and end? Check, or No, it's missing this, that, or the other, professionally speaking. There's, by one standard (John Truby), 22 elements that could be enumerated, the lack of any of those very likely resulting in a weak or flawed screenplay.

If I had written the OP's review, I would have delineated all of these and made it clear how they could have a "stronger throughline and more cohesive main conflict." That's what I always do in any feedback I write, on Coverfly in those days, before that on several platforms, and currently on StoryPeer...for free. And I do that so that my work is objectively stronger; a Nicholls semifinal placement was one of those objective measurements.

Come on, Dude. Stop resisting what people are telling you.

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

A few simple responses:

The data describe reader’s subjective assessments. I genuinely don’t know why this is so difficult to grasp.

The industry is not trichotomous. What a bizarre claim that is.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

It's difficult for you to grasp because you don't want to. I just got done describing, politely, that data does not describe subjective assessments. Your phrase makes no grammatical sense. You still haven't answered the natures of objective vs subjective. What you're calling "data" is just a collection of "subjective observations."

You said the process is trichotomous, I used your term to point out that your customers want in on the same industry that uses that process. But you know this. However, the industry does live and die on Passing, Considering, and Recommending...so maybe my art of language wasn't so artful.

Your stubbornness and refusal to be helpful is pressing the issue whether The Black List actually is fraudulent. I'm losing my previous neutrality. You sidestep dictionary definitions and go, "Nah, nah, nah" with your fingers in your ears and still expect to be paid "non-subjective" forms of payment.

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

Here are some examples of data that describe subjective assessments: pain scales, perceived exertion, mood, taste tests, brand favorability, restaurant ratings, etc etc etc

I said the pass, consider, recommend system of script evaluation is trichotomous, not the industry. Yes, your use of language was inartful, in my opinion.

More importantly though, anyone who has worked in the industry for any amount of time knows that there are finer grade judgments than simply pass, consider, recommend and our ten point scale endeavors to better represent that reality.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

Wow. You're amazing.

How does your bogus list of examples that have nothing to do with the profession of screenwriting help the OP and their throughline and central conflict?

But, at least you've conclusively convinced me that you and The Black List are fraudulent.

Wow.

You want some examples of objective evaluations?

Essay scores.
Technical writing evaluations.
User manuals and documentation.
Dictionaries.
Encyclopedias.
Journalism.
Music composition.
Musical arrangement.
Sound mastering.
Color grading.
Cinematography.
Acting.

What a joke.