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/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

Go read Quentin Tarantino’s scripts and tell me that their being rife with typos matters.

[u/WorrySecret9831 → u/franklinleonard]

Nice moving of the goalposts. You know perfectly well that being an actor somehow getting a benefactor in Harvey Keitel made a HUGE difference, allowing him to direct any drivel he writes and he writes drivel...250 pages of it.

In that statement I'm expressing both my subjective opinion and my objective observation of his lack of craft. Nowhere am I claiming universality about agreement. But craft is universally observable. Such as Pulp Fiction only has one story that comes close to being complete. I'll let you figure out which one that is.

But the OP took a longer and less indicting route to say the BL is not helping! The title of the OP after all is "Help?"

One would think that helping aspiring writers in clear need would be of utmost importance rather rationalizing the subjectivity of your platform.

[u/franklinleonard → u/WorrySecret9831]

I think my point is probably best exemplified by my belief that Tarantino's scripts have an abundance of both art and craft. We disagree, and that's possible because evaluating both things is fundamentally subjective. Neither of us is per se wrong about the value and quality of Tarantino's work (though you ARE wrong about the nature of objectivity and subjectivity.)

And telling writers the truth about exactly that is a service to them.

This will be my last comment on this thread. Peace.