Lesson catalog

Professional Preparation

Finding your three comparables

30 min

Fixes this hazard: The script has no stated audience, or comps are aspirational rather than accurate.

Repairs: Marketability & Audience Connection · Concept & Premise · Professional Readiness

A comparable is not your favourite film. It is a produced film that answers three questions for a buyer: who watches this, roughly what does it cost, and who has already made money doing it. Comps are how a stranger decides whether your script is a business or a hobby.

Pick recent and honest. A comp from thirty years ago tells a producer nothing about today's market, and comping to the highest-grossing film in your genre reads as inexperience. The most useful comps are modestly successful films made at a budget someone would actually risk on a new writer.

Three is the right number: one for tone, one for audience, one for scale. Being able to say 'the tone of A, the audience of B, at the budget of C' shows that you understand your own script as a product without pretending it is a phenomenon.

Comps also correct the script. If you cannot find three, either the premise is genuinely unusual — say so, and comp on tone — or the script is not yet aimed at anyone, which is a rewrite note, not a marketing note.

HOW TO RUN IT

Build the shortlist

  • Search produced films in your genre from the last seven years.
  • For each, note the approximate budget and the production company.
  • Keep the three that a buyer could plausibly compare you to.

Write the comp sentence

  • 'It's X meets Y, for the audience that turned up for Z.'
  • Check that X and Y are not both enormous hits.
  • Note which company made each — that is your query list.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Before

It's like THE GODFATHER but with women.

After

It's the small-town dread of a modest recent thriller with the workplace detail of a mid-budget drama, for the audience that showed up for a contained genre hit — all made under five million.

The first version claims a masterpiece. The second describes a film that could be financed.

The exercises

DO THE WORK HERE

Write your answers with the script open. Everything is saved on this device as you type — nothing is uploaded, and nothing is scored. The point is that the next draft is different from this one.

0/2

Exercise 1

0 words · 15 min

List your three comps with approximate budget and production company for each.

Recent, modest, verifiable.

Exercise 2

0 words · 10 min

Write your comp sentence: 'It's X meets Y, for the audience that turned up for Z.'

One sentence. No apologies, no superlatives.

Saves as you type

The drill

Write your comp sentence and note which company made each comp. That list is who you query first.