Is Keeping Your Screenplay Secret Stopping It From Being Read?
You don't have to put your script online to get useful feedback. A guide to choosing readers, keeping records and knowing what you're agreeing to.
Dylian Salvatore
The PreList Journal
Writing on the craft, the business, and the workspace.
Notes from the founder of The PreList on screenwriting, AI script coverage, and how the contest landscape is shifting in 2026.
5 Books for Screenwriters, and When to Read Each One
Struggling with structure, dialogue or the rewrite? These five books tackle different parts of the work, with a short exercise to try on your own screenplay.
Dylian Salvatore
What Professional Readers Look For in Your First Ten Pages
Five script editors, consultants and story analysts explain what earns their attention in an opening. Alongside their answers, we look at patterns across 416 produced feature screenplays.
Dylian Salvatore
The Social Network Screenplay: What Sorkin's Dialogue Really Does
Its reputation is walls of virtuoso monologue. Measured against 40 produced screenplays, The Social Network's speeches are shorter than average, and half of them run to five words or fewer.
Dylian Salvatore
What to Do With Script Notes: A Framework for Your Next Draft
Notes arrive as a flat list, which quietly suggests every problem is equal and independent. Neither is true. Here is the order that stops you doing the same work twice.
Dylian Salvatore
Introducing The PreList Editor, and the New Four-Tab Script Page
Everything to do with one script now lives on one page, under four tabs. And on the new Refine tab there is a proper screenplay editor, so the rewrite finally happens in the same place as the notes.
Dylian Salvatore
Are Screenwriting Competitions Worth It? An Honest 2026 Answer
Thousands of entries, a handful of winners, and a lot of fees in between. The honest case for and against screenwriting competitions in 2026, with two interactive tools to help you decide for your script.
Dylian Salvatore
11 Best Coverfly Alternatives in 2026: Sorted by What You're Replacing
Coverfly did five jobs at once. No single platform replaces all five. Here are 11 alternatives sorted by which Coverfly job each one actually covers.
Dylian Salvatore
Coverfly's Shutdown Explained: What It Means for Your Screenwriting Career in 2026
On 1 August 2025 Coverfly shut down. The corporate consolidation behind it, what writers actually lost, and the platforms shaping the 2026 landscape.
Dylian Salvatore