TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU is one of The Black List's Top 50 Most Downloaded for 2013! Also, a look at the site's data.

I got some very exciting news this weekend.  Despite behind hosted on the Black List site for a mere three weeks of last year, my script TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU was one of the site's Top 50 Most Downloaded Scripts for 2013!

As I did not purchase a review from the Black List, none of the traffic to my script came from official Black List emails.  This accomplishment is entirely due to my publicizing the script here and on social media, as well as the many strong rankings from Black List members.

Because of several high ratings of 8s and 9s, the script is currently in the 1 or 2 positions on several of the site's feature lists, including Top Unrepresented, Top Uploaded, Top Horror, Top Mystery & Suspense.

If you're new here and need to know more about TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU, check out this post.

Or you can watch this short video pitch.



For Black List industry members, the script is available here.

I'm already taking meetings about TOBY and as this week is really the first week back from vacation, I'm optimistic that I will be hearing from more people this week.  My assumption is that a number of people downloaded it to enjoy over their holiday breaks and that the coming weeks will see them reaching out if they liked it.

As some people have asked, I intend on doing a more complete data dump about my Black List experience as I approach the end of my time hosting the script there. 

The complete Top 50 Downloaded List is available here.

There are a couple of interesting finds here. Five writers each have two scripts on the Top 50 Downloaded List:

Christopher D. Bacon - THE RENEGADE MESMERIST and YOUR NUMBER'S UP
Tasha Huo - BLACK BELLE (FKA THE DARKNESS) and WARD 8
Dennis Luu - ON THE RUN and MOTHER
Jason Mosberg - THE SIMPLE ART OF VENGEANCE and JAILBIRDS
Anna Weinstein - FUCKING BRAD PITT and DAY TRADER

Conor Healy has three scripts on the list - CLEAN, BLACK AJAX and EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN.

As I'm a Black List member I went through and looked up each one of these scripts and gathered some data with regard to their ratings and paid reviews.  In cases like this, it's Black List policy to not share private data on individual scripts, but I am allowed to share non-identifying data.

I also want to caution that the data here only measures the Top 50 scripts against each other.  I don't have the information to stack these findings against the rest of the site as whole.  So what we're dealing with here may be a lot of correlation of data among the scripts in the Top 50 rather than determining the causation of how they ended up in the Top 50.

Having said that, these people succeeded in at least drawing traffic to their script so that at least suggests they figured out the salesmanship aspect of the goal.

40 of the Top 50 Scripts had a paid review of 8 or higher.  Some individuals had hidden their paid reviews, but by going by through my Black List emails featuring all scripts rated 8 or higher, I was able to at least identify scripts that met that threshold.  This means that only 10 scripts, or 20% of the list were able to draw traffic to their page by other means.  So it's not necessary to pay for a review on the site in order to get downloads, but it certainly improves your odds.

20 of the scripts (40%) had only a single paid review visible.
14 of the scripts (28%) had only two visible reviews.
3 scripts had three visible reviews
1 script each had four and five visible reviews, respectively.
1 script had seven paid reviews visible.

Does the number of paid reviews peak at 1 because 1 review is effective? Or is it because most people don't want to pay an additional $50 for a second review?  Or could those writers have paid for two reviews and only gotten one review to their liking?  There's no way to know for certain.  But you can say that 60% of the top downloaded scripts may have spent only $50 or less on reviews in order to attract their audience.  Pay to host it for two months and get one review and you've only spent $100, which is only slightly more than your typical contest entry fee.

What this also suggests is that a few writers employed the strategy of paying for reviews as a way of ensuring multiple appearances in the weekly emails.  Each paid review of 8 or above merits a mention in the weekly releases.  So if you purchase a review every other week and all of those reviews come back 8 or above, for the price of four reviews, the script will be pushed out to the membership every other week for two months.  Note that this strategy only really works if your script is good enough to get strong reviews.

16 scripts (32%) had fewer than 10 total ratings. (This includes both ratings from paid reviews and ratings from Black List members.)  One script had 2 ratings, one script had 3 ratings, three scripts had 4 ratings, one script had 5 ratings, three had 6, four had 7, two had 8 and one had 9 ratings.

Only ten scripts (20%) had 20 or more ratings.  Six scripts did not make this information available.

The other thing I wanted to take a look at is to see what percentage of the Black List member ratings were 8 or higher.  This is where it gets tricky because writers have the option to hide this information.  In fact 29 of the 50 scripts chose that option.  Of the remaining 21 scripts, only 11 had more than 50% of their ratings come in 8 or above.

I know, the numbers in that last paragraph can make your head swim.  What I want to get at is this.  Though you have to understand we are dealing with a VERY small sample size, it's not necessarily the end of the world if half of your ratings are below 8.  It's still possible to attract attention even with lower scores.  10 out of 21 scripts still got downloaded frequently even though more than half of the scores were less than 8.

Two things can probably make the difference here - having an irresistible logline, and having a strong review from the Black List reviewers.

I had also pulled the data with regard to how many of these writers were represented.  Here's where it gets tricky.  Since all of this information is self-reported and not mandatory, a writer doesn't have to identify themselves as repped.  Indeed, there were a couple writers who didn't have rep info listed even though I knew they had an agent or manager.

Additionally, I recognized a number of the repped writers as people who found representation only after uploading their work to the site.  But there's no way to know for certain who among these writers might have had an agent or manager before coming here.  So if I were to conclude "X number of writers on the Top 50 found their rep through the Black List," that would be impossible to confirm.

However, I suspect someone will go hunting for that data and might not put it in the same context that I am.  Between the information on the Black List site as well as public announcements about representation, I can state that 19 of 50 scripts had a rep attached.  Thus, (and I'm stating this again just so there's it's clear) going by the information available on the site and what has been publicly announced, we might conclude that 38% of the Top 50 have representation, but I urge against taking that as hard data. The actual number could be even higher, and we should not assume that 38% only encompasses writers who found their reps through the site.

And to think I swore off math once I got to college...

Updates on TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU and an offer to read your script

So the last three weeks have been kind to TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU on the Black List site.  I just got my 16th rating, half of which are 8s and two of which are 9s. My average is 7.5 and I have 45 unique downloads from the site.  That's very promising considering the script has mostly only been promoted through this earlier post and my Twitter feed.

In terms of the stats, 45 downloads is really good.  According to the Black List's stats for their first year, only 15 scripts were downloaded 50 times or more.  The next lowest stat they reveal is that 122 screenplays had 20 or greater unique downloads, which would seem to indicate that at least as far as exposure, TOBY's in some pretty good company.  (In case you're curious 2744 screenplays were downloaded at least once last year.)

Also, TOBY is currently #1 on both the Top Unrepresented and Top Uploaded Lists on the Black List website for the Month to Date, #2 on both for the Quarter to Date, and #4 on the Top Unrepresented for the Year to Date. It's #6 Year to Date on the Top Uploaded List.

I'll do a more complete data dump on TOBY once I conclude hosting, if that interests those of you who might be curious about how the numbers break down week-to-week. I'm already setting up meetings for after the holiday break.

This feels like a good time for another pay-it-forward post.  Same rules as last time - if you have a script currently hosted on the Black List (and one that will be up for at least another week, preferably two), leave your logline in the comments between midnight and 11:59pm on December 31st. That's 24 hours.  When we enter 2014, you've missed the deadline - no exceptions.


Pay attention, because this is important - your logline must sell me on the script.  The only submissions I will read will be those with loglines that interest me, just as if you were sending me a query.  It might be a good idea to look through the comments on this earlier post, where I gave notes on every logline that was submitted.  It could give you a good indication of what I respond to in a pitch, as would this post on the 8 scripts I selected last time.

The genres I'm most like to respond to are action, rom-com, horror, comedy, thriller and anything "high concept." What am I less likely to be drawn to? Period pieces and torture porn.  So keep that in mind if you're considering joining the Black List just to take advantage of this opportunity.

Your comment must include the following - Title, Genre, Logline and a link to your script's page on the Black List.  And remember that a logline is a sentence or a couple sentences.  Be concise, don't write me a paragraph. The link to your script's page on the Black List MUST be in the comments. Do not email me. Do not Tweet me. I will ONLY read scripts publicly pointed out here.

My aim is to select the 4 loglines that intrigue me the most and I will read at least the first 15 pages of each of those scripts.  In the event that you guys deliver a lot of awesome loglines, I'll consider going over that limit, but they're all going to have to be really good for me to consider giving that much time.   I probably will let you know if your logline was or wasn't selected, but I probably won't go into much detail why.  Don't take it personally - some ideas aren't for everyone.

I will offer no comments on any of the scripts I didn't finish reading. Don't ask me what you did wrong. Don't ask me for feedback. I doubt I'll have time to respond to everyone, and so to be fair, I will respond to no one.

I will be holding all scripts to the same standards as the material I read for my job. There's no such thing as "good for an amateur" on this scale. Scripts will be judged according to how they measure up to professional submissions.

If I really like your script I will spotlight it in a post on my blog, but know that it would probably have to rate an 8, 9 or a 10 for me to do that.  I'll do my best to write a review that sells people on the script.  It won't be full coverage, and I won't spoil any major secrets or plot twists.  If you want to get a sense of how these read, check out my reviews of MCCARTHY, DEAD CORPS, ALICE OF OZ, CHAMBERS, H8RZ, and WHERE DEATH FOLLOWS.

So good luck, gang.  I hope to be very impressed by the submissions in the comments.

P.S. This goes without saying, but I'm not making any claim of who I will pass the script on to and I will not attach myself as a producer or anything.  No crazy promises - and no exploitation.

Brian Scully's review of my script TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU

As I explained in yesterday's post, I'm not purchasing a review from the Black List readers, in part because the timing means that the value of the review might be questionable.  However, I've invited some of my trusted industry associates to offer their opinions on the script, starting today with Brian Scully.

I first met Brian via Twitter a couple years ago. I admit, after a few conversations, I followed him mostly because I thought he was the Brian Scully who wrote for The Simpsons, and after I'd discovered the truth it was too awkward to unfollow.  Fortunately he turned out to be a pretty cool guy, and a rather talented writer.  In fact, he started writing "professionally" at 14 when Star Trek: Voyager, and later Star Trek: Enterprise, gave him a standing invitation to pitch to them after submitting a spec to them.

Scully's script, COUNTERPOINT, a romantic thriller/drama, was recently optioned with financing currently being raised. It also was on last year's Hit List.  It's a really solid script, but it's nothing compared to his current spec, MERCIFUL, an action-thriller that is one of the best scripts I've read all year.

I was in awe multiple times while reading MERCIFUL, which is the story of a woman traveling across the post-apocalyptic remains of the country to reach the daughter she hasn't seen since the start of the chaos.  The script is full of evocative, visceral writing.  There are longer-than-usual stretches of silence, which really lets the visuals tell the story.  I told Brian after I read it that perhaps the biggest compliment I could give was that he genuinely surprised me.

So when it came time to give my script to people who were going to push me, Brian was at the top of the list.  The first few reviews came in and were very positive. You give a script to writers, you're going to get plenty of notes and suggestions because that's what writers do - but most people were really into it. However, I had one reader whose notes ran counter to that, and so I was pondering if perhaps the script needed an overhaul that the others were seeing.

It was in this context that Brian emailed me his notes.  He went in depth, not just talking about the broad premise and characters, but having notes about specific pages and scenes. Often he was writing stream-of-consciousness, describing his reaction to an event as it played out.  And let me tell you - he GOT it.  I don't think I've ever seen someone so completely understand what I was going for in a script.  Every emotion he experienced, every reaction he had, was precisely what I was trying to achieve.  And by this point, I knew that Brian knew what made a great script because he'd written one himself.

That review gave me a lot of confidence that there WAS an audience for what I was writing and that I shouldn't second-guess my instincts.  So because of that, I can think of no one better suited to tell industry members why they should download TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU on The Black List site.  Take it away, Brian...

We all love GROUNDHOG DAY, right? Everyone should, and if you don’t, you’re fired from life. Well, think for a moment about Bill Murray spending countless days following the same routine to glean even the tiniest new piece of personal information about Andie MacDowell as he attempts to seduce her, and with each new day and each new piece of info he’s “armed” with, he gets closer and closer to what he wants. 

…Have you ever considered how genuinely creepy that is? Ever stop to think that this efforts in slowly accumulating knowledge about her life in order to appeal to her more effectively is really, really disturbing? He’s earnest about wanting to know her better, he wants the two of them to click, so could his efforts really be so bad? Is it just an overreaction? 

Welcome to just a hint of what’s explored so effectively in TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU. It’s one of the most compelling dramatic thrillers I’ve read in a long while. The idea of our digital footprints, how detailed they are and how actual privacy has become a distant memory, is explored here from all angles, through numerous characters, but especially our rich and complex lead, Toby, and the woman with whom he’s become infatuated, Nina. 

What this script does is lead you gently to the top of what becomes a very slippery slope, letting you see why Toby is a legitimate hero (flawed as he is) and unworthy of scorn… and then the script gives that last nudge so you can start sliding down the slope. Over the course of a brisk and taut 90 pages, as personal lines begin to blur, the true horror of the film builds unrelentingly as Toby loses himself further and further in his obsession. 

But, Toby is no psychopath. He’s not some deranged criminal. He’s not a predator seeking to harm. There’s no malice. Toby is a legitimately earnest, heartfelt and charming guy who could fit very comfortably in even the safest of romantic comedies. And that is PRECISELY why this script becomes so damn haunting and unsettling — because Toby is not a monster. And yet, his actions become monstrous. By the time you finish reading this script, a terrifying realization dawns on you — Toby, by being so incredibly human and well-drawn throughout, could be your neighbor. He could be your best friend. Oh god, he could be your significant other. Oh god… he could be YOU and you’ve never even realized it. 

TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU is such a good thriller because it holds the mirror up to us and lets us see just how slippery that slope is with our own behavior in this digital age, how easily we may find ourselves crossing those lines in life, and how little we realize it. With our lives becoming more keyworded and searchable by the minute, and the myth of privacy becoming more and and more understood, there is no better time for a strong story to hit home about the world we live in, and TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU is that story.

Industry members of the Black List site can find TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU here.

Brian Scully is currently repped by Kathy Muraviov at The Muraviov Company. You can find him on Twitter at @brianscully

1000th post - My script - TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU! Come and get it!

Related: Brian Scully's review of TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU

[UPDATED at bottom - 5:25 pm PST - with FAQ]

Here it is, gang. The big one.

On a number of occasions, I have used my site to promote unsold scripts that have really impressed me, often by unrepresented writers.  It's something I've been happy to do, especially since the nature of the Black List website has made it possible for me to vet those unrepped screenplays as well as inform people in the industry of where they can find these scripts.  A number of those people have seen good fortune find their script subsequently.

As I've said many times before, having seen the Black List process up-close and through the eyes of readers who have benefited first hand from it, I absolutely think there's value in it.  I really think of a site or service marketed to amateurs that has a better method (and believe me, there are a LOT of them.)  I don't speak highly of the Black List because I'm paid to promote them, I speak highly of the service because I consider my blog a resource for amateurs looking to break in as writers and in my honest opinion, the Black List is the one site worthy of your money.

And now I'm putting MY money where my mouth is.

Right now, my script TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU is up on the Black List website. 

Logline: After a chance encounter, a young man becomes infatuated with an attractive woman and is determined to become the perfect man for her. His curious voyeurism turns obsessive as he exploits her online footprint to insert himself into her life. And the more success he has in manipulating her, the greater the temptation to go further...

It's a low-budget thriller that is essentially a stalker story from the point of view of the stalker.

I have had this script vetted by a number of fellow writers and other folks in the industry - many of them with professional credits.  The enthusiasm they had for the writing convinced me that it was ready for the Black List and the eyes of its professional members.  I have asked those individuals who liked the script to please rate it accordingly on the site.

And industry professionals who lurk around here, I hope that you will be interested in checking out the script, as well as spreading the word to reps, producers, filmmakers and actors who might be interested in reading it.  It's a brisk 90 pages so hopefully it won't take up too much of your time unless you read slowly.

And just in case a little audio/visual pitch might grease the wheels a little bit....


Honestly, my inclination is to keep the pitch brief, but for those who are interested in knowing a little bit more about the screenplay...

I wrote this script in part because I wanted to write something low-budget enough that it wasn't entirely impossible to direct it myself, should I scrape together enough money.  Most of my other scripts have tended to land in the mid-budget range. I didn't have a writing sample that was achievable on less than a $1M dollar budget, at least not without vastly compromising the quality.

After struggling with a few contained thriller ideas, I decided to tell a story with a little more scope but could still be done micro-budget under the right circumstances.  The basic concept of TOBY IS NOW FOLLOWING YOU grew out of my desire to tell a story about how much easier it is to dig up information on someone now than it was 10 years ago.


Facebook didn't exist when I was in college, so if there was a girl in one of my classes who I liked, I had to actually talk to her. I didn't have easy access to a self-generated stream of her thoughts. There was no site I could go to to look up the photos she took at wild parties or on the beach.  When these existed as physical photos, you mostly only saw them when people publicly displayed them in their homes, or let you browse their actual photo albums.

I'm drifting, but my point is that it's become more normal it's become to keep tabs on your friends (or people you might not even know) without actually having to interact with them to get that information. And that means that behavior that might have once made one feel like a stalker no longer seems as dirty.

I wanted to tell a story about a man who's gradually taken over by his worst impulses.  One small step leads to another, and another. Yet no matter how small the steps may be - they still are leading in a particular direction.  I've read a lot of thrillers about psychopath stalkers - guys who are just straight-up nuts. I think those stories are less scary because the bad guy is often unrecognizable as a normal person. This is not a story about a deranged madman.  This is the story of a very normal guy, a guy we might even sympathize and identify with, who makes some very disturbing decisions.

For now, I'm not able to put together the money to make this myself, but the very positive reactions I got from my trusted readers has made me think that the Black List might be the right place to take it first.

I like that the Black List makes it possible for me to publicize my work without having to make it available to everyone on the internet.  I want their users to access it, and so this will be the only place to get it. I'm not posting it anywhere else and if it does surface publicly outside of the Black List, I can assure you it is without my permission.

Regular readers, I know that might be frustrating to you, but one thing I will promise is to be as transparent as the situation allows. I will be updating you regularly on the traffic to my script and perhaps use this experience to give you even more information about what it means to have a script on the Black List site.  If you have questions about the experience, please leave them in comments and I'll do my best to be as open as possible.

And Black List members - it's your move.

UPDATE: Since this is the post that's getting all the traffic, it seemed prudent to add the FAQ here rather than create a new post.

The following are some common follow-up questions I've gotten today:


How was this timed so perfectly? You hit 1000 posts, quit reading, and announce this JUST as you top the horror charts on blcklst.com. Did you post the script in secret at first under a fake name or something? 

It was serendipity for a lot of it. I had been planning for a while to quit reading by the end of the year. (For tax reasons, I didn't want 1099s for the following year, so I knew I'd be ending by the start of 2014.) I had passed the script around to some friends in the industry who also have Black List access, and they were reacting to it well. I realized that if it was on the Black List, they'd be giving it pretty good ratings and that in turn could draw other eyes to it.

I had been thinking of doing something big for my 5 year blog anniversary in January, and I briefly considered posting the script then. Once I realized I was coming up on 1000 posts, it occurred to me that I might benefit from pushing the script out as the year winds down, before the yearly Black List release. I posted the script to the Black List site on Saturday and alerted my industry readers (well, the most effusive ones at least) that it was up and asked them to rate it. Two of them did so before the blog post went live. Two ratings is the minimum to be visible on the site's top lists, provided the scores average out at a certain number. In this case, my first two ratings gave me an 8 average, which was high enough to qualify.

Will you make the script available to Black List members who are fellow writers? 

I have to admit, though I remembered the announcement that writers could choose to make their script downloadable to all, I had completely forgotten about that feature. I won't be using it, though. Right now, this is targeted at the industry pros who can rate it. Frankly I don't see the advantage for anyone giving that open access to their script. If you were looking to workshop it, sure, but I don't think the Black List site is a place to put a script that you're still contemplating major revisions of. I'm aware that there are plenty of people in the industry who read this site, though, and so it stood to reason I could get a lot of downloads from them by publicizing it here. (Early numbers seem to back me up on that supposition.)

Honestly, I don't see any benefit to making the script available to people who can't rate it. If there are industry pros who are not a member of the site who are interested in reading it, they can contact me directly. The more exclusive a script is, the more valuable it is. Remember that when you upload your own work to the site.

Will you be purchasing reads from The Black List? 

Not as of yet, for a number of reasons. Because of this, I realize I am forgoing certain benefits. Since I have not purchased a read from one of their readers, then my script will NOT be featured in the weekly email announcing the scripts that have been rated highly. Also, I believe that this means I will not show up in the Top Uploaded List, even though I will show up in the top genre lists.

Part of this is simply due to timing. It can take 10 to two weeks to get back coverage. Because I wanted to upload the script as close to the 1000th post as possible, it meant I didn't have much lead time. This also means that any review would probably come back during Christmas week - a completely dead period of the year. It just seemed like it would be a waste to appear in that email. And if the Black List decided to hold off on that weekly email until the following week, then there would potentially be twice as many scripts pushed in that first email of 2014. It seemed like it could be lost in the shuffle there.

Knowing the people who frequent my site, as well as those who follow me on Twitter, I gambled that I'd be able generate a fair amount of traffic to the page based on my own visibility. (Also, by not promoting my script through the site's reviews/emails, this means I can really get a good idea of how much influence my blog carries - how many people in the industry I really have lurking here. There's a part of me that really likes the opportunity to study this.)

So we'll see how things go over the first month, which will then give me a good idea if it's worth it to continue for a second month, and possibly purchase a read from the site.

With all your industry contacts, if the script was 'great' wouldn't they just have passed it on to their reps?

I know writers and people in the biz, sure. But even counting everyone I know with access to agents and managers only gives me a direct line to a very small fraction of available people. With the Black List, I'm casting a much wide net. It's always good to have options, you don't have to dance with the first one who asks, yada yada...

Also, though some of my professional contacts may have passed the script on to reps, some of them cautioned me "My reps take forever to read stuff." I understand that. Even with some of my friends' scripts I put off reading for a few weeks jut because I don't feel any kind of ticking clock. By putting TOBY out there publicly like this, I've added some urgency.

Before I had a few reps who had this great script on their To-Read list and as far as they knew nobody else had it. Now, everyone who's seen this post knows that if the script is really good, someone else might beat them to it. Never underestimate the value of urgency.