What Do Script Coverage Grades Mean? Pass, Consider, Recommend — and the Five Grades I Use Instead

TL;DR

In traditional script coverage, a reader stamps one of three grades on your script: Pass (a no — the company shouldn’t pursue it), Consider (real promise, real problems), and Recommend (rare — send it up the ladder). Those grades were built for studios sorting a stack, not for writers improving a script. At ScriptCoverage.ai I grade on a finer five-level scale — REMARKABLE, RECOMMEND, REFINE, REVISE, RECONSIDER — tied to a scored, ten-dimension evaluation, so the grade tells you where the script stands and what to do next.

The Three Grades Hollywood Uses

Coverage began as an industry filter. A production company can’t read everything, so readers write reports and stamp a verdict on the cover sheet:

• Pass. Not a judgment of you — a decision for the company. This script, in this draft, isn’t something the reader can champion.
• Consider. The middle grade, and the widest. It can mean “strong writing, wrong project,” “great concept, flawed execution,” or “fix act two and come back.” Some companies split it — “consider with reservations,” “low consider” — because one word can’t carry that much territory.
• Recommend. The rare one. The reader is putting their name on it and sending it up. Readers guard this grade, because a false Recommend costs them credibility.

Built for the Buyer, Not the Writer

Notice who those grades serve. Pass, Consider, and Recommend answer one question: should this company spend more time on this script? They say nothing about what you should do at the keyboard tomorrow morning. That’s the gap coverage has always had — the report is about your script, but it was written for someone else.

The Five Grades I Use

When I built ScriptCoverage.ai, I replaced the three-grade verdict with a five-grade scale tied to a weighted score across ten dimensions of craft — premise, characters, structure, plot, theme, tone, dialogue, world, pagecraft, and commerciality. Every grade comes with a direction:

If you need a rough translation for a contest or a query conversation: an industry Recommend lives in my top two grades, a Consider spans REFINE and REVISE, and a Pass maps to RECONSIDER — except mine arrives with a path forward instead of a closed door.

One Warning About the Word “Consider”

In my reports, Consider shows up in a second place — and it means something different there. Every note in a ScriptCoverage.ai report uses the Three Cs: Commend (what works), Clarify (a question probing a choice), Consider (a problem and a path forward). A Consider note is not a Consider grade. The note is a nudge on a page. The grade is the verdict on the script.

What a Grade Can’t Tell You

Coverage is one perspective, not gospel. Professional readers disagree all the time — that’s the nature of subjective creative work. Use what resonates, question what doesn’t, and trust your own vision while remaining open to feedback. A grade is a snapshot of a draft, not a sentence passed on you as a writer. Scripts climb this scale one revision at a time — that’s the point of the notes, the Writer’s Note, and the revision strategy you build with dAIvid after the read.

See a Grade in Context

The demo is a full sample coverage of The Godfather — scored 93, grade RECOMMEND — with the ten-dimension grid, page-by-page annotations, and the Writer’s Note. See the format before you spend a dollar.

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