What do the scores mean?
Numeric scores include component scores and an overall score.
Scores range from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest).
Component Scores reflect the approximate strengths of key elements in your project.
The components evaluated vary slightly by format: all formats include premise, plot, characters, dialogue and setting, manuscript excerpts also consider originality, prose, themes, and pace. Ultimately, your component scores are a reflection of how a particular reader evaluates each element of your project.
The Overall Score is the primary rating attached to your project.
It reflects a reader's opinion on your project's overall industry viability. This is the number considered by our Top Lists and is one of the factors utilized by our site to help index your project in the Black List database.
It's important to note that any of the scores a project might receive are deeply subjective–as all feedback processes are. It is nearly impossible to translate qualitative statements from the written feedback into numerical scores because everyone has a different interpretation of where a statement would fall on the number scale.
The Black List offers evaluation services led by a diverse and professional reader pool to best duplicate the type of feedback a writer might get if they were cold-contacting agencies, production offices, or book agents. With these circumstances in mind, it's very rare to see a project receive universally similar feedback, simply because of the diversity of opinions, preferences, and expectations that different readers hold.