The Pass / Consider / Recommend Rating System, Fully Explained

Three words decide most scripts that enter the industry through the front door. Pass, Consider, Recommend. They appear at the bottom of a two-page document written by someone the writer will never meet, and they carry more weight than the entire draft above them.

The words are also badly understood, mostly because they’re evaluated as if they describe quality. They don’t. Pass, Consider, and Recommend in script coverage describe recommended action — what the company should do next — and that reframing explains nearly every confusing thing about how the ratings get used.

What Do Pass, Consider, and Recommend Actually Mean?

They mean stop, revisit, and escalate — three instructions to the person who commissioned the read.

Pass: don’t pursue this. Consider: don’t pursue this now, but the material warrants a second look or a conversation with the writer. Recommend: put this in front of someone senior, today, and I’m attaching my judgment to that.

None of those is a statement about whether the script is good in the abstract. A superb art-house drama submitted to a company that makes broad four-quadrant comedies gets a Pass, and the Pass is correct. Coverage answers “should we?”, not “is it?”

Why Is Pass the Default?

Because the volume demands it, and because passing is nearly free while pursuing is expensive.

A story department exists to protect executive attention. Every script that moves forward consumes a senior person’s evening, then a development meeting, then possibly an option payment and a year of someone’s life. Every script that stops consumes nothing. The asymmetry is enormous, and the rating distribution reflects it — most submissions get a Pass, and that isn’t a scandal. It’s the system doing its job.

Which means writers should stop reading Pass as a verdict on their ability. A Pass tells you the reader didn’t find a case worth making to their boss on that day, at that company, for that draft. It’s a routing decision that happens to be made about your work.

The useful question isn’t “why did I get a Pass?” It’s “did the comments tell me anything?” A Pass with a specific structural diagnosis is more valuable than a Consider full of mush.

What Does Consider Mean in Coverage?

Consider means two things are true at once: there’s a nameable asset, and there’s a nameable fix. Both halves are required, and the second one is where most Considers fall apart.

The asset has to be specific. Not “there’s something here” but “this writer’s dialogue is the reason to take the meeting.” The fix has to be executable. Not “the second act needs work” but “the ticking clock gets defanged on p. 45 and needs to be reinstated as a real force.”

When a reader has the asset and can’t name the fix, the honest rating is Pass — because “I liked it but I don’t know what to do about it” gives a development executive nothing to act on. When a reader can name the fix but not the asset, it’s also a Pass, because now you’re describing a script that’s broken and unremarkable.

Consider is also, in practice, a rating about a future draft. It says the current document isn’t the thing, and a version of it might be. Writers who hear “almost” are hearing the wrong word — the right word is “assignment.”

Why Is Recommend So Rare?

Not because good scripts are scarce. Because Recommend transfers risk from the script onto the reader.

A Pass costs the reader nothing. Nobody investigates a Pass, nobody follows up, and if the script sells to a competitor two years later, no one remembers who passed. A Recommend is the opposite: it’s a public claim, attached to a name, that a senior person should spend their evening on this. If they read it and it’s ordinary, that reader’s judgment now has a mark against it — and reader judgment is the entire product.

So the rating carries a structural incentive against itself. That’s worth understanding clearly, because it explains something writers find maddening: a script can be genuinely excellent and still not draw a Recommend from a reader who liked it a great deal. The reader isn’t being stingy. They’re being asked to stake something, and Consider lets them signal enthusiasm without staking it.

Which is precisely why Recommend means what it means when it does appear. A rating that costs nothing to give would communicate nothing. The scarcity is the signal.

How Do the Ratings Interact With the Grid?

The grid scores craft elements. The rating recommends an action. They’re related but not the same axis, and readers who treat the rating as an average of the grid produce incoherent coverage.

Grid pattern	Likely rating	Why
Excellent voice, Poor structure	Consider	Structure is buyable. Voice isn’t.
Good across the board, nothing exceptional	Pass	Competent isn’t a reason to act.
Excellent premise, Fair everything else	Pass or Consider	Depends whether the premise is defensible or generic.
Excellent or Good across the board	Recommend	No fix to name. That’s the definition.

Row two is the one that surprises people. A script where every category reads “Good” and nothing reads “Excellent” is usually a Pass — competence isn’t an asset, because competence is available. Development doesn’t pursue scripts because they’re free of problems. It pursues scripts because they have something.

That’s also why a Poor score can coexist with a Consider. The rating asks whether the problem is worth the money, and a fixable structural issue attached to an unbuyable voice frequently is.

Why Do Some Reports Rate the Writer Separately?

Because “should we buy this script?” and “should we meet this person?” have different answers, often in the same report.

Most house templates carry two rating lines: one for the script, one for the writer. A script can be a Pass while the writer is a Consider or even a Recommend — that’s a common and highly consequential combination. It means: this particular draft isn’t for us, and you should get this person into a room before someone else does.

For a writer, that second line is frequently the more valuable of the two. Scripts get passed on constantly, including scripts that later get made. What compounds over a career is being the person a story editor remembers. A script rating expires with the draft. A writer rating attaches to you.

Do the Ratings Vary Between Companies?

The three words are near-universal. The threshold between them is not, and the difference is entirely about what the company buys.

A studio with a large slate and a broad mandate has a higher bar for Consider than a small production house looking for one specific thing. A company hunting for a particular genre will Pass on excellent material outside it without much agonizing. Some houses add a fourth tier — “Strong Consider,” or a hot list — precisely because the gap between Consider and Recommend is wide enough to hide meaningful distinctions.

Which is why the same script can draw a Pass at one company and a Consider at another without either reader being wrong. The rating is a recommendation to a specific buyer with a specific mandate. It travels badly, and writers who collect three ratings on one draft and try to average them are performing arithmetic on incompatible units.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a Pass mean my script is bad?

No. It means the reader didn’t find a case worth making to their employer for that draft, at that company, that week. Pass is the default outcome for the overwhelming majority of submissions, including material that later gets made. Read the comments — that’s where the actual information is.

What does Consider mean in coverage, exactly?

That the reader found a specific asset worth pursuing and a specific fix worth doing. Both must be nameable. A Consider without a concrete proposed fix is a Pass being polite, and experienced writers learn to spot the difference within a paragraph.

How often do scripts get a Recommend?

Rarely, and the reason is structural rather than about script quality. Recommend attaches the reader’s professional judgment to a claim that a senior person should stop what they’re doing. Pass costs the reader nothing; Recommend costs them credibility if they’re wrong. The scarcity is the signal.

Can the script and the writer get different ratings?

Yes, and it’s common. Script Pass with a Writer Consider or Recommend means: not this draft, but meet this person. For a career, that second line often matters more — a script rating expires when the draft does, while a writer rating attaches to your name.

Should I tell people my script got a Consider?

Only if you can also state the fix the reader named. A Consider without a specific diagnosis behind it isn’t a credential, and anyone in development will ask what the note was. The note is the substance; the rating is the label on the jar.

The Whole System in One Line

Pass, Consider, and Recommend aren’t grades. They’re instructions: stop, revisit, escalate. Once you read them that way, the confusing parts stop being confusing — why excellent scripts get passed on, why competent scripts always do, why a Poor structure score can still land a Consider, and why Recommend stays rare no matter how good the submission pile gets.

If you’re a writer, the rating tells you what a stranger decided. The comments tell you why. Only one of those is worth rereading.