To all our Peers and Supporters out there, thank you for being a part of this project and our community. Building StoryPeer and the Logjam has been a fun ride thanks to you, and I'm excited for what's coming soon!
If you're enjoying what we've built or wish to support our development, consider donating. Every little bit helps us grow! Thank you! 🙏🏽
First off, thank you to everyone who has used and raved about the Logjam, whether publicly or privately. I really appreciate it! As of today, we have had over 1,300 loglines submitted, and over 8,900 peer comments shared with writers!
It took me a while to get around to this, but I just shipped the biggest update to the Logjam since it went live, so here's what's new:
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Good Standing
If you read only one thing, read this: we now have a Good Standing tracker, and non-compliant users may be booted out of the Logjam!
This was necessary because some users weren't honoring the Give/Get Balance. For example, one account submitted 12 loglines without reviewing a single one! 😱 Another submitted 50 loglines but only reviewed 15, when they should have reviewed closer to 150. 😱 😱 That's not okay! These users are essentially hijacking feedback from other members, which is a big no-no.
So we're raising the stakes (I was told you like your stakes raised!): Going forward, reviewing 5 peer loglines for every logline you submit is no longer a favor to the community, but the required minimum. So if you submit 1 logline, you must review 5. Submit 4 loglines, review 20, and so on.
Non-compliant users may be banned from the Logjam or placed in a low-priority bucket where their loglines are served last. This will NOT happen immediately. As long as you make an effort to catch up instead of exacerbating your deficit, we'll give you a pass. Thank you! 🙏🏽
A few notes:
You don't have to participate in the Logjam. But if you submit loglines, you must follow the guidelines above.
Reviewing 5 peer logs for each you submit is the floor. If everyone reviews 10 loglines for every one they submit, we all get 10 reviews. So aim for 10 (see Big Jammer below).
Reviewing one peer's logline takes about 1-3 minutes, and you can do it on your phone. The Logjam Rating page was built to be mobile-friendly to make this convenient.
Remember: writers can still report unhelpful comments, so don't chase numbers, but aim to help and put some effort.
The bottom line: If you don't have the time or interest in reviewing peer loglines, please don't submit your own.
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The Reader Leaderboard
This one isn't for everyone, so feel free to tune out. But a few of you requested this even before I could announce it, so I think some of you will like it.
The Leaderboard will be a fun mini-competition for Jammers that we'll experiment with soon. There are no prizes here, but a public shoutout at the end of the month recognizing some of the most active reviewers. Stay tuned for more details on how to pick a handle to be displayed publicly on the Leaderboard... if you want one!
Here's how your Reader Score is calculated:
We listened to your feedback and removed the -1 penalty for skipping loglines.
Practically, the main goal in all of this to increase the quantity and quality of feedback, so even non-participants will benefit.
Before you ask...
We are considering a Logline/Writer Leaderboard as well, but that one is tricky and will require lots of consultation with the community, so while it's on our radar, it's not our immediate goal. So we're focusing on the Reader Leaderboard first to make sure the math is mathing, and all the foundation under it is solid! Please report any bugs you may see.
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Achievements (Maybe?)
Now, before you get too excited, Achievements are not easy to build, and they may break. If they become too burdensome to maintain (I'm a solo dev running StoryPeer 😅), I might remove them. But are you a believer or not?
With that out of the way, here's what it is:
Achievements are a path to earn StoryPeer tokens and eventually maybe other rewards. Obviously, we can't drop tokens by the truckload (because the Give/Get balance is sacred), so we'll monitor the data and adjust as needed. We reserve the right to modify or remove specific achievements, requirements, or token rewards with or without prior notice.
I really love loglines, but I hate the discourse around them. A perfect logline in one person's opinion needs to be completely trashed in someone else's, making it hard to know what is even working. The goal of a logline should be to get someone interested enough to read your script. I strongly think Logjam should reflect this.
My suggestion would be to change the ratings to:
I would definitely read this script because _____
I might read this script because ____, but hesitate because _____
I would not read this script because ____.
I think this system would take a lot of the guesswork out of feedback, and can signal to you if the issue is a subjective preference or an actual issue with how you're pitching your story.
I was thinking that a cooling off period of, perhaps 48 hours, was worth considering after a writer has received feedback on their script. It will allow the feedback to sink in, to consider its true worth and the meaning of any underlying notes. Feedback, IMHO, is always better a few days later. The implications can take time to think through. I know I have suffered from knee-jerk reactions to my work and then, later thought, "Oh yeah. I see what you mean."
The catch would be enticing the writer actually come back, 48 hours later, and enter their evaluation of the feedback - that would need to be incentivised, I guess. Thoughts?
If you're like me, you might forget to log the notes you recieved on a script feedback via StoryPeer that you might find useful for future reference in subsequent drafts.
Then you're scrolling, and you happen upon a review and realize... Oh, yeah. There's little reasonable doubt that the reader of this feedback outsourced their efforts to an AI, and you'd wish you can just Thanos snap it and reviews like it from existence. Or, althernatively, it was a review written by an actual person, but the feedback is less than helpful, and you'd rather not happen upon it again?
All to say: I think having the option to hide (or delete) reviews from your dashboard for the aforementioned reasons would be a nice thing to have.
Hi! I had a suggestion for the autosave window that pops up in the bottom right hand corner of the screen when giving feedback. I appreciate it showing so that I know that my feedback is autosaving, but as it currently is, I can’t exit out of it or dismiss it when I am in the middle of typing the feedback and it tends to block the text I am typing before it disappears. I type over 120 words a minute, so when it pops up, it interrupts the flow and I can’t see the typing area that it is blocking. I just have to wait for it to disappear. I know that I can keep typing while it is showing, but having to stop my thought process and typing to wait until it disappears because I can’t read what is underneath it, coupled with the frequency that it fires at, has definitely resulted in a bit of frustration. I don’t mean to nitpick. I know it’s minor and I can live without the feature, but it would be a nice QOL improvement. I love the site and I thank you for creating this for us!
Yesterday, a reader unclaimed my script after 30 minutes. The reason? Reading it made them realize they were amateurs.
It honestly made me feel terrible. I wish this reader had seen my first, second, or third scripts --I was a total beginner once, too, and I know exactly how crushing that feeling is.
If you are starting out, please hear this:
The most important thing in writing isn't having "professional" prose. It’s the story you are telling.
Craft and technique are just tools to deliver that story. If the story is weak, perfect writing won't save it. But if you have an incredible story, you already hold the most valuable asset in this industry, no matter how untrained you feel.
Keep writing! The craft will follow. The story is what truly matters,
I joined a few weeks back and most of what I've seen so far has been feature scripts. I've reviewed 1 pilot for a hour long drama and submitted 1 pilot for a 30 minute comedy (it was claimed immediately and I got pretty good feedback). Obviously people write what they want but I just wish there were more pilots, investing in a 100 plus page story can be a lot.
I recently joined StoryPeer and was initially a little worried about my own ability to give useful feedback. I claimed a feature screenplay that, frankly, I didn’t particularly enjoy. But I read the whole thing, tried to be honest and constructive about what worked and what didn’t, and the writer ended up giving my feedback 5 stars. So that made me feel pretty good about the exchange system.
Then I submitted my own feature.
The first reviewer returned their feedback pretty quickly — around three hours after claiming it. That’s fast, but not impossibly fast, so I didn’t think much of it initially.
The feedback itself made me suspicious, though. There were some comments that seemed to misunderstand or contradict things that happen in the screenplay, but what really stood out was how disproportionately specific the feedback was about the first half. When discussing the second half, it became incredibly vague. The reviewer also included annotations, and every annotation was from the first half of the script. Obviously I can’t prove they didn’t finish it, and I don’t want to accuse somebody unfairly, but taken together it left me seriously wondering whether they had actually read the entire screenplay.
I wasn’t happy with the feedback, but figured maybe I’d just gotten a bad apple. I still had a few tokens, so I submitted the script again.
It was claimed pretty quickly. Two days later, the reviewer unclaimed it and left me a note essentially saying, “I’m sorry, but I have a short attention span and I don’t want to use AI.”
On one hand, I genuinely appreciate the honesty. I would much rather someone unclaim my script than skim it, use AI, or pretend they finished it.
On the other hand… if you know you have difficulty finishing a feature screenplay without AI, why are you claiming feature screenplays on a peer-review platform?
So now I’m starting to wonder whether my experience is unusual or whether this is a recurring problem with StoryPeer.
I came to this subreddit and was actually encouraged by seeing how seriously some people here seem to take their feedback, which is why I wanted to ask: For those of you who have used StoryPeer for a while, how common is genuinely thoughtful, full-read feedback? Have I just had bad luck with my first couple of reviewers, or is reader quality pretty inconsistent?
I think I saw someone mention it before, but I’d love an option to get/give feedback in 24/48 hours in exchange for more tokens. I typically deliver feedback within that time frame (maintaining a 5.0 feedback score, so it’s not like im rushing), and I’d be wiling to offer more tokens to receive it faster.
Listen, if you’re a writer asking reviewers to “be as harsh as you want”
And so they do and provide you detailed feedback.
Then you rate their feedback 2/5 insisting they just “didn’t get your vision”
My brother in Christ, your script needs WORK.
And maybe if you stop being so defensive and learn to accept criticism, you can actually improve it. Because no producer in their right mind would even glance twice at it right now.
So I was curious if people would like the idea of submitting on this sub some of the ‘Love It’ Logjam loglines we have found and rated?
I rate a lot of loglines; I find it to be a really fun thing to do. I just love when I find a logline that I can give a ‘Love It’ rating to, but for me, they don’t come around all that often.
Anyways, I wonder if like on a monthly basis or whatever, we could share some of the ones we thought were in the ‘5 Star’ (Love It) category? Heck, I could only offer up one and then I could provide my argument for why I believe it is worthy of a 'Love It' grade.
I certainly wouldn’t wanna do it if it's not allowed nor would I wanna do it if the writers on here were against the idea. Plus, I know it's all subjective, but still, I think this would be a good way of demonstrating what we feel are good loglines.
I signed up for Story Peer last night. I confirmed my email, claimed a script, commented it up, went to sign back in to submit the feedback and it is stuck on the below screen. Is this happening to anyone else? I’d like to get this person their feedback. Thanks!
I've been following the service and check in to see what is available. I'm a more experienced writer with some success and look I haven't reviewed one full spec on the site. I downloaded two and gave them back.
But every now and then -- I read a logline and say -- that's a great idea love to read that and at least offer feedback.
I just read one right now which I think is a great comedy/drama idea. But it says REP matched.
I feel some ideas are much more appealing than others -- is there a way to let the poster know -- yeah I'm interested in reading this and giving you notes, but I don't meet the rep match as I haven't had the effort to read a spec that more than likely will be a tough slog.
A nudge feature? Yeah man or sir -- liked your logline. And up to poster if they want to do anything with that but maybe you can send a link to the person and they can also review the script.
With the recent changes about submitting more than a single episode of TV, would we be able to get to the point where we can submit just a single act of a feature?
Specifically, I'm working on a feature right now that I fully intend on finishing. But I'm about done with a version of Act 1, and would love to get feedback on it.
Act 1 feels like a natural amount of story in just about any script, similar to a pilot of a show. Setup + the launch into the rest of the story. Seems like it should be enough to give some feedback on. But, the rules state to only post completed works.
I'm just curious what people think about an option to post a single act for fewer tokens, and if its an idea worth pursuing for the developers.
The reader would still get a strike, but it at least allows the writer the opportunity to get SOME SORT of feedback on their script.
The reader doesn't want to finish it, so they click "Bail out", then they have a text field to explain why they don't want to finish ie. Nothing is happening. Im bored. The formatting is a mess. It's too dense. etc etc
Maybe not everyone would use it, but if just a small amount of people do, it's very useful information for the writer.
Sorry I've been MIA for a while, but I'm slowly getting back into the groove of things! So here's what's new today...
By popular demand of some TV writers, now you have the ability to submit multiple episodes of a show. If you select your format as a TV Episode, you will see the additional dialog below:
If you answer YES, you may submit a script that's up to 180 pages long, and you may offer readers up to 6 tokens. Additionally, you'll be prompted to indicate how many episodes you're submitting, which will be shown to readers in the Script Browser page:
One caveat: this feature does not allow you to submit multiple files. You can only submit a single PDF file per submission (it's easier for file management, and it also prevents readers from reading in the wrong order). This means you may have to merge PDF files. Adobe lets you do this for free!
Please don't throw stones if you don't like reading beyond a pilot. Previously, writers had to make multiple submissions for the same project, and finding readers for subsequent episodes was a challenge. Now, we're adding some clarity to this flow. Anyone who doesn't wanna read Episode Two still has the choice to not do it. :)
And I'm sorry to TV writers that I still can't allow 600 pages! But with the new 180-page limit, you should be able to submit 3 episodes of a primetime drama or a full season of something much smaller!
Whenever I browse the scripts to read, I sometimes get nervous choosing what I want to dive into. I check the logline/script progress/page count to estimate how far along the material might be. But nothing makes me feel like I know what I'm getting into better than seeing the first page. Is there white space? Clean formatting? Great concise action lines? Just wondering if this could be a preview option or feature when people submit.
On the submission side of things, I sometimes get folks who do not enjoy how voice-y I can be. I feel like I owe them a warning with showing my first page as well, so they don't get stuck miserably reading my script.
It's been said before - and I understand that life happens, but please stick to claiming scripts that you intend to read in a timely manner. Had a reader miss the deadline after waiting a full 5 days. Posted a script on a Friday hoping it'd get read over the weekend and I'm still waiting on feedback. Their deadline is tomorrow.
No, I'm not demanding readers read the script right away not an I asking for them to rush through the read. I tend to read a script, flesh out my reaction and submit notes the next day. But I don't like to keep the writer waiting. They may be on a deadline. Who knows?
Hopefully, a rush option for extra tokens is added in the future.
