Being paid to read books? Sounds great.

The nuts and bolts are this: an agent, executive, or producer sends Clarke a book or manuscript, blind. He reads it and writes a detailed beat-by-beat synopsis of the core scenes, settings, conflicts, and characters. Here, he quotes essential dialogue and, if any sentence-level writing stands out, includes excerpts. He then steps back to evaluate how the book might actually function on screen, that is, which elements are inherently cinematic, what can and can’t be rendered visually or dramatized, and what kind of movie or series the material wants to be.

Uh, okay, that sounds like work…