Comps (Comparable Titles)

Recent, successful works a project resembles — shorthand for its audience, tone, and market position.

Comps answer 'who is this for?' by triangulation: 'Knives Out meets The Farewell' carries genre, tone, and audience in five words. Good comps are recent, successful-but-not-generational (comping yourself to a once-a-decade phenomenon reads as naive), and honest.

They're also a development tool — studying how your comps solved structure is the closest thing the craft has to reading the answer key.