You still have until tomorrow (Thursday) night at 8pm Pacific to enter your action spec for Amateur Action Showdown!
One of the most frustrating things about pursuing screenwriting for a majority of people is screenwriting contests. A lot of these feel like a crapshoot. Who knows who’s reading your script. That horror script you wrote that’s going to make IT’s box office look like Charlie’s Angels could end up in the hands of someone who detests horror movies. And who knows what order a reader reads your script in. Is it his second script of the day, where he’s alert and hopeful? Or his sixth script, where he’s exhausted and thinking about the three chalupa special at Taco Bell? And the whole thing just seems so SUBJECTIVE amirite? Does the best script win? The best idea? The most woke socially conscious biopic concept? Navigating this world can be equal parts frustrating and depressing. But I’m here to help you do better in these masochistic merry-go-rounds of mayhem. With a few tips and the right outlook, you’re going to start seeing results. Let’s get to it!
1) Most screenwriters enter contest scripts that aren’t ready – Look, I’m all for deadlines. Without deadlines, I’d never post anything on this site. But there’s a difference between a realistic deadline and a deadline where all you’ve done is put words a page. Nobody is going to give you points for getting a messy rushed script in on time. And I was guilty of this too. I would use the Nicholl deadline to finish a script and literally send the script on the final date at the last mailing pickup time of the day. And then I’d be mad when my script didn’t win. You are up against 100 to 7000 other scripts in a contest. Do you really think your rushed first draft of a script is going to do well? Nicholl gets rich off of people like you. While story will always be subjective, sloppiness is not. I want you to tattoo what I’m about to say to the inside of your eyeballs because it might be the best advice you’ve ever received: Contests are not about showing the world that you can write a screenplay too. They’re about writing something that STANDS OUT from the pack.
2) Tell a great story with your first scene – While contests are different from “real life” in that the reader will read the entire script, that doesn’t mean they’ll pay attention the entire script. If they’re not impressed with your first scene, their overworked reader brain will switch into skim-mode. Notice I’m giving you a very specific directive for the first scene. I’m not just saying, “Write a great first scene.” I’m saying: “Tell a story.” In other words, hook the reader with something, then make them have to keep reading the rest of the scene to find out how that hook concludes. A female hacker must escape a group of men who have come to capture her (The Matrix). A man calling a babysitter and telling her he’s going to kill her then hanging up (Scream). A man wakes up on a train with no idea why he’s there or who he is (Source Code). The reason to do this is because it’s one of the easiest ways to pull someone in quickly. And contests readers are exhausted so you want to pull them in quickly.
3) Professional presentation – Correct formatting, no misspellings, no grammar mistakes, no punctuation mistakes, no light text from cheap screenwriting programs, no ultra-wide dialogue margins, no “condensed” mode to turn your 130 page script into a 110 page script regardless of the fact that all the lines overlap each other vertically. This one seems obvious but as someone who’s read a lot of amateur screenplays, I can tell you that a lot of you who think you’re being professional aren’t. If you’re someone who has written under three screenplays, you are probably making some mistakes in your presentation. Become OCD about your presentation. It’s one of the most reliable ways for us readers to spot bad scripts.
4) Your dialogue is thin, obvious, and on the nose – While there’s plenty of debate about what constitutes the difference between good and great dialogue, everybody knows what bad dialogue is. Bad dialogue is characters saying exactly what they’re thinking in simplistic uncreative ways. It is characters espousing exposition like robots. It is characters who are speaking directly to the reader as opposed to the other character in the scene. It’s a long road to become good at dialogue but the starting point is your characters. If the characters are fun talky types, they’re going to have more interesting dialogue. If you know the character well, you’ll be able to write more specific dialogue for them (example: If you know your character once lived in France, they may occasionally throw a French word into a sentence). And if you know how to inject conflict into a scene, your dialogue will improve exponentially.
5) Know your audience – There’s an old documentary with Vince Vaughn where he takes a group of young comics out on the road to do stand up. One of Vince’s comedian’s central bits was about how real men don’t wear sandals. At their first show, he went on about how sandals are for wussies. The problem? They were at a Colorado college campus where 90% of the college men in the audience were wearing sandals. The boos from that crowd still echo in his ears to this day. What’s the lesson here? STOP SENDING GENRES TO CONTESTS THAT DON’T CELEBRATE THOSE GENRES. The Nicholl doesn’t celebrate horror scripts just as The Tracking Board doesn’t celebrate two American Indians trying to start a rug business in 1865. You live in the age of the internet. Do not send your script ANYWHERE until you go to their website and find out every script that has won and placed in their contest for the past five years. You’re going to save yourself a lot of wasted money. Trust me.
6) Contests tend to reward ingenuity – Most scripts read like every other script. The contained thrillers, the biopics, the Westerns, the guy with a gun, the buddy cop, the heist movie. There isn’t anything wrong with writing one of these scripts and executing it well. You can start a career with a great version of any of these genres. But in contests, these scripts blend into the background because they’re so common. The scripts that rise up tend to be those that try something different. For example, Shimmer Lake, which won Austin years back and later became a Netflix movie. That was a mystery that was told backwards. Stuff like 500 Days of Summer. Or yesterday’s and Tuesday’s scripts. There’s so much of the same in these contests that you stand out with a creative storytelling take.
7) You need at least 5 contests (with a single script) to know where you stand – A single contest not liking your script isn’t enough to identify where the script is or where you are as a writer. There are too many variables involved. However, if you send your script to five contests and it doesn’t advance in any of them (even to the second round), there’s likely something wrong with THE BASICS OF YOUR SCREENWRITING. We’re talking bad presentation, a huge page count, a vague concept, misspellings and grammatical errors, not understanding the basics of scene-writing (beginning, middle, end), lack of clarity in the writing, an inability to set up your hero effectively, no concept of what conflict is or how to use it. Good screenwriters have all the basics down. If you’re not advancing at all in contests, I can almost guarantee you it’s because you don’t know all of these things. So learn them and get back in there with your next script.
8) If you’ve written more than six scripts and still aren’t placing in any contests, GET FEEDBACK – I know I’m expensive so you don’t have to use me. But find SOMEBODY who understands screenwriting and can be honest with you. Otherwise you’re flying blind. You have no idea what to work on or what to improve. About five years ago, this writer came to me with this very problem. He’d been writing for 15 years and had never placed in a contest before. So he ordered a consultation and his script was this completely zany out-there concept. It was so weird. Out of curiosity, I asked him to send me the loglines for his previous five scripts. They were all really weird and out-there. It would be the equivalent of writing Armageddon and adding a cannibal storyline where one of the cannibals was a ghost. I said to him, dude, you’re all over the place. You need to simplify your concepts and stop trying to be so zany. And the next script I read from him was a major improvement. And he admitted to me that he would’ve never known his ideas were too weird had he not gotten feedback. He had been told early on that you have to write something that’s unique to get people’s attention and he mistakingly took that advice and applied it 1 million percent. The point is, you could be making the most obvious mistake with your script but if you don’t get feedback every once in a while, you’ll never know.
9) If you’ve consistently placed in contests (top 10 or 20%) but can’t get any further, you’re probably in one of two positions – a) You’re extremely talented but raw. Half your script has flashes of Tarantino but the other half feels like a compilation of Donald Trump’s tweets. b) You’re a screenplay technician who’s mastered the formula, but your script lacks big risks and stand out moments. There’s not enough creativity in your storytelling. If you’re the former, put aside six months and learn the nuts and bolts of screenwriting (especially structure). If you’re the latter, watch all of the weirdest (good) movies you can find and study the choices the screenwriters make that result in such a unique viewing experience.
10) Your script is only going to be as good as its concept and main character – Lame uninspired concepts do not turn into good scripts. Boring/weak/lame main characters don’t all of a sudden become interesting on page 90. You can be a good screenwriter but if you’re entering contests with one of these two problems, your script isn’t going to do well. Period.
I hope this was helpful. Leave your favorite contests in the Comments Section and I’ll put together a master list here.
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