Reader Question: Is it worth submitting a first draft into a competition?

Reader Question from Twitter:

Is it worth submitting a first draft into a competition?

Short answer: No.

Unless God Him/Her/Itself has reached down from on high and anointed your first draft words with final draft quality.

Unless you prefer to live on Planet Delusion where somehow your first efforts are equal to the blood, sweat, and tears of your competitors who have slaved over their scripts through multiple drafts.

Or more pragmatically… unless you have a driving desire to waste your own damn money.

I’ll say it again. No.

If you sense the powerful emotions in the subtext of my word “no,” it derives from personal experience in the biggest contest of them all: The Hollywood development system. You can read about it here: Never send out a script before it’s ready.

You can pretty much reverse engineer that sad saga from the title of the post.

Look, there is nothing easy about this gig. Anybody who has any hopes of making it as a professional writer — of any stripe — has got to accept that fact. There’s a reason why the adage “writing is rewriting” has so much play among professional writers. Writing a story is akin to wrangling magic. And apart from whatever we do on the spiritual side of things to go into the story and find the animals, trusting that our characters exist, the story universe exists, and all of that New Age-y type of stuff that is actually true, there is the simple fact that we have to show up to do the work. Ass. On. Chair. Day after day. Draft after draft.

Which leads me to two other points. First, as writers, we should take pride in our work. In part, that means caring enough about our stories to get them into the best shape possible. A 1st, 2nd, or 3rd draft is generally a stage in that process of becoming the story it deserves to be.

Second, let’s say a writer submits a first draft to some screenplay competition. Let’s say through some miracle, it wins. Hell, let’s play out this fantasy for all it’s worth. Now the writer gets repped. And the script goes out as a writing sample. Then lo and behold, it lands the writer a writing gig.

Hallelujah!

Cut to a month later where — for maximum effect, let me switch this to the second person — you are seated in your lawyer’s office. On the table in front of you is a contract for said writing gig. Holy crap! It’s a six figure deal. With trembling hands you pick up the pen to sign the contract when you notice this item:

Delivery date of draft: 8 weeks. Okay, let’s say 10 weeks just to be generous.

Have you developed your writing chops sufficient enough to feel confident you can deliver the goods? If you haven’t gone into the trenches — prep, first draft, rewrites, polish, edit — and developed an approach to writing whereby you feel at least pretty good about being able to craft a credible, professional quality screenplay, just imagine the pressure you will feel.

Even if you’ve got your writing act together, more or less, you’ll feel pressure. But if you don’t really have some clarity on how to do what you need to do to write a script, that pressure can crush you.

So again — no. I would strongly advise against submitting the first draft of a script to anyone, not just competitions. Write, then rewrite the script until you honestly think it’s in good enough shape to get some feedback. Then do that. Seek out other writers who know their way around a story. Based on their notes, you rewrite some more. That process can continue for awhile, hopefully each time the story getting better.

Here’s the thing: It’s not just about the script. It’s about learning how to conduct yourself as a professional writer. And one thing that means is rewriting that first draft until it becomes the story it deserves to be.

How about you, readers? Any thoughts on the subject? Head to comments if you would.

UPDATE: Twitter conversation re this post:

In point of fact, that’s Eric Roth’s approach who begins every writing session on P.1, so by the time he’s gotten through the draft, he’s rewritten it perhaps dozens of times:

So okay, I guess I should have been more specific about what “draft” means. If you constantly rewrite it as you go through the first draft process, you could have something to send to a contest. However isn’t the a hybrid first draft? A rewritten first draft? More in the spirit of what I wrote about above?

My main point still stands: Get your story in the best shape possible before submitting it somewhere. 

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