Screenwriting competitions
One question I get quite often relates to screenwriting competitions. My answer has always been pretty much the same. There is the Nicholl Fellowship, the most prestigious and influential competition. The Austin Film Festival screenplay competition which has grown in importance in the last decade. Then about 4 months ago, Franklin Leonard launched the new Black List service, not a specific competition per se, but providing access to Hollywood in its own unique way.
So I was pleased to see this post yesterday featuring reps from all three: Greg Beal, Director of the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting; AFF Screenplay Competition Director Matt Dy; and Franklin Leonard, Founder of The Black List.
These three will be appearing at a Launching Your Career panel in Los Angeles on March 30 between 1:00–2:30PM. To rev up to that event, sponsored by the AFF, they put some questions to the trio about screenwriting. Here are some excerpts:
Q: What do you consider a strong story?
GREG: For me, Graham Parker’s song title “Passion Is No Ordinary Word” should apply to every story. If the writer truly cares about her story, her characters and the moments of true feeling she’s conveying, it appears on the page and on screen. If she can make her characters live and laugh and survive, then I have the opportunity to live through them, feel with them and learn from them.
FRANKLIN: A beginning, middle, and end that keeps the audience interested in what happens next, elicits emotion of some sort of emotion (anything from fear to laughter to awe to sadness), and lives the audience viewing some aspect of their lives — no matter how small — differently than they did before being exposed to it.
MATT: A strong story is one that takes you on a journey without realizing it. When you’re reading a truly engaging script, the words fly off the page and you’re anxious to get to the next scene rather than thumbing through to see how many pages you have left. It’s easier said than done but it’s what every writer should strive for.
Q: What’s the best advice you would give to a writer hoping to advance in a competition or make it on The Black List?
GREG: Submit your best work. Prior to uploading your script and paying the entry fee: Read the rules. Make sure you’re submitting an eligible and appropriate script for a particular competition. If you have questions about a competition, shoot an email to its administrators. Don’t trust everything you hear about competitions from online screenwriting forum “experts.”
FRANKLIN: I’m going to paraphrase Hayao Miyazaki’s definition of a popular movie: write something that is “full of true human emotion, no matter how base. The entrance should be low and wide so that everyone can be welcomed in. The exit should be high and purified. It shouldn’t be something that emphasizes or enlarges the lowness.”
MATT: Write something that truly stands out. Write the most daring and uninhibited story you can think of and in the most cinematic way that can draw in an audience. There isn’t a dearth of screenwriters in Hollywood so what the industry needs and is looking for is the next great original voice. Screenplay competitions hope to infuse the industry with new, exciting talent so you should do whatever you can to stand out.
For more of the interview, go here.
For those of you based in Southern California, you have a great opportunity to take in more of what Greg, Matt and Franklin have to say at the event noted above: March 30 at 1PM at the Los Angeles Film School, 6363 Sunset Blvd, Hollywood, California 90028. For more information, go here.