“The Quest”: The Road To Now

NOTE: At 6PM Eastern today, I will be announcing the writers who will be participating in the first edition of “Go Into The Story: The Quest.” What follows here is background on the process that led us to this point. If you care to read about that, click here.

On May 16th, I made my first announcement about “Go Into The Story: The Quest”:

I will be looking to work with up to four writers in a 24-week Screenwriting Master Class intensive in which they will learn my comprehensive theoretical approach to the craft, then put that knowledge to use prepping and writing a full-length screenplay.

The cost? Nothing.

That’s right, a 6-month deep immersion in screenwriting theory and scriptwriting workshop where you end up with an original screenplay with me as your mentor for the entire process, and you don’t have to spend even a dime.

And if at the end of the process you have written a great script… you will have direct access to industry insiders.

Plus this little twist: Every single person who applies, even those who do not get selected for The Quest, will win something.

That’s the tease. Full details here on Monday, May 21.

On May 21, I laid it all out with this post:

“Go Into The Story: The Quest” is my humble attempt to do what I can to create an alternate way into Hollywood for those outside the system, and in the process provide participants principles and practices that maximize their chances of success as a professional screenwriter.

The selection process was based on writers submitting loglines. Over a period of about 10 days, I received 3628 loglines from over 1500 writers, a staggering number of submissions.

I reviewed all of those loglines personally.

Every. Single. One.

I narrowed the list down to 21 writers [actually 22 with one writing team]. I requested and received resumes, questionnaires, and writing samples from each of those writers. I reviewed all of those.

Every. Single. One.

I originally intended to make another cut, then talk with that group of writers. Instead I decided to do a teleconference with each member of the finalists.

Every. Single. One.

Why the diligence? Because as I was feeling my way through this process, I realized how much “The Quest” had resonated with people. I literally received hundreds of emails from GITS readers who did not make the final cut, telling me how valuable the experience was reading my posts about How to Generate and Critique Story Ideas, How to Read a Screenplay, comments from others, and so on. That passion, your passion inspired me to go the extra yard, even though “The Quest” blew a huge hole in my life-schedule.

In the end, I decided to make “The Quest” available to more writers than I had first anticipated. Four became six. Then six became eight.

Each of those choices involved me taking a good, hard look at my time, my life, and my own goals. Per the latter, I want to see good movies. I want to read more great scripts. I want to do whatever I can to help writers succeed. So in effect, I went from committing myself to living a crazy life to living a totally crazy life for the next six months.

Therefore later today, I will be introducing two “Quest” groups.

The first group is comprised of six writers. They will be a public group, the one I have been describing all along, only instead of four writers, there are two more.

I will also announce a private group, consisting of two writers.

Why a second private group?

All of the submissions that came to me which ended up in the group of 21 finalists were ‘blind’ entries. That is I didn’t know who they were. I judged their stories based on the merits of each concept and the way they were crafted as loglines.

It just so happens that two entrants were L.A.-based and have industry backgrounds.

I liked their story concepts, but I wanted to be extremely careful in focusing the energy of “The Quest” on my original intention: To provide an alternate way into Hollywood for outsiders.

Thus the private group.

The public “Quest” group is comprised of four people who have no connection to Hollywood, one who used to work in the non-scripted TV world, and one who writes TV, but is based in England.

So I doubled the number of Questers in order to make sure I met the original goal: Four writers who are outsiders to Hollywood.

Three out of the eight are women. One is from Europe. All of them are talented and came up with good story concepts, each of which has strong commercial potential: Three Comedies, one Romantic Comedy, one Action-Comedy, two Thrillers, one Action-Horror.

Over the next 24 weeks, we will all be working together with two goals: Teach each writer key principles and practices to give them the tools to be successful, working screenwriters; and write great scripts.

As for those finalists who I did not select for “The Quest,” I told each of them to consider this the beginning of a conversation. I will be sending them the entire Core curriculum, all forty eight lectures, to enable them to learn the character-based approach to screenwriting I use and teach. In addition, I will be staying in touch with them, open to any and all possibilities down the road, depending upon where they take their stories.

Two last points.

First this last two months has been a total whirlwind for me as the response to “The Quest” was overwhelming. The experience has pushed me to up my own game on all fronts, especially thinking like a producer. As crazy as it is, I am pretty much convinced I will do a second session of “The Quest” to commence in January 2013. The logline submission process will likely take place in November later this year. More details down the road.

Second I want to encourage each and every GITS reader to up your game as well. I will continue to post articles on the blog so readers can learn more about the craft and the business of screenwriting. I will provide an online context for you to Go On Your Own Quest, something you can start on Monday, July 16, then start prepping your story in earnest on September 10. And you will have another opportunity to work with me in “The Quest: Winter 2013,” so now is the right time to generate story ideas and work on your loglines.

This has been an amazing journey and I feel like we have benefited from it, even before “The Quest” has begun officially. I thank you for your interest and support, and look forward to what each of us can do with our creativity during the last half of this year.

Onward and upward!

Comment Archive