Update: The Quest initiative
I am pleased to announce that of the six writers I selected for the public version of The Quest initiative — Brandon Cohen, Jordan Earls, Emma Millions, Ben Odgren, Rob Pilkington, and Scott Reynolds — I will be moving forward with all of them.
To recap: Last year, I started a private one-on-one 24-week screenwriting workshop called The Quest. Working with several Quest writers and they positive experience they were having, I had an inspiration: Why not open up The Quest to anyone based on loglines they submit, writing samples, interviews, and so forth — and offer to a select group for free?
What resulted last summer was 1,500 writers submitting nearly 4,000 loglines for consideration for The Quest. From that, I selected 6 writers and 2 to work with privately [they are both employed in Hollywood and I wanted to make sure to aim this initiative toward people outside the entertainment business].
The Questers went through the 8 weeks of Core classes, grounding them in screenwriting theory, then 6 weeks of Prep, and finally 10 weeks of Pages. It turned out to be a terrific workshop experience with each writer providing feedback and support, and of course I was there to help things along as well.
In the end, each writer pounded out a first draft, hitting the due date no less. I liked what I read, I liked working with each of these writers, and I liked the story concepts they presented as loglines and developed into full-length screenplays.
Therefore as part of our agreement, I now move into the role of executive producer on each project and will continue to work with these six talented writers, helping them to develop their scripts to the point where they are ready to go to managers, then to market.
[Meanwhile I continue to work with the other two Quest writers as they are working through their first drafts.]
For the first 14 weeks of The Quest initiative, each of the writers wrote a weekly dispatch which I posted on the blog. You can read all of them here. Once they typed FADE IN and launched into the first draft, I released them from that task. But they’re back for one final Dispatch from The Quest which I will be featuring each day for the rest of the week at 6PM Eastern / 3PM Pacific. I think you will enjoy reading their summary thoughts of the experience.
I am excited to continue working with these six writers, proud of what they have accomplished thus far and hopeful of good things down the road. Each of them knows the rewriting process is going to be an arduous one, digging more deeply into their stories, getting them into the best shape possible, but they’re all excited to move forward.
So Brandon, Jordan, Emma, Ben, Rob and Scott, congratulations! Now onward and upward!
Finally on Sunday, January 13, I will be posting some news about The Quest initiative. I suspect more than a few folks will be interested to read about that.
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