Screenwriting Tips » Contest

MASSCREENWRITER: CHARLES BAND’S SYNOPSIS CONTEST WINNER!

admin — Sun, 13 May 2012 03:52:02 +0000

* WANT TO SEE HORROR EXCITEMENT GO TO: FULLMOONHORROR.COM AND FULLMOONDIRECT.COM

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Screenwriting Tips from a Screenplay Contest Judge

admin — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 01:10:33 +0000

Article by Gordy Hoffman

After cracking hundreds of screenplays sent into the BlueCat Screenplay Competition, the same problems in the execution of the story and script continue to emerge. Here is a general overview of these persistent issues.

Do you realize what you’re saying??In the theatre, they read plays aloud over and over in the process of script development, and one of the reasons they do this is to hear the dialogue. When I hear dialogue in my head, it might sound very good, but then when I hear a person actually speak it, I often have an impulse to jump in front of a bus. And over and over and over and over, when I read screenplay entries to BlueCat, I am immediately dismayed when the characters start speaking. Excellent everything else, awful dialogue. And I often wonder if the writer has actually heard the lines they have written for their characters out loud. Either read the whole thing aloud to yourself, or even better, get a group of your friends to read it. You do not need professional actors to evaluate dialogue. Just people excited to help. Videotape it. I have videotaped readings, and then sat down and worked out an entire rewrite off the tape, addressing every single line that bothered me. Which leads me to another thing.

Ha.It’s hard to pass a screenplay on to industry contacts if an unfunny joke is sitting in the middle of page two. It’s highly difficult if there’s twelve by page five. You might have a payoff in your third act that would break my heart, but if your jokes are poor, the heart of your audience will be shot, probably resentful, and your work will be recycled. Please try your humor out. If your beats aren’t funny to some people, rewrite. Trust a truly hilarious bit is coming. Think of the patience you need to muster through this writing process as courage, because it is.

If you find you are not funny, write a script that is not funny. Many, many great scripts are not funny, as we all know.

Mispellings.Do you think the development people in Los Angeles, basically the smartest people in the film industry, will not be annoyed and continue to read your script when you have misspelled three words in the first five pages? Perhaps. How do you feel when you’re reading something and you find misspelled words? How does your attitude shift towards the author? Exactly. If you don’t think many scripts have this problem, start a screenwriting competition.

OKAY, WE GOT IT!Try to limit your scene description. When a person opens your script, how many INCHES of action slug are they looking at on page one? Is there anyway you can convey what you want us to SEE with less words? I always go back and CUT CUT CUT to prevent my screenplay from fatiguing my reader with excess words as they try to listen for my story. Do we need to know what necklace someone is wearing? We all understand making motion pictures is collaborative. I strive to let the art department and the costumer and the prop master and so on DO THEIR JOB by not making their decisions in the screenplay, because I have little passion for it and don’t do it well. They will make their own choices, and most likely better ones, so why bother? Always use fewer words to say the same thing.

It’s not show and tell, it’s show not tell.I constantly find myself being told something by the screenplay the viewer of the film will not be aware of. Screenplays are not literature. They are words assembled to describe what motion pictures will play out on the screen. Telling us a character is a jealous person is passive and dull. Showing a character in an act of jealousy is more effective and essentially cinematic. Let the words and actions of your characters carry your story. This is not easy. You want the actor or director to understand what you want and what you mean. Allow the description of physical actions and the recording of spoken words reveal the narrative to the filmmakers. The script will read faster and offers the reader a richer opportunity to imagine and discover.

The Joy of Making Things Up.I really cherish the idea, that as a writer, I can make things up. If I want the guy to say something, all I have to do is type it. But I have to fight against creating characters and interactions amongst characters derived from movies I have watched and television I have seen. I often find myself writing a scene only to realize I’m not drawing from my imagination or my own life experience or my observations of people, I’m drawing from the millions of hours of observing actors play human beings on television and in movie theaters. And because I’m writing a “MOVIE,” it is even more difficult, because I’m fighting against a subconscious or unconscious observation that this is “how people act in movies.” Stop yourself and ask, would this happen on planet Earth? Do I know how people from Miami really speak? What would a person actually say if they had a gun in their face? Can you possibly imagine what could happen? This is your opportunity to be truly imaginative. Answer your own expectations of original work. A mature writer develops a strong capacity to recognize and reject the false.

Ouch.Forced exposition. This is when a brother tells a sister on page two that he will be attending a school which dad wouldn’t pay for because he bought a farm that the whole family will be moving to tomorrow because he found that the city was a really bad place to live in after mom was really scared because of that mugging thing that happened after they came back from the sister’s graduation from high school. When characters engage in an unbelievable conversation about matters in which they would be familiar with, or when they proclaim something completely out of nowhere simply to inform the audience of key facts crucial to their understanding of the movie, you have a problem. This awkward exposition will not be seen as genuine human behavior and will detach your audience from the emotional current of your story. Exposition is necessary and difficult to execute. Be careful how you offer information crucial to your story at the start of your screenplay. This is a common problem in early drafts. Exposition needs to be seamless and graceful.

Format.You know what? Go get a script and copy what you think it looks like and you’ll be fine. Trust me. Spec scripts are sitting on desks all over Hollywood and their format is not consistent at all. Getting crazy about format sells screenwriting software. I use two tab settings and copied stuff from a book and not one person in the film industry has ever said a thing to me in ten years. But if your script looks like a book, or a poem, or a magazine article, your screenplay format is wrong. Just make it look a little like a movie script, and if it kicks ass, guess what.

So do you.

Article URL address: www.bluecatscreenplay.com/About/advice.php About the AuthorWinner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance Film Festival for LOVE LIZA, Gordy Hoffman has wrote and directed three digital shorts for Fox Searchlight. Made his feature directorial debut with his script, A COAT OF SNOW,world premiering at 2005 Locarno Intl Film Festival. Also founder of BlueCat Screenplay Competition, which provides written screenplay analysis on every entry.Gordy acts as a script consultant for screenwriters, offering personalized feedback, http://www.screenplaynotes.com.

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The Raven Storyboard Contest

admin — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 03:49:09 +0000

FilmmakerIQ.com has teamed up with Celtx, the creator of our favorite open-source filmmaking tool to give you the opportunity to enter the Dark Gothic World of Edgar Allan Poe. Here’s your chance to really show off your screenwriting and pre-visualizing skills by adapting and storyboarding Poe’s poem “The Raven.” So we’re asking for a short script (up to fifteen pages) and an accompanying storyboard. Your task is to first download the latest version of Celtx for FREE, create a Celtx project file, write a screenplay that adapts “The Raven” for film, and storyboard it using Celtx tools. Then submit the project file by midnight November 7th. Only this and nothing more… For full contest information and how to enter – check out our contest page at FilmmakerIQ.com filmmakeriq.com

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Would too many f words in a screenplay affect my result in a screenwriting contest?

admin — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:18:22 +0000

The nicholls felowship, the most prestigious screenwriting competition.

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Soma Important Screenwriting Tips from a Screenplay Contest Judge

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:21:32 +0000

Acid disorder reflux gives the unfortunate sufferer a burning sensation in their chest and stomach. This painful inflammation is the result of hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid is used by the stomach to digest food. When the stomach and the esophagus canal is not separated by a mechanism known as the Lower Esophageal Sphincter, then the stomach acids backup into the esophagus. This refluxing motion causes an irritation to the sensitive tissues in the lower esophagus area.

Generally the esophageal sphincter muscle functions normally. It contracts and closes the esophagus area after you have had a meal. This closure prevents the stomach acid from rising up into the esophagus during the digestion process. However there are times when the Lower Esophageal Sphincter does not operate properly, then acid from the stomach reflux into the esophagus. This results in the condition that is medically known as gastroesophageal reflux disorder or acid disorder reflux.

The reasons for acid disorder reflux are varied. However they often occur with other health issues like allergies, enzyme deficiencies, gallbladder problems, hiatal hernia, stress and heartburn ulcers.

Food and beverage consumption is another possible cause. It is recommended that you avoid consumption of alcohol, chocolate, citrus fruits and drinks as these are known to relax the Lower Esophageal Sphincter or LES as it is called. Coffee, Tea and colas, which contain caffeine, must be eliminated from your diet as well. These beverages contain a substance called theobromine.

Fried and fatty foods have a tendency to slow down the digestion process. Eating large amounts of food at any time of the day can put a lot of pressure on your stomach muscles. When the food is kept in your stomach for a long period, there is increased pressure to the stomach muscles. This pressure build-up can weaken the LES.

As this is the valve that protects your esophagus from the stomach you need to take care that this weakened conditioned does not allow the digested food acids to pass into your esophagus. Therefore you should eat small meals throughout the day. By consuming large amounts of food, you cause the LES to relax and reflux food into the esophagus leading to acid disorder reflux.

Tomatoes and tomato-based products like sauces and tomato juice will also cause the LES to relax. These tomato-based products lead to an increase in the production of stomach acid. When they reflux into the esophagus, the acidity levels cause acid disorder reflux.

By watching what you eat and taking care of your health, you stand a better chance of avoiding acid disorder reflux from entering your life and causing you pain, and its’ always better in the long to eat healthy anyway.

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Write A Screenplay For A Short Story Contest?

admin — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 03:51:04 +0000

Is it okay to write in screenplay format in a short story contest? It doesn’t have any rules or regulations against it, but how good are my chances of winning? Would you still judge my story like every other contestant?

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How to Start a Screenplay: Treatment or Free Fall?

admin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 10:56:55 +0000

Starting a screenplay can sometimes be as hard as finishing one. Impatient to pull up to the front door of a classic motion picture, I want to get everything right so quickly. This impatience challenges my trust in the work, the creative process of screenwriting. What exactly does trust mean? If I don’t trust my writing, then what am I? Frightened. This is the battle. If I’m scared that everything I’m typing is worthless, then what? My hands find something else to do. So trust is good and important and essential to beginning this journey, alone, a trip that will eventually take what comes out of you into millions of people. But its just you now. And your trust.Now, does trusting your writing mean sitting down with no ideas, opening a new document, and starting to type? Of course. And no. What I need to do is make a decision and execute. And this decision often comes back to whether I should write an outline or treatment before I start writing my screenplay, or, with a rough idea, a shadowy shadow of something calling from my brain, start writing?I have done both in the past. When I wrote the first draft of LOVE LIZA, I really had very little idea of where the story was going. I had a few things to start off with, and somewhere I wanted to end up down the road, but that was it. It was terrifying and difficult to remain seated. But the most original characteristics of the screenplay came out of the immediacy of trying to come up with whats next, with my fingers resting on the keyboard. I became sold on this process. Outlines killed creativity, because writing an outline is not actual screenwriting. Its outlining.But then I came to Hollywood and tried to tell executives the little ideas I had. I would very proudly announce an image, a picture in my head, that I knew contained the fire of an entire epic. I was shocked when they asked, Then what happens? I didn’t have an answer. Why? Well. BECAUSE I HADNT WRITTEN IT YET. It seemed like a completely stupid question. What happens? What happens?? Did I say I had a complete screenplay to show you?!You know the rest. No phone calls and bewilderment and then I found myself in the city of pitches, and starting to flesh out things into 14 page screenplay treatments. I did so, convinced that it could never be that good, that it was forced, and staged, and predictable. I was shocked to find out that it did not destroy my creativity. I was still able to come up with interesting, original things. But deep down I knew. This was still not screenwriting. This was not the art of screenwriting. And I’m right.So now what was I going to do? What was better? If I was to sit down and spec something out, how was I supposed to go about it? First off, I’m lazy, so having a treatment or an outline sitting next to my laptop to walk me through the first draft is very appealing, despite knowing that the inspiration driving a treatment is different than the juice that comes when writing the screenplay blindly. And I have sat down and written 90 pages, trying to find the story, only to simply start over. This is a lot of work, but I’ve come to recognize that this work is not lost. This is the path. It hurts, it kills, it bludgeons, it fatigues, it flattens, but its the road. Believe me.But what about a heist movie, or a mystery? A thriller with twists? Aren’t movies sometimes puzzles? Can we find this stuff without a plan? Don’t you have to figure this stuff out? Yes and no. Flying by the seat of your pants often produces jaw-dropping turns the audience will never see coming. Why? The writer didn’t. This is the largest reason why studio movies are predictable—-the fabric of the script is shot through with the knowledge of the ending of the story.If we are to plot out the map of our movie with a treatment, beat sheet or outline, we better be damn sure its the real thing. Putting our best foot forward with a very strong outline is only the start of what will end up as a screenplay. Despite putting that golden outline next to our keyboard, we will find that turning it into a screenplay is still, I’m awfully sorry, a lot of work. Scenes that we imagined to be amazing will suddenly be impossible to write. And why does that upset us? Why does that frustrate the writer?Well, we thought we had a short cut. We thought we were going to sneak into the back of a classic movie. My journey as a writer has been marked by the learning and relearning that all that wood has to be cut out there in the back yard, whether I like it or not. If I wanna do this, I have to swing the axe.But we know, if we trust our gift, that something beautiful is coming, regardless if we have an outline or not. Perhaps the writers who work from outlines should throw them out. Perhaps the writers who write like the house is on fire, with nary a note within miles, should sit down and write a treatment. Treatments are fun, too.I do both, switching back and forth when I need to. When I’m writing and I start to feel blindfolded, I turn to jot down a few notes, sketch a few ideas, track a character arc, reorder an act. But when I think I’m caught up in pitches and notes and beat sheets and the safety of plans, I chuck it all and write like I did when I was a kid.Did we use notes when we were kids?

Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival for LOVE LIZA , Gordy Hoffman has written and directed three digital shorts for Fox Searchlight. He made his feature directorial debut with his script, A COAT OF SNOW, which world premiered at the 2005 Locarno International Film Festival. He is also the founder of the BlueCat Screenplay Competition. Dedicated to develop and celebrate the undiscovered screenwriter, BlueCat provides written screenplay analysis on every script entered. In addition, Gordy acts as a script consultant for screenwriters, offering personalized feedback on their scripts through his consultation service, www.screenplaynotes.com. For more articles by Gordy on screenwriting, visit www.bluecatscreenplay.com.

Healthcare Reform NOW!

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Kick Start Your Writing Career By Winning Fame, Glory and Prize Goodies

admin — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:49:28 +0000

Have you ever heard of the Pulitzer Prize? It’s the one of the grand daddy of writing contests. Started by 19th century journalist Joseph Pulitzer, the first prize was awarded in 1917 and cash prizes continue to be awarded annually to this very day.
While winning a Pulitzer, is certainly a noble achievement, there are literally thousands of smaller (and easier to win) writing contests that will appeal to authors and poets of any genre.
Popular writing contest categories include fiction and non-fiction books on almost any subject, fictional short stories, novels and novellas of any genre; non-fiction articles, essays, and journalistic pieces; poetry which includes book-length manuscripts as well as chapbooks; scripts and screenplays, and an almost unlimited number of specific categories such as writing contests for grade school writers, college-level essays, and topic-specific such as pet articles and patriotic themes.
The list truly goes on and on. Many writing contests have very impressive prizes. The Nichols fellowship, for example, is no chump change contest. Especially designed for screenplay writers, this contest is so prestigious that even getting into the final cut will earn you offers from Hollywood agents. Up to 5 winners will each take away $30,000 fellowships and almost all top fellowship writers have had their screenplay produced. Now that’s a contest.
Why it’s nice to dream, these “top dog” contests might be a bit much to bite off for your first writing contest but they certainly are a target to aim for as your experience and skills grow.
For the rest of us there are thousands of novels, short story, scriptwriting, screenplay, plays, fiction, non-fiction and poetry writing contests to keep winners happy for years to come.
How writing contests work:
Many writing contests charge entry fees. The absence or presence of an entry fee has no bearing on the legitimacy of a contest. Most of the time the entry fees are used to cover contest expenses including the actual prize money.
Be aware that there are some rip-off contests and scam operators are active in the writing contest market just like they are in any other area where money can be made.
When you are considering entering a fee-based contest make sure that the minimum cash prize is at least more than the entry fee. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to pay $25 to win $10 unless the contest is well advertised and you care more about the glory than you do the moolah. Speaking of glory, some contests do not award any cash at all but you do get the bragging rights to having your entry published in a real book or magazine. Wining any legitimate writing contest, whether the prize is cash, merchandise, or just a pat on the back, gives you the right to use the phrase “award winning writer” in your portfolio and resume. That can be worth the price of entry all by itself.
The good news about writing contests is that your chances of winning are directly dependant upon your skills. It doesn’t matter who you are, or how many pieces or books you have to your name. If your entry is selected as a winner, then you’re a winner. You could go up against Spielberg and come out a winner if your story was better.
Why contests are held:
There are many reasons why writer’s contests are held. One of them is to simply make money. If the organizers collect more in entry fees than they spend in prizes and overhead, then they’ve made a profit. There’s nothing wrong in running a contest as a profit center just as long as the contest is fair and impartial.
Another reason the writer’s contests are held is that it’s a relatively inexpensive way for publishers to get fresh, new content into their magazines. Readers enjoy reading new writers and writers love winning contests and seeing their work published. Every wins in one way or another.
Some companies run contests to draw attention to their product or service. They create a lot of advertising hoopla which ends up selling more magazines, or razor blades, or whatever product or service they’re pushing.
No matter what the reason for the contests, everybody loves a winner and everyone loves winning. You could make thousands of dollars a year if you enter and win a number of contests, or you could end up being happy just having a few published stories, poems, or articles to add to your portfolio.
Writing contests are fun, challenging, and could end up putting some veggies on the table if you have enough talent to be a winner!
The only thing that’s stopping you from finding out if you’re destined for the next big prize is you.
Good luck and I hope to see you in my favorite magazine soon.

Melanie Rockett is THE Contest Guru. Her website and blog serves up lists of current contests for poets and writers. Check out the hundreds of writing contests you can enter today.
Website: http://contestguru.com Blog: http://contestguru.com/contestnews
(c) Melanie Rockett 2007
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How to Start a Screenplay: Treatment or Free Fall?

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:40:54 +0000

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