The Interim Period

The Interim Period

Waiting to hear back from contests is always the most frustrating thing to me. I have a lack of patience at times and it definitely is one of my biggest faults. I'm filled with both hope and dread in regards to the contests. I'm confident in "Vengeance" but will the subjectivity of the industry play against me?

What DOES it take to win a screenwriting competition? I was looking at the past winners of these contests and a few of the people have gone on to have their movie made, but that is a few people overall out of the dozens of contests I was looking through. So even if you do win, it doesn't necessarily mean that anyone will care about your writing, so what does that mean?

Back to the previous question, what do these contests look for? Well written scripts or novelty scripts? Things within genre conventions that are well written and tell a good story, or nonconformists that try to break boundaries and, to paraphrase Peter Griffin, insist upon themselves? I see no general guidelines in these contests aside from "we're looking for great scripts!" but what is the definition of great? A great Godard is quite different from a great Kubrick which is different from a great Gilliam, is it not? So where are there boundaries?

Are they all looking for the novelty of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or the action blowout that could be the next Die Hard?

It really makes me wonder. Subjectivity is both the enemy and the draw of Hollywood, is it not? What I was talking about was just what the contest organizers might say overall about the contests, not about the mindset of the individual judge that's looking at your screenplay at that particular moment when they may have an inflamed hemorrhoid.

Maybe I should send cookies and Prozac with my next contest submission