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My POV
Brian A. Wilson
?TIS THE SEASON FOR CONTESTS
Have you been pushing your product out the door?
I hope so! This is one of the prime times of the contest season.
Time was, nigh onto five or six year ?go, the contest biz did peak this time of year. Nowadays (as they say in my native Texas), competitions have become so abundant that deadlines hit virtually every week of the year.
Despite the proliferation of screenplay contests as a cottage industry, there are still a few that make a big splash and are worth the price of entry, IMHO.
The Big Boys are Nicholl Fellowship, Austin Heart of Film, Chesterfield Film and Disney. I pick these either because they combine both prestige and payola if you win. All are well respected, and even to place well in one of these gives you a great lead on your next query letter.
Final Draft has a nice prize at $10K. Scriptapalooza is offering $20K. Writers Digest is a helluva bargain at only $10 to enter, with first prize a trip to NYC or the Maui writers conference. Beyond that, there are literally hundreds of contests to enter. Submit as much as your heart desires and your wallet can afford, but be sure you're not just making somebody ELSE rich by entering a pricey contest that, even if all goes well, won't reward you with either prestige or money.
Decide what you want out of entering a contest. I enter contests because I respond well to deadlines. I scrambled this week, putting the finishing touches on three new scripts in order to make the Austin and Chesterfield deadlines. If it works for you, use contest deadlines as motivators.
Also, I like getting feedback in the form of doing well in contests. I've been a semi-finalist or better in Disney, Austin and Chesterfield, and placed high in about a dozen more competitions. This tells me I'm on the right track and that my work is getting through to people.
It's tough "getting read" in Hollywood, not just to get your script sold, but to get some feedback that you're on the right track. Good placement in a contest or two or three or ten can help with that by letting you know your work is a cut above five or ten thousand other entries.
Also, the agents and managers with whom I speak consistently say they respond well to queries about scripts that have done well in major contests.
No matter which contest you enter, after entering, my best advice is to forget you entered. Did I use "entered" enough in that sentence? Anyway, don't wait by the mailbox or the phone (and good news can come either way, although you almost never get a bad-news phone call). Just keep writing the next one. Go on with your life. One day, if all goes well, you'll get the exciting feedback that your script has advanced or won.
I hope it happens for you this season.
Keep writing.
BW
LA
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