When Hollywood’s Award Season rolls around, if you’re like most aspiring screenwriters, you can’t help but hope that one day you might be getting some of those big fancy awards of your own.
It may take a while to get the big fancy awards, but guess what…. You can get some of the small, fancy awards now… as in THIS YEAR! And what I am talking about is Screenwriting Contests!
This month is a great time to make a Screenwriting Contest Plan for the year and use it to motivate you all year long. My screenwriter clients often ask me what I think of contests, and my answer is very simply: Enter, but keep things in perspective.
First let me tell you what I mean by “keep things in perspective.” You never really know the level of the person doing the coverage on your script. The reality is…you may have much more experience than they do. But another reality is, that may also be the case when someone at a production company reads your script.
Therefore, keep that in mind when you get feedback — you simply don’t know the level of the person who covered your script.
On the other hand, the good thing about Contests is that you can use them to help you set deadlines for yourself. You’ll have to enter contests by a certain date, so use that as your deadline to get the next draft done. You can set some of your goals for this year around meeting contest deadlines to keep you busy and focused.
Here’s an article I wrote about screenwriting contests. Just going a little more in depth on what I’ve said here.
Of course, if you want a real, legitimate professional script analysis, you can always have ME do that. I’ve reviewed literally thousands of scripts. My Ph.D. is in Mythological Studies (all about story), and I was rated a Top 5 Hollywood Script Consultant three different times by Creative Screenwriting magazine.
Most importantly, keep focused on writing and improving…. then seeing where your script stands… improve some more… then market it.
Screenwriting contests may prove to be
Happy writing.