To anyone who won a screenwriting contest that sees this: before you take offense, hear me out.
I’ve read a whole whackload of scripts, including many contest finalists and winners. And I’ve noticed something about most contest winning scripts: they’re actually pretty bad. Not from a narrative perspective (though some are balls boring), but in terms of structure and wordiness.
If you take a look at the My Works section, you’ll see that in one contest I complained the winner didn’t deserve to win (EDIT – I since removed that comment, but the point still stands). And that particular winning script did NOT deserve it: it was wordy to the point of embarrassment, overly descriptive in like every anti-textbook way, going into the particulars of characters’ physical appearance and environment detail like a bad fantasy novel. I’ve read the scripts of great, high-grossing films and sample scripts many an online writing guru cites as strong, and both have something in common: they don’t do what that winning script did. Every lecture I’ve attended at an expo, every good piece of advice I’ve ever got on the craft, says NOT to do what said winning script did.
And it won, over the second and third place entries (neither were mine, by the way) that really DID deserve to make it that far.
It’s a tad maddening, and it jives with something I often hear: contest winners are not necessarily great screenwriters (yet; they’ll likely get there), but did write something different enough from the norm that contest judges found refreshing in some way. Go Google it, right now: you’ll find judges talking about how finalist scripts are terrible and somehow ended up winning.
“Oh, you’re just mad, handsome fat man,” you retort. My answer: “Fuck off, I actually put thought into this.” And here’s the result of that thought:
Play to win.
(Obligatory Sirlin shoutout and link to his awesome-ass website here.)
If contest judges are looking for material that deviates from the norm, give them exactly that. If you study a contest’s past winning scripts and see a certain pattern emerging, even if the winning trend flies in the face of actual sound screenwriting convention, mold your entry to the trend. Or write a whole new script for the contest, if you really don’t want to mess with your current script’s hopefully-agent-and-manager-impressing form.
Contest wins (from reputable contests) are real nice to have, so I hear. Treat it like school: do what you need to impress your current teacher. There’s no shame in sucking up in the short term to meet your long term goals. Swallow that pride.
Random contest rambling over… for now…