by John | Mar 11, 2019 | Updates
One contest ends, another begins… We’re committed to championing great stories in our 20th anniversary year, and after an incredibly competitive final round of judging for our Winter Contest last week, we’re eager to see what else you’ve got for us. So here we go again: the WriteMovies Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest!
The Grand Prize Winner will walk away with $2000, and the top three placed scripts will all receive:
- A year of free script development worth up to $3200
- Guaranteed pitching to industry
- Exclusive previews of WriteMovies Academy, our unique Virtual Film School
- Exclusive prizes from InkTip
And as with our last contest, you can get free entry to the contest when you buy a script report from us. Get invaluable feedback from industry experts to help you hone your script and make it the best it can be, with Judging Feedback from just $89 – see our full list of Script Report Services here!
What does it really take to win one of our contests, though? With each round of our last competition, we’ve written an article explaining how we judge scripts, what the criteria are, and the what the most common problems are in the submissions we’re read – a must read for anyone entering the WriteMovies Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest.
So before you submit, take a look at our article on What Your Submissions are Telling Us and then our Semi-Final results, where we discussed what made these scripts really stand out. Finally – and most importantly – see our Winners Announcement to find out what kind of questions we’re asking when picking between the strongest submissions in the contest.
WriteMovies has been helping writers succeed for twenty years. Enter the WriteMovies Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest to begin your writing journey with us by clicking here!
by John | Mar 8, 2019 | Updates
What makes a true winner? The hardest choice…
…and we mean it, any of 10 projects could have made top 3 or even been the overall winner this time. Things changed a lot when we looked closer at how the industry would react to these scripts. So what are we asking ourselves, when we pick our winners? As we judge, above all, we’re looking for great writing (whatever that means). But when it’s a choice between many real contenders?
After all, we model our services on the way the real industry responds to scripts and books like those we’ve received. Here are some of the questions we’re asking ourselves, to isolate strengths and weaknesses when we’re picking between projects that are clearly strong submissions. We’ll provide Insights articles into each subject in the months ahead, to help you more as you refine your ideas and submissions to our contests.
- THEME.
- FOCAL PLOT.
- SUBPLOTS.
- QUALITY OF WRITING.
- POTENTIAL WITH DEVELOPMENT. We offer a year’s free script development for a reason: where a script can get to, may be more important in the bigger picture, than where it is right now.
- AUDIENCE/DEMOGRAPHICS.
- AWARD POTENTIAL.
- GENRE SELLABILITY.
- TITLE.
- PROFITABILITY VS. COST.
- PRACTICALITY TO PRODUCE.
- BIG TRAILER MOMENTS. (If it’s a pilot, the EXPANDABILITY of its premise and storylines.)
- CASTING APPEAL FOR BANKABLE TALENT.
- ANY POTENTIAL LEGAL ISSUES.
And, as agents in touch with producers every day, we should also consider when deciding our Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest winners: ARE THERE SPECIFIC COMPANIES IN THE INDUSTRY LOOKING FOR SOMETHING JUST LIKE THIS RIGHT NOW.
Now, above all, we want to reward great writing. But if that script never gets made, then were we right to single it out? It’s a tough one.
On the other side, we don’t go for schlocky, formulaic genre scripts just because they’ll sell either. We view scripts as prospective producers would: that’s our background too. And we have a reputation to protect, and this year we’re focusing on our 20 years as champions of great global storytelling.
So last of all then, maybe that’s the deciding question for us, in this our 20th year…
Will this prove to be great, global storytelling?
It’s always a hard choice. And this time round it was the hardest in years. Thanks for giving us so much great material to read this time, guys. We’ve taken it all to heart and come up with new contest formats we think you’re gonna love.
So now, the moment you’re waiting for…
Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest Winners!
- GRAND PRIZE WINNER: PROMISE OF TOMORROW, Andrew Pennington
- SECOND PLACE: BAD LISTING, Brent Hartinger
- THIRD PLACE: WITHOUT BORDERS, Chris Gebhardt & Jenn Russi
HONORABLE MENTIONS
| TÖDLICHE ERINNERUNG, Urs Aebersold |
LE SECRET DU KATANA NOIR, Christian Bourgeois |
STRUCK, Elaine F Chekich |
| BAD LUCK VS KARMA, Aaron Davis |
HOLLYWOOD’S MOST WANTED, Manny Jimenez Sr. |
THE SAX, Pascal Kulcsar |
| AGENT 355, Laura Lambert |
THIS IS NOT REVENGE, David Pierotti |
THE CRACK IN PEGGY SUE’S FLOOR, John Woodard |
I wanted to write a short note to say how much I enjoy working with WriteMovies. The professional way in which you work with the writers and the analysts makes the experience of giving and receiving screenplay notes a painless one and as a result allows the creative process to flow smoothly. Any writer looking to move their script to a higher level can’t go wrong by turning to WriteMovies for feedback.
Producer of SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, RAIN MAN and many other top films
by John | Mar 1, 2019 | Updates
According to the (paraphrased) advice of the greatest writer in history – or at least, according to the thirteen-year-old girl he has say the line – “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. When picking a title for your script, you might be tempted to follow this philosophy – the idea that choosing a script title doesn’t matter as much as everything that follows it.
It’s especially easy to think this when you realize that the name of a project will change many times once it goes into production. All sorts of people will want a say: the producers, the director, the marketing team, every actor and their grandma! Looking at how your script wil get turned into a film, it’s tempting to just put the first words that come to mind on the front cover.
But that would be a mistake.
We’ve all been told to never judge a book by its cover, but we’re also told that first impressions are important – and guess what? The title of your screenplay is the first impression it’s going to make on someone! Here at WriteMovies, we read a LOT of scripts, and a great title can make all the difference. It can make us excited to start reading, it can tempt us and make us curious.
And it can have the opposite effect when the title is clearly wrong. When the name of the script has given us certain expectations – about genre, subject matter, or anything else – and those expectations aren’t met, it’s disappointing for us. It’s the same for producers, too. If you want your script to stand out from all the others that come across their desk, choosing a script title is vital. But how do you do that?
Choosing a script title
There’s a simple exercise you can do to make sure your title is the right one. A renowned theatre director recently told us that before she even reads a script, she creates a mind map around the title using word association. She lets the title itself feeds her imagination, giving her an idea of what it might be about. With a good title, the associations she comes up with are surprisingly accurate; she can figure out the concept and theme, the subject matter, and all sorts of other things.
Do the same thing with the title for your script: ask other people who haven’t read your work to come up with word associations based around the title. If the words they come up with don’t reflect the story of your script, then there’s a good chance that your title is giving people the wrong idea about your script and you’d be better off with a different one.
Looking for more hints and tips on screenwriting? Check out our Writing Insights articles here!
by John | Feb 27, 2019 | Movie Reviews and TV Reviews
“Oh, so much great writing here...”
In readiness for the eventual arrival of the final season of Game of Thrones, Ian Kennedy subjects himself to the whole thing again. Next up is Episodes 6, 7, and 8. Can anyone endure Ned’s honor, Stannis, the Red Wedding, and – worst of all – Arya’s unending journey from ‘annoying’ to ‘a different kind of annoying’, all over again? Or will the quality of the writing conquer all foes once more? Spoiler central here, if you hadn’t guessed… but in euphemisms that would make Tyrion blush, most of the time.
Oh, so much great writing here. Really got my heart pounding when Tyrion’s trial by combat happened, even though I knew the outcome. And Viserys gets the crown he craved – but it’s not the crown he craved – just the first of many times the series gives a character what they say they want, to teach them brutally that it’s really not what they want. Super.
Playback rating: 5/5
Yes, it’s the one with that line from Cersei to Ned which gives the series its name. To be honest, I’m finding the storytelling and dialogue so absorbing that I struggle to break off from watching to write up my thoughts. This is seriously multi-layered – so many characters and references that went over my head last time. I’d forgotten that Renly was such a recurring character in Season One, already set for a tilt at the crown, and that we already knew Stannis was, well, Stannis, many times before we met him. Great stuff, even when you know what’s coming.
Re-watching is a great chance to test out the theories I’ve been forging about the series. I think I’m definitely right that Ned’s – and all the other Starks’ – fatal flaw is being honorable; many characters say as much, in different ways and circumstances. His refusals to play Cersei and Littlefinger at their own games are, in hindsight, laughably naïve – but would be a successful and satisfying strategy in most stories, and GoT hasn’t revealed its hand by this point.
Playback rating: 4/5
One element of the usual Game of Thrones formula is missing – there’s no sex in this one! Maybe no wonder the episode seems to drag a lot after the first phase, even after a bloody coup and with all sides gearing up for war.
Another character who is punished for showing mercy and sentimentalism is Daenerys, when she saves some peasants from becoming spoils of war, and then gets one of them to treat a wounded Khal Drogo. Soon she’ll learn the error of this. But unlike most, she survives it to harden herself for the future.
Playback rating: 3/5
Continue into Ian’s review of the following episodes here: https://writemovies.com/second-look-game-of-thrones-season-1-episodes-9-10/ or go back to the first episode’s Second Look here! https://writemovies.com/second-look-game-of-thrones-season-one-episode-one/
by John | Feb 25, 2019 | Updates
Whatever you think about the Oscars, there’s always something to be learned from them. Last night was no exception: there was the usual number of sure-fire wins mixed with a few shocks that leave us scratching our heads. Here’s our take on what happened at the Oscars 2019…
- The big news of the night was the surprise win of GREEN BOOK for Best Picture. This may not have been the most competitive year for this category, but stacked up against films like BLACKKKLANSMAN and ROMA, it’s still not what we expected. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times even went so far as to call it “the worse best Picture winner since Crash“. Ouch. But the main thing to take from this? ROMA might have been the favorite on the night (rather than THE FAVOURITE… okay, it’s a bit confusing) but the Academy isn’t ready to give highest honors to a Netflix film just yet. The big studios continue to guard their territory.
- Spike Lee finally has an Oscar, winning Best Adapted Screenplay for BLACKKKLANSMAN. When it comes to films about race, the Oscars have generally favored less hard-edged material than Lee makes, so at first glance, this looks like it could indicate a shift for film’s biggest awards ceremony. However, that’s all kind of cancelled out because…
- The winner for Best Original Screenplay also went to GREEN BOOK, which has come in for a lot of criticism for perpetuating the “white savior” trope and couldn’t be more of an opposite to BLACKKKLANSMAN if it tried. Take a look at that article from Chang and you’ll see why it’s so confusing that the two screenplay awards went to these two films. On the one hand, a film that takes an intense, no-holds barred look at racism – on the other, a film that deals with it through a feel-good story. One thing is clear – Hollywood still hasn’t figured out how it wants to deal with this kind of subject matter.
- Away from the main controversies, superhero stories are starting to gain some traction at awards ceremonies to go with their popular appeal, with BLACK PANTHER picking up three awards and SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE winning Best Animated Feature. This is where the real money is right now – and it looks like there’s even the possibility of picking up some nice shiny awards to go with it.
- On a similar note, BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY took home four awards. Even though the only big one here was for Rami Malek’s performance as Freddie Mercury, it’s a surprise to see a film that got mixed reviews from critics fare so well at the Oscars. Is the Academy really becoming more democratized to reflect popular opinion? We’ll have to wait and see how next year unfolds…
From a screenwriting perspective, the main thing here is the confusion of seeing two totally contrasting films take home the awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. Here at WriteMovies, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this, with several of our past winners – such as BLACKOUT.COM by Ruben Bush III dealing with this kind of subject matter.
The Oscars 2019 may not have had the drama of the wrong winner being announced for Best Picture like a couple of years ago, but they’ve certainly given us a lot of food for thought…
by John | Feb 22, 2019 | Updates
It’s time for more Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest results! There were a lot of great scripts in our Quarter-Finals and it was tough to make this next round of decisions, but after careful consideration our judges have decided on our Semi-Finalists!
There’s often a fine line when it comes to the different rounds of our screenwriting contest. Some scripts only just miss out, and it can be difficult to know why. A lot of the time, it comes down to the execution of basic elements – structure, characters, and dialogue.
Take a look also at this article that our Director, Ian Kennedy, wrote when we announced Quarter-Finalists: What your writing submissions are telling us, 2017-2019. If you’re making any of these mistakes, they could be holding you back!
But what else have we found with these latest Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest results? Well, a few things that have often helped our Semi-Finalists stand out from the rest:
- Unique Concepts. If there’s something in a script we haven’t seen before, it immediately makes us want to read on. See what Ian wrote in his article about the number of scripts with a vehicle smash at about page 10 – when we’ve read the same thing so many times, it quickly starts to become dull. On the other hand, when we encounter something new – that’s really exciting!
- Specific in genre and the story they wanted to tell. With a number of scripts, we found it difficult to tell what genre the writer was aiming at and it was a while before the story began to take shape. These unfocused openings usually fail to hold our attention. Be specific about your story, and be clear with its genre!
- Engaging characters. Ian wrote it in his article but it’s worth repeating again here: “Make us care and get fascinated with your main characters and their world”. When we care about the characters, the script takes on a whole new life. Don’t rely on clichés or stereotypes, but create rounded characters we can engage with as if they were real people. And not just the protagonist either, but the supporting characters and villains as well!
And with that, it’s time for the moment you’ve been waiting for. Here are our next Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest results: the Semi-Finalists!
|
Semi-Finalists |
|
| BAD LUCK VS KARMA, Aaron Davis |
TÖDLICHE ERINNERUNG, Urs Aebersold |
SPACE RACERS, Jason Azcar |
| THE DAWN OF EVE, James Bingham |
LE SECRET DU KATANA NOIR, Christian Bourgeois |
LA VENGEANCE DU COBRA, Christian Bourgeois |
| THE WALL, Anthony Buono |
UNE CHANCE POUR GUERIR, Christine de Chauvelin |
PSYCHOANALYTIC TALES, Christine de Chauvelin |
| STRUCK, Elaine F Chekich |
THE HUNTED, Mark Flood |
WITHOUT BORDERS, Chris Gebhardt & Jenn Russi |
| LAST CHRISTMAS, Owen Gower |
BAD LISTING, Brent Hartinger |
KOBOS, Adam Hersh |
| HOLLYWOOD’S MOST WANTED, Manny Jimenez Sr. |
THE SAX, Pascal Kulcsar |
AGENT 355, Laura Lambert |
| IN THE ABSENCE OF JUSTICE, Stephen F Maynard |
PROMISE OF TOMORROW, Andrew Pennington |
THIS IS NOT REVENGE, David Pierotti |
| BOY MOST WANTED, Tuck Tucker |
ESTHER’S DEN, Persephone Vandegrift |
THE CRACK IN PEGGY SUE’S FLOOR, John Woodard |
Keep an eye out for more Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest results from us, as we move on now to judge our Finalists and winners – and decide who takes away the Grand Prize!
by John | Feb 18, 2019 | Updates
Feature films tend to get most of the glory among filmmakers, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore short film as a medium! In a new series of Insights articles, Ian Kennedy looks at the benefits of writing in this format. Here, we take a look at how to structure a short film.
In the first article in this series, we looked at why you would want to write a short film – but once you’ve decided to do so, what’s the next stage? There are a lot of advantages to making a short, but how are you supposed to fit a story into such a short number of pages? Well, before you start coming up with ideas, you might actually want to think about how to structure a short film first…
Two vs Three-Act Structure
When writing a feature film, a classic three-act structure is usually the way to go. It basically looks like this:
- Act 1 – Setup. Here you introduce your characters and world, and get the story rolling.
- Act 2 – Conflict. This is where most of the story happens, and where things stand in the way of the protagonist getting what they want.
- Act 3 – Resolution. The characters must overcome the final hurdle, defeat their enemies, and win the day… or lose it.
So for example, in Star Wars, Act 1 sees Luke Skywalker on his home planet of Tatooine, Act 2 has him trying to rescue Princess Leia from the Death Star, and in Act 3 he must defeat the Empire once and for all.
When writing a short film, it’s still a good idea to aim for this structure – but there’s also another alternative. For short films, you can also use a structure that only has two acts – a structure that doesn’t work for a longer film at all! A story with a two-act structure is quite simple, since it has the same basic structure as a joke:
- Act 1 – Setup…
- Act 2 – Punchline!
In a two-act structure, you basically cut out the middle. You make a promise to the audience in the first act, and then fulfil that promise in the second – this has the advantage of asking them to connect the dots between the two themselves, which makes them involved and ultimately rewards them for being invested.
But whichever structure you use, the real key to writing a successful short is to trust your audience that you don’t have to explain everything to them. Use our unconscious knowledge and expectations to shortcut as much exposition and world-class building as possible.
So in conclusion, when making a short film, you need to match your concept to the structure. You don’t have to use three acts in short format because there’s another option; if your concept is something simple that functions like a joke, with a setup and a punchline, then two acts will also work. And above all, let the audience fill in the bits of the story there’s not enough time for, so that you can keep your short screenplay… well, short!
Take a look at our other Writing Insights articles here for great hints and tips on crafting your scripts!
