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WriteMovies Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award 2019 – Winner Announced!

WriteMovies Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award 2019 – Winner Announced!

We first launched the WriteMovies Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award because we wanted to be transported to amazing, fantastical new worlds – and boy, did you guys deliver! Our entrants spanned the deepest reaches of space, magical lands, and all of time: past, present, and future!

The imagination is a writer’s most powerful weapon, and it was on full display here. Well done to everyone who entered; the quality was so consistently high that you made it extremely difficult for us to pick a winner!

Some of the things that helped us make our choice include:

  • Originality of concept – giving us something truly unique instead of something we’ve seen before
  • Depth and complexity of worldbuilding – making the universe of the story feel like a real, lived in place
  • Impressive visual elements – taking full advantage of these genres’ strengths
  • Great characters – ensuring that the human element doesn’t get lost!

So here it is… The first ever winner of the inaugural WriteMovies Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award is…

 

THE TIME-TRAP

By Mark Flood

A big congratulations to Mark, who has won guaranteed pitching to industry, two sets of Development Notes, and continued script development from us! Well done also to all of our Honorable Mentions, who you can find listed below.

 

HONORABLE MENTIONS

OMEGA POINT, James Bingham ENDANGERED SPECIES, Mark Flood GODLESS SKIES, Joshua David Harris
FABLE OF THE JADE TIGER, Jason Fisher SHIRO, Pascal Kulcsar THE LAST PRISON, Richard Geiwitz
THE REVOLT OF THE WHALES, Michael Rhodes MARS GENESIS, Don Ternyila RACE MUSIC, Eric Weber

WriteMovies Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest – One Month To Go!

WriteMovies Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest – One Month To Go!

Our inaugural Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award may have closed for submission, but the WriteMovies Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest goes on – and the final deadline is now just one month away!

Your last chance to enter will be on Sunday June 16th, with a Grand Prize of $2000 plus guaranteed pitching to industry and a year of free script development for the top three scripts. So get to work polishing that dialogue, tweaking your story, and fleshing out those characters, and make sure you give us lots of reasons to get excited!

But what will help you to get our attention? Here are some things we look out for:

  • A unique concept. We read a lot of scripts, so show us something we haven’t seen before!
  • Fully rounded characters that we love. If we’re invested in the people, we’ll always want to keep reading!
  • Strong commercial potential. If the project won’t make money, it has little chance of getting made.
  • A great opening. Make sure you grab us with the first ten pages. First impressions matter!

You should also take a look at our Director Ian Kennedy’s article on “What your writing submissions are telling us” for some hints and tips on what mistakes to avoid, and more details on what we’re after.

And then, when you’re finally ready… Click here to submit to the WriteMovies Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest by June 16th!


 

Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest – Introducing our Grand Prize Winner!

Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest – Introducing our Grand Prize Winner!

PROMISE OF TOMORROW: After finding a website devoted to insulting him, a struggling, separated and obsessive Project Manager becomes determined to track down who created it.

A romantic-comedy with heaps of charm, PROMISE OF TOMORROW made us laugh more than any other script in this competition. In the tradition of great British rom-coms, it captured our attention with its quirky characters, heartwarming story, and fantastic audience appeal. This is a script that deserves to go far – a huge congratulations to its writer, the winner of our Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest, Andrew Pennington!

As the Grand Prize Winner of our Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest, Andrew has won $2500, guaranteed pitching to industry, and a year of free script development. If you want to follow in his footsteps, then enter our Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest (click here!)


Here’s a summary of PROMISE OF TOMORROW:

PROMISE OF TOMORROW is a comedy feature following Owen, a slightly OCD Project Manager, who has always taken the easy roads in life.

Owen is horrified as he finds a website devoted purely to mocking him.  It sends his obsessive and paranoid tendencies into overdrive, as he struggles to work out who could possibly have set up such a cruel prank.  When his wife decides to leave, she becomes the clear number one suspect.

Seemingly more upset about the website than his impending divorce, Owen is guided by his family and friends to deal with his separation.  His boss suggests using his considerable professional skills to aid the situation.  Project manage his break-up!

Owen struggles through an investigation of clues as to the website author, whilst keeping emotional distance from his personal life.  He finds that his coping mechanism can only work for so long before he’s forced to confront his difficult journey.

If you’re a producer interested in this project, email david.vogel@atalentscout.com today!


And here’s a quick bio of the writer of PROMISE OF TOMORROW, Andrew Pennington:

Andrew Pennington - writer of Promise of TomorrowAndrew Pennington is a screenwriter who grew up in the North West of England and is currently based in Merseyside, with his wife and two children.  He initially studied social sciences at Lougborough University and developed a career in research within academia and then the National Health Service.

An affinity for visual story-telling, initially starting with comic books as a boy, led to a love of film and T.V.  Andrew went on to gain an MA in Screenwriting from Liverpool John Moores University.  He writes a variety of film and T.V. screenplays, primarily in comedy and science fiction.

See if you can coax him into more social media than just retweets here: @atpennington


 

Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest now open!

Spring 2019 Screenwriting Contest now open!

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!

Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest – Semi-Finalists!

Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest – Semi-Finalists!

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!

Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest – One Week Extension!

Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest – One Week Extension!

A huge thanks to everyone who has entered our Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest so far – we’re hard at work reading through your scripts! While the official deadline was yesterday, we’re announcing a one week extension to deal with technical and administrative issues we’ve been having recently – so we’ll be accepting further entries until January 20th!

The prizes we’re offering in our Winter 2019 Screenwriting Contest are:

  • A grand prize of $2500, up from $2000!
  • Top three scripts all receive a year of free script development worth up to $3200, with detailed analysis and advice on structure, characters, commercial viability, and other important aspects.
  • Top three scripts all receive guaranteed pitching to industry, including packaging and promoting the projects to professional producers, directors, and actors!
  • Plus exclusive prizes from InkTip, and more!

Thank-you for your patience during the email issues we’ve been having over the last few weeks, which has been the result of problems with our hosting. WriteMovies will be moving to new hosting shortly, which should resolve all the problems we’ve been having (and if you’d like to know which hosting provider we’d never recommend, feel free to get in contact with us privately!)

If you have sent us an enquiry at any point recently and not received a reply, contact us again now at author@writemovies.com and we will endeavor to resolve your query as quickly as possible.

This might be the last time we run a contest in this format, so don’t miss out on this chance. Click here to submit by Sunday 20th January and take the first steps on your screenwriting journey with WriteMovies!

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