by John | Dec 28, 2019 | WriteMovies News
It’s been a great year for us here at WriteMovies, with three successful contests – Winter, Spring, and Fall – producing a lot of great scripts! We’ve also been very proud of our first two genre awards to celebrate great writing: the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award and the Horror Award.
We’re already hard at work with our winners on developing their scripts and getting them out there to the industry, but today we look back at our contests and reveal our full Wall of Fame for 2019.
Here’s a reminder of our Grand Prize winning scripts…
- PROMISE OF TOMORROW by Andrew Pennington: A fantastic British rom-com that made us laugh out loud from start to finish, capturing our attention with its quirky characters, heartwarming story, and fantastic audience appeal.
- CARAVAGGIO by Alasdair McMullan: Based on the tempestuous life of the Italian painter, this television pilot was as fun as it was fascinating, making the most of its strong concept and engaging main character.
- MONGER by David Axe: The winner of our Horror Award also took the Grand Prize in the Fall Contest. The plot and the monster that haunts the protagonists both feel fresh, and with well-rounded characters we quickly came to care about, it kept the suspense high throughout.
And a special shout out to the first ever winner of our Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award, too: THE TIME-TRAP by Mark Flood! To describe this script as a thrilling ride would be an understatement; it kept us gripped from the first page to the last.
If you’d like the chance to see your name on next year’s wall, submit to our Winter 2020 Contest and Rom-Com Award today – just one week until the Standard Deadline!
by John | Dec 19, 2019 | Writing Insights
Every year without fail, there’s a question that I can’t seem to answer. To this day, it remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in the world of cinema: is THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS a Halloween film or a Christmas film?
To some, it’s obvious. “It’s both, isn’t it?” they say. This stop-motion animated classic (usually associated with Tim Burton, although actually directed by Henry Selick) tells the story of Jack Skellington, Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, who grows bored of his usual holiday and decides to take over Christmas instead – so of course it’s both.
I’ll admit that this answer may be right, but it doesn’t help because it doesn’t tell me when I should be watching the film. Do I watch it at Halloween or Christmas, or at some strange midpoint on November 27th? Which set of celebrations should it be a part of?
This year felt like the year to try to resolve the issue. With WriteMovies running our first ever Horror Award and announcing the winner on Halloween, we’ve read lots of scripts and watched lots of films that made us think about the Pumpkin King’s holiday, whether they be scary and violent or more light-hearted like THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS.
And after some thought, I think I’ve finally figured it out. I think I’ve finally found an answer to the question…
Because I genuinely believe now that it’s a Christmas film.
Even writing that out now, it still looks strange to see. After all, this is the film that still, 25 years since it’s release, is most emblematic of Tim Burton’s visual style – a style that has been embraced by goths, outcasts, and lovers of the weird and spooky ever since.
It’s a film which has a skeleton as its main character, which opens on shots of ghosts and pumpkins, and which sees Santa Claus (or “Sandy Claws”, as the residents of Halloween Town call him) kidnapped by a misbehaving gang of trick-or-treaters. To call it a Christmas film therefore sounds strange even to my own ears.
But I’ve decided that it is – because thematically, it shares much more with Christmas films than anything else. Fundamentally, it’s the message a film conveys that determines where it belongs. Christmas films generally have a focus on family and community, and THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS is just the same.
After all his (mis)adventures, at the end of the film Jack comes to realize the folly of his mistakes. By turning his back on his friends and the town that loves him, disaster has followed. It’s only by returning to where he belongs, embracing his community, and accepting the love of the ragdoll Sally that he finds happiness again.
Nobody would ever accuse THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS of being a horror film, but I believe this shows that it’s not even a Halloween film either. It belongs firmly to the realm of Christmas, and that’s why I’ll be watching it as part of my holiday celebrations this year.
Of course, give it another twelve months… and I’ll probably change my mind again.
From all of us here at WriteMovies, a very Merry Christmas. Oh, and I supposed a Happy (belated) Halloween, too!
by John | Dec 12, 2019 | Writing Insights
Everyone in the world thinks and speaks differently. The differences in our characters come about for a number of reasons such as our brain structure and genetics – but they are expressed in the way that we conceive of things and our choice of phrases and the words we use.
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by John | Dec 9, 2019 | Our Winners, WMC
The last WriteMovies competition of 2019 – our 20th anniversary year – is over. It’s been a fantastic contest, with amazing scripts at every stage – but in the end, there can only be one victor. And today is the day that we announce the winner!
What is it that separates our winner from the rest? How do we make that decision? We’ve given our hints and tips in the past, but here’s a quick guide for all you screenwriters as you hone your craft…
- Come up with a concept that we haven’t seen before. Your script needs a unique selling point that will make people sit up and take notice!
- Grab us in the first ten pages. These are the most important pages of your script, your chance to make a good impression; make sure you don’t have a weak opening.
- Get us invested in your characters before hitting us with the action. We need a reason to care about the things that are happening – and that means we need to care about the people those things are happening to!
- Make sure you understand the basics before trying anything more complicated. The true masters of the craft know the fundamentals inside and out, and often the best scripts are the ones that implement do the simplest things well.
These are all things we’re looking for when judging – and the things that guided us when making our decision this time around as we picked… the WriteMovies Fall 2019 Screenwriting Contest winner!
|
Winner |
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MONGER,
David Axe |
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| 2nd Place |
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3rd Place |
THE PINCH,
James Raynor |
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HAVENWOOD,
Jai Brandon |
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Honorable Mentions |
|
GHOSTED, WITH LOVE,
Bob Canning |
BREAKING POINT,
Christina Ward |
ROCK’N’BISCUIT,
Craig Miller |
THE PAPER ROUTE,
Danny Howell |
MINDSET,
Edward Smythe |
HOLLYWOOD WOMAN,
Jesse Lopez |
CODE.7390,
Johnny Gilligan |
SUNSHINE STATE: DUENDE,
Kai Thorup |
WHEN NIGHT AWAKENS,
Ken Paiva |
by John | Dec 6, 2019 | Writing Insights
The importance of world-building – in all genres, although particularly science-fiction, fantasy, and horror – can’t be understated. The world of your script isn’t something that should be designed separately from the story, but in tandem with it.
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by John | Dec 2, 2019 | Rom-Com award
Our celebration of great writing continues with our latest genre prize. After the great success of our Sci-Fi and Fantasy and Horror awards, we are proud to announce the first ever WriteMovies Romance and Comedy Award!
Do you like to make people laugh with great comedy? Are you a fan of stories about enduring love and relationships? Or do you like to blend the two into that most classic of genres, the rom-com? Then this is the contest for you!
The WriteMovies Romance and Comedy Award is here to celebrate scripts that lift our spirits through laughter or inspire us with passionate love – or a bit of both! We’ll be accepting scripts in the genres of both comedy and romance, plus the crossover genre of the romantic-comedy.
The winner of this prize will receive:
- Guaranteed pitching to industry
- Two sets of Development Notes to help take their script to the next level
- Further advice to fine tune their script from our experts
Plus, every entry to this award will receive free, automatic entry to the WriteMovies Winter 2020 Screenwriting Contest!
So it’s time to get writing. Standard entry to this award lasts until Sunday 5th January, with the final deadline on Sunday February 9th! Click here to visit the main contest page and submit your script!
by John | Nov 25, 2019 | Our Winners, WMC
This is where the competition starts hotting up! We’ve been hard at work reading and judging for our Fall 2019 Screenwriting Contest, and after some careful decision making, we’ve decided on our semi-finalists…
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