Winter 2021 Screenwriting Contest – Winners Announced!

It’s time for our Winter Contest to come to an end with a brand new set of winners! Our deserving Grand Prize winner walks away with $3500, and the top three all receive pitching to industry, script development, and more.

From rom-coms to sci-fi epics, from historical dramas to horrors and thrillers, we’ve seen it all in this competition. As ever, though, there are some universal truths we found when reading your scripts.

Here’s what we learned from the submissions to our Winter Contest. Make sure you take our feedback on board as you prepare to submit to our new Spring Contest and Sci-Fi and Fantasy Award, both of which are now open!

• A number of scripts here had sparkling dialogue and lovable characters – but the concept was ordinary. You absolutely need a unique selling point to grab our attention (and a producer’s attention, too!), or you’ll get lost in the crowd.
• On a related note, there were several submissions which were too predictably plotted. Of course, it’s vital for screenwriters to understand structure, but if you blindly follow a formula, we can see what’s coming a mile away. Remember to keep us on our toes!
• The world could do with some feel-good stories at the moment, but too many scripts lacked enough conflict. Even for romance or comedies, conflict makes a script interesting; don’t remove it entirely, but find ways to rework and make it appropriate to the genre.
• If you’re writing a TV pilot, don’t just set up future episodes! Your pilot should tell a self-contained story of its own. Most of the pilots we read are nothing but an introduction to the world and characters, and fail to tell a compelling story.

Thank-you to everyone who entered this contest for giving us so much great stuff to read. Congratulations to all of you who made quarter-finals, semi-finals, and particularly our winners and honorable mentions!

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Winter 2021 Screenwriting Contest winners and Honorable Mentions!