How I Judge A Screenwriting Contest
July 6th, 2005
by Charles Deemer
In May and June, I was the final judge in the 2005 Pacific Northwest Writers Association's screenwriting competition. Perhaps my reflections on this task and responsibility will be informative to beginning screenwriters.
As the judge who would select first, second and third places, I was sent the ten finalists for the award, which had been selected by previous readers. With each anonymous script came a logline and a short synopsis.
The first thing I did was throw away the loglines and synopses. These tools, which are so useful to potential buyers of material, are crutches to a contest judge. I didn't want a logline or synopsis to "clarify" a story for me -- what I knew about each story and characters I wanted to learn directly from the script.
Being a screenwriting teacher, I have considerable experience in reading student scripts. I read about 100 of them a year. I had learned from this experience that some of the scripts probably could be rejected very early in the reading process. When I was a reader for a production company, for example, I sometimes rejected a script after only a few pages. However, since this was a competition, I decided to read at least twenty pages of each script. But if I could eliminate some of them after the first act, I would.
I began reading. My initial impression was that almost no one seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing. Three-fourths of the scripts were shooting scripts formatted in a style popular twenty years ago but out of fashion today. In fact, I was appalled by how many writers were shooting themselves in the foot by not presenting a script in contemporary spec script format and style.
Besides writing a script full of camera angles, long descriptions of people and places, and other novelistic rhetoric not appropriate in a screenplay, virtually all of the scripts would have benefited from a visit by the friendly chain saw. Scene efficiency was terrible. Good half-page scenes had been blown up into bad two page scenes. Dialogue went on forever -- chat, chat, chat, going nowhere.
After reading twenty pages of each script, I eliminated half of them. I read the remaining five to their midpoints, about to page 55 or so. I was able to eliminate another. I now was left with four scripts for three prizes. In truth, I thought none of the scripts actually deserved a prize but I'd already experienced the firestorm that results when a judge refuses to award prizes. I'd gone through this a couple decades earlier and didn't want to experience the consequences again. Therefore, I decided I'd make this a "relative" contest and do the best I could with the material at hand. In other words, I'd give them a relative order.
It also was clear to me by now that two of the four scripts were contending for first and second, the other two for third. I read the last two scripts cover-to-cover and made my selection for third place. Then I read the other two but couldn't make an immediate decision.
I let the scripts sit for a few days and picked up the two contenders again. Comparing them was like comparing apples and oranges. One was a sci-fi thriller, the other a witty comedy. Both were over-written but not nearly as badly as the others. I finally asked myself this question: if these were both movies, which would I go see first? The sci-fi thriller, I decided, and this was the script I selected as the winner.
If I was appalled by the writing of these scripts, I was impressed by the stories. All of these writers had stories to tell that were worth telling. However, this made their writing problems tragic because they had become their own worst enemies. Every screenwriter here had committed the cardinal sin of letting the writing get in the way of the story. As a reader for a production company, I wouldn't have stayed with any of these scripts long enough to appreciate the story. These writers were thinking like fiction writers, not screenwriters. In fact, they didn't seem to comprehend that a screenplay is a blueprint for a movie -- that is, unless they were directing the movie themselves.
I couldn't help but wonder where on earth these writers had learned screenwriting. Most apparently were copying published shooting scripts. Two clearly had copied format from Syd Field's classic book, using devices popular in the 1980s but not used today. None showed evidence of having taken a screenwriting class, at least not from a teacher who was up-to-date on current spec script style.
Any competent screenwriting teacher could improve the writing skills of these screenwriters manyfold by sitting down with them for fifteen minutes and explaining what their writing task is and is not. Screenwriting is not rocket science. All of these writers made their storytelling task far more difficult than it should have been -- and made their scripts far harder to decipher. I believe all of these scripts would have been rejected after ten pages by a prodco reader for technical reasons alone.
What a waste of good stories! What a waste of effort.
Here are some morals from the experience:
Good models for writing spec scripts are hard to find but there is one screenwriter I recommend: Harold Pinter. He writes with great economy, often in fragments, and with dramatic clarity. Being European, he uses a different format but his rhetorical screenwriting style is worth emulating. Another good model is John Guare. Check out their scripts The French Lieutenant's Woman and Atlantic City for good models of contemporary screenwriting style.
Charles Deemer teaches graduate and undergraduate screenwriting at Portland State University. He is the author of the electronic screenwriting tutorial, Screenwright: the craft of screenwriting. His book Seven Plays was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. His new book, Practical Screenwriting, is due in 2005. Deemer maintains two websites:
In May and June, I was the final judge in the 2005 Pacific Northwest Writers Association's screenwriting competition. Perhaps my reflections on this task and responsibility will be informative to beginning screenwriters.
As the judge who would select first, second and third places, I was sent the ten finalists for the award, which had been selected by previous readers. With each anonymous script came a logline and a short synopsis.
The first thing I did was throw away the loglines and synopses. These tools, which are so useful to potential buyers of material, are crutches to a contest judge. I didn't want a logline or synopsis to "clarify" a story for me -- what I knew about each story and characters I wanted to learn directly from the script.
Being a screenwriting teacher, I have considerable experience in reading student scripts. I read about 100 of them a year. I had learned from this experience that some of the scripts probably could be rejected very early in the reading process. When I was a reader for a production company, for example, I sometimes rejected a script after only a few pages. However, since this was a competition, I decided to read at least twenty pages of each script. But if I could eliminate some of them after the first act, I would.
I began reading. My initial impression was that almost no one seemed to know what they were supposed to be doing. Three-fourths of the scripts were shooting scripts formatted in a style popular twenty years ago but out of fashion today. In fact, I was appalled by how many writers were shooting themselves in the foot by not presenting a script in contemporary spec script format and style.
Besides writing a script full of camera angles, long descriptions of people and places, and other novelistic rhetoric not appropriate in a screenplay, virtually all of the scripts would have benefited from a visit by the friendly chain saw. Scene efficiency was terrible. Good half-page scenes had been blown up into bad two page scenes. Dialogue went on forever -- chat, chat, chat, going nowhere.
After reading twenty pages of each script, I eliminated half of them. I read the remaining five to their midpoints, about to page 55 or so. I was able to eliminate another. I now was left with four scripts for three prizes. In truth, I thought none of the scripts actually deserved a prize but I'd already experienced the firestorm that results when a judge refuses to award prizes. I'd gone through this a couple decades earlier and didn't want to experience the consequences again. Therefore, I decided I'd make this a "relative" contest and do the best I could with the material at hand. In other words, I'd give them a relative order.
It also was clear to me by now that two of the four scripts were contending for first and second, the other two for third. I read the last two scripts cover-to-cover and made my selection for third place. Then I read the other two but couldn't make an immediate decision.
I let the scripts sit for a few days and picked up the two contenders again. Comparing them was like comparing apples and oranges. One was a sci-fi thriller, the other a witty comedy. Both were over-written but not nearly as badly as the others. I finally asked myself this question: if these were both movies, which would I go see first? The sci-fi thriller, I decided, and this was the script I selected as the winner.
If I was appalled by the writing of these scripts, I was impressed by the stories. All of these writers had stories to tell that were worth telling. However, this made their writing problems tragic because they had become their own worst enemies. Every screenwriter here had committed the cardinal sin of letting the writing get in the way of the story. As a reader for a production company, I wouldn't have stayed with any of these scripts long enough to appreciate the story. These writers were thinking like fiction writers, not screenwriters. In fact, they didn't seem to comprehend that a screenplay is a blueprint for a movie -- that is, unless they were directing the movie themselves.
I couldn't help but wonder where on earth these writers had learned screenwriting. Most apparently were copying published shooting scripts. Two clearly had copied format from Syd Field's classic book, using devices popular in the 1980s but not used today. None showed evidence of having taken a screenwriting class, at least not from a teacher who was up-to-date on current spec script style.
Any competent screenwriting teacher could improve the writing skills of these screenwriters manyfold by sitting down with them for fifteen minutes and explaining what their writing task is and is not. Screenwriting is not rocket science. All of these writers made their storytelling task far more difficult than it should have been -- and made their scripts far harder to decipher. I believe all of these scripts would have been rejected after ten pages by a prodco reader for technical reasons alone.
What a waste of good stories! What a waste of effort.
Here are some morals from the experience:
- A spec script is not a shooting script.
- Screenwriting is not fiction writing.
- Consult a screenwriting book less than five years old, written by a competent author.
- Don't let your writing get in the way of your story.
- Less is more.
- Less is more.
- Less is more.
Good models for writing spec scripts are hard to find but there is one screenwriter I recommend: Harold Pinter. He writes with great economy, often in fragments, and with dramatic clarity. Being European, he uses a different format but his rhetorical screenwriting style is worth emulating. Another good model is John Guare. Check out their scripts The French Lieutenant's Woman and Atlantic City for good models of contemporary screenwriting style.
Charles Deemer teaches graduate and undergraduate screenwriting at Portland State University. He is the author of the electronic screenwriting tutorial, Screenwright: the craft of screenwriting. His book Seven Plays was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. His new book, Practical Screenwriting, is due in 2005. Deemer maintains two websites:
Comments
Only logged-in members can comment. You can log in or join today for free!
Advertisement
