Screenwriting Competitions - Reputation

No. There's all this talk of various competitions being 'legit' and it mostly comes from people who've entered them.

Nicholl has major kudos but you still have to work a win or good placement into a career. Austin falls someway below it but a win or good placement can still get eyes on your work.

After that, it tails off alarmingly fast. From my experience, it's hard to find execs and producers who've even heard of the likes of Page and Bluecat, never mind the countless others that have popped up in the last decade or so. Last time I checked, there's 1,500 screenwriting competitions listed on Film Freeway.

What's worse is that most of them do nothing for you other than publish a list of titles, names, along with log-lines and many industry members don't trust them anyway. They don't value their opinion and don't believe they read all the scripts submitted.

Stage 32 are the only competition organisers I know of who actively go out on the road with their winners and try to find them work.

That's why only Nicholl, Austin, and Stage 32 competitions are considered "prestigious" here. I would never advise writers spend their money elsewhere.

I get asked all the time to judge competitions or run one through Script Revolution but I don't because it's such an utterly corrupt and predatory industry that turns career building into gambling.

Don't believe me? Check out Ep 355 "Not Worth Winning" from Scriptnotes after they asked competition winning writers for feedback.

There are so many people out there charging you money to enter contests, charging you money for notes, charging you money for consulting. It doesn’t work. And more to the point, not doing it has worked. In fact, not doing it has worked for literally everyone you and I know who works as a professional screenwriters. So at some point I think we’re asking people to take a leap of faith here and stop doing this. We know that the Nicholls Fellowship matters. It doesn’t always work, but it can work. We know that Austin to a lesser extent can work. Beyond that, stop - Craig Mazin

Props to CJ. I've mostly stuck to the "prestigious" or niche contests... and even those I'm wrapping up. I do wonder about people who enter/place in tons of (random, lesser known) contests and I sincerely hope it works out for them. Just seems like an expensive undertaking.

Expensive and potentially damaging if they list dozens of low placements on unknown competitions. It can look desperate.

That said, a few wins in multiple comps might sway a newer producer or small-time indie rat into a read.

Enter competitions for the prizes not the career prospects. The only people claiming they lead to breaking in are the organisers, the aggregators, and the entrants.

As an emerging screenwriter who's entered and won a few competitions, I'll provide my perspective.

I have never spent, and I never will spend, more than what I can afford as a loss, in case I get nothing. So low-cost competitions only.

I mean no offense to anyone, the following is based on my own observations. American contests, for the most part, based on what I've seen, are in fact cash grabbing scams. I get invites all the time that ask for a specific script. Click on link, see the astronomical entry fee from an unknown organization, and say to myself, yeah, that's a no. So, it wouldn't surprise me if my ratio of rejections is proportional to the number of cash grabbing scams that pose as screenwriting competitions. Which is to say, a lot.

I've talked to people who won at the Austin festival. Their scripts were optioned right away. Good for them. However, I've yet to see anyone get a script recognized by screenwriting competitions, including Austin, and also get directly produced. No short cuts in life. I also can't verify if the optioned screenwriters broke even, at the very least. I, um, never heard back from them.

However, my wins do look good in a letter and they have made it easier to make contacts in the Canadian entertainment industry. I'm not saying anything has resulted in any kind of major win, because it hasn't, at all. A small step in the right direction, so far, nothing more.

For what it's worth, most of us have been there. When I first got into this in 2012, I was an early adopter of the Black List. I threw most of what little I had in savings at it because I truly believed in the concept and thought I could get ahead. What I didn't realise at the time was just how subjective readers are at that level. It was however an incredibly enlightening experience because it taught me how polarised, short-sighted, and ignorant opinions can be. I fell into the trap of believing that addressing one reader's concerns would lead to a better score from the next and learned it could have the opposite effect. I found out that one reader could ignore a lot of typos while another with froth at the mouth if they spotted one. I read through rants from readers that knew nothing about weapons and complaints from readers over elements as petty as geographical locations.

Random story; I once had a Black List reader sandbag a script of mine because I'd chosen a certain location in the California desert. Seven years later, I was shooting a script of mine with a full crew just miles down the road.

The crazy thing is, my partner at the time was specialist in data archiving and kept telling me "you can't rank the subjective" but, like everyone else, I thought I was the special exception who would get noticed.

All that gave me insight into what goes on through the minds of readers when they judge for competitions. It's complete chaos. It's a lottery. It's also an easy way to effectively print money because the operators answer to nobody.

In nearly nine years of being in various screenwriting communities, I can only think of one writer I've seen who feels they owe their career to a competition and that was networking heavily after being a finalist in Nicholl. However, they are an anonymous poster on Reddit who doesn't share their credits so I can't do any due diligence on their claims.

Isn't Blacklist just another expensive Hollywood clique? I've always had reservations about that one. A bunch of people claim they got a "recommend" from Blacklist, but I've yet to see that result is anything.

It used to be referred to as a clique and now more as a casino. The annual list used to hold a lot of kudos despite what it really was but I think the website has really killed off a lot the respect people had for it, partly down to the image of the reader quality and partly down to the perceived success rate.

Thanks CJ, that's what I suspected. Unfortunate. I've seen people proudly saying they finally got something positive on Blacklist. And I'll think, what do you mean finally? How much money did you throw away to get anything? Yeesh.

I know a few people who've gotten results out of InkTip. Like here, they tend to attract smaller independent producers.

However, know this; a couple of years back someone I know who scours the InkTip newsletter messaged me to let me know there was a request that almost perfectly matched a script of mine. They reached out to me to let me know. It was for a major production company that I recognised right away and the owner is a friend of a producer I know. Rather than go through InkTip, I reached out to my producer friend and told him about the advert. He was very familiar with my script (a big fan of it) and felt it did indeed align very well. It felt like kismet but also a little odd that one of the biggest outfits in the business would be asking for specs from unknowns in a newsletter.. He called his friend, the owner of the production company to discuss the request, and the owner knew nothing about it. There was a project but nobody in upper management had placed the InkTip ad. They, like any prodco of that size, simply go to the big agencies and ask for their best material to fit their demands.

We concluded that it was most likely an intern or a reader had put out the request themselves perhaps to try and impress somebody higher up or push through an element of diversity (the request was looking for female led material).

So, nothing untoward going on with InkTip themselves but just a lesson that everything is rarely as it seems. You're not going to get big players scouring the web for new material when there's a huge backlog of loved scripts and easy access to established writers.

Just a quick note. There are free, and I do mean completely free logline competitions. Does it get anyone anything? No idea. But, I do question anything or anyone who charges money to list a logline only. We're talking about 25 words. I ignore anything that claims listing a logline only for a fee, no matter the amount.

I've never even heard of logline competitions. This is thing now, is it? Seems like a great way for people to steal valuable ideas.

The sarcasm is strong in this one...

Sarcasm aside, it is a new thing that's popped up a lot recently, probably because of the pandemic. Could be a gimmick, I really don't know. But I have seen it a lot in recent weeks.

It sounds like a complete reversal of what's needed. I'm going to assume it's come out of Twitter.

Stage32 has a free logline contest.

https://filmfreeway.com/STAGE32MOVIELOGLINECONTEST

I am not, under any circumstances, promoting or saying this is valid. As I said, I have no idea.

Oh, that's not so bad at all. They are actually having industry members give their opinions on them and it's free. That's fine. I think they are putting way too much importance on loglines but then I do see some terrible ones out there.

Phew. That's good to know. I guess I should have said more like feedback competitions.

CJ - due respect (sincerely), but I think your list of worthwhile contests (Nicholls, Austin, and Stage 32) is way too narrow. Even the dude from Stage 32 loves the PAGE contest.  And there are at least a half-dozen of these contests that show up pretty consistently on a wide variety of sources whether you Google ,most prestigious, most worthwhile (or whatever term of art you prefer) - you're going to find a half dozen of the usual suspects. What you will never see on these lists is Stage 32.  

On every listing page for a script there's a section for Accolades & Coverage where a writer can put anything they've achieved, such as recognition in other competitions/contests.

Lily - thanks - but I am aware of that. But here are the rules for editing info on your script.
 

To have any prestigious awards, professional coverage, or recommendations added, and thus be searchable in script listings and eligible for the Featured scripts section criteria, you must send a request to info@scriptrevolution.com noting what you would like adding along with proof of any awards and/or recommendations.

This list shows what's currently accepted and is subject to change as Script Revolution continues to build relationships with new partners while consulting industry members on what they hold in high regard

So - adding anything other than the ones approved is kind of meaningless. 

Dave, I'm not trying to start an argument here and I'm not going to speak for CJ. However, I'm getting the impression perhaps you're unaware this website is not a place to advertise screenwriting contests. We are free to discuss, of course. CJ, if noticed from his earlier comment on this thread, does not support screenwriting contests. If, however, you feel this is real issue, sending a message to the email you posted would be better.

Lily, I have been with this site since its inception.  I am fully aware it is for not advertising contests nor was I doing such. I was responding to CJs comments regarding his view that there were only 3 prestigious contests . That I thought there were more.  For some reason you've done felt it was necessary to point out at any writer could mention Awards on their bio. Not only was that not the point it is somewhat inaccurate it's only three of the contest that CG believe are prestigious how recorded or accounted for in the rating of the scripts. You further compounded this by can accurately categorizing my comment is advertising. Which they were not. I assume if CJ thinks I'm out of line he will let me know.

I'm always open to a frank conversation about competitions and which are valuable to writers.

The dilemma I'm often put in is that I have writers one side and industry members the other. Those writers have invested a lot of money and emotional energy in various competitions and want to believe they are powerful while those industry members have little time to learn about new ones and have a generally dim view over their integrity and ability to identify good content.

I don't really care too much what various opinion leaders within forums consider legit as, more often than not, those opinion leaders have zero experience. I know that's harsh to say but it's a real problem within the break-in screenwriting scene. Compounding this is the fact I'm learning more and more about who's out their judging for many of these comps and it scares me.

I include Stage 32 because I know how the sausages are made and deeply respect their judging criteria. They're left off many lists because a lot of the advice out there is generated by these cultish echo-chambers.

If someone was to put together a strong case for the likes of say Page by proving their writers go on to build careers, I would take that very seriously. Please understand that it means a lot more work for me whenever a competition is added and, with regard to Page, 50% of my placements are in that competition.

Adding placements to the general list of achievements in a listing does have power. If someone is already looking at your work, it might just sway them.

Anyway, the good news is that there might just be something on the horizon which solves a lot of this. Stay tuned. Some of you are going to be very surprised at who I've been talking to.

Glad you are open to the discussion. 

Not sure why you think writers want to believe something that's not true - that has not been my experience. My experience has been that writers are hungry to find the legit contests to that they don't waste their money on the bad ones (at least that is my experience). I can tell you this, my worst success rates in competitions are in fact Nicholls and Austin - I don't do nearly as well in those two as I do in others. HOWEVER - I still believe that Nicholls hands down in the best for getting attention, the most prestigious, and would recommend it to anyone. Austin certainly would be in my top five.  So, we already agree on those two. I have not done enough research into Stage 32 to have an educated opinion on them only that I do know this is the only site (that I can find anyway - so  I could be wrong) that includes them in the top 5.  That being said, your view carries weight with me so I am certainly going to continue to research them.

Not my site (obviously) - but if it were, I would seriously consider doing a member survey of those contests that they thought were the most valuable/prestigious (or whatever the right term is) and include those five in the recognized ones. Just my opinion.  

IMO I wouldn't put "placed X in Stage 32 contest" in a random query-letter since I don't think they're super well known, however I've observed their value to winners has been more the introductions they've been able to facilitate with their own network/known industry-associates, paying to fly some people down to LA for meetings (pre pandemic) ect. I believe I'd prefer that approach over the e-laurel + name on website + "good luck" that perhaps some more gen-pub recognizable contests employ (not to disparage any particular one I've entered both Austin & Nicholl before... don't know much about PAGE besides many members on screenwriting forums listed it in the "big 3" when I first came on the scene)   

btw I even repeated "big 3" and formatting "rules" myself once or twice to new(er) people just because that was general consensus of screenwriters on various forums and therefore must be right, which (while I did mean well) I have def stopped doing as a general thing.

Also I think a certain number of online screenwriters (not aimed @ anyone in this thread) don't really have any idea what the industry wants but still wish to sound authoritative on the chance they'll be seen by some mythical producer who will fly them on his back to sit on the Hollywood sign in recognition.   

CJ - You've been talkin' to Benny Andersson n' Agnetha Fältskog Re: Script Revolution I'm not surprised! :/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-crgQGdpZR0

Message received CJ.  There's a lot of good stories out there.  Lots of good writers.  As a writer, you have to contribute in other areas in the production as well to ensure success.  Finances is a good addition.  I'm learning.

Not my site (obviously) - but if it were, I would seriously consider doing a member survey of those contests that they thought were the most valuable/prestigious (or whatever the right term is) and include those five in the recognized ones. Just my opinion. 

John August and Craig Mazin did this a few years back. They asked writers to feedback on their career success rate with competitions. It was very enlightening and concluded that Nicholl was worth entering, Austin less so, and then it dropped off a cliff.

My experience is that the majority of writers are willfully deluding themselves over many things like this. I wish I shared your optimism LOL.