Novelists are familiar with NaNoWriMo, the annual personal novel-writing challenge that begins in November. It has fueled many successful projects and bolstered much confidence in its ten years. Now screenwriters have their own personal script-writing challenge: Script Frenzy.
Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants take on the challenge of writing 100 pages of scripted material in the month of April. As part of a donation-funded nonprofit, Script Frenzy charges no fee to participate; there are also no valuable prizes awarded or “best” scripts singled out. Every writer who completes the goal of 100 pages is victorious and awe-inspiring and will receive a handsome Script Frenzy Winner’s Certificate and web icon proclaiming this fact.
More people who want you to write! The immediate gain is purely personal. The bigger picture will be what you make it. New writers and seasoned alike, these marathons are a fun way to break your patterns and see what happens. Try it!
Both projects are managed by non-profits so, if you are able, do gift them with a little something to show them you care. Good writing and good luck meeting your own writing challenge if you choose to join the thousands rapid-firing ideas onto paper next month.
Visit the Script Frenzy official site.
How To Be An Overnight Success
March 27, 2009
Here’s your Friday thought:
Expertise can be yours with a simple 10,000 hour investment.
We writers–high-school students to showrunners to Nobel Laureate novelists–certainly know a few things when it comes to creating stories. We make people laugh, we make them cry, and–if we’re lucky– our audience claims our stories as a part of them forever.
Even that phenomenal success does not necessarily mean we may claim the title of “expert”…not in its truest sense, anyway (for there is much room in our culture for casual use of the idea). It doesn’t mean we know all there is to know about our art, our craft. Today’s post is a reminder to seek out that which we DO NOT know in our work and learn more about it. Today. Do it. Just one thing.
Want to know how to become an overnight success? Sure, there are people who, every minute, land in New York, London, and Hollywood’s eager laps and get swooped up into the publicity machine to be lauded as fantastic! A spectacular spectacular! And surely they are all of those things…but perhaps “dazzling” isn’t an all-encompassing definition of success nor expertise.
You need a particular kind of practice— deliberate practice —to develop expertise. When most people practice, they focus on things they already know how to do. Deliberate practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t do well—or even at all. Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become.
So whoever you are, whatever your accomplishments, keep working. Stay curious. And remember that you will always have learned more than someone else and there is always someone who has learned more than you do. And that’s a great thing.
For more on the subject, check these out online or at your local library:
The Expert on Experts by Christopher Percy Collier at Fast Company
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
The New York Times talks with Roger Moore (a podcast direct link)
Special Guest: Michael Hauge on the Prologue
March 17, 2009
Coaching veteran Michael Hauge, author of Writing Screenplays That Sell and Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds, has offered readers of THE STORY SPOT these words on crafting the introductory pages of your screenplay. This piece, along with others by Michael, can be found on his website at www.screenplaymastery.com.
THE PROLOGUE OPENING
by Michael Hauge
The first 10% of your screenplay is what I term the SETUP, during which you must transport the reader from the real world into the world you’ve created, as well as get them emotionally involved with the setting and characters before your main story line begins. While many films open with the hero living his or her everyday life, you may want to consider preceding your hero introduction with a PROLOGUE. Here you begin with some outside time, location or character, in order to draw the reader into the story more quickly or powerfully, and to create anticipation of what is to come.This Prologue can take the form of a FLASHBACK, BOOKEND, MID-STORY PEAK MOMENT, or NEMESIS INTRODUCTION:
Variety Launches New Job Search Site
March 11, 2009
Industry staple Variety has launched VarietyMediaCareers.com, its entertainment industry-focused job search site. They’ve transformed TheBiz, their effort at social networking, into a Monster.com for the industry.
Where else but in Hollywood will you see these four jobs posted right next to each other reminding us all that it’s one tiny flopped feature from the corner office to the commissary.
Need a job? Why not give it a try?
www.varietymediacareers.com
John August: Notes on the Industry
March 3, 2009
Derek Dauchy: If you can pitch and understand it as a title, it’s gigantic. If you can sell it with a logline, great. If you need a paragraph, you’re in trouble.
Keep in mind that this all refers to the major studio system and it appears to basically be business as usual except a tad more in earnest, understandably so. The state of indie financing is a whole other kettle o’ fish.
Good stories will always be good stories so don’t let all the hubbub get you down.
Keep doing what you do; keep writing!
Pop over to johnaugust.com to read the original post.