Nickelodeon Writer's Script Review

A few weeks ago at the San Diego Latino Film Festival, I was lucky enough to attend a writers conference held by Nickelodeon for aspiring TV writers. The event is designed to help writers polish their spec scripts for submission to the annual Nickelodeon Writing Fellowship competition.

Every year, Nickelodeon, Disney, NBC and a few other studios hold fellowship competitions for aspiring TV writers. In the process, hopefuls submit sample or spec scripts, and the studios will judge the scripts to ascertain those with the most potential. Winners have the opportunity to work for a year under the fellowship, learning the field with an eventual chance to get staffed on one of their shows as a writer.

It's a very heated competition, with many talented people applying. The Nickelodeon Writers Script Review gives people the opportunity to have an actual sit down meeting with the execs at Nick who do the script judging and have them give their honest opinion of your script and provide constructive criticism and analysis of it. This review is invaluable because it allows you to hear from the horses mouth exactly what they're looking for in a winning script, and basically helps you identify problems so that you can build the best script possible to submit to the fellowship.

The two Nickelodeon execs I met with were awesome. Relaxed, friendly and super helpful. I was incredibly nervous, but they made me feel comfortable and provided honest and constructive criticism. It's helped me see the strengths and weaknesses in the script and I feel super-charged to go back and do some quality rewrites.

One of the books they recommended is Story by Robert McKee. He's a pretty popular author (figuring prominently in Adaption, Kaufman's film about the stresses of screenwriting). It's a great tool for understanding story structure and the unspoken meaning within stories. You can buy it here.

Last round...

So I'm in the last round of the screenplay competition I enrolled in September. I finished 3rd in my heat once again, so I'm doing okay, although not as well as I'd like. My assignment in the last round is as follows: The Location has to be set in a nursery. A wig has to appear in the script at some point and the genre is ...drum roll please...OPEN!!!! Yeay!!! THANK GOD. The last 3 assignments have all been in genres I'm bad at: Horror, Monster Movie, and Science Fiction. Bleh..but now my options are much broader. I just got my assignment an hour ago, so I'm going to spend the rest of the night thinking of a killer story idea. Ciao!

Oy, screenwriting contests

Is it me or does the word screenwriter conjure up images of a cliched hipster stroking his beard, while lounging in a coffeeshop bragging about the psychedelic drug trip screenplay he'll never finish? Well maybe it is just me, but it seems like everyone and their mother is working on a screenplay these days. So, I've decided to distinguish myself from the average "unpaid screenwriter" crowd, by enrolling in a screenwriting contest to brush up my skills. NYC Midnight has a lot of fun creative arts-related contests they hold throughout the year, from short stories to 48 hour filmmaking contests. They're all fun and allow you the chance to get some honest feedback from professionals in the industry. So at the last minute I decided to enroll in their 2009 short screenplay contest. The premise is, you have to write a complete screenplay in 48 hours using a specific genre, location, and item they have designated for you. But it's a lot harder than it seems. For instance, my specific group had to write screenplays where the location had to be set in a horse stable, the story needed to include a generator at some point, and the genre had to be a monster movie. What?? Could it be anymore random? And it had to be done in 48 hours. Needless to say I struggled through the process...Having to write a story in a genre that I'm completely unfamiliar with and do it in two days is a daunting task. Eventually I came up with an idea that I think worked okay. It's obviously not a story that I would ever come up with on my own, but given that I only had two days I don't feel like it was that bad. The formatting was a little iffy (too much action and not enough dialogue! and dialogue is too corny!), but now I am a little more prepared for the next round. I'll let you know how good (or embarrasingly) bad I do after the judging ends on October 23rd. Until then I'll continue to work on my feature screenplay and run through my head all the improvements I could have made to the contest screenplay. Anyways, check out the site, if you're ever looking to brush up on your writing!

Screenwriting Contest

Hey, there's a cool screenwriting contest out right now..check it out.