Now That Nanowrimo is Over, Consider Script Frenzy

It’s the first Monday after the end of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). For some it may be a very blue Monday. If you reached your novel writing goal, you’re facing another steep mountain ascent: revision and re-writing. If you didn’t reach the goal, you may be in despair because you can’t think of a thing to do with your manuscript. Why don’t you consider Script Frenzy?

The Script Frenzy Contest

Script Frenzy is like NaNoWriMo except the material you try to produce is a script of some kind. The goal is 100 pages, roughly 20,000 words, written April 1 through April 30. The prize is the satisfaction of having completed a script or scripts.  The rules specify the writing has to be “screenplays, stage plays, TV shows, short films, comic book and graphic novel scripts, adaptations of novels, or any other type of script your heart desires.” For NaNoWriMo participants the keyword is adaptation. You may adapt your NaNoWriMo novel (or your NaNoWriMo novel-in-name-only mess if that’s a more appropriate description) as a screenplay, graphic novel script, stage play, etc.  

The Script Frenzy goal is set at 100 pages because movie scripts are usually estimated to run one minute per page and currently American and European feature-length movies run around one and a half hours. Nonetheless, Script Frenzy allows participants to submit multiple shorter scripts as long as the total is 100 pages.  

Script Frenzy allows you to team up with a writing buddy. Splitting up the duty with a friend may make achieving the goal easier to reach.

International Participation

Some participants outside the U.S. may be at an advantage when it comes to seeing their projects turned into a show for an audience. In the U.S. it’s almost impossible to get a screenplay in front of a pair of eyes belonging to someone who can pass it on to someone else who makes decisions about movies or TV.  I suspect writers in Europe and India face the same problem.  Nevertheless, you will never get your script in front of anyone if it does not exist.  In other countries where direct-to-video production is inexpensive, it may be easier to see your first script produced.  

Script frenzy does not require scripts to be in English.  ”Any other language is fine,” according to Chris Baty, Executive Director. 

Writers outside the U.S. also have a reasonable chance of having their radio drama performed, at least compare to writers in the U.S.  Radio plays are, for all purposes, extinct in the U.S.  I don’t think I’ve heard one on the air since I was a child. Writers in other countries may easily write for the radio drama market where production costs are minimal.  We writers in the U.S. must content ourselves with podcasts.

Sources, links and further reading

General

“Script Frenzy,” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Script_Frenzy.

Script Frenzy. http://www.scriptfrenzy.org.

“Movie Making Manual.”  Wikibooks.  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Movie_Making_Manual.

Formatting

Proper formatting is essential in screenwriting.  The following resources exemplify or explain the U.S. standard.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Screenplay_example.svg.  An example of a properly formatted page from the Wikipedia article “Screenplay.”  It’s a .svg file, so Triond won’t let me upload it here.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Movie_Making_Manual/Screenplay_Format.  The Screenplay Format page from Wikibook’s “Movie Making Manual.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuet_Dw6H4A.  A video by Tony Ramirez for Expert Village in which he describes scriptwriting format.  Kudos to Tony for making this video that gets to the nitty-gritty details.