Screenplay Movie Script Pdf: August 2011

Jitters

Genre: Horror/Family/Comedy
Premise: A recently downsized father moves his family into a dying town, only to find out that it's infested with killer mutated insects.
About: This script made the lower third of the 2009 black list. It sold to Paramount earlier that year. The writer, Marc Haimes, used to be an executive at DreamWorks. He also produced The Legend of Zorro and Hotel for Dogs.
Writer: Marc Haimes
Details: 103 pages – October 2009 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Get ready as I plan to fully contradict myself, only to make excuses as to why I'm fully justified in doing so. You see, one of the elements I've been trumpeting nonstop on the site – urgency – is a huge part of this screenplay. However, the excessive reliance on this tool brings up an important question. Is it possible to add too much urgency to your script? It's a strange question because so rarely is it actually a problem. 99.9% of the time, when there's a pacing issue, it's that the script is too slow. But the answer is yes, you can push things along too quickly, and Jitters is an example of that. I'll explain in a second but let's find out what this is about first.

Off in Nowheresville, USA, some scientist-types have been working on breeding genetically modified bugs. At first it's just to help some nearby plant life. But the results prove that the potential for these bugs is much bigger. In fact, it becomes clear that some of these insects could be constructed for…duh duh duhhhhhh, military purposes. So they invite some government dudes in to show them (we have moths that can camouflage themselves, tarantulas that can fly, ladybugs that can…think?) and let's just say a few of the insects get out of their cages and bug these men to death.

A couple of weeks later Walt Hatcher and his family ride into town ready to start their new lives. Besides the wife and baby, Walt has a 13-year-old daughter Kate, who believes every passed minute is a minute you could have been spending saving the world, and a 15-year-old son Jackson, a selfish smart-alec whose number one priority is to make his sister miserable.

As soon as they roll in, they notice that this isn't going to be like life in the burbs. You see, Walt had a nice job and a nice life but all that went to hell with the economy. Unfortunately, the only jobs left were in the middle of crappy dying towns like this one.

Well, maybe "dying" is a strong word. The insect population around here seems to be doing just fine. In fact, the bug problem is so intense that the entire bug spray shelf at the local hardware store has been cleaned out.

Almost as soon as they get to the house, everybody is off to do their own thing - mainly explore this crapola "town." Kate runs off to spy on a couple of nerdy kids who build remote control mini-robots and Jackson goes after the hot girl who lives next door. But when Walt realizes that the insects are out for blood (courtesy of the town’s lone homeless man who has uncovered the giant insect conspiracy) he must round up his family and get them the hell out of here before they all become bug food.

I have to give it to Jitters. I was laughing a lot more than I expected to. All the characters here are really funny, especially Jackson. There's a line he gives early on that perfectly encapsulates his character. A mosquito is caught in the car and everybody's bickering about whether to kill it or not. Kate, of course, is begging to save it while Jackson nonchalantly offers, "We must kill it. It's the only way it will learn."

It's actually a perfect early scene and one of the classic ways to introduce characters. You present a problem to a group of people and use everybody's differing reactions to tell us what kind of characters they are. So it's in this scene that we learn that Katie is the "all life is precious" save the world girl, and that Jackson could care less about anyone.

There's also a funny scene right afterwards where Jackson follows a hot girl in a white tank top to the freezer section of a convenience store, trying to discreetly tape her on his camera phone while pretending to talk to someone. It's juvenile and silly and yet it's something I totally would've done when I was 14 so I loved it. In fact, all the character stuff here in the first act is top notch.

Where Jitters runs into trouble is that it moves at the speed of some of these flying insects. I'm not sure what the time frame is, but I think the whole thing takes place inside of 12 hours. Now you know me. I'm Mr. Urgency. So why didn’t this work for me? Well, it's quite simple. If your whole movie is going to take place in a town, it's important that we get to know that town. And we never get to know or understand or feel the character of this place because we're off and running before we've even settled in.

For example, we meet the hot girl neighbor and geeky robot building twins, but since we've only known them for a few hours, when they find themselves in danger, we don't care. Had we gone to school with them for a few days or had more than one scene to get to know them, I'm sure we would've found ourselves rooting for them because they're actually solid characters.

I also thought the theme of trying to keep the family together could've been better executed. There are times when you're reading a script and you get to that final act and all of a sudden the characters start spouting out universal themes that up until this point have never even sniffed the story (i.e. "Seize the day." "It's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.") And you're asking yourself, "Where is this coming from?" It's coming from the writer feeling the need to make up for the fact that he hasn't tried to say anything with his story so far. So he has no choice but to wrap everything up in a bow before it all ends.

I feel a lot of that going on here. When Walt starts talking about how family is the most important thing in the world and that's why he needs to save the day, I'm sitting there going, when exactly did this become important? I never got the impression that Walt didn't care about his family at all. And I think the reason for that is, we never spend any time settling into the town. Had we settled into the town, we could've showed Walt being more obsessed with work than he was with his family. But since things move so fast, we never get that opportunity.

On the plus side, you don't really have time to think about all that stuff. The urgency masks a lot of the deficiencies and you find yourself simply trying to keep up with the pace. On top of that, this script is just packed with fun moments. One of my favorites was when the hot girl neighbor tricked Jackson into believing he was being attacked by a giant spider. After she leaves, a real giant spider arrives, and Jackson "isn't buying it this time" and begins messing with the "fake" giant spider, going into this whole routine of petting it and taunting it. Needless to say, it doesn't end well.

That's the true strength of this script. It has this fun lighthearted vibe to it that reminds you of movies like Tremors and Gremlins. It never quite reaches the heights of those films but I can still see this being a really fun silly time at the movies.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I'm going to take a few steps back here. While I've been touting the importance of urgency a lot lately, this script reminded me that you first need to build up to that urgency. For thrillers like Buried and Source Code, yeah, you want to sprint right out of the gate. But certain stories, such as this one, require that set up time to pull the audience in. Only then do you want to start upping the urgency with ticking time bombs and chases. Jitters never took the time to settle its characters in and I think that's why the script feels too fast for its own good.

Jitters

Books for a young aspiring screenwriter

I got a Twitter question from @JulianRamos_

Any books or novels you would recommend a high school senior / aspiring screenwriter to read?

Boy, did you come to the right place. Thanks to membership at several very well-stocked libraries, I pretty much read every screenwriting book published by the time I was in my early-to-mid twenties. After reading dozens of those books, I came away with the feeling that many of the books were saying exactly the same thing. That theory was somewhat proven by my friend J.J. Patrow in this blog post. He compares the storytelling philosophies of Aristotle, Joseph Campbell, Syd Field, Blake Snyder, Peter Dunne, Drew Yanno and then visually demonstrates the similarities via chart. So know that while there are probably hundreds of screenwriting books out there, a lot of them are going to tread on the same ground.

First, formatting is something you want to have drilled into you early on so you don't screw it up. For that reason, I'd make The Screenwriter's Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script by David Trottier one of your first reads.

From there, I'd say that it helps to get a sense of three-act structure and what that means in terms of breaking and developing your story. There are at least a hundred books that'll cover this in some form - I recommend Blake Snyder's Save the Cat. He's taken some flack for the way he somewhat rigidly adheres to a formula, but I think it helps to give beginners some structure. His 15-point beat sheet is a good way to get the hang of writing a film. It also can be of use in helping you dissect films that you like, making it a stepping stone to getting inside the story and understanding why some screenplays work and some don't.

After that, I'd suggest immersing yourself in some more personal memoirs from working writers. It's always good to balance the nuts and bolts education with straight talk about what it's really like not just to develop screenplays, but also work in the industry. There's more to being a screenwriter than just writing scripts, if you know what I mean. To that end, these are among what I'd consider required reading:

Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman

Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman

Billion-Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson's Creek by Jeffrey Stepakoff

Tales from the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories

Go to your local library and find where those books are. I can almost guarantee that you'll probably find a dozen other worthwhile books in a similar vein right next to those on the shelves.

Also, for extra credit, read Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. It's not a screenwriting book. You'll find it in True Crime. Then, go watch the first season of Homicide: Life on the Street, the NBC series inspired by the book. There are a great many storylines and characters that are adapted quite closely from the book, but you'll also notice at least as many differences in character and plot. Some characters are merged, others are invented out of whole cloth. Make yourself aware of what changes have been made and ask yourself why those changes were necessary.

Hopefully, that'll give you some insight into how even the most interesting real-life stories often need to be restructured and re-conceived when adapted as drama. A lot of first-time writers try to adapt things from their lives without understanding that real life is boring and often without the construction that makes drama interesting.

That and Homicide's just an awesome show. David Simon wrote the book when he was a journalist for The Baltimore Sun, but when it became a series, he wrote a few episodes and this started his career as a TV writer/producer. He's since gone on to create The Wire and Treme.

That should be enough to get you started. Be warned that the more screenwriting books you find, the more tempting it is to say, "Well, I'll write my script after I read one or two more of these, just so I'm REALLY prepared." Don't allow reading these books to become an exercise in procrastination.

Does anyone else have what they'd consider essential reading?

Books for a young aspiring screenwriter

Underling

Genre: Horror/Thriller
Premise: A man slowly comes to discover his girlfriend is literally working for the devil and has to find a way to escape.
About: Underling finished in the lower third of the 2009 Black List. I believe this is the writing team’s first screenplay together. One of the writers, Ben Shiffrin, is currently working with another partner bringing the animated comic "Dirty Pair" to life. Shiffin also wrote a spec script a couple of years back called Heartstopper with another writer that made some noise but ultimately didn't sell.
Writers: Dave Stoller and Ben Shiffrin
Details: 110 pages – undated (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

I have to admit that I made a huge mistake when I picked this one up. I thought the logline was, "A man slowly comes to discover his girlfriend is the devil and has to find a way to escape." Now I don't know about you, but that's a movie I would love to see. Had I read the logline a little more closely and realized it was about the girlfriend’s boss being the devil, I never would've read it. Mainly because I've already seen that movie (The Devil’s Advocate).

So as the story unfolded and I began to realize that the girlfriend wasn't the devil, I was kinda disappointed. Still, I tried to refocus and give the script a shot. What I found was a strange screenplay with a vacillating tone and a subject matter that was probably more ambitious than the writers realized.

22-year-old East coaster Tamara Stevens has just gotten a kick ass music management job in Los Angeles. She's going to be working for one of the best managers in the business, the ultra-intimidating Kyle Barrington, described as "Bruce Wayne meets Gordon Gekko."

Somewhat reluctantly dragged along is Tamara's boyfriend and our main character, 22-year-old shaggy haired Alex Jacobs. Alex doesn't really have a lot to do in Los Angeles but he's a very supportive boyfriend and if his better half is moving across the country for her career, he's going to be her number one cheerleader.

They get to Los Angeles and Tamara immediately gets to work. But on one of the first nights out at a club, Alex thinks he sees a man kill a woman in the bathroom. The cloaked-in-shadows man must have seen Terminator 2 too many times because he chases them in their car in almost the exact same manner as the T 1000.

Later on, Alex finds some evidence to suggest that the man he saw is his girlfriend's boss. When he finally gets the courage to tell her, she of course thinks he's crazy. So he does a little digging, and that turns out to be a lousy idea. Kyle finds out and he sicks a bunch of his deadly assistant minions on Alex to warn him off.

In the meantime, Tamara is working later and later at work and she's acting a lot stranger back home. If he didn't know any better, he'd think she's under Kyle's spell.

Eventually, Alex is able to turn one of Kyle's minions against him, and she’s able to educate him about his weaknesses. So Alex must channel up his strength and try to save his girlfriend from the clutches of a man who very well may be the devil himself.

This was one of the odder reading experiences I've had in a while. Despite my misinterpretation of the logline, I still think this script needs to be re-examined. There's something here, but I'm not sure the writers respect the complexity of the subject matter they’ve chosen.

Let's start with the main character. I always get nervous when the main character isn't the most active character in the screenplay. The reason for this is simply because audiences like active characters. They like it when their heroes are the ones making the decisions and pushing the story forward.

The person making all the decisions and being the most active in this story is Tamara. She's the one driving off to LA for a job. She's the one who's working 16 hours a day. Our main character is essentially this slacker being dragged along for the ride. As a result, he feels weak and unimportant.

This inactive follower mentality continues throughout the story. Alex doesn't even have a job as far as I can tell. His only actions revolve around checking up on his girlfriend. And that gets old quickly. This is exactly why The Devil's Advocate worked so much better, because our main character wasn't some secondary hanger-on. He was Tamara's character, the one in the trenches who had the actual job dealing with the antagonist.

It's also why I liked my initial "mistake premise" better (A man finds out that his girlfriend is the devil) because, again, our main character is directly interacting with the antagonist. Wherever there's danger in your story, you want to put your main character as close to it as possible, and that doesn't happen here. There’s this detached quality to the narrative because we're always experiencing the danger second hand. By far, this is the biggest problem with the script. You need to have your main character be more active and in direct contact with the dangerous situation. Keeping Alex so far away from the meat of the problem is killing this script.

Now this next opinion is going to ruffle some feathers so I want to make sure I convey it delicately. Whenever all of the characters in the story are really young – in this case around 22 – it's easy to conclude that the writers are also young. Now this doesn't matter if you're writing something that takes place in a younger universe ("Friends With Benefits" "Friday the 13th"). But if you're trying to tackle subject matter or a storyline that requires a little more sophistication, it can often feel like a couple of teenagers who read about war in their history books trying to write Apocalypse Now. It just doesn't feel like they're up to the task.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. Because the screenwriters are so young (or at least, I'm assuming they are), they make the main characters boyfriend and girlfriend. Why? Because that's all they know. That's the current world they live in. However, while that relationship might work fine in the movies I listed above, when you're trying to tackle something with more gravitas, boyfriends and girlfriends are too lightweight. Most relationships at the age of 22 have what? A four month lifespan? At best? If these characters were older and married however, there would be so much more at stake. Alex wouldn’t just be trying to save some girlfriend he's probably going to break up with in two months anyway. He'd be trying to save the love of his life. (Remember people: stakes!)

I'm not saying you're a doomed screenwriter until you turn 28. But I am saying that in order to mask your lack of life experience when dealing with sophisticated subject matter, you should match the ages of your characters to the situation they're in and not just make them 22 because you're 22. Then you have to do the research and make sure those older characters act like they're older. That might mean giving your script to a 35-year-old and asking them, "Does this character really act like a 35-year-old?" If you look at Kyle, for example, he doesn't act like a 35-year-old at all. He's petulant and immature and thinks the world revolves around him. This character is supposed to be one of the oldest entities in all of time, and he never acts older than 23 years old. If all of this sounds too complicated, then just write characters and subject matter that you're extensively familiar with and you should be fine.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that readers expect young writers to be sloppy. So if you give them clues that you're a young writer, and they pick up on some sloppiness, they're going to make a connection between the two and dismiss you because of it, however unfair that is. So mix up the ages in your screenplay and then do your homework on the older characters to make them honest. You have parents and uncles and aunts. Ask them questions. Ask them if they'd really react the way the older characters in your screenplay reacts. It's your job as a writer to create the most honest believable world possible, no matter how extraordinary the story you're telling is.

Anyway, I'm rambling and I'm making this sound like a terrible screenplay, which it really isn't. It's just too unfocused and shoots further than what the writers are willing to commit to. I'm not saying they aren't capable of getting there. But I would've loved more depth to this story. It was too all over the place for my taste.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: One of the easier ways to spot a young writer is tone. Whether we’re talking about humor that's too broad for the subject matter or repeatedly jumping between genres or inconsistent characters, it can be confusing for a reader trying to grasp what kind of story you're trying to tell if the writer is jumping all over the place. For example, if you read the first 10 pages of this script, you'd probably think it was a romantic comedy. If you read the last 20 pages, you'd think it was torture-porn in the vein of Hostel. You can't just jump back and forth between those kinds of extremes and expect the reader to stay with you unless your name is Quentin Tarantino. And unfortunately, there's only one Quentin Tarantino.

Underling

Tuesday Talkback - Should studios inform the original writers when they prep a remake?

Sunday, Deadline posted a story about how screenwriter James Toback was rather upset to find out secondhand that Paramount was planning a remake of The Gambler. Toback was the writer of the original version, which he considers one of his more personal films. Chief among Toback's complaints was the fact that the studio didn't even offer the courtesy of letting him know about the remake before announcing it to the world via Deadline.

Legally, Paramount was under no obligation to do so. They bought the script. They own the property. In a legal sense, Toback has no claim to the material any longer so there's no reason they would have had to tell him - but would it at least have been the moral thing to do.

This isn't the first such case of this happening. Wes Craven was rather blunt last year when discussing the fact that he wasn't consulted about the remake of what is arguably the film most associated with him - A Nightmare on Elm Street. He not only directed the original film, but he wrote the script and created the character of Freddy Krueger. Considering the studio had been looking to jump-start the franchise, you'd think they'd have at least courted him in an effort to secure his blessing, yet all indications from Craven are that they didn't. But again, they didn't have to.

And of course, the people who hold the rights to the original film version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer have been trying for a few years now to get their reboot off the ground - without the involvement of creator Joss Whedon. This again strikes me as a botched move, as not getting Whedon's blessing runs the risk of alienating his loyal fan base.

But what do you think? No laws are being broken here, so it's not as if the studios or producers owe the original creators anything in a legal sense. If you were in the studio's shoes, would you have given the original writers a courtesy call? If you were one of those original writers, would it bug you to find this stuff out from a third party, or do you think you'd accept that this is how the business works.

Tuesday Talkback - Should studios inform the original writers when they prep a remake?

Jumper Of Maine

Genre: Drama
Premise: A young emergency response driver with Tourette's syndrome falls in love for the first time.
About: If this sounds familiar, it's because it's one of the winners of last year’s Nickel (sic) competition. Yes, we have a real live winner here.
Writer: Andrew Lanham
Details: 108 pages (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

First earthquakes. Now hurricanes. How are you East coasters handling all this? Speaking of the East Coast, today's script takes place in Maine (see how I did that?). Not only that, but it won the most prestigious screenplay competition in the world!

I figure screenplay competitions have been getting a lot of discussion on the site lately, so why not show you what a big winner looks like? Who's the big winner?! Mikey’s the big winner! The thing is, if you want to win this contest, the granddaddy of them all, you're probably going to need a couple of things, and a good projectile vomit joke isn't one of them.

You're going to need a profound/interesting theme and/or a compelling nontraditional main character. The competition skews towards meaning. They want you to say something bigger about the world and the people in it. It's screenwriting at its purest. You have to remember that the contest is affiliated with the Academy, and as we all know, the Academy likes to reward films that have a little more going on behind the bread basket.

To that end, I'd say it's the best outlet for writers who are interested in writing non-commercial fare. If you’re someone who loves to dig into characters rather than imagine how a marketing department will sell your film, this competition is probably for you.

25-year-old Oliver James is a paramedic with Tourette's syndrome. Now most of you know Tourette's syndrome as the thing that makes people swear uncontrollably. But as Oliver tells us , Tourette's syndrome can give you a multitude of tics, not just an excuse to swear a lot. Oliver, for instance, uncontrollably jumps. He uncontrollably honks. He uncontrollably licks things. If he concentrates really really hard, he can prevent himself from doing these things. But he's usually helpless against them.

One day, while off duty, Oliver hears about a single mother whose eight-year-old daughter is having a seizure. He races to the house and saves the daughter's life. Afterwards, the mother, Allison, approaches him, and we find out that there's actually a history between the two. Allison was Oliver's sister’s best friend before she died eight years ago, and Oliver has been infatuated with her ever since.

In fact, Oliver has pretty much been stalking Allison for eight years (hence why he was able to get to the house so fast). A little bit dangerous and emotionally distant, the newly single Allison starts hanging out with Oliver, and he falls for her at light speed. But his physical tics start becoming emotional tics and the regular complications of a relationship are compounded by Oliver just trying to be "normal" enough to be around her. Other complications arise, from both the past and the present, and Oliver will have to overcome them in order to finally get what he's been searching for - a true "normal" connection with another human being.

I can understand why Jumper of Maine won. You're exploring a type of character that movies don't typically explore. The script also has an interesting rhythm to it. It starts off exploring the origins of Tourette's syndrome before segueing into a narrative that occasionally likes to jump (just like it's main character!) into the past, always keeping things a little off kilter so you never get too comfortable.

Jumping around in time takes a certain level of skill. The writer has to understand when and where to make those insertions so they don't feel clumsy and Lanham knows what he's doing in that regard. If I have a problem with the script, it's that it's so heavy-handed. For example, I'm not sure we needed the dead sister backstory stuff. We’re already dealing with some pretty complicated subject matter here. To throw another layer of noodles on an already jampacked screenplay lasagna might've stacked things too high.

Don't get me wrong. I like characters with substance and backstory, but I think sometimes writers can get carried away. Every character is so complicated in this story that sometimes it detracts from the point of it all. For example, can't the mom, who has a total of one page of screen time, just be a mom? Does she have to be a mom with Alzheimer's? (For the record, Alzheimer's has become a huge crutch for protagonists’ parents in many of the recent screenplays I've been reading. Think twice before using it).

The other talking point here is the Tourette's syndrome. Whenever you create a character with a disability or a disease, you're walking a fine line. On the one hand there's something honest and important about exploring a person who's suffering from something the average person doesn't understand. But on the other, it can look like you’re pining for the reader’s sympathy. If the reader senses that they’re expected to feel a certain way, you can bet they're going to feel the opposite.

Having said that, I'd still recommend this script.

Why?

Because it's different.

One of the things you learn by reading thousands of scripts is that most people are writing the same kinds of stories. Comedies with a couple of bumbling slackers at the helm. Thrillers in a contained environment with time running out. A group of characters trapped in a scary location. Romantic comedies with two opposite main characters. And I'm by no means saying you can't turn any of those scenarios into a good screenplay. A good writer can find unique avenues in any story.

But it is nice, every once in a while, to read about characters or read about a situation that nobody else writes about. And that's what we have here. This is a relationship we don't have a lot of context for, so every story beat is a little unfamiliar.

That's not to say I liked all the choices here. On the Melodrama Richter Scale, I'd probably rate this one above the recent East Coast quake. I thought the script went overboard with the sister getting yanked out to sea. I can't see how that doesn't feel forced and manipulative on the big screen. I would get rid of the Alzheimer's stuff. We have plenty of other issues to work through here. And the stuff with Oliver and Allison is so good that you don't need it. I might even get the ex-husband more involved. As it stands, he's not a real obstacle for Oliver. But if Allison still had feelings for him and at some point he wanted to try again, that could really add some conflict to Oliver's pursuit.

All in all I'd say this was an interesting screenplay. It's far from perfect but it gives us a glimpse into a world we’re not familiar with and does so with a high degree of skill. For that reason, it's worth checking out.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: There's been a lot of discussion recently about the importance (or lack thereof) of screenplay competitions. Here are my thoughts. I think competitions are great. The reason I think they’re great is because screenwriting is a very lonely profession. You might go three years before getting a script in front of somebody who matters. That's a long time to wait for gratification. What screenplay competitions do is they give you that gratification now. Even if you don't place, there's something satisfying about sending your script out into the world. There is a feeling of achievement, and that feeling is essential in a profession that doesn't have many opportunities to feel that way. The truth is, you're probably never going to win one of these things unless you've been writing for seven or eight years or you have an extensive background in other types of writing. But my experience has been that good screenplays usually advance. And getting to the quarterfinals or the semifinals – while not winning – may give you the confidence to finally send that script out to that big contact or add that final polish that's going to put your opus over-the-top. I think without deadlines or checkpoints, it's too easy to get lost in this process. It's too easy to believe that's it's all for nothing. Screenplay competitions are a great way to keep you focused and on track. So pick a few of the better competitions out there (this one, Austin, Zoetrope, Page, Bluecat) and don't use them to try and get that impossible win. Use them to keep yourself writing.