Script frenzy
Script Frenzy is starting April 1st. I don’t know enough about it to endorse it, but some readers might find the faux-competitive nature of it motivational.
Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants attempt the daring feat 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.
It sounds like NaNoWriMo for screenplays. One hundred pages in a month is an ambitious but achievable goal.
If any readers end up entering and finishing, please write in and let us know how it went.
31 Responses to “Script frenzy”
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March 28th, 2008 at 10:33 am
it sounds like NaNoWriMo, cause it essentially is — the same people who do that are behind this. (see http://www.lettersandlight.org/ourevents.php)
March 28th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I’m probably shooting a short in April but I might try to fit this in. It’s certainly a very nice initiative to get people writing!
Good luck and happy writing to those of you who join the Script Frenzy =)
March 28th, 2008 at 11:11 am
I’m actually prepping my outline/3X5 cards for it now. I found out about it through NaNoWriMo and am pretty sure they’re affiliated. I’m kind of cheating cuz I’m polishing up an idea I’ve been kicking around for about 10 years, but it sounds like fun…
March 28th, 2008 at 11:17 am
I participated last year (the 2007 “competition” was in June). It was definitely a good motivator for me. I had three unfinished novels and two screenplays in the drawer and I completed a 118-page screenplay in 29 days. It was really a lot of fun.
Even though the experience was a rushed one, I still learned a lot about the writing process and my strengths and weaknesses related to it. There are a lot of great resources for plot structure, formatting, etc. in the forums. I live in a rural area, but the forums also included groups of people in larger cities connecting and meeting each other. If anything, it could also help you find some new friends and mentors in the business.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Dammit John. I just did a post about this, but now everyone’s gonna come to your site because you are a “working” screenwriter and I’m just a wannabe. Thanks John. Thanks.
I kid, I kid. Who else is joining, and what will you be writing?
March 28th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I entered last year and it was a tons of fun. Something about the combination of a target, a deadline and low expectations just makes the words flow freely. And I was writing really good stuff, surprisingly. Definitely be playing along this year.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Uhm… I wrote 90 pages in 2 weeks. It was my first and only long feature screenplay.
March 28th, 2008 at 11:57 am
I’ll be doing Script Frenzy this year. I’m pretty sure it’s organized by the same people who do NaNoWriMo. Hopefully having a deadline will help me actually finish something.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
With all the where-is-John-Hughes articles that have been floating around, I’ll tell you where he is:
About to clean up the 2008 Script Frenzy with four features banged out in April, that’s where.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
If I wasn’t in post with three short films I’d attempt it. The last screenplay I wrote was very well received so I’ve gotten a little more interested in writing.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Just so i understand — The idea here is to write a 100 Pages in a month, and the reward being you get to feel good?
This sounds awfully lot like that little voice in my head.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Script Frenzy is organized by the same folks behind NaNoWriMo.
March 28th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I’m unemployed, so maybe I’ll sign on to this. It definitely won’t be hard to write 100 pages in a month with nothing to do lol.
Am I the only one that reads everyone’s comments, or am I just the only one that noticed the first comment established that Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo are affiliated? Sorry, but it’s a pet peeve of mine when people repeat things that have already been said. My mom does it all the time…
March 28th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Not sure if this is the screenwriter version
http://14dayscreenplay.com/
But I decided to do it along with another assistant.
We figured if we did it without any penalties we’d probably slack off and quit midway thru. So we turned it into a contest.
Rules:
We are going to exchange pages every night before midnight - minimum of 5 pages.
Script has to be 90 pages minimum.
If you miss a night you owe the other person $10.
If you quit/don’t finish you have to pay for the other person’s drinks (weeknights) for the rest of April.
Both screenplays will be read by 3 of our fellow assistants. Writer who’s script sucks the least wins $60 along with any penalties incurred from the other writer($20 from each of the 3 judges).
If we both fail to finish we owe the 3 judges $50 bucks each - a total of $300.
We know whatever we write is going to suck but it will still be a finished screenplay. We both have a idea and genre along with a basic outline. I’ve gone further and used John’s Big Fish Sequence breakdown. This weekend I’ll break down each sequence and outline the scenes. Figure a minimum of 2-3 sequences a day and I’m golden.
March 28th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I tried to do this two years ago and failed horribly. I think that I got 20 pages in and just gave up. I didn’t do it last year, due to the fact that I was in the middle of doing a Summer class. I gonna try again this year and so far I have a little over 45 scenes planned out and ready to go. I plan on writing 5 to 10 pages a night, if worse comes to worse I’m gonna be writing 10 to 15 a night. Wish me luck, cause I’m gonna need it.
March 28th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
First time I have heard of this. I will attempt this feat with an idea that started with John’s character intro scene challenge from last year. I think back about what I submitted with my character intro and shudder with embarrassment–but I have learned a lot since then and have kept my core concept. Thanks John!
March 29th, 2008 at 12:25 am
Why not. I was probably going to write at least 100 pages next month anyway.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:53 am
I’m in on the Frenzy, if anybody want’s to keep a friendly competition going you can buddy my profil here: http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/eng/user/232822
I participated in the NaNoWriMo but failed so hard it was almost unbelievable. But this time I’m prepared
March 29th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I just finished a draft and am picking over ideas for my next project. I might use this as motivation to jumpstart that script. Even if I only do 50 pages it’s a good start.
March 29th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Okay, I’ve signed up.
Just out of interest John, what’s the shortest time you’ve taken to churn out a first draft?
March 29th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Hells, I’m in post on my latest episode and I’m signing up. I’m a fool.
But the gods watch after fools and travelers, and being both, I’ve got a whallop of luck on my side.
March 30th, 2008 at 2:28 am
Self-discovery via completion of the 2007 ScriptFrenzy: I am way too novelistic to do well. At 20,000 words, my plot was on Act II, Scene I; my character arcs were in beginning discovery mode.
Hitting the boards, I followed the “best” recommendation consensus and acquired J. Michael Straczynski’s The Complete Book of Scriptwriting, and have been lazing through it, prepping for a JUNE date, only to be foxed by the move to April, when my paying job’s commitments are heaviest.
A quandary, no? So I resolved it sensibly. I signed up again, choosing a title, but with No Plot. No Problem, right? I’ll think of something…
March 30th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Hi, this is really random. I just stumbled on your page after googling for The Nines script. It’s currently 6:45am in Jersey (still haven’t slept yet and the sun just came up-ugh), I just finished my midterm for my senior seminar in film- I wrote my paper on The Nines. It’s a great movie and I must of have seen it like 4 times this weekend. Anyway, just wanted to say Hi and I really loved your film.
PS: I’ll bookmark your page, lots of good info an screen writing, so thanks for that, too. (I kinda dabble in screen writing)
March 30th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I joined Script Frenzy last year (in June 2007, as noted by other commenters). I’d written novels before (still in editing and unpublished), and found the Frenzy much more difficult. On the other hand, I learned a lot and had a lot of fun. (I trust that writers will understand how “difficult” can equal “fun.”)
I’ve signed up for this year’s Frenzy. April is a tough month, though.
March 31st, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I once wrote a script in three days… and it looked like it. I’d been mulling over the story, structure and research for a while and then it just all came out of me like a moving picture. Though it was crap (an historical epic on the Boudiccan Revolt), I at least had the main structure down and could go from there.
I wrote from morning till night, slept normally, then repeated the process the next day and half of the next. I remember standing up from the computer after I’d finished and got so dizzy I nearly fell over; it was as if I was coming back to this time and place (when in actuality I was probably just woozy from sitting before a monitor for so long).
March 31st, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I think Paul Schrader said he wrote “Taxi Driver” in a week. I assume he did a lot more rewriting before Scorcese and crew started shooting, but he got that initial draft done in seven days.
March 31st, 2008 at 8:29 pm
I participated in Script Frenzy last year and churned out a pretty decent first draft in a month. It’s a fun contest and a great way to get yourself to write without second guessing yourself. No time!
March 31st, 2008 at 8:30 pm
I think Quentin Tarantino also wrote “Reservoir Dogs” in a week also.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:47 pm
With no foreknowledge whatsoever of “Script Frenzy” I had already embarked upon a ridiculously insane schedule for April. If I pull off 25% of what I hoped to, it’ll probably kill me. So, we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll get a charmingly meaningless token of congratulations from the Script Frenzy folks out of it
April 8th, 2008 at 8:18 am
If you need a contest to motivate yourself– especially one where you only win a “certificate”– you shouldn’t be a writer.
April 10th, 2008 at 2:40 am
I wrote a script on 2006 June 6 (I think that was the day), in the middle of the Seattle International Film Festival, overnight between a day when we saw four films and a day when we saw three. It was a short (I think around eight minutes in that version) wasn’t very good, and I spent the rest of the year refining it into a solid short (I think around 13 minutes, but my page counts and minutes never seem to match). The original version wasn’t good, but the idea at its core was, so there was merit to the overnight product, even if I was pretty sleepy the next day.
Cranking out something in a short amount of time is quite possible. It’s quite possible to crank out something with a worthwhile set of good ideas too. But tuning it into a good script, as opposed to good ideas in script format, seems improbable.
I’d drag something out of my idea file to turn into a draft script if I weren’t trying to animate another project. It sounds like a fun way to do something I’d be doing anyway, which is writing a script.