A Sea of Writers

[bison]

From their webpage.



"The popular Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Competition presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a received a record 4,440 entries, fellowship coordinator Greg Beal told indieWIRE yesterday. The annual competition, for writers who have not sold or optioned work, distributes up to five grants of $25,000 each.

In 1989, the program received 1,395 entries, Beal told indieWIRE. The following year the numer jumped to 2,880, and in 1991 submissions again grew by another thousand. Since 1991, the fellowships have received over 3,800 submissions, and entries have been above 4,000 for the last three years. The winners willbe announced this fall. Attributing the steady increase in annual entries, in part, to the perception that the screenplay is the new "great American novel", Beal added that, for some, the screenplay competition is viewed as a sort of "lottery". Given the perspective that writing a script is a formulaic process where writers think they can simply "fill in the blanks", Beal believes that would-be writers see finishing a 120 page script as a much more attainable goal than writing a novel. "More of us have been affected by movies and television than any other art form," Beal added, comenting that some writers tend to think, "This is really bad and I can do better." Ultimately, Beal surmised, "How can you read newpapers and magazines and not notice that people in the film industry make an incredible amount of money. I think that has something to do with it."

I think everyone who has strung three paragraphs together thinks it would make a "great movie." I truly would not want to be on the receiving end of the deluge of scripts.............

[preyer]

me, neither. i harp on movies that are always the same, so why wouldn't a writer think it's mostly a rote process when, well, there's little hollywood evidence to the contrary. the difference here is, i believe, people who watch movies from hollywood and little, if any, independent or foreign films. the formula applies especially to (mostly cheap) horror and romantic comedy, i think. to further jade a potential screenwriter, there are those awful story programmes that generates outlines (like Dramatica, one version just for screenwriting). i argued up and down with another member in another forum that this is *not* being creative, but to no avail. the excuse, 'well, i'm new to writing and need all the help and tools i can get' doesn't fly too high with me.

i'm curious, too, about how the genres are distributed. are there less action scripts now than ten years ago?

another thing i think why people are attracted to screenwriter is because of its perceived easiness over writing a novel, and which would you rather sell? there's a lot of appeal to screenwriting to begin with, let alone not having having to be earnest hemingway on top of everything else. :)

[icerose]

That would be interesting to see the breakdown in genres. I tried the demo of dramatic and hated it. I felt it really hindered my creative process. I would much rather write then fill in all the stupid little details.

I agree with Preyer on the perceived easiness, also how many bad movies that are out there doesn't help either.

I think it also has to do with the get rich quick appeal. They hear about the high money involved and think they can just whip out a script/novel and hit it big and ride the wave where in reality it often takes several years to get anything and many still don't.