If you’ve embarked on a screenwriting career within the last ten to fifteen years, it’s probably hard to imagine a time when there wasn’t a hundred script contests all vying to “unlock the doors to Hollywood” for you. In return for your nominal entry fee, of course. And so long as your manuscript manages to sift its way to the bottom of the sluice of subjectivity.
But, indeed, before the 1990s you could count on one hand the number of competitions open to aspiring screenwriters. You could count them on a three-toed sloths hand, too.
The Samuel Goldwyn Awards started in 1955 awarding money and a leg up into the film industry to University of California students.
The Nicholl Fellowship launched in 1986 and was also initially only open to college students in California. By 1989, Nicholl expanded to include any resident of the United States who had not sold or optioned a screenplay or teleplay.
The Chesterfield Writer’s Film Project — created by Paramount Pictures and Amblin Entertainment — joined the pair in 1990. From there, a slew of new screenplay competitions emerged nearly every year until, by 2000, script contests had become a cottage industry.
FilmMakers.com currently lists 301 active screenplay competitions ranging from the majors — Goldwyn and Nicholl — to every niche you can think of — The New Mexico Governor’s Cup Short Screenplay Competition, for example.
The website also indexes 107 now defunct contests. Throw in the untold number of competitions which have come and gone with minimal fanfare and that’s a lot of information to sort through. How does a writer know which of these is worth laying down twenty to fifty dollars to enter?
If your script or demographic fits a particular niche contest then go ahead and send in your script. The size of new and niche competitions harken back to the early days of screenplay contests. The first Nicholl Fellowship had just 99 entries. Those are fantastic competition odds when compared to the more than 6,000 aspiring fellows whose scripts duked it out in 2008.
But if you want to weed through the broader competitions, the contests with greater notoriety and rewards, you’ll need a tour guide. Here are what I consider the five best screenplay contests to lay it down for.
#1 Bluecat
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Gordy Hoffman launched the Bluecat Screenplay Competition in 1998. And it was a very humble start with a top cash prize of $2,000 and the winner’s name printed in the Hollywood Reporter. But, over the last ten years, the popularity of this competition has boomed thanks to some very writer-friendly innovations cooked up by the founder and his crew. The end result of Hoffman’s contest creativity is that Bluecat has become simply the most worthwhile screenplay competition an aspiring writer can participate in.
First and foremost in Bluecat’s greatness is that every single entry receives script notes. While the internal workings at most screenplay competitions are mysterious and no doubt cause many writers to wonder just how much of their script was actually read before being booted, you get a timely and professionally rendered synthesis of your script from an impartial source. As Bluecat’s popularity explodes (384 scripts competed in the first competition while just under 3,000 clamored for acclaim in 2008) the quality of the coverage has not been affected one iota.
With an entry fee of $65, at the very least, Bluecat serves as a cheap critiquing service even if your script doesn’t make it past the first round.
Another innovation is that Bluecat has embraced the paperless revolution. Whereas some competitions still require a hardcopy be printed out and snail-mailed to the headquarters, Bluecat went to exclusively electronic submissions in 2007. This is a big time and money saver for writers who can always use a little more of both.
With its boom in popularity, Bluecat has been able to increase it’s prize offers which are now at $10,000 for the winner and $1,500 a piece for for runners-up. The contest has also seen an uptick in landing writers production deals, representation contracts and entries into filmmaker labs.
With a somewhat lower participation rate than other major screenwriting competitions, a decent top prize, a good track record in launching careers and script feedback for every single participant, Bluecat should be first on your list of competitions to enter.
#2 Nicholl
The Granddaddy of them all. And still the most rewarding screenplay competition to win. But also the most competitive. The sheer size of this thing makes it almost like a lottery.
Started in 1986 by Gee Nicholl after the death of her husband, TV writer Don Nicholl (Three’s Company, The Jeffersons, All in the Family), to help aspiring film and television writers start their careers.
And the Nicholl Fellowship’s divining rod for talent is rivaled by no other screenwriting competition, uncovering the likes of Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging, Mi Vida Loca), Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich, Catch and Release, The Soloist) Ehren Kruger (Arlington Road, Reindeer Games, The Ring) Andrew Marlowe (Air Force One, Hollow Man) Mike Rich (Finding Forrester, The Rookie) and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jeffery Eugenides whose book The Virgin Suicides was adapted and filmmed by Sofia Coppola.
This pedigree makes winning a Nicholl highly valued by the film and television industry at large. To have one of these on your resume opens a lot of doors.
The payout for winning a Nicholl Fellowship is also unrivaled, awarding $30,000 a piece to five writers every year while demanding one of the lowest entry fees of all screenwriting competitions at $30.
Nicholl is also an amateur-only competition. Anybody who has made more than $5,000 writing for film or television are thereafter disqualified from competing. The benefit of this should be obvious to any aspiring screenwriter.
So, what are the drawbacks?
With 6,000 entries per year, just about every amateur screenwriter in America (and elsewhere) enters the Nicholl — especially the very best of these amateurs. So while your script may be light years better than the bottom three or four thousand entries, once things get widdled down to the top thousand, you’re writing is going head to head against every other screenwriting wunderkind in the universe. And don’t delude yourself that you’re the only one.
Also, no feedback. Once your script is cut from the competition, that’s it. Better luck next year.
Write a fantastic script. Enter the Nicholl. You’d be a fool not to. But the odds of winning and the lack of a critique puts Nicholl slightly behind Bluecat, in my opinion.
#3 Scriptapalooza
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Started in 1998 Scriptapalooza includes both feature and television categories. The top prize is $10,000 plus a bevy of screenwriting-related swag such as writing software and the like.
But what really makes Scriptalooza a must-enter contest is that its winners and finalists consistently draw some pretty intense interest from Hollywood. If you go to the “headlines” page of their website, you will find a long and impressive list of script sales, rep landings and read requests.
There are two reasons for this. The first is that all scripts entered are read by working producers, managers and agents rather than the friends, family, interns and homeless people that other contests seem to rely on for coverage. The second reason is that the people who run Scriptapalooza actively promote their finalists for a full year following each competition. The contest President Mark Andrushko once said that his ultimate goal of Scriptapalooza was to get writers repped or their scripts sold or optioned. In effect, Scriptapalooza acts as a veritable agency for all its finalists for a full year.
The entry fee is $50.
A brief tangent.
Before I get on to #4, I thought I’d digress on something a moment. And that’s how soul-crushing entering some of these contests can be. All because of that nasty subjectivity thing.
To see a list of 500 or so quarter-finalists (out of thousands entered) without your latest opus included, is a pretty humbling experience. It can make you want to toss in the towel and seek some new creative outlet.
Let those feelings pass. Strive to get better. And remember that, in all likelihood, your script was just as good as any of the 500 scripts that made the cut. It just didn’t happen to connect with a single individual’s sensibility.
Screen and television writer Doug Molitor (Full Moon Fever) said this of his contest experience, “I must have submitted ten scripts to Scriptapalooza, feature and TV, and never made it past the first round. Then number eleven — a spec Boston Legal — won. I still have no idea why that one did so much better than the rest.”
So, if you’ve entered three or four contests with no luck, just consider what Molitor went through before winning it all. Ten complete rejections. For a professional writer whose career has been consistent and plentiful for over twenty years, that’s got to be a kick right in his ego’s groin. Then again, he believed in his material enough to send off number 11.
#4 Script Pimp
Launched in 2002 by Chadwick Clough, Script Pimp has made a big splash in the world of script competitions in amazingly short order. Billing itself as a “Pipeline Into Motion Pictures”, this competition does just that as over 150 production companies have requested finalists’ scripts and a fair number of those contacts have lead to production deals.
This competition also limits professional participation, although not to the stringent degree of Nicholl’s $5,000 earnings limit. No writer who has made more than $15,000 off of a screen or teleplay is eligible to participate. Credited producers and directors are also verboten for good measure.
Script Pimp likes to share the wealth in awarding its prizes. There are four grandprize winners — getting $3,000 a piece. And 20 runners-up receive $200 each. And, like some other contests, there is plenty of swag divvied out.
Because it’s a relatively young competition, the number of participants is still pretty low at a little over 1,000 each year. If you’re a writer looking for good odds without sacrificing a good payout, this the one to check out.
#5 Austin Heart of Film
The Heart of Film Screenplay Competition runs in conjunction with the Austin Film Festival and divides its contest into genre categories. Which makes sense. Why try to compare a comedy to a drama? There is even a subset for science fiction writers. The top prizes in the drama and comedy categories is $5,000 each plus reimbursement for airfare to Austin and hotel while you’re there.
As Austin grows as a formidable alternative to Los Angeles in terms of film production, this script contest is great for writers who hope to head in an indie film trajectory as opposed to working the studio system in Hollywood.
Starting in 1994, The Heart of Film screenwriter’s Conference was designed to put amateur screenwriters in direct contact with working industry professionals including writers, producers and agents. So, while the $5,000 prize is nice, being a featured guest at the conference is potentially far more rewarding.
The competition is open only to “writers who do not earn a living writing for television or film”. But, unlike Nicholl and Script Pimp with their set earnings limits, that’s a very interpretive statement. Still, you can bet that the vast majority of fellow participants have probably not made a single buck writing scripts.
The entry fee is $40 for feature screenplays and $30 for teleplays.
Honorable Mentions.
Beyond these five, there are a lot of great competitions. Just briefly, The Slamdance Screenplay Competition has been going strong for 15 years (always a good sign). The winner gets $5,000 and is also an amateurs-only competition. The contest also offers feedback but, unlike Bluecat, you have to pay extra for it.
Fade In Magazine’s Writer’s Network Screenplay Competition is a 16-year veteran of the competition world. This contest offers over $10,000 in prizes, is open to fiction and plays as well as screenplays and allows up to two pieces of material per entry. Most importantly, winning it does have some cache with producers and agents.
If you’ve got a short script, The American Gem Short Script Competition is a great contest to send it to. The top prize is $1,000 plus the winning entry gets made into a short film. The entry fee varies depending on the length of the script, but if yours clocks in under 45 pages — send it in. Having a short film is a great way to kick in some doors around Hollywood. It’s also a good way to convince your skeptical parents that you’re actually getting somewhere. Talk about winning a prize!
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