So, my crack team of readers and I have been hard at it these past two weeks (snarf) and we’re *almost there* on scoring the entries and sorting the Script Lab places, though inevitably the annual ructions occur on who goes through, plus we’re now doing some second reads (yes the standard is that high). The announcement of Script Lab 2014 winners will be October 16th. In the meantime then, here’s my annual glimpse into the spec pile!!
Of all the Script Labs, inevitably John Yorke’s was the most popular, with over 60 entries; Steve Rue’s was second, with nearly 40. For the third year in a row, Philip Shelley’s TV drama lab performed extremely well in terms of entries, getting just under 30. The others all performed very well, each getting in the region of 20 entries or under, which was on point as they are specialist labs in terms of medium/style, genre or both.
As ever, there was the usual writer weirdness and submissions insanity, not to mention general freakery! One of my readers went off her barm and deleted the Dropbox with ALL the entries in it (don’t worry, she has been dealt with and will NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN).
Moving on then, here is the full rundown:
- Title pages & naming files. People are at least naming their entries and pages, but they’re still not filling in their title pages or naming their actual FILES. I like to think I didn’t misname or misfile anyone, but who knows? Name blindness and Dropbox-based insanity CAN happen even with the best of intentions, so I can’t be sure. So, don’t leave this to chance, take the power back into your own hands! Download The B2W Submissions Checklist, HERE and check out this post on naming your files for best practices.
- Bizarre email addresses. There was an outbreak of weird and overly long email addresses this year, I noticed. Keep those for personal use. Stick to yourname@whatever.com for submissions purposes. It’s safer for everyone!
- Honesty is the best policy … EXCEPT WHEN IT’S NOT. I saw a lot of people talking themselves and even their writing DOWN in their applications, especially in the “supporting statement” section. If you want to be taken seriously, you simply mustn’t say things like, “I have no experience” – if you write, then you have experience! It’s as simple as that. Here’s how to put together a Writer’s CV/Resume.
- Taglines instead of loglines. We got a LOT of taglines instead of loglines, which is really frustrating – especially considering that means an applicant who does this has basically just lost out of a LOT of marks, which can mean the difference between getting a place on a lab … OR NOT. Double-check you know the difference between loglines and taglines HERE.
- Boomerang projects. I saw a lot of what I call “boomerang projects” – titles or pages of scripts I’ve seen in multiple places, multiple times. Now, whether a boomerang project is bad or good depends on context, ie. have I seen it before, on a contest WINNERS’ list, within the last 6 months? If yes, then great! It’s clearly a project doing well and in which case, everyone wants to check such a project out. BUT – and there’s *always* a but with me! – I did also see just as many titles that have come through multiple avenues, multiple times and FOR YEARS. Look, I get that you have your fave projects and believe in them; I even understand if you think they might be “perfect” for a given opportunity. However, I do think writers are better off writing more new projects as standard; plus I also think writers DO have to let go of stale projects after a certain point, or at least refresh them to a degree … Even just the title would be a start! This then means readers who’ve been round the block a few times like moi don’t automatically think, “This one … AGAIN???” Here’s some pointers on titles.
- Not following the brief. Some entries didn’t give us what we asked for, which is a shame. Whilst some entrants gave us TOO MUCH (that’s always fine, unless you go completely off the boil and submit your entire portfolio), there were quite a few entries with stuff missing, especially one pagers. Perhaps the system timed out on them, or they freaked out over the Formstack uploading thing. That’s cool and I get it: WiFi can be a colossal pain, so I gave these writers time to resubmit because believe it or not, I’m NOT completely heartless. I WAS surprised however to hear nothing from some of those writers, especially considering the weight of the scores is on the PITCH, rather than the pages. Not sure why we’d want a one page pitch? READ THIS.
- Hitting the bullseye. Of the one page pitches that were included, most have scored 3 out of 5 – in other words, they were fine, but a bit “woolly” in terms of plot and character. Readers were not always sure what was going on, to whom, for what reason. So writers in general ARE getting better at selling their work “off the page”, but there’s still some way to go in terms of really “hooking” the reader in and being CLEAR with it. Check out this post for what I call the “3 Cs of writing”.
- Cliché-o-rama. That said, the one page pitches that did well, didn’t always “match” their pages – clichéd openers raised their ugly heads as normal, with some pages reading more like “movies of movies” (and similar), rather than a writer’s OWN work or voice. Remember, always dig deep and try and bring something FRESH to the page a reader won’t see regularly. For me, the biggest culprit was the interrogation scene for probably the fifth year running. Now, interrogation scenes obviously CAN work and perform a useful expositional shorthand for many different genres and stories – I really liked this one, opening LOCKOUT (2012), which I find amusing – but you’ve got to find that je ne se quois that no one else has, ‘cos essentially you’re starting on the backfoot writing something that crops up a lot.
- Non dialogue versus dialogue-lead screenplays. I always make a point of reading ALL the short film entries myself and interestingly, for the first year ever I got a colossal whack of non dialogue scripts for the short film lab – over 25%. Of the short films that did include dialogue, all were very theatrical. So, a REALLY interesting split in tone and style, this year.
- The same story. Every single year, no matter how wide the brief, different writers will submit essentially the same story, characters and/or themes. This year, across ALL the labs, I’ve seen a bias towards the following (in no particular order):
Female protagonists
Detectives with issues / police in general
Time Travel (particularly paired detectives … with issues)
The Victorian Era (especially paranormal /steampunk and also, detectives … with issues!)
Soldiers as protagonists (all male, interestingly)
For more on what I call “Zeitgeist Stories” and how they happen, READ THIS.
So, that’s it for this year’s look inside the spec pile – again, everyone will hear very soon, we’re just locking down last minute timings with Regents’ and the Lab Leaders and so on … Check back here next week for the announcement – remember, that’s October 16th. While we’re waiting, here’s a picture of a duck. Ciao!
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Posted by a member of the London Screenwriters’ Festival team.
