You know I love the short story!
I don’t know how I got on their email list, but it’s all good. Got an email the other day informing me of this contest. I just figured I would share in case anyone else out there might be interested.
Go to Screencraft.org to find it if the link doesn’t work.
They are kind of sketchy on submission requirement details. They just sort of assume that everyone is going to know what “standard submission format” is for short stories. I believe that is how they phrase it. If you don’t know, I would suggest doing a search for William Shunn. I know that he lists guidelines that are used by a couple of the magazines: Asimov’s Sci-fi, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. This is probably the format they mean. If not, it should suffice. Mr. Shunn even has templates that you can download for both the short story and the novel. You can do a general search for his name, or try the link below.
https://www.shunn.net/format/story/
I might enter. The first story that comes to mind is “Silent Cove, Haunted Cave,” from my book, Pirate Tales. Don’t know why that one jumps out to me.
They are looking for stories between 5k and 20k words. And the cool thing is that you can use a story that is already published as long as you hold the copyright to the material.
I might also send a story from my current, in progress of being written Sci-fi book. Maybe “Incentive Corps.” Though the story and atmosphere is perhaps too similar to PKD’s Blade Runner. It isn’t really, when you look deeper, or read deeper, as there are totally different things actually going on. It is mainly the atmosphere. And the main character is similar in style to the Harrison Ford character. But there are good visuals that would come off well cinematically.
Anyway, a couple of other notes regarding this contest. You can submit later than the date that is 8 or 9 days away. The “late” entry carries on into November. You will just have to pay a little more money. I want to say the entrance fee jumps from $50 to $59.
And too, they have more than just short story contests. They have novel and, obviously (since it is their bent) screenplay contests.
If you are more interested in the screenplay side of things, I would suggest investing in a good screen/script writing software. My favorite, and the software that at one time was the most used in Hollywood is Final Draft. It is pretty good. The learning curve is a little steep (unless you are really familiar with screenplays and script format). It is also expensive. I have version 7.0 and I believe the newest is version 11.0.
I’ve never mastered it. I’ve only dabbled, and have about four or five partially complete screenplays. My problem is that I like to move in and out of a character’s mind. You can’t do that with a screenplay. It is more a case of what you see, and what gets expressed strictly through actions and dialogue. This is all very restrictive to me. I’m sure I could get the hang of it, but just haven’t invested the time.
Final Draft does have their own screenwriting contest every year: The Final Draft Big Break contest, which usually runs from Jan. to Apr. 30th (?). I believe the winner gets $10,000 and gets flown out to meet studio execs, etc. I threaten to enter every year, but never have a complete screenplay ready.
The “closed” just means for 2020, I would guess. Whether the contest wasn’t held due to Covid 19 or whatever, I don’t know. So who knows about 2021? As with everything else, due to Covid, a whole lot is iffy at best!
Another option for writing screenplays, as well as any other type of writing is to use Scrivener. Scrivener has a screenplay template (along with short story and novel), though I have never used it (the screenplay template). And it handles Final draft formatted files–I don’t know how well, because I’ve never tried importing my Final draft files. Scrivener is relatively cheap. I love Scrivener, though it does have a steep learning curve. And I keep planning to migrate to it. But habits die hard. I’m still using an old laptop and Office 2000 to write my stuff, initially. Then I migrate the stories to Word 2019 on a desktop for formatting of the book. I only purchased this newer version of Word due to an editor I used for Daguerreotype Dreams. She is great, her name is Caroline Barnhart and I found her on fivver. Anyway, I had to upgrade Word in order to open the files that she sent back to me. I hated spending the money. Scrivener is very reasonably priced. I believe they might have increased the price since I purchased it a couple of years back. I think it is now $49. This still beats the extremely high price of Microsoft Word. If you want to check out Scrivener, it is at literatureandlatte.com.
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
Okay, so anyway, I just felt the need/desire to share about the contest. I’m sure there are writers out there as well as readers. Or maybe readers who are thinking of making the jump. DO IT! Come on in, the water’s fine. Make that leap. It is Super fun!