Maybe Your Screenplay Simply Blows

It's tough. How do we sell these damn things? Maybe we can't write.

Contests? God damn things. Yeah, I still enter them, not as many or as often as I once did. Because in the long run, I truly feel 99.9% of them WILL NOT GET YOU ANYWHERE.

I visited a message board recently, with screenwriters talking about all the contests they've won, and they are NOWHERE. And they had some decent placements in some good contests. I keep seeing the same names pop up as winners of various contests, with the same script, all the time. After winning these contests, they haven't gone anywhere? What the fuck?

Okay, you'll see a news blurb once in a blue fucking moon about a writer who sold their screenplay after it placed in a contest, I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but they may have had something in the works before the contest.

Think about it, did a bunch of do-gooders just wake up one morning and say - I want to help no-name writers!!! No, they didn't. They said - I want to make some fucking money!

Query letters? Useless. I tried that road before, and it's a sucky road. I hate that road. 99.9% of query letters will end up in the trash, or if you're lucky they'll wipe their ass with it (Hey, at least they were holding something written by you before they cleaned off their stink star).

Do you make it yourself with local actors? You can, and if you're actually talented, you might make something worth while. Or if you at least havea budget to work with so it doesn't end up looking like cable access quality. I went this route, makde some shorts, made 3 features, and they all went....nowhere. Sure, we had some local screenings and all, and our family and friends thought they were amazing! But they weren't amazing, they were low-budget crap. Don't get me wrong, I loved the process and I worked with some incredible cast & crew, but I wasted their time, too.

Or, maybe our stuff just isn't good enough. Maybe we're not inspired enough. Maybe we're too wordy, or maybe we put screen direction in our scripts (I NEVER do the last one by the way, it'll get you nowhere and fast). Maybe we do need to live in LaLa Land. But maybe there's too many damn writers there already.

Friend of mine won best Noir at Fade In a few years back. Script went nowhere, but it picked up a few more wins here and there. Still, nowhere. He ended up sending it to a company where you send them a ton of $$ and they'll guarantee you a read & detailed critique/meeting with a producer. And guess what, so far, it's worked. He hasn't sold it yet, but it is out to several agents, and the producer himself is putting himself behind it, so we'll see. But who has that kind of $$? Of course, it may have all been in vain.

You can also try the Inktips & Moviebytes websites. What I find funny is someone will request your script, and then they'll say it's "not for them." Hey cockdog - You knew what the fucking story was when you read the logline & synopsis. Don't make me go through the bullshit of sending it out if you're not gonna consider it anyway. Fucking idiots, man. I had someone request a script (HEADSHOT) back in March. Still haven't sent it to them. My main reason was that I wanted to tweak it a bit, but my inspiration simply wasn't there.

It's times like these where I get a bit annoyed (can't you tell) with this whole screenwriting thing. I haven't written much in the past 2 months (few tweaks here and there, nothing major).

I came up with a new idea for a script this week that I really like and will run with it. My other partially-begun scripts (there are about 40 of them) will just have to wait.

I'm not giving up. Fuck that shit. But I gotta figure out a better way. There's got to be a better fucking way. I mean, not all my stuff can be bad, can it?

How do you guys handle it?