Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest

So, on top of my dabbling in writing fiction, I've also considered writing screenplays. Movies, in particular, as I'm not sure I'm necessarily cut out for the format of a television series. I took a couple wild cracks at movie scripts during the Script Frenzy "contests" - usually achieving the intended page count goal but not finishing with anything resembling a complete script. Each attempt was fun and educational, though, and I still have that nagging desire to see one through to the finish.

Which brings me to another contest - this one much more legitimately deserving of that term - that I've had my eye on for a year or so now, the Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest. This one is targeted primarily at new, aspiring writers, and has a low barrier to entry - you only have to submit the first 15 pages of a script for a logline provided by someone well established in the industry. Ten finalists then work with one of the Writers Store's staff over the course of a couple months, getting valuable feedback with each new set of pages added to the script until finished and then a winner is chosen. Really does sound pretty ideal for a first timer.

Well, with each new round of the contest, I've sat down a brainstormed a few different sketches for the logline. Some had a bit of potential, but none sucked me in and demanded to be written. And, thusly, I have yet to try to enter the contest.

A new round of the contest just began and I'm in the process of working up some ideas. The logline was provided by Edward Saxon (Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and others) - "After a storm destroys her small farm, killing her mother and father, an adolescent girl is sent off on a journey of survival."

Not bad. It provides quite a bit of structure, while remaining wide open. I immediately discarded the first couple thoughts that came to mind, most surrounding tornadoes in the mid-west (something with which I grew up) and the recent hurricane disasters, figuring it was best to head in an unexpected direction. I now have three very rough ideas, two are hard sci fi and one is magic fantasy, and in most all variants of these the "small farm" has nothing to do with produce. There are lots of different kinds of farms and I wanted to use an unexpected interpretation.

Now the tricky bit - fleshing these out to see if I can get one to suck me in and demand to be written...