As I had mentioned in a previous post, having signed up for a screenwriting competition at the end of my vacation and wanting to follow up on that feeling of accomplishment, I had looked for other contests to enter. One that was upcoming was the Toronto International Screenwriting Competition.
Now, at the time I had entered, the only confidence I had was that I had already entered one competition, and wanted to get Lock the Doors out there in front of more eyeballs. I didn’t think there would be too many other horror screenplays submitted, and for good reason. The genre isn’t always known for its storytelling.
Despite that, I felt that I had an angle to play with my script, because it took the slasher genre, which I’ll admit can be described as played out and stale, where rarely anything new is brought to the genre, and flipped it on its head, telling the story from the killer’s point of view and making them empathetic, even with the notable drawback of them killing the other characters.
After getting the results that I had placed as a finalist in the first competition I’d entered Lock the Doors in, I was feeling really confident, maybe even cocky. So, when I saw I had an email four days later from TIFF, I felt like this was about to turn into a really amazing vacation.
I saw that the judging status had been changed, and when I opened it I saw…
“…unfortunately…”
Shoot.
That brought me back to reality. Hard.
But, after a little time to process it, I had to remind myself what my thought process was when I first entered Lock the Doors. I was just looking to see how it fared, this draft didn’t have all the changes I had made based on the feedback I received, and I hadn’t been expecting my horror script to fare well against other screenplays written to win competitions, both as scripts and as films, and that I had entered it because I thought the concept might help it fare well.
So despite the setback, I wasn’t discouraged in the least by not being selected. It actually motivated me to get back out there and try again.
I’ll get more into that, next time.