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As I mentioned in my last post, after doing some research, I entered my screenplay for Dig Down to three contests right away. All of them provided some level of feedback, most of them offering several different levels.

This abundance was a good dilemma to have, although it did make me think and really contemplate what to go with. As a for instance, one of the contests I entered, Santa Barbara Screenplay Competition, offered an entry for just the script, an entry where you received the judge’s notes and your score, an entry where you received a writer’s room analysis, an entry where you received academy analysis, and an entry where you received a live consultation and line notes.

It might be easy to say just go ahead and sign up for the most extensive feedback and coverage you can get, but each level of analysis provided has a cost to it. And while I felt very good about Dig Down‘s story as a manuscript, this is a whole other medium I had adapted it to, and one that I didn’t have that much experience with.

Judge’s notes and a score might provide the same level of feedback that the script needed to be polished for this form of entertainment that the live consultation did, and at a fraction of the cost.

So with that, I had to really assess what level I really needed at this stage in my screenwriting career, as new as it was. I felt it was important to get the most bang for my buck.

I ended up going with the following: for the Santa Barbara Screenplay Competition, I went with the entry where I would receive the judge’s notes and a score. I felt the score would not only be an honest and fair assessment of my script and myself as a screenwriter, but based on that score, I’d have a sense of how I fared against the other screenwriters who had not only entered, but a rough idea of where I was at when compared to all screenwriters, my reasoning being a score in the 50s would probably mean I had my work cut out for me, and a score in the 90s probably would mean I could get some interest when I started trying to option my script.

I also entered the Finish Line Script Competition, also receiving a guaranteed minimum number of pages of notes on my screenplay. The last screenplay competition I entered was the Page Turner Screenplays Contest. Just like Santa Barbara, this offered multiple levels of feedback, though not as extensive as Santa Barbara. And just like SB, I had a choice to make – go with the feedback option, where I would receive notes of my scripts, or…go with an option to have an extensive analysis of my script, over the phone with the lead judge of the competition.

It was a tremendous opportunity…but it was the priciest. By far.

But I ended up going with it.

I’ll go into my decision on why I went with that option, next time.

As I mentioned in my last post, with a completed and revised screenplay for Dig Down, I decided the best option for myself was to enter it into screenplay competitions. Yeah, yeah, I know. I might lack some imagination when it comes to figuring out what to do with completed scripts, and I might just be a one trick pony following the same formula.

I felt I was still in the same boat though, not really knowing where I stood in terms of the quality of my screenplay. This medium was still relatively new to me. The only screenplays I’d ever read were three that I’d written, Lock the Doors and Dig Down, as well as an idea that I’d written as a screenplay 17 years ago called On the River, and the script for Crawl, which I downloaded and read when looking for examples of horror screenplays the previous year after submitting Lock the Doors to competitions.

There was still this need for feedback, so I could hone in on what needed the most attention. Screenplay contests themselves would do that as it would compare me against the field of other hopefuls who were also pitching their stories. And, if I could find some contests that offered specific feedback from the judges, that would help my understanding all the more.

I actually found I was throwing myself into the search for competitions more this time around. I think two things greatly contributed to that. The first was, as I mentioned way back in my posts about finding contests for Lock the Doors, I’d entered one, that felt I’d been lackadaisical, letting a week go by before entering another, and even when I entered two more, I had this unshakeable feeling that it was out of guilt for not pursuing it more aggressively sooner.

I guess I wanted to avoid the rut of following a bad habit.

The other aspect that I think contributed to entering more contests was that Dig Down wasn’t horror, and I felt actually fit with what a lot more contests might be looking for. While studios will always be looking for horror projects because they are cheap to produce, they don’t fare well against all the other genres out there in film competitions. However, something like Dig Down, which while a chase story, has a lot of depth to it, could hold its own against other entries. That alone meant there were more options for Dig Down to enter.

I ended up finding three contests, all of which offered not only feedback, but varying levels of feedback. This, in itself, left me with some decisions to ponder. I knew I needed notes, but what level of criticism and analysis was right for me?

I’ll explore the details of the options I was posed with, next time.

Now that I had a completed screenplay for Dig Down, I needed to figure out what to do with it.

While I’d had initial success with the screenplay for Lock the Doors, that sadly didn’t last. And the feedback I’d gotten from screenplay competitions was that if the judge read the entire script, it placed as a finalist, but otherwise, it wasn’t strong enough to keep a reader’s attention.

This was a harsh reality to accept…but it was a reality. I’d heard it said that people reading scripts (actors, producers, directors, studio heads, agents) can sometimes tell within the first page if it’s good. So sticking with the notion that if people just read it, they’d see how good it was, wasn’t a good tactic to get a script optioned and produced. In fairness to all the other screenwriters out there trying to eke out the same living, I’m positive so many of them would also relish the opportunity for those in a position of power to take the time to read their full story and watch everything come together into the masterpiece their screenplay is.

But…that’s not our reality.

In truth, with so many people chasing the dream of writing a screenplay in the hopes that it will one day be made into a movie, those people in who are in those positions of power have to do what they can to screen and weed out all the scripts that come across their desk that they know won’t get any further. And, they have to be brutal about it.

It’s harsh, but…it just means working harder to elevate the screenplay as much as possible so it avoids the junk pile.

Now, unfortunately for me, I found myself in the exact same situation I was in last summer with Lock the Doors, a complete script with no idea as to it’s quality. And just like last summer, I couldn’t think of too many resources that would be able to provide feedback on my script in a timely manner with some level of expertise and authority.

Which meant I felt my best option was…

…you guessed it.

Screenwriting competitions.

I’ll get into the contests I decided to enter next time.

So here I was, I’d say a little over a year after my previous laptop crashed with my only version of a freshly adapted screenplay for Dig Down on it, and what was I doing?

Adapting Dig Down into a screenplay.

It would be fair to criticize the direction of my writing career, or call it stagnant.

And yet, it felt great sitting down to write the screenplay again. As I had mentioned in my previous post, I didn’t have the time needed to devote to a new story, and had to scrap drafting a manuscript I was working on.

I wouldn’t say I was depressed, but I wasn’t in the best of moods during that stretch. I’m usually in a good mood and feeling positive about myself when I’m in the middle of writing something. I think my most upbeat stretches of high school and college were when I was writing stories, especially when I first got to college and really started experimenting with voice and narratives in novels (maybe published one day), and several short stories.

I also felt that with the advice and notes I’d gotten for Lock the Doors, I was catching a lot of things as early as the first (really fourth at this point) draft of Dig Down that I knew would need to be edited out (like all the eye movements in the book)! This allowed me to think up creative ways to focus the camera on what I felt was important in the scenes, something I never had to think about when writing the original stories.

I was in such a good mood with this process that even when, in February of this year, I got the results from the Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards and saw that Lock the Doors wasn’t selected again in the final screenplay competition I had entered it into, I wasn’t even fazed. I had already moved on to work on my next project (yes, it was an old project), and if the news had been different-GREAT!-but I was focused on making Dig Down as good as it could be.

I’ll talk about where that left me with the project, next time.

Making the decision to adapt Dig Down into a screenplay a second time was just the change I needed to make in my life. After feeling like I was making no headway in my writing, both in the screenplay competitions I was entering, as well as struggling to write new stories because I was adjusting to my new role and the responsibilities that came with it that left little time to devote the attention a new manuscript needed, this change of pace was like a godsend.

I had a little reluctance retreating back into a story I had already told. Ideally, I would either adapt another one of my books into a screenplay only after Lock the Doors maximized its success, was made into a movie, and I was looking to build on my career as a screenwriter while I was riding high. Short of that, I would save adaptation for a rainy day, when I wasn’t really feeling any new ideas, and just wanted to write something.

Well…it was a downpour.

Despite my sentiments on this pivot, this shift in priorities couldn’t have happened at a better time. Focusing on re-writing the script for Dig Down still allowed me the ability to write, without the requirement of having to think up a whole new world, the conflicts, and how the characters interacted in it, something I knew I still didn’t have time for.

That’s not to say the adaptation was not without its challenges. When I had first written Dig Down, I had sought to tell a basic story of a man running for his life from a deadly rogue’s gallery in a creative way. This unique storytelling wasn’t exactly optimal for screenwriting. So much of what made Rob Rob was his internal monologue, how he reacted to the mayhem around him, but because it was his thoughts, that wasn’t always easy to transfer to film.

Hurdles like this ended up being really beneficial. They transcended the adaptation from a mere copying and pasting into a new format, instead posing challenges to me for every scene: how are you going to get this across on the screen?

The challenge drove me to want to come up with solutions in creative ways, and most importantly, got me out of the rut I felt I’d been in with my writing.

As I stated in my previous post, after experiencing a string of rejections, as well as finding it difficult to find the time and energy to focus on a new story (although one I still hope to write), I was in a rut. This was a tough time to go through writing-wise, because it had been awhile since I had felt good about a finished idea, and I didn’t have any new ones that I particularly liked.

I felt directionless.

In times like these, I don’t like to force it. While I want this to be a career, there’s no pressure to adhere to any sort of release schedule. I prefer to let new stories come to me on their own, I think they’ve come out pretty well because I can let them breathe and grow into the best versions of themselves. Trying to rush the process because I feel anxious that it’s been awhile since I released I’m Not My Father isn’t going to make the next project better because I got it out faster. If anything, it’ll lack the layers of polish and care I was able to give to my three published books.

This was in part why I had turned to adaptation in the first place. The ideas that I was having weren’t that great, but I still wanted to channel my writing into something. Once I started focusing on the Lock the Doors manuscript, my mind felt relaxed enough to allow a really intriguing story to surface. My process was working, and if it hadn’t been for my new job title demanding most of my free time, I feel pretty good that each draft would get it closer to publication.

Conceding that I didn’t have the energy to work on a new story, I reflected on what I could do with the spare time I had for writing. And it brought me back to an old idea, not too far off from what I was doing now.

Adapt Dig Down.

It had been my initial plan to adapt the books in the order of their release. And so many readers had told me when reading it that they could see it as a movie because of its quick pacing. Lock the Doors could have had an easier path to production because it was horror, but what set me down that path initially was that I had lost all my progress and couldn’t bare to start over right then.

The key words being…”right then.”

Enough time had passed that the sting of having lost the completed draft that I had been working on wasn’t so fresh. In my mind, I was able to compartmentalize that setback and enter into the mindset that I would be adapting Dig Down for the first time.

It was the old plan. But it wouldn’t feel like the old plan. Despite the setbacks, I’d had some success with the Lock the Doors screenplay. Adapting Dig Down was now a way to build off that success, and show that I had more to offer.

I’ll describe how that went, next time.