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In September 2023, I attended the Toronto Film Festival for nearly the entire duration, skipping the final day as I had to catch my flight back home, though at that point I believe all the films were just additional showings. I was excited going into this because this had the prestige like Tribeca, only this time I was going to be able to attend for more than a day.

This was hands down the best experience I’ve had at a film festival.

For starters, it helped that I arrived before the festival started, allowing myself to settle in, instead of getting into the city and scrambling to attend the first screening I’d bought tickets for. Also, because I was there for more than one day, or in the case of my first festival, because I wasn’t trying to jam as many movies as I could into one day, I was able to enjoy myself and space out the movie going experience instead of trying to force myself into viewing a movie at every available timeslot.

This was also in no small part due to the availability of tickets for films I was interested in when it came time to purchase and plan out my trip, but what felt like an initial setback turned out to be a wonderful turn of events. I ended up going seeing one movie a day, except for the last Friday of the festival, where I watched two movies back to back, which freed up my day to enjoy things beyond movies.

Although I was on vacation, I was still waking up at 5 in the morning, and because I was training for a marathon and needed to fit that in around showtimes that tended to be in the afternoon, I did my runs early in the morning. Even though I was up early, I would ease into the day, and would still be out of the hotel room by 7, walk a couple of empty blocks to the park, and run my three or four miles, with the long runs happening on Saturday mornings. Even after I was finished, the sidewalks weren’t that crowded with people who had to endure being so close to the sweaty mess I was after my training.

I’d shower and relax for a bit, and depending on when that day’s showtime was I would either take in the city, something I hadn’t been able to do at either of the previous film festivals, or head straight to whichever theater was playing the movie I was seeing. Just like the previous festivals, the movies weren’t all playing in the same theater, but at TIFF, the entire festival was held in the theater district, so the location of any day’s films were all on the same street and right next to each other.

The schedule also allowed me some time to relax, both before and after the marathon training, and between either attending that day’s showing or some other point of interest around the city. During these times that I was relaxing in my hotel room, I was often outlining the next novel that I had planned to start writing two months later, so I was still putting that time to good use. But I would still find myself feeling guilty that I was spending about an hour in the hotel room at times during the day, and had to remind myself that I had gotten in a good workout to start the morning, had gone on a small adventure exploring another area that interested me in the city (CN Tower, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and 2 local breweries, to name a few things) and had watched another movie at the film festival.

And even when I was back in my hotel room for the night, I was still living it up, because the hotel I was staying at was the Mariott in the Toronto Blue Jays stadium, where I had specifically gotten a room that looked out over the outfield, because the Blue Jays had a homestand for the entire duration. So at the end of each night, I would roll open the shades and watch an entire game from the window, drinking beers and cheering the team on.

These days were just absolutely packed.

I had originally signed up for the festival to network. With the WGA strike still going on, I once again wasn’t able to do so, but even with that situation, this turned out to be one of the best vacations I have ever had.

It was so great that Toronto is my current front runner for place to retire.

With the query letter for Dig Down stalled out, I had nothing left to focus on to advance my screenwriting career other than attending TIFF – the Toronto International Film Festival. I was hoping to capture at least some of the momentum that I had had going back to the beginning of March, but unfortunately, the WGA strike was still going on, so this would be the third of three film festivals that I had bought tickets for that I wouldn’t be able to network at.

At this point, it would have been easy to sink into a bottomless pit of despair. Everything seemed to be working against me, and not only had I been unable to gain any traction with the positives that I was experiencing at the start of the year, I was resigned to the idea that I was going to have to start over from scratch with an all new screenplay if I was going to have a chance to move forward.

It might have been easy to carry this negativity into this final failed attempt to get my script out in front of people in the industry, or just to talk with other screenwriters. But instead, I just looked at it as another opportunity to get comfortable and familiar with the film festivals.

I’m so glad I did.

This trip would end up being one of the best trips/vacations I’d ever had. I’ll get more into my time at TIFF, next time.

I had a gameplan for how I wanted to proceed with my screenwriting career. In the short term, I would be drafting a query letter for my script of Dig Down while I waited for the writer’s strike to get resolved. In the long term, I would be focusing on writing a new story with the sole intent of writing it as a screenplay first, instead of trying to adapt the story into a script format.

I felt it was a sound plan, and yet…I found that it was a struggle.

I don’t think that the source of these struggles was from the plan itself. It was a good way to bide my time while improving an already advantageous position. Rather, I think the issue was that I was trying to apply this to my adaptation of Dig Down.

With time, I started to see this with more clarity. Part of my plan was itself a concession that it would be a struggle continuing on with my script of Dig Down. I had recognized that there was a limit to how much I could do with my own stories in a new format. The feedback I’d gotten from the second consultation had called for a lot of changes to how I felt the story should go, most notably cutting down close to 20 pages from the script. While I felt that Dig Down should have a quick pace, I also believed it was more than just a bare-bones, typical 90 minute movie-going experience.

As I had noted in the May 6th blog post, the revisions to polish Dig Down into an industry accepted script were possible, but I didn’t believe I was the one to do this. I was too close to the story, held it close to my heart as the way I had originally written and published it, and it wouldn’t seem right to me making the level of changes that were being suggested.

It was a shame because I felt most of the query letter was in a way already written. From webinars I had already attended, it sounded like I was in a prime position to query and pitch to agents. The advice given in the webinars was that if you had placed as a finalist, with your script already vetted by judges and placed very highly, to go out and market it — pitch!

But I could also see that even if I generated some interest from agents, even studios, that similar – if not the exact same – revisions were going to be suggested, maybe even insisted on. And I’d be facing the same scenario I was looking at now, only delayed by a couple of months, one that I didn’t know I was up for because of how wrong it would feel for me to make, even if I did believe they would be necessary if I wanted it to become a film.

As I went over the scant few lines I managed to write for my query letter over and over again, I knew I had approached the inevitable. I’d reached the end of the road of how far I would be willing to take my script of Dig Down on my own.

If I was going to continue my screenwriting career, it would only be possible through the second part of my plan: writing a brand new story specifically as a script.

Although the writer’s strike put everything remotely related to selling scripts on pause, that didn’t mean I was barred from preparing for a time after the issues were resolved, when I would be able to network and try to option my screenplay. Taking the time to thoughtfully draft a query letter for representation was a big step, but it was also only half of what I wanted to do during these circumstances.

The other task I planned on doing was following the advice that I had been given by the judge I’d had the second consultation with for the script of Dig Down: to keep writing scripts.

I had already adapted Dig Down and Lock the Doors into screenplays, but hadn’t gotten to I’m Not My Father yet. This wasn’t the only story that was low hanging fruit for conversion to a script. There were plenty of stories I’d written before I had finally made the move to self-publish, and I felt more than a few of them could be worthwhile and engaging screenplays.

But at this point, a few weeks removed from that second consultation, a lot of the points the judge had made were fresh in my mind, and I was starting to accept that although I had stories available for adaptation, this wasn’t the path to take. All the stories I had written already were written as novels and short stories. That was primarily how I saw them, and I felt any effort to convert them to this new medium would run the risk of arriving at the same end point as Dig Down: good…but not good enough.

I decided that if I was going to write another screenplay, I was going to write it with it being a screenplay in mind from the start. That meant, for the first time since 2008, a full 15 years(!) I was going to be writing an original screenplay, not an adaptation of one. If the story was going to be adapted, it was going to be adapted from a screenplay to a novel, novella or short story.

At this time, I was starting to outline and flesh out the idea for a new story-one that would be too big to be a screenplay-but that was fine to focus on it for now, because I didn’t yet have my idea for a new script.

That was going to come much later.

But I had the map of a plan. When I came back to the screenwriting circuit, to the contests, and festivals, and networking, it was going to be with a story designed to be a script from the start.

I found myself in an advantageous position…that I currently couldn’t advance.

But just because I couldn’t advance didn’t mean I couldn’t do anything.

After placing as a finalist in two different writing contests with my script for Dig Down, and well as placing as a finalist in a horror-specific competition and getting an honorable mention in a broader contest for Lock the Doors, I had gotten both of my scripts vetted already by people in the industry. And the conclusion was they not only weren’t terrible, but that they were worth people’s time.

The only problem was that with the WGA on strike, nobody else was able to see them.

Rather than get bogged down by this setback, I decided to view it as an advantage. Sure, I couldn’t send my scripts to anyone in the industry, but neither could anybody else. And even if a strike wasn’t ongoing, I couldn’t just submit my script to people as an attachment to an email which said this had already placed well in some contests.

In order to get people to read your script, you either have to know them — which I don’t — or you have to go a more common route and query them. Query letters are about a one page memo where you introduce yourself and your script, giving some details such as its genre, what it might be similar to, and a brief synopsis. Its a way for executives, managers and agents to sift through all the hopefuls inundating their inboxes hoping to progress their careers to the next step.

With a commitment of reading one page (and sometimes not even having to read that far) they’re able to tell if they want to pursue any further action with you. Does your query letter follow industry norms, or does it run on and on and on? They can see how well you present your idea, and how well you grasp the ability to market yourself. From the way I’ve heard them describe the process, its almost like they’re looking for reasons to remove people from consideration. It might sound harsh, but its a great screening process to reveal the handful of submissions that actually have potential to get made into a movie.

Even from there, the actual screenplays get a similar treatment, further reinforcing that only the best submissions actually survive to the next stage.

It’s a great system.

It’s also, like most writers, something I struggle with. I feel like I come up with unique concepts for stories. I feel like I can provide a general enough roadmap of what my story is about and where it’s going to people. But describing a story and pitching it are two different things. The former is about relaying information to someone. The latter is about hooking them.

I feel like the format of the query letter also changes with time, so it’s something I never feel too comfortable with when I start drafting it. I would’ve been concerned that I was the momentum from placing as a finalist multiple times…

…except because of the writer’s strike, I couldn’t advance any farther anyway.

So, I chose to view the pause not as a stumbling back, but as a reprieve. The longer the strike went on, the more time I had to revise and improve my query letter. Because no other writer would be able to gain on me in striking a deal in this interim.

Viewed from that lens, I felt I was being given the time to improve my already advantageous position.

After blitzing out attendance to two film festivals for two straight weekends, I was free to focus on other aspects of my writing. While it was nice not having to plan out a whole excursion to watch movies because I couldn’t pursue my main goal of networking, this also wasn’t the time to take my foot off the gas pedal. I knew I needed to keep making choices that would help me advance my writing career.

The only avenue of this kind of advancement was actions that would get me representation, and due to the writer’s strike, I couldn’t actually pursue this. The harsh reality of the situation stung a little. My script for Dig Down had placed as a finalist in two separate screenwriting contests, and were still in consideration for a handful of others I had entered that I was still waiting on the results for. I had never been in this advantageous of a position before, and because of current events that were out of my control, I couldn’t move forward while my motivation was at its max and the iron was hot.

I didn’t allow myself to get deterred during this holding period. I still attended some screenwriting webinars, because there was nothing barring writers from doing so. They gave similar advice, which was to continue working on screenplays, even though no deals could be struck, because once this strike eventually ended, producers were going to be in need of quality scripts to replenish the stockpile they had started to burn through leading into the strike.

This simple advice was fantastic, and I realized quickly that it could help me set a course to navigate this advantage I’d gotten for myself by entering and placing well in several contests. There were two tasks that came to mind, and both had potential to really help me market myself once I was able to once again seek representation.

I’ll get into what I ended up doing, next time.