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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.

I got the feedback from Scriptapalooza on my first 20 pages of my Lock the Doors script on October 3 of last year. In the span of two months, I had gone from an incredible high of finding out that I had placed as a finalist in the first screenwriting contest I had entered Lock the Doors into, to the low of not even placing in another two, and further feedback that while not terrible, was far from good.

I still had one last contest I was waiting on for results, but the optimism from the summer had long since faded.

This, unfortunately, was not the only rough patch I was experiencing with writing at the time.

While I had been awaiting the results on these competitions, I was working on the first draft of a new manuscript, for a story that wasn’t going to be a novella, but at the very least I full sized novel, with the hopes that this would be the first true novel I ended up publishing. I was heavily outlining this story when I was first entering Lock the Doors into competitions like 13Horror.com. I believed the two actions combined were going to mark a roaring return to writing for me. This was shaping up to be a huge year for me, as I had just been promoted to manager at my job in May of last year.

In terms of writing, the promotion was actually problematic. This new position brought many challenges with it, and demanded lots of my time. I was to lead a unit that I was building up from scratch, and that meant lots of interviews. The work wasn’t put on hold for these interviews either, so I was taking work home me, opening up my laptop after an hour or two of recharging from the day and working, sometimes until 8 or 9, and logging back on at 5 the next morning to apply some finishing touches.

I had started the first draft of my manuscript the same week I had visited my cousins in Airzona, only wrote a page, and put it on hold until I returned to New York. I tried to keep a steady writing pace, sometimes satisfied if all I could do was write a page.

I managed to type the first 100 pages of the manuscript before considering stopping at that milestone, suspecting that the workload might catch up with me. I tried to forge ahead, but after another chapter –about 15 pages– I realized I was asking too much of myself.

I loved the story, felt characters were really coming alive, and had jotted down plenty of notes to smooth out the rough edges of a very rough draft, but the schedule I was keeping was very draining. I felt continuing to forge ahead would have resulted in largely diminishing quality. And while this could be overcome with future drafts, I was concerned my outlook on the manuscript might be forever marred, and that I’d be resentful for how hard I was having to work to “fix the story” even though the story wasn’t the problem, my ability to write it was.

On October 21st, I decided to shelf it, with the hopes of picking it up again one day and giving it the love and attention it deserved. It was sad concession to make in what felt like right on the heels of the feedback from Scriptapalooza. Nothing I was doing writing-wise seemed to be working, and what was even more crushing was that this new story idea felt like the only suitable one I had come up with all year.

Everything around me felt like it was sinking, and I felt I needed to do something to reverse this awful trend.

I’ll share what that ended up being…next time.

As I mentioned last week, I wasn’t really sure where my script of Lock the Doors stood. I had gotten success initially, when all I was really looking for was feedback, but then when I tried to follow that success, I was surprised to find it non-existent. I decided at that point what was best for me was to stick with the initial plan, to seek out feedback.

Scriptapalooza was offering that, not as part of another screenwriting contest, but as a focused review of the first 20 pages of the screenplay. This felt worthwhile because I had heard several times that if a screenplay didn’t hook someone in the first fifteen, maybe even ten pages, they would just put it down and move on to the next script.

This review would be a good litmus test for my script.

So how did it do?

Honestly…poorly.

I had thought that I had set myself up pretty well pacing-wise in those initial twenty pages. It started out a little slow, admittedly, but it also introduced nearly all of the main characters, with the last one just arriving onto the scene around the twenty page mark, established the conflict, and even had the first tense scene that resulted in the first murder. For horror, this usually happened within the first couple pages, so again, I admit it started a little slow, but it still got there, established the stakes, and started to raise them.

The reviewer did not share my assessment of my first twenty.

They seemed intrigued by side characters more than the main ones who were in a bigger chunk of the script, even the first twenty pages. They said the characters all sounded the same. They were even saying they didn’t buy small actions like a character accidentally setting a siren off.

The experience wasn’t all bad. The feedback did identify some blind spots I had for my script. For instance, they wanted to flesh out a character mentioned in the script who was actually dead, something that was obvious in the book, but something I acknowledge I hadn’t conveyed in the screenplay. While I had identified this as horror, and its set in an isolated cabin in the woods, I think its fair they may have wanted to push me to develop characters who typically become fodder in these types of stories. And they had questions about where the story was going which I wanted to shout “You’ll get these answers if you read the whole thing!” but in fairness, their assignment was to only read the first twenty.

They also included a four rank scoring system from “Poor” to “Excellent.” Unfortunately, I was across the board “Fair” which was one rank above “Poor.” I knew that this evaluation was not of me as a writer, but of me as a screenwriter, but I was still expecting better of myself.

In the end, I had gotten feedback like I wanted. I just didn’t like the feedback I got.

As I mentioned in my previous post, after scoring some initial success for my script of Lock the Doors in the first screenplay contest I entered, it started trending in the wrong direction. Not only was I not building off the initial results, I wasn’t getting any results.

At that point, I was open to considering the possibility that while I had received positive feedback, this may be the outlier in the experience that all script readers were having. It had been the only contest that had offered feedback, which was what I originally sought after and was extremely helpful, but didn’t guarantee that the positives they saw in it were what other competitions saw or were even weighing equally.

I decided that what I needed was to find an avenue that offered me feedback on my script. While I had gotten what I was initially after, I could also see that I stopped pursuing feedback in lieu of similar results in the competitions. I had gotten a taste of success, and though I think its justifiable to believe that I would’ve gotten similar results, there was still the opportunity to grow and develop in a new medium.

After doing a little research for script analysis online, I found that Scriptapalooza was offering a review and analysis of the first 20 pages of screenplays submitted, as well as a scoring system. While I would have preferred a review of the entire screenplay, I understood that in this industry, because so many scripts come across people’s desks, it’s important to hook people within the first ten to fifteen pages.

Also, in the 13Horror.com contest where I was selected as a finalist, I received feedback on comments to get a better understanding of why I placed where I did. In TIFF and the other screenplay competition where I was not selected…well, that’s all the information I got. I had no idea where I stood among the other entries, had no idea what my script had done right, and -more importantly- what it did wrong.

Also, the only feedback I had gotten on the revisions I had made was that I placed as a finalist. But I didn’t actually know if I had implemented the changes in the most effective manner.

The additional feedback Scriptapalooza would provide offered the possibility of finding out what might still be lacking in my script that could get me over the hump of these pesky “Not Selecteds.” The notes would be something to compare and contrast to the previous notes I received, to see if the issues identified were still prevalent, or if something else was holding it back.

I’ll share the results from this 20 page feedback, next time.

Although my bold claims that everything was going to go my way while on vacation were dashed when I got the results from the Toronto International Film Festival and found my screenplay had not been selected, I still felt like I was in a really good place. The feedback I had gotten from the first contest I had entered was mostly positive, and I placed as a finalist. Not getting selected didn’t even feel like a setback, it was on a draft that hadn’t implemented the changes I’d made, and horror wasn’t likely to have a strong showing at a competition as prestigious as TIFF.

I felt the best placement for Lock the Doors in screenplay competitions would be in contests actually for horror scripts. And so, I preceded to enter my script into two more horror screenwriting contests. I felt like I was putting myself in a great position to succeed.

Some time went by, and the deadline for the earlier contest arrived. I opened the email and my eyes immediately honed in on “Unfortunately…”

Whoa! What was going on here?

All of a sudden, the contest where I was selected as a finalist was the outlier. This actually was starting to become crushing because it had been the first competition I had entered Lock the Doors into. I still felt like I could dismiss the results of Toronto, as I would readily admit my script didn’t fit what they were looking for. But now this contest, with its focus purely on horror, was telling me my script didn’t fit their competition either.

At this point, I knew what was best wasn’t to just continue submitting my script into more competitions. It also wasn’t to just give up and stop applying at all. I had gotten some much valued feedback, but…was it enough feedback? And, more importantly, was it the right analysis.

I knew this was going to take more than just another readthrough of the screenplay with my own eyes. Having written it, and adapted it, and gone through so many drafts, I was too close to it. I needed objective, professional, analysis.

I’ll describe what that was, next time.

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.