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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.

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.