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After the initial near blunder, the rest of the consultation for my script of Dig Down went smoothly. It also went about as good as I ever could have expected, let alone ask for.

The judge who I was on the call with told me it was a real pleasure reading my script, and that one of the biggest problems he had with it was that in doing these competitions, screenplays like this only came along once every month or so, so he jokingly blamed me that it would be another month before he read something so solid.

He also relayed that this was going to be a different type of call than what he was used to for these consultations. They are pricey, but they are open to anyone who doesn’t mind spending the cash for them. The high cost, theoretically, should weed out scripts that aren’t polished, as you could get the feedback from this very competition for much cheaper. Apparently that isn’t typical, at least for this contest’s judge, as he stated that for some calls, they’re going over the basics of formatting.

That still blows me away. I get wanting feedback on your screenplay, that’s why I entered this contest, but again, they offered a variety of services, many much cheaper than this alternative. Yes, you wouldn’t get a phone consultation in those meetings, but why not get a sense of where you stood before plunking down this kind of cash.

I know the answer though – most people don’t know what they don’t know. They might not realize how far off target they are from where they need to be. And from the judge’s comment that sometimes he’s spending time arguing with them about formatting basics, it sounds like people don’t always want to believe they’re that far off, even when they’re told.

Another positive was that the judge said my script had everything. As I alluded to in earlier posts, the reason it was taking so long to get the notes turned out to be because they really liked it. That didn’t mean that there still wasn’t areas to improve (I’ll get into that in the next post), but that any notes needed to be thought out beyond the surface level (like formatting) to really elevate the screenplay to the next level. The judge said that all the elements were there for what people were looking for in a movie, now it was just about bringing them out in the best way.

With the focus on positive feedback, I found myself more and more relaxed as the phone call went on, which helped me feel comfortable in discussing points about the script. The concern I had going into the consultation that I wouldn’t be able to thoughtful responses to questions – that evaporated within moments after the early near faux paus, as I felt at ease the rest of the meeting.

A great example of this was his question about the name of the script, and whether it should be changed. While I didn’t necessarily have the sales at that time to insist that the story had name recognition, I went into the different layers that the title held for me, and this actually helped shape an idea to give it a film noir element (more on this in the coming posts). The conversation went for two and a half hours before it started to wind down, and at no point was there a shortage of discussion on ideas to improve the script further.

I think we could have kept talking longer, but he did have another consultation to prepare for. And to be honest, as much as he may have enjoyed my story, even I can see there’s only so long someone else can have the interest to discuss it. But as we were wrapping up the call, he did reiterate that because of this level of feedback and consultation, I had the ability to make revisions as I saw fit (another great thing about this contest, and working with editors, they’ve never tried to mold the story into what they want, they’ve always just made suggestions for what they feel could help improve the story I want to tell) and resubmit, up to the contests deadline, and ended the call with something that conveyed he had faith in me as a writer.

“I’m looking forward to reading the revisions.”

Everything was in my favor. I had pages of solid notes on my script for Dig Down. I’d spent time preparing myself for my first ever script consultation. I’d been told to expect a positive call. Hell, even the start of it couldn’t have been better, as the judge of the competition I had entered had started off saying he hoped I enjoyed writing it as much as he enjoyed reading it.

And in the time it took me to respond, I felt I almost completely sabotaged the future prospects for my Dig Down script. What could I have said that could have such a devastating impact on my work?

I told him I must have enjoyed it, because this was the second time I had written it, as an adaptation to the first book I’d published.

Now, this appears very innocuous on the surface. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the response. Except it invited a follow-up question: “Do you have sales?”

I knew what the judge was getting at with this question, and the implications that went with it. In Hollywood, studios are taking fewer chances on unproven stories. Its why you see so many adaptations from other medias, sequels, reboots and remakes. They’re hoping to reduce the risks that come with making movies.

When the judge asked this question, I knew he was hoping to hear that I already had a large, loyal fanbase. In truth, so did I. If I had a following that was willing to buy tickets to see a story they loved on the big screen, or on a streaming service, combined with the quality of the story, this would have increased my chances of getting Dig Down into production.

But…I was adapting my books into screenplays as an approach to get my stories out to a wider audience. This is one of the challenges of writing, and something I might get into in more depth later. Essentially, the judge was asking if I already had the think that I was after, which was a wider audience.

I had inadvertently put myself into a jam. I couldn’t tell him I didn’t have sales, because I knew that would dampen the mood of the phone call. It might risk losing the enthusiasm that he had going into the meeting. Saying no would also mean one of my fears I mentioned in a previous post would be realized – that I wasn’t savvy enough for these meetings. I also couldn’t lie and say I did. It wouldn’t have taken too long searching the internet to find I wasn’t appearing on any of the top pages or sales figures. All I’d be doing there is proving I was a liar, and signaling I was someone you didn’t want to work with.

While this was a predicament, quick thinking saved me from the dilemma I’d put myself in. I didn’t have major sales, but I did have sales. So, instead of saying I had no sales, or lying, I decided to frame my response a certain way. After all, I’d had a lot of practice of this as a writer, guiding the reader to think and feel the way I wanted them to as they read my story.

I answered that I had some sales, but not as much as I liked. I also explained that this was a deliberate strategy, which was true. When I had been doing research for indie publishing leading up to the book launch of Dig Down, some advice I kept seeing was that indie writers should write series, as it was a way to hook a new audience, as it would give them multiple books to read, and thereby get multiple sales.

I do think this is a sound strategy, but felt it wasn’t for me. Dig Down is short enough, I couldn’t imagine splitting it into thirds. But I felt it was worthwhile to apply a part of the strategy that went with writing series. It was advised to wait until two installments of the series were ready to be published before actually doing so. This would generate some momentum as writers could control the release schedule, and have two books scheduled to their liking for new fans to find and enjoy, hooking them long enough for the next installment to be made available.

While I didn’t have a continuous story to keep readers engaged, I liked the idea of holding off on a marketing push until I had a couple of published books under my belt. If I marketed heavily going into the release of Dig Down, I felt that fans might have a hard time waiting for my next book. I always try to write something every year, but that’s not exactly the best pace for the internet. And not everything I write meets my expectations to go forward with publishing.

So, my thoughts were to wait to truly start marketing myself, until I had multiple books already out there. This would give writers new stories they craved right away, instead of waiting on my release schedule. This would also give them a better sense of what to expect from me, not only my writing style and what types of stories I liked to tell, but also that I’ll hop from genre to genre to tell the stories I want.

I gave this in-depth explanation to the competition judge, and while he replied that the better strategy is to build up that audience so that instead of entering screenplay competitions trying to get noticed, studios are coming to me looking to adapt my story, it was delivered not as a reprimand for a poor decision, but as advice to help me succeed.

It was a good thing this was a phone call instead of a WebEx or Zoom call. I didn’t have to risk him seeing me breathe a sigh of relief. In an instant, I’d given a near catastrophic response, but just as quickly, I’d averted disaster, and had done something I was seeking to do going into this meeting – that I could display some savviness that showed I understood the process and what professionals were looking for in this industry.

Luckily for me, this turned out to be the only real scare in the meeting. The rest of the consultation went very well from here.

Looking up contests to enter, weighing the different ways of entering, waiting on the feedback these contests offered, and reviewing and applying the notes I’d received, had led me to this moment: my first ever script consultation. My excitement had been kept under wraps as the prep work for this meeting kept me busy, and now, in the final moments while waiting for the call, this nervous excitement was all I was left with.

Nerves were definitely present, but I reminded myself that the email I had gotten scheduling this appointment was to expect a good call. The notes, while filled with areas to improve, were still positive and supported this expectation. But still, anytime you go into something for the first time, there’s bound to be a little nervous energy about the unknown.

“This is going to be a good call,” I reminded myself. “They told me so.”

I think that may have actually added a little bit of pressure to the moment–that the expectation was that this was supposed to go well. The email gave the impression that they were impressed with my script for Dig Down. Yes, they had noted areas to work on, but from research I’d done on writing screenplays, and webinars I’d sat in on hosted by industry professionals, I knew that most scripts were bogged down by lots of technical issues, many of them not formatted properly, or lacking the story structure of a movie.

Having adapted my script from my first published book, which had been vetted by my editor, and had gotten positive feedback from readers, I knew that I didn’t have any story structure issues. And I had made sure to format my screenplay properly.

“They told me to expect a positive phone call.”

My main concern was the high bar I might have set for myself. Because I didn’t have glaring technical deficiencies, I felt that when I had the consultation, I’d fall short of their expectations when it came to answering the questions they posed in their notes, maybe only giving surface level responses and then finding out they were hoping for responses that were more in depth. Imposter syndrome definitely crossed my mind heading into the meeting, that it wouldn’t take too long into the conversation for the facade to lift.

Two o’clock came. I had everything set up. My laptop was open to their notes, with the screenplay minimized but ready to be called up. I had a notebook with my responses to their questions, and a book mark to flip to a blank page to take more notes on the conversation. My phone was fully charged, but still plugged in, as this was blocked out for three hours, and I didn’t want to run into any technical issues during the call.

The phone rang. This was it.

“This is going to be a good call.”

When I answered, I was greeted warmly by Joe, the lead judge in the Page Turner Screenplay Competition. I really helped put me at ease, reinforcing what they had told me, to expect a good call. He then followed up his greeting with something else that really help settled my nerves, saying:

“I hope you had as great a time writing this as I did reading it.”

The conversation couldn’t have gotten off to a better start.

And then, what I said next nearly blew the whole consultation before it even started.

On the morning of my first ever consultation to discuss my script, I felt there was still so much I needed to get done to prepare. Although I had been taking notes and outlining my responses to the pages of feedback I’d gotten, I was still organizing my thoughts so that they would be as cohesive and thoughtful (or at least sound that way) as they could.

While I still wanted to fine tune my thoughts, the biggest thing left on my to do list was to watch a link that the judge had provided with the expectation that I do so prior to the meeting. With a phone call that was expected to go hours, it wasn’t likely that I could skip it and that we just wouldn’t have gotten to it during our call. I also wanted to make sure I was getting the most out of this consultation, and not watching this would only sabotage my efforts.

As usual with things I try to do, there were complications. This was a 90 minute video, essentially a movie in and of itself, so I needed to set aside the time to watch it. Also, I felt it would be beneficial to organize my thoughts on the video afterward so that I could actually offer something to the conversation when we discussed it, so another half hour to an hour needed to be set aside just for this video.

The time for this wasn’t main problem – I had the whole morning, and this call wasn’t until 2 in the afternoon. The main obstacle was that my internet at the time was spotty at best. It’s still very unreliable, even in the stretches where its working great, there’s this thought in the back of my mind that’s just wanting for the issues to come up again…and they tend to. I’m still experiencing them even as I’m trying to upload this post.

Trusting my internet to hold for a 90 minute video was asking a lot. So not only did I need to set aside the time to watch and analyze the video, I also needed to set aside time, in case I needed it, to troubleshoot any connection issues that arose, to handle them in what I hoped would be short order.

I followed the link to the video, and was surprised that it started up immediately. But, as expected, within the first two minutes, it paused and started to buffer. I closed out of it quickly, and began brainstorming plan Bs to be able to watch the video. I made up my mind that I would give it one more chance, and if it experienced the same issue, I would head to the library and watch it there. Their internet wasn’t great, but anything was better than mine.

The link opened again…and this time, actually played through the entire video without any problems. There was a sense of dread even while it was playing that it would pause again, but the further I went into the video, the more at ease I felt that I was getting what I needed from it, and that I’d be able to share my thoughts during the phone consultation.

The video was excellent: it discussed how the best movies have climaxes where the main character is forced to face their external, internal and philosophical conflicts all at the same time, and that doing so creates the powerful endings movies are remembered for. The video gave examples of this in classics, such as Star Wars and The Graduate. It really gave me a lot to contemplate about improving the ending to Dig Down, and was in line with the character analysis that they had given me as part of the feedback on the notes. What was interesting was how the video said that most scripts don’t have this, which is why so many movies feel lacking at the end of the movie. The message was received – while I felt my script was good, this could be what elevated it to the next level.

Miraculously dodging the internet connectivity issues, I spent the rest of the morning taking notes on the video, reviewing my responses for the questions posed about my script, and finally, taking some time to just relax and get myself in the right frame of mind for this phone call.

There was still some nervousness as time crawled toward 2. This I just chalked up to nervous excitement. There’s always things you think you still could have done, but I felt I’d gotten myself prepared for this consultation.

I was as ready as I was ever going to be.

After going over the in depth feedback I’d gotten from the Page Turners Screenplay Competition, I needed to get to work. I had gotten the notes only a few days before I was scheduled to have a phone call with the lead reviewer, which the contest runners had said were extensive, so I needed to come prepared.

In the days leading up to my phone consultation, I began working on addressing the notes and questions that the feedback had posed to me. The first was the question about the title, Dig Down, and whether or not it should be changed. I outlined several reasons of what the title meant to me, and more importantly, what it meant to the story. Until this point, I had never really thought too much, and never articulated, the different layers of meaning in the title.

If nothing else, I was grateful for the notes because they really made me explore the story that I had written and been a part of my life for years, to a level I’d never reached before.

I also spent time each day working on the four layers of each character in the story – what their external and internal motivations were, what their philosophical motivations were, and the secret that each of them harbored. Again, this was great because the notes were like a challenge to me to take my story and do even better, to really dig beneath the surface of the story I had told. To me, while Dig Down is only the length of a novella, I felt that there was so much more packed into its size than other novellas, even other stories twice its length.

This exercise was also great because in answering the questions about these characters, it allowed me to delve into aspects of the characters that didn’t make the manuscript. Details that were in the notes but couldn’t naturally be incorporated in the story, or information that had been divulged in the serials I posted on this site, and eventually compiled into a book of short stories in the Dig Down universe that I sent to people who had subscribed to my email list, found their way into these character studies, and in some cases, found their way into the later drafts of this script.

This was what I was primarily focused on leading up to the meeting because it was the most time consuming. With the amount of time it took me, I was glad I had made the decision to take the day off from work for this phone consultation, because it gave me the whole day leading up to the call to prepare.

As much as I was focused on getting prepared for this meeting, on the morning of, there was still one thing I hadn’t done. There was a link to a video that had been embedded into the feedback, which I was waiting to watch once I had a block of time dedicated to do so.

I’ll discuss what the video was about, next time.

So after getting two sets of feedback within about a week of each other, I was just…wow!

This was a lot to process. There were definitely positives that both competitions had noted. As well as areas of improvement. Even though I had gotten feedback from Finish Line first, because the phone call with Page Turners was coming up first, their analysis was what I chose to focus on.

Although both had offered several pages of constructive feedback, I was so excited when I got the feedback from Page Turners. Finish Line was good as well, and pointed me in a direction of what to focus on, but there was something different about the notes Page Turners.

It wasn’t that I agreed with everything in the notes. In fact, I was ready to argue one of the first points they made, about revising the title. It’s always a pet peeve of mine on behalf of the writer when I see in the credits that it’s based on a book or story of a different name. To me, there was obviously something that attracted someone to adapt this into a movie, and aside from extreme examples where the author’s original title wouldn’t have made for a marketable movie title (some Philip K. Dick stories come to mind), or where the story is good, but obscure, possibly because of the title, I always would rather see an adaptation is based on a story with an eponymous name.

Despite that and some other small points where I was ready to stand my ground, I think what stood out to me was the level of feedback I was getting from Page Turners. This wasn’t so much that it was in depth, critiquing every little thing in the script. It was more that the focus wasn’t on surface level things. Finish Line had gone beyond grammar and punctuation in their notes, bringing up points of the story that I should address better.

This analysis was going beyond that. It felt like it was delving into the inner workings of the story, to weed out any deficiencies and mold it into the best version of itself.

The best example of this was the instructions of the different levels that each character was operating off of: taking the external stakes they’re addressing, and then delving deeper to the internal and philosophical stakes that shape them and their actions, as well as the secret they harbor. This note, which spanned several of the pages of feedback, had me critically analyzing my own characters, to make sure I could answer these questions, not just to the judge, but also to myself.

What’s more, I felt that if I tackled this feedback first, this would help me out with the feedback from Finish Line as well, in part because some of the notes echoed each other (this was something I was looking for after all, areas to improve that were common in multiple notes). I also felt that by attaining this higher level and bringing it out in revisions, my submission to Finish Line would be all the more stronger.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited to be told I needed to improve my work.