At least I'm in the hunt!

I forgot to mention that on Feb 1 the BlueCat Screenplay Competition announced that one of my scripts had moved forward to the quarterfinalist round. Some honesty is important here -- usually, the scripts that make it through the first round in a contest tend to be the ones that were actually formatted correctly. I know that everyone always wants to think it's because of their amazing talent, but a lot of garbage gets submitted to these things. The readers often have to wade through hundreds of submissions that don't follow the rules of screenwriting.

So, making it to the next round just means my script is at least mediocre and that my Final Draft program is working correctly. If you'd like some numbers, the contest had 3391 submissions with about 10% moving on to the next round (341 scripts).

The nicest thing about BlueCat is that you get feedback on your entry as part of the entry fee. I think that I, and a lot of writers, really view it as a cheap way to get your script read and get some notes, with the contest being a bonus. They do offer a much more in-depth analysis, but being the poor scribe that I am, it's not something I can really afford.

The competition has a page count cut-off. Of course, my screenplay was far past that, mainly due to the nature of my script's genre and my poor skills. So, I was forced to do the ol' chop chop to make the submission requirement. The fastest place was to cut the majority of the denouement. I still believe it's an important part of the script, but you can get the gist of where the future is leading my characters without it. Of course, what was one of the main complaints in the critique I received? The reader thought the ending was too abrupt and cheated the viewer. Well, sir -- I agree! At least it shows that the reader REALLY did read the script.

The screenplay I submitted was Gaia 4: The Last City, my anime/space opera homage. There is really nothing along the lines of Macross or Lensman coming out of American cinema these days, although I really feel that there is a hunger for that sort of story. The script is also based on a novel I'm working on, although it's slow going. Hopefully, I'll have an update on that sometime soon.

If you wanted to check out all the quarterfinalists, you can do so here.