Got a Screenplay in Your Drawer or Hard Drive?

Hollywood wants to read it! So what are you waiting for?

THE NICHOLL FELLOWSHIPS ARE NOW OPEN AND READERS ARE READY!

Each year, since 1986, the Academy Nicholl Screenwriting Competition awards up to five $35,000 fellowships to amateur screenwriters. To enter, submit a feature-length screenplay (as a PDF file) and pay the entry fee via the online application.

Fellowship winners are invited to participate in awards week ceremonies and seminars, receive individualized Academy member mentorship, and are expected to complete at least one original feature film screenplay during their Fellowship year.

THE BIG CHANGE THIS YEAR?

You can only enter ONE SCREENPLAY.

In prior years, under the theory that if you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it will stick, you could enter every screenplay you’d ever written. Many of my writer friends did this, but I’m taking the fifth here.

But Nicholl readers are not going to slog through your screenplay for nothing. Rules are rules. The early entry fee is $50, the screenplay must be feature-length, meaning no shorter than 70 pages and no longer than 160, with the recommended length between 80 and 125 pages.

Unless you have endless patience for hitting your space bar, indenting and centering all lines of dialogue down the middle of the page, you should consider buying Final Draft or other screenwriting software. https://store.finaldraft.com.

I used Final Draft and liked it well enough. It was not cheap though, at $185. The software sets up the page, spacing, and all other peculiarities of screenplay writing so you don’t need to worry about it. “Just add words” was their marketing slogan at one time. Maybe it still is. (Final Draft also has its own screenwriting competition called “The Big Break.”)

Below is what a screenplay page needs to look like if you want to engage, not enrage, the Nicholl reader. It’s from my oldest screenplay in which Hollywood had some mild interest at one point. While nothing to brag about, this exerpt demonstrates the industry-acceptable format (using Final Draft) for a screenplay.

Buried in the fine print about what the Academy is looking for in Nicholl entries is the following esoteric question: ‘Does the idea have a purpose as opposed to being simply about misery?’ (That probably rules out most writers— ed.)

As a winner, you can’t just accept the $35K, say thank you, and get on with your life. Not so fast. You are expected to work for that money by writing a brand new screenplay. And that $35k Fellowship will be paid to you quarterly subject to satisfactory progress of the recipient’s work, as judged by the Academy Nicholl Fellowships Committee.

My Experience with the Nicholl Fellowships

Twenty-some years ago, I found out about the Fellowships, likely from some writers’ group. I had an idea for a story (a thriller) and used it to write a screenplay which I mailed to the Nicholl Fellowships in LA. (Hard copies were accepted back then but not now.)

Since I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing, my script was a hot mess. But by some glitch or miracle, my pile of pap made Quarter-Finalist status (top 5% of all entries). It never made it to semi or finalist status, but trying to figure out why it got as far as it did was like reading tea leaves. (My script was worse than that actually.) I entered again, over the next two or three years, with new screenplays, but never made it out of the slush pile. I’d had my shot at screenwriting fame, it seemed.

I thought about entering this year, just for the heck of it, but discovered I am disqualified because I wrote (though it is hard to say ‘wrote’ with a straight face) boring voice-over tracks for a cable TV show for two years, and anyone who has made $25,000 or more writing for television or film may not apply to the Nicholl Fellowships. So sad, too bad. Their loss.

Last year, the Nicholl Fellowships got 8,191 script entries from 89 countries. Ten finalists were chosen and ultimately five winners.

To read about the winners and their scripts, see here: https://www.oscars.org/news/academy-reveals-winning-nicholl-screenwriters-5

Please note, even if you are one of the five winners, your script will not likely ever be made into a film. The contest is not about writing a producible script. Those who win need to complete another script within a year to get the $35,000 (in installments) with no guarantee that their new script will ever be made either.

Still, want to give it a shot? Even lowly quarter-finalists like me got calls from Hollywood agents wanting to read my quarter-finalist script or asking: “so what else ya got?”

It never led to anything, but fifty bucks is not a huge investment and just might open up La La Land for you. Remember, Brad Pitt’s first gig was wearing a chicken costume and passing out chicken samples to passers-by on the street. Entering the Nicholl Fellowships seems a lot less humiliating.

Bang out a screenplay, or dust off the one you’ve got kicking around; make a PDF of it; get out your credit card and follow the rules here: https://www.oscars.org/nicholl/about.

This year’s deadlines are as follows:

Early entry fee of US$50(by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on March 2);

Regular deadline entry fee of US$65 (by 11:59 p.m. PT on April 2) and;

Late deadline entry fee of US$90 (by 11:59 p.m. PT on May 2).

As for the story idea that prompted me to write that mess of a screenplay I entered into the Nicholl Fellowships back in 1999 and “won” quarter-finalist status; it is now a novel, scheduled for publication this summer. Maybe somebody will read it and want to make a movie of it. How funny would that be? Nothing would surprise me. Not in Hollywoodland.