This post is just about sharing a great resource with other aspiring scriptwriters.
For roughly the past year I’ve writing the scripts, on spec, for an animated limited series. I’ve recently finished the first draft of the 35th and final episode and I felt like I needed a break from universe building. This gave me new found spare time in which to think about what to do with a 35-episode sci-fi series based around my graphic novel’s protagonist, Alexandra. In all honesty I thought I’d just slowly role it out on Youtube as a somewhat animated show. Animation is expensive and time consuming. Somewhat animated is less so.
However, I’ve recently thought, as part of my master plan, that I’d like to enter the pilot episode into scriptwriting festivals. Which means, that in addition to having written the pilot, I needed to learn how to properly format a script.
Apparently, there is software for that such as Final Draft and Scrivener, but I’m not at the learn (and purchase) new software phase of my scriptwriter development quite yet. I already own Microsoft Word, so Microsoft Word it would be. Sans industry specific software I needed to learn how a script should look and then I had to learn how to get Word to do what was required. Youtube is always my go-to online mini-class on any topic that I’m hoping to get the gist of quickly and it did not let me down.
The next, and as far as I’ve thought this through, phase of my master plan was the actual entering of my script. That’s where I am at now. My hope is that festival feedback will help me polish the script and that placing at a festival will help me in securing a literary manager. How does one find festivals? In my search I stumbled upon a wonderful website,
https://filmfreeway.com, which has been of great help in finding all sorts of festivals. It was just a matter of me scrolling through and finding the ones I thought would be a good fit.
If you are an aspiring screenwriter and you want to try your hand at festivals, I wish you the very best of luck. Unless, your up against my script, then I wish you luck, just not the very best.
D.W. Richards
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