Suleyman Films

If you read the title and thought, “What does that even mean?” allow me to explain. First and foremost, context. This semester, the final one for my master’s in fine arts, I have focused entirely on screenwriting. My last degree concentrated on fiction, and I felt less than thrilled by the end of that program. While I think my writing has improved, it felt like something was missing—be it a finished piece of market-ready fiction, confidence in the “what next” step, or…unsure entirely. But I think those points two largely sum it up well enough.

Now, back to this past year, I spent the first half writing a thesis paper that I presented this summer and started a brand-spanking new screenplay. The paper primarily looked at my favorite creative element, setting, and I essentially said it’s an underrated and often underappreciated aspect of films. Thrilling stuff, I know.

But the real hullabaloo comes from the reignition of screenwriting itself in my life. I had dabbled in it previously for my master’s degree and finished a script to submit to a contest (of which I did decently well, considering it was my very first try), but since then, I had done very little (read, nothing) in the genre as much of my focus was on fiction. Now, the reverse has happened, and over the summer, I found myself with a hot new idea that was totally not based on real life (just with ghosts added for good measure). I cranked out an entire script in about two weeks. Was it good? Not really. Was it enough to excite me for the fall semester’s project—writing a script or, in my case, revising a script? Absolutely. So, the semester is almost done, and with all the help of my screenwriting mentor, I have a script I am happy with. I still have a few weeks to get the finishing touches on it and receive feedback for the last third, but all in all, I think it’s in a good place.

And all that leads me to the crux of this post: screenwriting competitions, of which there is an illimitable number. Luckily, my screenwriting mentor gave me a list of guild-approved competitions and fellowships, allowing me a good starting point. It turns out Googling “screenwriting competitions” will get you a lot of muck that costs a pretty penny. So I dove down the boundless rabbit hole and found one that closed last night. I spent much of the afternoon and evening—with a break to watch Longlegs with my sister—revising and proofreading. Final Draft, as good as it is, misses a lot of typos… But all the same, I finished my revisions, added and touched up dialogue, and then stared at the screen, wondering if I was missing something. I probably am/was/did. Maybe I could have added another jump scare, fleshed out a side character, or used that Chekhov’s Gun of an alarm system that I forgot about until after I clicked “SUBMIT” on the application.

Today, after a three-mile walk, I sat back down to see what other contests were out there. To my anguish, I found many had already closed—imagine that, 2024’s contests being closed already—and then I felt like I had missed the boat on entering more competitions, and so begun the downward spiral that many of us writers are familiar with: dreadful despair that our work will never see the light of day and all this is for naught.

Luckily, all that went away when I took a long sip of my coffee and stared at my screen and thought, “Wait, I didn’t even have a script to submit back in May. Get the hell over yourself.” So, I did just that and decided, wait a minute, the world will want to read about my sheer getting-the-hell-over-myself-ness of my morning, so why not write a blog post? It’s not like I hadn’t done that in a while…

Is my realization good advice? Probably not, and it might not help most creative types (or it would, but they wouldn’t want to hear it), but I think it helps the melodramatic. Not that I’m such a person; I’m more of a mellow dramatic.

As I finish my coffee and this blog post, I’m thinking about the boats I won’t miss next year. Especially not when I’ll have such a great screenplay to submit.