Write Club Screenplay Challenge

We’re stoked to announce the referee for our second challenge, Write a New Ending for Paranormal Activity.

Denise Gossett is the founder and Director of the Shriekfest Horror and Sci Fi Film Festival, which runs in L.A. each October, and an actor. A certified Scream Queen in her own right, Denise has seen a lot of screenplays come through her festival, as well as of course having appeared in a few flicks herself: Carnies, Fright Club, The River, Decaying Orbit, Chain of Souls, Nightwatch, Sheila Takes a Bow, When Silence is Dangerous, Self Inflicted, Crustacean, and tons more!

We appreciate her making some time in her extremely busy schedule.

WHAT YOU WIN: Thanks to Denise, the lucky winner will get a Shriekfest t-shirt, a free 200 word ad in their newsletter (use it to pimp your film, your screenplay, your writing services, etc), a link on the Shriekfest site, and a free festival pass for 2010 Fest. How’s that?

UPDATE: Winner announced!

** SPOILERS ** This screenplay contest assumes the entrant has seen the film Paranormal Activity, and knows how it ends. Virgins tread no further lest the cherry be popped.

Is it too soon for this?

As you may know from my review of Paranormal Activity, I’m a fan of 98% of the film. The last 3o seconds, however? Not so much.

And I’m not alone. The film has developed into quite a phenomenon, and so has the heated discussion around the supposed “studio imposed” ending. This thread at Roger Really has information about two other alleged endings, and the comments section makes for good reading on the variety of reactions to all the alternatives. Likewise the IMDB forums for the film. Or HorrorSquad.

Those who dislike the ending seem galvanized on one point: The camera lunge. I likewise am largely fine with Micah being thrown at the camera – it’s a shocker, a great exclamation point on the excruciating tension the film’s worked so hard to build to that point. But that last part, when Katie crawls in, inspects Micah’s body, and then lunges (morphed like a shot cut from Jennifer’s Body) at the camera, followed by those insipid scrolling footnotes (“…and when the teenagers got home, there was a HOOK hanging from the car door!”) just did not seem like they were from the same film, and left me and many others sitting there thinking… “That’s it? It’s over? What the Hell? This movie was different. It was good. What happened?” (Raises his arms to the ceiling and yells “Spielberrrrrrrrg!”).

So here’s the deal. I hadn’t planned on launching another challenge so soon, but the discussion this movie’s ending has generated really got me thinking… and since it’s gotten its theatrical release now, and more folks can see it, it seemed like a good time to talk about endings.

I used to work retail (who didn’t). Worked my way up to management (by mostly showing up every day). Ended up training cashiers. And here’s what I told them: No matter what the shopper’s experience is in the store, good or bad, what they’ll remember is the last interaction they had. Bad shopping experience? Offset by that nice cashier who smiled and wished you a happy day. Wonderful shopping experience? Ruined by the rude college kid who wouldn’t look you in the eye, didn’t say thank you, and smashed your tomatoes.

So too with storytelling, the ending matters. A lot. Great endings make great movies (check out this list of the top 50 endings at AMC). And bad endings become the stuff of legend (here’s Hollywood.com’s top – er, bottom – 10).

Just as your opening pages have to grab the reader (or viewer) and get them hooked, the closing pages have to leave ‘em satisfied. Just like each scene in your script should have a great button, so should your whole movie. Whether it’s a period, an exclamation point, an ellipsis or a question mark, the right ending, narratively, structurally, and psychologically puts the right closing punctuation on the story sentence.

Does that mean you’re obligated to thoroughly resolve everything? Nope. Tie everything up with a bow? Of course not (especially if you’re thinking sequel). Frankly, I like me a little ambiguity. But it’s about delivering with a style and conviction in keeping with the rest of your story. That’s what folks are complaining about with Paranormal Activity (those who are complaining anyway). That the ending doesn’t deliver on the promise of the rest of the film.

So here’s your challenge:

WRITE A NEW ENDING FOR PARANORMAL ACTIVITY.

Challenge Requirements (read carefully):

This is, we acknowledge, a particularly subjective challenge.

Consider this more than just an exercise in “endings” but also an exercise in re-writes. As a working assignment writer, you may find yourself contracted to polish or fix an existing screenplay. In this case, imagine Spielberg had asked you to “fix the ending”, keeping the balance of the existing script in mind and intact. What would you have done?

This is not about a full final act. Not even really the final scene. It’s about that critical last 30-120 seconds that justifies or validates the entire preceding 88 minutes. And it’s not really about Paranormal Activity per se, so much as it uses that film as a contemporary example to experiment with.

The (next to) final scene stands. Katie gets a strange grin on her face, and convinces Micah that it’s fine to stay in the house.

What happens next?

Everything after that (Katie leaves the room, Micah follows, and all Hell breaks loose somewhere in the dark) is up for grabs. I’ll leave it up to you whether they leave the room at all, whether you use the “Micah gets thrown at the camera” moment, whether Katie addresses the camera.

Should the film end with a bang or a boo, smash cutting to black? Is it better served with a bang and a narrative epilogue? Do we need a title crawl? Or to get out of the house to give our audience a psychological escape? Think about the characters, their personalities, their relationship, what we’ve learned about them through the story, any clues or foreshadowing or props that might be leveraged, think about what kind of a story it’s been, and find an ending that makes elegant use of all that information for a satisfying ending.

The rules:

1. 1 scene
2. 2 pages or less
3. the scene should be in keeping with the balance of the film in tone, character and pace
4. the scene should provide a satisfying conclusion to the preceding existing film
5. proper screenplay formatting
6. zero typos (esp. spelling, commas, and apostrophes) – including the character names!

Check our RULES page for more details.

Check out the FAQ page if you’re still confused.

HOW TO SUBMIT: Post your entry in the “comments” for this post. Use “Scrippets” tags to format your entry like a screenplay.

SUBMISSIONS LIMITED to the first 50 qualified entries (qualified = meeting the stated criteria) or 11-31-09 — whichever comes first.

WINNERS ANNOUNCED approximately two weeks after close.

COMMENTS WILL BE RESTRICTED TO ENTRIES ONLY. Other comments will be deleted (there’ll be time for comments and discussion later, promise). Contact Us if you have questions.

WHO’S JUDGING: Your referee will be Denise Gossett. Denise is the founder and Director of the Shriekfest Horror and Sci Fi Film Festival, which runs in L.A. each October, and an actor. A certified Scream Queen in her own right, Denise has seen a lot of screenplays come through her festival, as well as of course having appeared in a few horror flicks herself. We appreciate her making some time in her extremely busy schedule!

WHAT YOU WIN: Thanks to Denise, the lucky winner will get a Shriekfest t-shirt, a free 200 word ad in their newsletter (use it to pimp your film, your screenplay, your writing services, etc), a link on the Shriekfest site, and a free festival pass for 2010 Fest. How’s that?

Ready? Go!

— Disclaimer! This website, its operators, its sponsors and entrants have no affiliation with the film Paranormal Activity, its creators or its distributors. We make no claim to the story or characters and present this screenplay challenge only as a critical and educational tool for screenwriters, storytellers and movie fans. Paranormal Activity remains the property of Paramount Pictures Corporation and Oren Peli dba Solaka Films.

The first Write Club Screenwriting Challenge contest results announced – “Subtext”.

See the original challenge (and read the entries) here…

The envelope please…

Thanks to all those who submitted to the subtext challenge. Knowing how to avoid gratuitous exposition and on-the-nose dialogue is so critical to developing characters that have depth and motivations that resonate.

How often as a teen did you catch grief over your tone of voice? “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it” was a common refrain in my household.

How many times has a loved one claimed that they “shouldn’t have to tell you what they want/need/mean” because you’re supposed to understand their true motivations without their spelling them out?

These are the hallmarks of subtext… the understanding that the tone and energy under the words people utter rarely carry the message they want to communicate, that their true meaning lies somewhere behind the words.

Your task was to write a scene with two characters, at least one of whom wants something from the other, at least one of whom gets what s/he wants from the other, neither of whom ever explicitly states what it is s/he wants.

Your Referee for this round is John Rainey. John has reviewed the entries, and without further ado (drum roll please) I’ll turn it over to John for his results!

AND THE WINNER IS:

ALAIN DOMINIC

All are born to their function.
A common, but durable, lineage.
Rarest breeds. All are precious, all irreplaceable.
No infection great or small must be allowed to compromise that potential.

Now, THIS is subtle subtext. Trista’s subtext is to get a position for her son in the Royal Academy. But the Queen nails her at every turn. Everything the Queen says keeps Trista in her subservient place without stating it overtly. The scene could have been even more dramatic if Trista (Wife) had continued to pursue her scene objective subtextually.  Nevertheless, excellent work! Thumbs up!

About Alain: Alain is a serious screenwriter with big aspirations and bigger ideas, who maintains a great blog at Dangerous Screenwriter. Check it out!

“Just wanted to give a big THANK YOU to all for putting on the contest in the first place, and choosing my scene as the winner! Consider this my digital hug to you all.

Websites like yours and opportunities for no-nonsense feedback really means a lot to those of us who take our craft and our careers seriously. This kind of stuff must be somewhat of a drain on your already busy schedules, so I just want you to know that your efforts to share your knowledge and inspire those of us who are really trying are appreciated and are having a great impact.” – Alain

Alain Dominic will receive a copy of SONY Vegas Movie Studio 9 software courtesy of The Business of Show Institute and Sony Creative Software. Congratulations, Dominic, on being the first winner of a Write Club Screenwriter’s Challenge! (Learn more about BOSI and SONY’s support for Write Club here!)

RUNNER UP:
PAM INGLESE: “I think the actions/reactions could be more subtle, and the ending was a touch melodramatic, but the scene fulfills the task [and Chip is especially fond of the fact that Lorna drives her agenda with no dialogue]. Well done!

Among the others, although they may not have specifically fulfilled the subtext task, we saw some good writing! A cute, well written scene with snappy dialogue. A powerful scene with an incredible climax that blew me away with its sense of hopelessness as reason debates rage… and loses. From the sublime to the ridiculous, you gave us the whole spectrum.

GENERAL FEEDBACK:
With an eye toward making the challenge worthwhile for all, and in the spirit of constructive criticism, I’ll share some of the common problems among the entries (not all related to subtext):

• Double entendre was often confused with subtext. It’s not enough that the words have double meanings, but that there is an agenda behind the words. Thus there was some cute dialogue that unfortunately just didn’t fulfill the task.
• Likewise metaphors are not subtext. They’re neat, but they’re not subtext in their own right.
• There was a fair amount of “relationship exposition”… scenes that illustrated a complex relationship, but without subtext and no apparent resolution of an agenda.
• Don’t forget it’s a visual medium. I’m not fond of nonspecific phrases like “uncertain what to do next”. If that’s how your character feels, try to demonstrate that through their actions in a way that lets the viewer know the character is uncertain what to do next.
• And don’t describe your character in ways that a viewer can’t possibly know. Don’t tell me that he’s “dressed as he is every morning” or “cranky like always”. As the viewer, unless I’m familiar with his patterns I won’t know that. If it’s an important character trait, you’ll have to find an interesting visual way to communicate to the viewer that this is a behavioral pattern.
• Watch out for passive verbs and adverbs. Don’t let your characters “walk quietly”, have them tip toe.
• And I’m afraid I saw a few missing commas. It’s an obsession, I know.

Thank you all for your entries, and for letting me referee the first Write Club Challenge. Keep writing!

- John

John Rainey – Rated the #1 screenwriting analyst in the country by Creative Screenwriting Magazine in 2003, John has been in the industry as an actor, screenwriter, reader, and analyst for more than 20 years. Learn more about John’s consulting and writing services at raineyscriptconsulting.com.

The winning entry:

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

The gauntlet has been thrown.

John Rainey has stepped up and volunteered to referee our first challenge. It goes without saying that all of our challenges share a few requirements… among them proper format, spelling, and punctuation. Otherwise, we leave it up to each referee to define their challenge, and to decide just how stringent they plan to be on issues of compliance. We can promise you John has extremely high expectations.

JOHN’S CHALLENGE REQUIREMENTS (READ CAREFULLY):

From John’s site: “An objective is the character’s subtext in a scene. Rarely do characters say what their objective is. They speak around it in an effort to persuade the other character to give him/her what he/she wants. A guy on a date would never say ‘Let’s go to my place and have sex.’ … To say that would be ‘on-the-nose.’” …more

1. 1 scene
2. 3 pages or less
3. 2 characters
4. Strong opposing character objectives where the objective of one character must be fulfilled by the other character
5. the objectives should be discerned only through subtext and never articulated by character through dialogue
6. one or both objectives is/are fulfilled through implication
7. zero typos (esp. spelling, commas, and apostrophes)
8. your entry can function as a self-contained short or a scene from a larger story

HOW TO SUBMIT:
Post your entry in the “comments” for this post. Use “Scrippets” tags to format your entry like a screenplay.

SUBMISSIONS LIMITED to the first 25 qualified entries (qualified = meeting the stated criteria) or 09-30-09 — whichever comes first.

WINNERS ANNOUNCED approximately two weeks after close.

WHAT YOU WIN:

1. SONY Vegas Movie Studio 9 software courtesy of The Business of Show Institute and Sony Creative Software. (Learn more…)
2. Bragging rights.
3. Satisfaction.
4. A kick in the direction of a new writing project.
   

That’s it. Simple, right?

Check our RULES page for details.

John Rainey – Rated the #1 screenwriting analyst in the country by Creative Screenwriting Magazine in 2003, John has been in the industry as an actor, screenwriter, reader, and analyst for more than 20 years. Learn more about John’s consulting and writing services at raineyscriptconsulting.com.

We can’t tell you the details yet, but we can let you know that the theme is SUBTEXT.

Check back September 1st for the announcement.

And check out our about and rules pages to learn more about Write Club Screenplay Challenge.

John Rainey – Rated the #1 screenwriting analyst in the country by Creative Screenwriting Magazine in 2003, John has been in the industry as an actor, screenwriter, reader, and analyst for more than 20 years. Learn more about John’s consulting and writing services at raineyscriptconsulting.com.

• We establish the parameters of the challenge.
• You submit your “entry” in the comments section below the challenge post (using “scrippets“).
• Our referee(s) review the entries and choose a winner.
• The winner receives the satisfaction of having won (maybe someday we’ll offer something more than that… but if you’re not writing to write, that in itself is something to think about).

We’ll be launching our first challenge soon… keep checking back. And tell your fellow screenwriters.

why?
It offers motivation to get writers to write; it allows for socializing with, and feedback from, your peers; and it’s good fun.

inspiration…
Write Club Screenplay Challenge was inspired by the John August website. Although John is a busy busy man, he occasionally finds time to offer his blog readers a “scene challenge” — wherein John sets up parameters, and invites readers to post “entries”. There have been 5 challenges on John’s site in the past 30 months. When he has another, we’ll let you know.

Write Club is an appreciative homage to the spirit of John’s site.