Dear Readers,
Welcome to Script Frenzy 2012! Script Frenzy is an annual challenge held by the Office of Letters and Light in April to write a 100-page script in the month of April.
This year, I’m participating in Script Frenzy for the first time in several years – and this time, I have an edge: last semester, I learned how to properly write a screenplay in the Screenwriting I course at my university. Along the way, I’ll post encouraging tidbits, discussions of craft, and hopefully pick up a few guest bloggers as well.
If you’d like to participate in Script Frenzy this year, you have plenty of fantastic options for writing. You may want to consider experimenting with one of these forms:
- Writing a film. 100 pages is a typical length for a feature film and, based on how much action and the pacing of the dialogue, makes for a film of about two hours.
- Writing a stage play. I’ve written stage plays before – that’s how I started my high school drama club. Stage plays are fun, but you’re limited by the space on the stage. If you loved drama club when you were younger – or if you love acting for the stage even now – you may be most interested in writing a stage play. My favorite stage play is M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, which is the book on which I wrote my senior Honors Thesis.
- Writing a miniseries. A miniseries can be tons of fun! Since you can calculate about one minute per page of script, a 40-page chunk would make a single episode of your miniseries. If you’re not too intimidated by going over the page count, try writing a three-episode miniseries with 40-minute episodes for a total of 120 pages.
- Writing the opening episodes of a television show or web series. TV episodes are usually about 20 to 23 pages long for a half-hour show and about 45 pages for a one-hour show. With those lengths in mind, you could easily write three or more opening episodes for a potential television show – and you could reduce the number of episodes needed by writing a double-sized pilot episode. If you’d rather write a web series, you can write serial scripts of any length, so you could write a five-minute show every day and crank out your SF project in only 20 days.
- Writing a comic book or graphic novel script. This is the really fun but really difficult one: comic book/graphic novel scripts are written very differently from screenplays or stage plays. You can learn more about how to write comic book and graphic novel scripts in Script Frenzy’s Writer’s Resources section.
Certainly at least one of those things must tickle your fancy! If you’re just coming from NaNoLand, you may want to try writing a film first – and using your last NaNo piece as the base of an adapted film. Who knows? Maybe your SF script will end up even better than your NaNo novel.
Remember: to make that 100-page goal, you have to write three and a half (3.5) pages per day. The actual number is 3.3 pages, so if you do 3.5, you’ll finish a little bit ahead of schedule!
Are you participating in Script Frenzy this year? If so, post the URL of your profile here, and I’ll become one of your writing buddies! You can also add me directly on the site by visiting my profile.
Feliza Casano 