Tag Archives: cyberspace open

Reminder: Cyberspace Open

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Round one of the Cyberspace Open writing contest is this weekend, and it’s going to be a hoot! While I don’t know whether anyone out there is interested in participating at an official level (if you are, you must enter by the 16th), I thought I’d remind you just in case. Even if you don’t register officially, you can still play along. Whee!

From the official Web site, here is the description of round one of the competition:

Round One: Your Lost Weekend

This round is like this real-life situation: A producer calls you at 5 pm Friday and says “We desperately need a new scene first thing Monday, or production stalls, with a $50,000/hour crew sitting around!”

This is your chance to save the production. We send every entrant the same premise and set of characters by email at or slightly before 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18, 2009. The premise will also be posted above on this page where indicated in case you don’t get the email.

Contestants will have the entire weekend, until 9 AM Monday Sept. 21 — but not one second more– to write and submit one final version of one scene, three to five pages long, on line.

Then, judges from CoverageInk.com, the manager of the competition, will grade each scene. Entrants will receive feedback and a score from a judge by email.

Exactly 100 highest-scoring writers advance to the tighter deadline of Round Two.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m really looking forward to participating. When I get the notification of what the scene is supposed to be about, I’ll post it here, and when I submit my entry I’ll post that here as well. If anyone else writes something based on the challenge that they would like to share, I’ll happily post that as well. It could be a movie scene, but you could attack the subject in regular prose, poetry, or even photos if you want. I’m the only one who has to please a judge. Use it as an excuse to spend some time with your creative side.

At the very least, please stop by over the weekend and cheer me on!

Thanks!

Bangin’ Out Scenes

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My brother sent me a link to a screenwriting contest this morning that looks like it could be pretty cool. One of the best things about this contest is that it can’t eat up a whole lot of my time. That’s the point of the exercise, in fact.

The contest is an elimination tournament of three rounds. For each round the writers are provided a premise, and writers must produce a 3-5 minute scene based on the premise. Only the best go on.

In the first round, participants have a weekend to prepare the scene. The submissions are graded and the top 100 writers advance to round two. The site promises feedback for each entry, but I don’t expect they will have time for anything terribly in-depth. Creativity is 25% of the score, and all over the site writers are encouraged to ‘think outside the box’.

Round two: A new premise for another 3-5 minute scene, and a new deadline. Overnight. The top ten advance.

Round three: Ninety minutes.

The top ten finalists will be judged at the Screenwriting Expo. Actors will rehearse and perform three finalist scenes before the expo audience, in what promises to be a pretty fun event. The winner walks away with a cool three grand and some pretty serious bragging rights.

I’m not sure how many people will be participating, but I will be one of them. It would be fun to make it to the second round, but a lot depends on whether the genius idea strikes at the key moment. I expect the competition will be pretty fierce. I’ll just sit back, relax, and let fly, and hope it sticks. With an entire weekend, the danger is over-editing or trying to do too much. The second round may actually be easier.

I’ll post each of my scenes here, as well. In fact, what the heck — I’ll do the following rounds even if I don’t advance, just for the fun of it, so there will be a total of three scenes here, no matter what the judges say. At the start of each round I’ll echo the premise in these pages, and if any of you care enough you can brainstorm rough ideas how you would treat the premise in the comments. If someone else wants to participate (either officially or as a shadow) I’d be happy to make a page here to share everyone’s results. Let’s make it a party!

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Thanks!