Won’t waste time or effort on the CS Open again

Updates being few and far-between I don’t expect I get much screenwriting traffic on the blog anymore, but just in case, I thought I’d pass along an opinion on the CS Open screenwriting competition- avoid it and spend your time doing more productive things. Like clipping your toenails or something.

The CS Open sounded interesting $12 an entry for an elimination style tournament. You get a prompt and have increasingly shorter deadlines to return a new 5 pg scene with each round. Since I’m a spec writer and I’ve been out of college for a while, the idea of a deadline really appealed to me. (I’m sure working writers who genuinely sweat crazy deadlines are thinking I’m crazy, but… Well okay, I can’t really deny being crazy.)

Here’s how things have played out… First, there were technical problems with registration, then some folks had issues submitting their entries by the deadline so it was extended, and now it appears some entries have just disappeared into the ether. But as far as I knew until this morning, I wasn’t having any of these problems. Got my proper #digit entry ID, had my pages done and submitted, properly formatted and title paged, by the original deadline, got a confirmation page and everything. But no score. No nothing.

I’ve sent several emails after each “Check by” date they posted to the site and still have not received a direct response. Found out via Twitter that a few other people are having the same problems. Done Deal reveals others.

So to hell with that noise. And I’ll be honest, I didn’t have a lot invested in this. $12 ain’t gonna break me, which was half the reason I entered. Plus I had a lot going on the weekend of the first round, SparkCon was going down in Raleigh, bands were playing, I had even gotten a little sick. But I came up with my 5 pages anyway, trying to put a fun spin on the vague plot requirements- but that was it, these weren’t characters I’ve spent months learning about and I guess I like my process a lot more when I live and breathe my characters for more than 5 pages.