Lunchable

I got over 1100 words of the screenplay transcribed over lunch (e.g., 30 minutes). That's good. Gives me a sense of how long it'll take to get it all transcribed. Shouldn't take too terribly long, as I type very quickly.

Finished!

I finished the first draft of the screenplay this morning! Yay! Now, I have to transcribe it (yeah, I wrote it longhand), and put the scenes in order, and read through it and revise/rewrite as necessary. And then let some folks read it, see what they think. Then revise and rewrite again, then sling it out to the competition. We'll see. I think it's got a good concept, and the plot unfolds nicely, and anybody who knows me will laugh when they read it, because they'll most definitely realize the inspiration behind it. I hope it wins at the festival, although I really can't get my hopes up, of course. Here's what I'm competing for...

All winning entries will be reviewed for consideration for production and/or distribution. In addition, we’ll announce to thousands of industry professionals that you were a winner of our festival. This will be done via an advertisement in a widely read industry publication. In some cases there will or will also be a cash prize and/or a product/software bundle.

Of course, the challenge I face is that they're judging it on "most frightening" -- and I don't know if the story I wrote is "most frightening" or not. It'll be a well-written, smart, darkly funny horror screenplay. Will it be most frightening? I don't know. But will it be good? Hell, yeah, it will. It will feature a unique monster, and will be witty and carefully plotted. But "most frightening?" I don't know. Fingers crossed? We'll see how my readers react to it. It's hard for me to judge it, since I am behind the curtain, know all the magic tricks.

What I'll likely do on revision is turn up the volume on it (not in terms of gore, but in terms of terror -- I'm not a fan of gory horror as a substitute for good writing). There's the meat and bones of the story, and then I'll bring the horror and terror into as sharp a focus as I can. I have plenty of time to get it done before the deadline. I'll see what I have when I have it all typed up and the scenes in order (the hardest part of screenwriting [for me, anyway] is writing scenes out of sequence).