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There are literally thousands of screenplay contests accepting submissions from writers hoping to demonstrate the viability of their work. Although winning awards can offer aspiring writers a pat on the back and a bit of recognition, they provide little in the way of real opportunity, and are an inadequate method of assessing screenplays.
Screenplay contests are generally established and run by individuals who are interested in writing and movies. Some are themselves hoping to be “discovered.” Most do not have real industry work experience as a screenwriter, such as having been hired by a producer to write a screenplay or having sold a spec script. For some, running contests is the sum total of their livelihoods. Successful screenwriters are too busy working at their craft to run contests, although some do participate in contests as readers or promoters.
Screenplay contests are similar to beauty pageants. It’s fun for the winner to parade about with their prize, but it rarely offers real work opportunities. The prize usually consists mainly of bragging rights. There are some contests whose prize is a production deal, such as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Project Greenlight. And being able to call oneself an award-winner can sometimes help get a foot in the door.
Those who assess the screenplays that are submitted to contests vary greatly in their qualifications. Most contests have a tiered system in which volunteer readers, which very often consist of anybody willing to read, weed out the worst screenplays. Then, depending upon the contest and the number of tiers, the readers become more experienced and qualified as the screenplays make their way up the food chain. Be aware that what qualifies someone to assess screenplays varies greatly: from real producers, writers, agents and those who actually work in the industry, to a guy who saw a movie once. All contests are not created equal and very often the screenwriting contestants will never know who the real readers are or whether or not they are even remotely qualified.
The largest drawback to screenplay contests is that they do not reflect the way screenplays generally get made. Granted there are innumerable methods and ways that screenplays get produced and there are always exceptions to the rule. Maybe your neighbor is a personal friend of Al Pacino’s. But if contests were meeting their inherent fiduciary responsibility to function as realistically as possible, evaluations would be based on genre, and a set of evaluation criteria, rather than on readers’ personal biases and tastes.
Most screenplay buyers, be they producers, directors, executives or agents are not floundering about waiting for a great screenplay to land on their heads. Usually they have something specific in mind for which they are searching. If the studio is looking to produce a teenage love story, it doesn’t matter how many contests your psychological thriller has won, the studio is not interested. But if you just happen to walk in with an award-winning teenage love story, well, now you’re talking.
So if screenplay contests, truly want to serve screenwriters and those who buy them, they would run them in a way that more closely reflected this reality. Contests need to start evaluating screenplays by genre, not only because it makes matching a seller with a buyer more efficient, but because it is the only fair way to assess screenplays. How can one judge say, a pile of westerns against a pile of action films, against a pile of thrillers, against a pile of romances? Regardless of how "objective” a screenplay reader tries to be, personal bias towards one or another genre gets in the way. A mediocre romance may beat out a good sci-fi thriller because the reader, even in trying to be objective, still enjoys one genre over the other.
In fact, why not run screenplay contests that accept only one particular genre? Such as “The Great Western Contest” or “The Thrilling Thriller Contest?” My guess is that contest creators true objective is not necessarily to provide a service, but rather, perhaps, to secure entrance fees or make a name for themselves. Even with a take-all, come-all screenplay contest, screenplays could be evaluated by genre, with winners in each genre, and then the top screenplays of each category compared against one another, still resulting in a winner who gets to parade about beauty-pageant style.
Most finished film and video contest are run in this manner, based on category and/or genre. In that way, films can be judged against their peers, that is, against films that were attempting to achieve a similar outcome. Rather than the way many screenplay contests are run, where an apple is judged against an artichoke. Even the academy awards divides up the industry in this way. Screenplay contests are missing the boat, by lumping unlike screenplays together and calling it pie.
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