I have four months until the Academy Nicholl Fellowship opens, plus about another two months until it closes. If they repeat this year’s formula, then it’ll remain open until the 5,500 submission quota, hence the two month estimation. That gives me about six months to decide what I’ll be submitting to the most prestigious screenwriting competition on the market.
Writers are given one submission per season to this competition, so the question is…what will I be entering?
It’s highly doubtful that I’ll have new material to submit by then, so I’ll have the pleasure of picking a piece from my portfolio. At the moment, I have a choice to make between four of my children, and it’s not an easy one.
THE HIGHWAYMAN: This is the forgotten piece of the bunch, however, it’s probably the most “ready” script that I have. There’s perhaps one sequence that could use a revision, but I would otherwise feel comfortable submitting it right now. I submitted it to a couple competitions in 2022, where it nearly made the semifinals at the Austin Film Festival (top 2%). Without giving away too many details, The Highwayman is a low-budget action/thriller with a twist that is unique, sympathetic, and offers a fresh perspective on the prototypical cinematic antihero.
SKULL CREEK CANYON: While this script is the most accomplished of the bunch, it also may be the odd man out. The problem with Skull Creek Canyon is that I feel like it requires a smart audience to understand what I was really going for. It has polarized readers since I first started entering it into competition, with some loving it and others absolutely hating it. It’s a low-budget thriller with only three onscreen characters at any given time. It would be wonderful to watch, but you need to find someone who truly “gets it” first.
SHIFTER: My proudest work, but also the most untested of the group. This one’s a toughie; I love the story, the characters, the dialogue, the action, and the twist. But I also feel like there’s a little more that I can add to reinforce the script’s structure…I just haven’t figured that part out yet. Unlike the aforementioned scripts, Shifter is a bigger budget production as it’s a sci-fi action/thriller that takes place a century into the future.
WELCOME TO THE WEST: I recently brought this one back into the fray after having ignored it for a couple of years. Originally stuck at 121 pages, I have managed to cut about seven pages of fluff while beefing up the storyline. As the title implies, Welcome to the West is a western, which may or may not put it at a disadvantage at first glance. However, it also performed well at Nicholl, including a top 10% finish. From that perspective, this script has already demonstrated that it has the legs to compete.
It’s tough. I love all of these scripts for different reasons, but come February when Nicholl opens, I’ll have to pick one. Of the four titles listed, Shifter is the only one that hasn’t received any sort of accolades yet because, well, I haven’t entered it into anything. That makes it something of a boom-or-bust piece at the moment.
The question is: which of my children am I going to send down the Nile?