Takeaways From a Screenplay Call

Two years ago, I ran an open call for horror film scripts through my company, Apple Park Films. With a feature film almost at picture lock after feedback from our test screenings, I had a real sense of momentum and wanted to capitalise on this by preparing projects to shop around when people asked what I wanted to do next. I had also noticed a shift in the attitudes of the Screenwriters I interact with on social media. They had become almost fixated on scoring high on The Blacklist in a bid to land an agent or big producer who can make their career instead of pitching/selling to independent directors/producers like me.

I thought an open call would make an interesting thought experiment – would I be swamped with pitches as I was back in 2016? I didn’t think so, not if my experience looking for Writers to collaborate with back in 2021 was anything to go by (I received only five expressions of interest, and all of them fell through). I created a script call with the following criteria:

• Genre: Horror.
• Few locations.
• British (or adaptable to British).
• Budget range £100,000 – £200,000.
• Real horror genre – any subgenre is fine, but no dramas dressed up as horror.
• One of my main complaints about modern horror is how boring and despicable most characters are – bear that in mind.
• I only want to see loglines at this stage.

I then posted this on Twitter, hashtagged the appropriate screenwriting channels, and waited to see what came in.

The results were admittedly more promising than I had been expecting. As the results came in, I noticed some interesting trends that I feel are worth analysing. What follows is a breakdown of these trends and some cautionary tales about the way some Writers chose to present themselves that may serve as food for thought for Screenwriters.

Submissions Breakdown

• I received a total of 41 loglines from 30 Screenwriters.
• The gender split across these submissions was 84% Male/Male-Identifying to 16% Female/Female-Identifying.
• The sub-genre split skewed in favour of supernatural horror (56%). The next most popular sub-genres were creature feature (10%), slasher (10%), psychological horror (5%), and techno horror (5%). The remaining 14% came from sub-genres such as mystery-horror, horror-comedy, and contained-horror.
• One logline had no identifiable sub-genre.

Takeaways

I expected fewer submissions than I received, but 41 loglines are still far lower than one would expect for an open call. Low-budget horror films never go out of fashion. They’re fun to make, easier to sell, and have a fanbase that will accept films without star names. Writers should have one of these in their arsenal of scripts. It may be tempting to have a more cerebral horror script that you hope to sell to A24, but you’re more likely to sell a low-budget gorefest to an indie-production company and see that film made. If you don’t have a low-budget horror in your pile of specs, I would suggest writing one.

The gender split was incredibly disappointing. I’ve seen a lot of women interested in writing horror on social media, so to have so few submissions from women in an open call seemed a shame. I recently read that women are more likely to hesitate when applying for a job when they don’t meet all the criteria. Men, however, are far more likely to apply for the same role even if they don’t meet all of the criteria, and in some cases, if they meet less than fifty percent. More on this later.

The sub-genre split reveals just how cyclical horror is as a genre. It should offer reassurance to those who worry about having their ideas stolen. It never fails to surprise how similar many of the submitted loglines are to one another. I won’t reveal any specific loglines here, but there are many instances where two or more loglines approach similar subjects. There are a lot of films in my submission pile where protagonists return to their rural homes only to be greeted by an evil force that doesn’t want them to leave. It’s not the idea that makes a screenplay original but the execution. We’ll see how those executions hold up when I read the screenplays that I request.

The logline that offered no discernable subgenre is worth discussing in isolation. I assume that the film is horror because it was submitted to a horror open call, but there was nothing in the logline to suggest it was a horror film. When presenting a logline you need to let the reader know what the genre is in the body of the logline without straight-up saying it. You need to know what you’re selling. I need to know what I’m potentially buying.

Of the 41 loglines, only two made me want to read the script right away. I’ve not discarded the rest. I have organised them in a chart that I will read again and use to narrow down the ones I want to read, a luxury I can afford because I only received 41 submissions. If I had received submissions in the hundreds I wouldn’t have time to do this and would have passed on many of these loglines. Your logline should sell your film. It should make me want to know more. Many loglines I received were over-complicated and messy. Others weren’t loglines but taglines you would expect to see on a poster and didn’t tell me the story (it’s unlikely I’ll read these scripts). Finally, some (but not many) of the loglines were boring and lifeless. They gave me no reason to read the screenplay. They say you should sell the sizzle, not the steak. Your logline NEEDS to sizzle. Loglines are difficult and I struggle with them myself. Once you have written them, please run them by people before sending them out into the world. See if it makes your friends/families/Checkout Assistant at the local supermarket want to see your film. The best feedback I ever got from a logline was when I pitched an idea to my mother, and she asked if ‘I had come up with that all by myself?’

Earlier I mentioned how research shows that men are more likely to apply for positions even if they don’t meet all of the criteria for a post. The open call process reinforced this research. Throughout the process, I was contacted by men (and I will gender this because it was only men) offering something other than what the open call was requesting.

Please don’t do this.

I know we’re taught that we should seize the initiative and grasp every opportunity, but know your limits. If an open call asks for feature film screenplays in the horror genre, you can bet your arse I do not want to consider your rom-com short script (yes, this happened). It’s tempting to see this sort of behaviour as putting yourself on my radar or getting a foot in the door but think about it from my perspective. I have a limited amount of time. I don’t need to be wasting that time on things that are irrelevant to what I’m doing. If I ask for horror features and you send me a rom-com short, I’m not thinking of you as the ‘plucky Screenwriter that seized the initiative.’ I’m thinking of you as the ass-hat who wasted my time by bringing me something I didn’t ask for and didn’t want. Bearing that in mind, ask yourself – ‘am I top of the list of people he’ll contact if he wants a script in the future?’ If you answered anything other than ‘no’ you need to sit down and think about your attitude.

The above sentiment applies to all the men (again, it was only men) who emailed me to ask if I wanted to collaborate on a screenplay from the ground up as well. Writing a screenplay from the ground up is a long collaborative process. I want to know that I can collaborate with that person and that they write with a voice and style that suits me as a Director. Doing an open call is as much a search for Writers with a voice I like as it is the perfect screenplay.

Finally, those of you submitting to open calls must remember how important it is to leave lasting, positive impressions on those of us you contact. Demanding that we ‘read your screenplay right now before you offer it to someone else’ won’t win you any favours. The answer will be no. If you follow this up by calling us an asshole, we’ll be sure to add your name to the list of people our friends and colleagues should avoid. The industry is small. Word of mouth is an important tool that many of us use to learn who we should and shouldn’t work with. Don’t get a reputation because you think you have the upper hand and can force a deal. We all remember who you are. I have a list of people that I have no interest in working with because they’ve proven themselves to be a dick. If one of my friends mentions a name on my list, I’m sure to let them know who this person is.

The Scripts

Of the forty-one loglines, I received from the initial open call I requested twenty-one scripts/outlines to read. Over the course of the past three months, I have sat and read these scripts. It has taken me a long time to read them, much longer than I imagined. Now that I have finished reading the scripts/outlines requested I intend to break down some of the things that I feel writers will benefit from knowing about their scripts and how I read them, and their conduct as writers who wish to engage in this industry. I will not be naming and shaming any of the writers involved. The purpose of this article is to provide constructive guidance to any screenwriter who interacts with it. Pointing will not encourage that.

Before getting to the screenplays I think it’s important to share my process when reading spec scripts. I have never been shy about the fact that I don’t enjoy reading spec scripts. It takes a lot of time and like anyone, I would rather spend my time doing something I enjoyed. I won’t go into details here, but if you are interested in reasons why people don’t enjoy reading spec scripts I would recommend you check out this Twitter thread by Samantha Horley.

Again, the purpose of sharing this is to offer constructive feedback and not to belittle writers. Samantha is very good at what she does and you would do well to heed her advice. As a result of not enjoying reading spec scripts, I have come up with a process:

• I’ll read the first ten pages.
• If the first ten pages interest me I’ll read to page twenty.
• If I like it up to page twenty then I’ll finish the script.

These are my rules. It saves me time. If I don’t like something in the first ten pages, odds are I won’t like the whole thing, now for the feedback.

Notes On Professionalism.

When doing the call out I was contacted by some writers who had an idea, but it was only in the outline stage. This was fine, as I would rather read an outline than a spec anyway. I agreed to read outlines for these ideas and this makes sense because it’s the ideas that hook my interest in the first place. However, after requesting the scripts I had three other writers contact me and say the script was only at the outline phase. One even tried to shift the blame to me by saying I ‘hadn’t specified when the scripts need to be finished.’ If you haven’t got a finished script, tell me.

This frustration was taken to the next level when two writers informed me they couldn’t send me the scripts I requested because they had already been optioned. If you can’t send what you offer, don’t offer it in the first place. One told me he ‘didn’t want me to think he was wasting my time.’ How do you think I felt when he told me this after I requested his script?

I cannot stress this enough – the industry is small. People talk. Do not get a reputation for wasting people’s time.

Outlines

The outlines I read were all pretty good. Good enough for me to ask writers to follow up with the scripts. They all presented the ideas in a clean, straightforward, and easy-to-read fashion. In the future, I will be asking for outlines before I ask for spec scripts.

The Scripts

When reading scripts in an open call, the most important thing for me is that I like the execution of the idea. I’m looking for something I may spend up to two years of my life with, so my main question is ‘do I like this?’ Sadly out of the scripts I read there were very few that I clicked with. This is not always the fault of the writer and in most instances, the reason I passed is that it simply wasn’t my cup of tea. Another common reason was that the scripts were too American in theme/idea/tone and would be tough to sell here in the UK. There’s no feedback I can give on this. No way to help you improve. It is simply that sometimes the idea doesn’t work for the person reading it. So please don’t take it personally if someone says no.

This isn’t the only reason I passed on scripts. Let’s detail these below:

Budgets

Included in the call for these scripts was a budget of £100,000 to £200,000 and minimal locations to save money on location spending. It became evident to me that many writers aren’t sure about budgets. Again, I won’t mention names, but when I say minimal locations I mean a house, a warehouse, an office. Sending me a script set on a tropical island may well be minimal locations, but they’re expensive locations to get to. I would advise all writers to have a look at some film budgets and just how much some things cost. It will benefit you considerably when tailoring your script to calls with specific budgets.

Ambling Starts

There is a difference between a slow start, which engages the audience with the world and characters, and an ambling start where people just do stuff to fill time. It surprised me just how long it took for anything to happen in some of these scripts. As I pointed out in my process above, I give you ten pages. If there’s not been something to keep interested by page ten I am putting your script down. One script took until page twenty for anything to happen. The first twenty pages were a character wandering around a house, looking in different rooms. I kept reading past page ten just to see when anything would happen. Give the reader a reason to care in the first five pages at least. It can be a character. It can be the world. Just give us something.

Uninteresting Characters

I may well have built this rod for my own back. In the open call, I said I didn’t want to read scripts where all the characters were horrible. And it’s true; one of my biggest criticisms of low-budget horror is that many films are horrible things happening to horrible people. You can swing too far in the opposite direction. The issue should never be dichotomous. It’s not between nice and horrible. Characters have to be interesting. They can be nice and interesting, they can be horrible and interesting. The key is interesting. Gone are the days when we want characters to survive because they’re nice. It’s the same for wanting them to die because they’re horrible. I want more. Actors want more. Audiences want more.

Telling Not Showing

Film is a visual medium. You need to show us what’s going on through character and setting. Give us a sense of the world and the people in it. Too many of these scripts had generic sluglines and then told me in detail where we were in the first line of action. For example:

INT. CAFE – DAY

We are in a Greasy Spoon.

It’s breakfast time.

You’re wasting action lines. You’re not making me feel like I’m in a world. This is what people mean when they talk about unfilmables. This is merely an observation of where we are. Let’s try again:

INT. GREASY SPOON – MORNING

Grease hangs in the air. Diners shove bacon, egg, and sausage into their mouths.

That makes me feel something. I can experience that world. I can build it with the cast/production designers/DoP. Your writing has to evoke something in me. Visual writing makes me care. It makes me interested. No doubt there will be people out there who say I’ve overwritten the second piece and that you can’t film grease hanging in the air.

I disagree.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article is to give some insight into my experience doing an open call for screenplays from the viewpoint of the person on the receiving end. Writers often describe submitting as a bit of a crapshoot, so if I can help clear anything up, I’ve done my job. However, my approach is not definitive. I’ve tried to keep the advice to general good manners and etiquette. I’m one person. There will be other Directors/Producers who have different rules/standards from mine. The most valuable advice I can offer is that Screenwriters should have a low-budget horror feature in their arsenal and consider seeking out independent production companies like mine. They shouldn’t rely on services such as The Blacklist and other competitions as their sole source of hope. Agents and Representatives are equally impressed by script sales and produced work as they are the numbers eight, nine, and ten.

I’d like to thank the people who sent me screenplays to read during this open call. It’s a brave thing to send your work to a stranger and have them judge it. As a director, it’s my job to be picky. I’m looking for writer’s voices I enjoy (many of which I enjoyed) and hopefully a good script, which is hard to come by. I hope that what I’ve written here hasn’t discouraged or upset any writer, be it someone who submitted or someone else. The purpose is to give you food for thought and advice from the perspective of someone who goes into it wanting to make your script. When I watch a new film I always say that I am on the film’s side. I want to like the film. It’s much the same when reading spec scripts. I want to like them. I want your script to be the one. There’s a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of bad advice out there on social media. A lot of people who don’t have much experience offer new writers far too much advice.

Watch movies. Read scripts. Read scripts as you watch movies and see how they work. A lot of people say that reading produced scripts isn’t that helpful because those writers are established and can break rules. They’ll tell you to follow the same rules they do.

I would offer an alternative view. If 99% of writers get rejected, why would you do the same thing that 99% of writers are doing? Break some rules. Throw in some cool stuff. At the very least it will be refreshing to the person who has to read it.

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