The DC Shorts Screenwriting Competition is a different kind of screenplay contest. What makes it unique is that the winner receives $2,000 toward turning their script into a film. The film also automatically gets in into the following year’s DC Shorts Film Festival.

This alone makes it worth the time of any aspiring writer. However, even if you don’t win the competition, it’s a worthwhile entry fee – all scripts receive feedback from judges. And if your screenplay is a finalist, you get to watch it being performed by actors, in front of a live audience in Washington, DC (pictured above).

As a screenplay judge for the DC Shorts Screenplay Competition, and as a screenwriter myself, I’m going to tell you exactly how to win this contest.

I hate to say it but the rules are important. They exist because we want great short films that can be produced in DC, ones that audiences will stand up and cheer for.

Most important rule – your script can’t be longer than fifteen pages. A script fewer than ten pages would be even better.

As stated on the DC Shorts web site:

Scripts are scored by each judge for strength of plot, originality, writing proficiency, ability to be produced on a budget of less than $10K, ability to be successfully read, performed, and understood by a live audience, and other values.

Your script will be judged by each one of the criteria listed above. What do we mean by them?

Strength of Plot – Story is conflict. With less than fifteen pages to work with, you must introduce your main character and their dilemma immediately. We don’t have time to get to know them – we must discover their problem in the first couple of pages. Then you must figure out a way to resolve it.

Originality – Everyone knows what happens in a romantic comedy, how the characters meet cute and are destined for one another. What’s your twist on this familiar genre?

Writing Proficiency – DC Shorts screenplay contest judges are writers themselves. Don’t annoy them with clichés, with bland lines of dialogue, with overwritten descriptions. And certainly don’t include typos, misspellings or other mistakes.

Ability to Be Produced – We’re talking low-budget. No special effects. No explosions. One or two simple locations, like a coffee shop or a bedroom. No crowd scenes or exotic costumes. Keep it simple and let your story do the work.

Ability to Be Successfully Read and Performed – Finalists get a table-read in front of an audience, who picks the winner. Write dialogue that actors want to perform, that audiences will thrill to hear. I suggest reading it aloud yourself or with friends. Act it out and see how it plays.

Other Factors – Judging is, by its nature, subjective. We read a lot of scripts so, above all, we want things in correct screenplay format. Extreme violence or sex may put off some judges. Stories that are racist, misogynist, homophobic or badly written certainly will. And it’s called DC Shorts, so we have a preference for scripts set in Washington.

What doesn’t matter is… who you are. Judging is blind. We don’t know who wrote what. Anyone can win this contest.

You can do it. Fewer than fifteen pages, a couple of locations, some interesting characters, an intriguing situation – c’mon, you could write that over an evening.

Early Deadline – March 31
Regular Deadline – May 15
Extended Deadline – May 31

Submit your script online at DC Shorts.

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It’s the end of the year, and the end of a decade. What were my favorite projects of 2009? What did I have the most fun working on?

Murder in Ocean Hall

I can’t help myself, I like to write fiction. People have asked me how I could leave my job and then spend countless hours alone, in a coffee shop, writing a novel. I’ve offered advice on setting a schedule and being committed, but the truth is that writing a book is a huge sacrifice and something that you must really, really want to do. And something that you must enjoy doing more then anything else.

DC Shorts Film Festival

This year, I made sure to really enjoy the festival, not only as a screenplay contest judge but as a participant. For the first time, I was in town for all the parties and saw some great films, including Funky Prairie Boy. What’s great about DC Shorts is that you get to meet filmmakers and other creative folks in a very relaxed, friendly atmosphere. And with the Screenplay Competition held a month after the main festival, I got to enjoy both events. The funny thing about being a volunteer is that if you show up and prove to be reliable, you get given all sorts of other interesting duties. For DC Shorts, I’ve been a film judge, screenplay competition manager, executive judge, film panel moderator, assistant emcee, furniture mover and event photographer – anything for the cause!

Transparency Camp

“One time, at Transparency Camp…” Embarrassing, I know, but Transparency Camp was really a revelation for me. Having worked in government, I firmly believe that it should be more transparent and accountable, which was the focus of the event. The most interesting part was the format – it was an “un-conference” where the participants devised the agenda and put on the presentations. And it was free. That’s a tremendous development, because most web conferences cost thousands of dollars and feature sitting in cold rooms looking at PowerPoint presentations from various experts. By contrast, the un-conference format enables tapping the knowledge of the group in a democratic and open session. Plus, free beer!

Pink Line Project

The end of the year found me embarking on a new project – interviews with artists and other interesting DC creatives for the Pink Line Project. These are people who are risk-takers, who go out and start film and theater festivals. I think that everyone is creative and with my interview series I hope to encourage others to write that book or make that painting.

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It was a great festival again. I’ve volunteered with DC Shorts for more than four years now and each year it gets better and better.

My personal favorite film in the festival was Funky Prairie Boy. It won the Diversity Award (presented by Verizon). This short Canadian film is about:

A young boy living in a small prairie town during the early 1980s, befriends the only black kid at his school and soon discovers the prejudice that exists within his friends, his family and even in himself.

It’s got the most well-developed story of all the films I saw at DC Shorts. The characters seem real, all of them a mix of good and bad impulses. The short film captures the awkwardness of children dealing with adult issues of race and prejudice. Yet, it’s not an afterschool special, where the plot is driven by social points to be made. Instead, it’s a messy and funny look at kids trying to be kids. While they’re trapped in a rigid world that they didn’t create, they just want to dance and hangout.

Funky Prairie Boy

I’m not a fan of message movies. Funky Prairie Boy is above all, a good story, one that just happens to deal with touchy issues. Plus, it’s got some rocking music and excellent performances by the young leads.

I had a chance to talk to the director of Funky Prairie Boy, Mike Schultz, at the DC Shorts Awards Brunch. One of the great things about the festival is the accessibility of the directors. Identifiable by their blue badges, you can find them at parties, at Q&A sessions following the films and just hanging out in front of the theater. We’re so not LA…

Mike explained that this was a story long in development. It started with a script that was a recipient of  the Worldwide Short Film Festivals Giveaway Prize. Mike won a bunch of film equipment and then took a couple of years rounding up a crew to help turn his short screenplay into a movie. This time was well-spent.

As Jon Gann, Founder of DC Shorts said, this was the year of the technically competent film. Advances in technology have made it possible for nearly anyone to turn out a gorgeous looking short movie. However, the best cameras in the business can’t compensate for the lack of a good story, one with a beginning, middle and end.

Funky Prairie Boy is playing at 9:30 on Thursday night with other award-winning shorts at E Street Cinema. If you can’t make it, check out the Funky Prairie Boy web site.

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I’ve been involved in DC Shorts almost since the beginning. I volunteered with Jon Gann, founder of the festival, and  was a film judge for a couple years. Me and other volunteers watched and rated the hundreds of submissions that came in. We used a clever online system to do so. One key trait about DC Shorts is how professional and well organized it is, from top to bottom.

The next year, I was a screenplay contest judge, where I read short scripts that were submitted to the festival. We then did a live reading of the finalists at E Street Cinema; the winner got money to turn their script into a film.

In 2008, I was the DC Shorts Screenplay Competition Manager. In addition to reading lots of scripts, I got to work with writers, actors and a theater director to put on a show at the Navy Memorial. The finalists had their scripts read, with various degrees of acting and blocking. Jon appointed me to be “bad cop,” to make sure that the writers followed the rules, to keep it fair. We said no props or music to focus on the words in the script.

The six finalists of the DC Shorts 2008 Screenplay Competition were:

• The Note
• Shiva
• Two Lines and a Stick
• Taco Mary
• Geronimo’s Last Ride
• Last Drag

Dealing with bunches of actors in a theater is not something I ever really wanted to do. I’m more comfortable writing, hidden behind a laptop. I honestly considered breaking my own leg to get out of it! Or at least faking an injury. Despite this, it was really a wonderful experience, one of those challenges that you really learn from.

How it worked was that the writers all got to select actors from a pool that Jon provided. The actors were local, pulled from people Jon knew and Stonehenge, the open casting session held annually in DC. Some of the writers (most of whom were from out of town) talked to the actors beforehand. Others just selected people based upon a packet of headshots that they got to select from. Some of the actors appeared  in more than one script reading.

The writer and their cast first met the day of the reading. We provided them a meeting room at the Navy Memorial for them to rehearse in. We held rehearsals all day long,  so each group had time of their own. Tables were pushed aside in the conference room as we watched, American Idol style. They would generally read out the script first, then the writer would offer their feedback. Certain lines would need to be stressed; the delivery was wrong on others; tone it down on this part. Writers who had made short films or plays were more comfortable in giving direction to the actors.

A very talented theater director, Linda Murray from Solas Nua, was there to help them stage the reading. She provided advice on choreography, how to arrange the actors on stage to highlight what was happening in the script. The actors also pantomimed actions in the script, like eating and smoking. I learned a lot from watching her, about how move people around on a stage to make things more interesting. Lots of simple old theater tricks.

I was there as timekeeper, rules enforcer and DC Shorts problem-solver.

No props, no music, no costumes. Questions about props came up frequently. I was strict on this point. People asked about costumes – I said they had dress in normal clothes. The only thing that slipped by me was one woman’s red wig – I honestly thought it was her real hair. Additionally, there was a lot of concern over the microphones and microphone stands in the auditorium. It turned out not to be an issue, for the acoustics were good enough (or the actors loud enough) that mikes weren’t needed for the most part. Several of the actors came from the theater and could really project.

Jon wanted a simple reading. But, inevitably, if you bring actors, they will act. They performed the scripts, as if they were doing a play. Some of the performances that seemed rather broad in the rehearsal room really worked on stage.

One writer and their group seemed to be heading toward failure, at least in the rehearsal room. They weren’t listening to their inexperienced writer. Evidently, they continued to rehearse all afternoon and got it together, putting on the funniest performances of the night.

Like I said before, I’m not a theater person. I’m a writer and was unprepared for the inevitable drama of opening night, even if it’s just for a reading of short screenplays. The group that had the theater before us ran late. One of the writers lost their scripts. They had to be retrieved from the garbage at the last moment. An usher got stuck on the Metro. She burst into tears before instantly recovering as I said not to worry about it. The folks at the Navy Memorial were extremely helpful but they couldn’t figure out how to play the video introduction to the reading.

I was most concerned about having it run on time, without long breaks. We had all the actors and writers sit in the front row of the theater, so they could easily get up when their turn came. Stands and stools were quickly rearranged as each group performed. The theater was about mostly full and the audience seemed to really enjoy the show.

And, afterwards, they got to pick the winner. Using a telephone voting system (again, like American Idol), they chose Taco Mary by Mary Novak.

With money from DC Shorts, she then went off and made her movie. You can see Taco Mary at DC Shorts on Sept 10 at 10 PM, Sept 12 at 9 PM and Sept 13 at 1 PM.

And come see the drama of writers and actors at the DC Shorts Screenplay Competition Reading on Oct 17 at 7 PM.

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