Writers, Rev Your Engines: Script Frenzy 2009 Kicks Off the Month of April

The Challenge: 100 Pages in 30 Days

I thought November was bad enough.

A full-time college student and a full-time spa employee, I blithely ignored the time constraints set upon me by the laws of physics and the space-time continuum to say "You know what? I can write 50,000 words in one month, easy!" My desk lamp burned way into the late hours. I went through two typewriter ribbons and discovered that fingertips can in fact develop typing blisters. I cursed the day I ever invented fictional characters that could walk, talk, and do things I never intended them to do.

And now, because November's National Write A Novel (NaNoWriMo) month simply wasn't enough for the wordsmiths of the world, Oakland, CA nonprofit Office of Letters and Light issued a new challenge which urged writers worldwide to "stop watching, start writing."

Enter Script Frenzy, a free, web-based screenwriting event in which participants worldwide are dared to hack out 100 pages of script in 30 days, whether it be Oscar or Razzie-worthy.

Last year's Script Frenzy saw over 9,000 brave souls risking carpal tunnel and their social lives for thirty days straight, and a February press release sets the estimate this year at 1,000 higher. One of those poor souls will, no doubt, be me.

What's the point of Script Frenzy? It's not about creating the next Slumdog Millionaire, although I admit that'd be a plus. It's more along the lines of what NaNoWriMo was meant to prove: that it can be done.

It's easy for writers to get bogged down in editing, re-editing and red ink upon red ink. This is particularly true for screenwriting, which is a realm many writers likely have never ventured into. The rules are different. The format is different. The font is different. (Courier New is not for the faint of heart.)

To that end, Script Frenzy provides How-To Guides for novice screenwriters, as many of Script Frenzy's participants are likely to be, with topics like "Introduction to Screenwriting" and "Screenplay Formatting Overview," with the same courtesy extended for stage plays and TV scripts. There are also forums aplenty, and advice from successful screenwriters.