It’s
been a busy week, the introductory course in financial planning is behind me
and the wheels have been set in motion to find a placement for an
internship. The next course begins on
Tuesday but I am putting the odds at 50/50 that Monday will bring an email that
the class has been canceled for lack of sufficient enrollment, just as it was
last time. Meanwhile, in my last post I
lamented that I had had a serious computer fart while submitting “Ash Wednesday”
to my very first screenplay contest and thought I had ruined my chances. I have taken delivery of my new computer but
since it is missing some essential components, I continue to work on my laptop. Since this debacle began, I have been sending
weekly updates on Sunday but, today is September 30th and, as was
pointed out in last week’s update, September 30th this year was
destined to be special. It turned out to
be special in more ways than one. So
because of the special things that happened today, I am sending this week’s
update on Friday instead. The day’s
events can be summed up handily in two words – Ashes Fly!
September 30, 2016. As pointed out last week, that was the date that our friend Jim Rickards had predicted that the economy would collapse, urging everyone to put everything they had immediately into gold, though if you watched his entire video, he was really looking to sell an advisory program for $49/year, which in fact turned out to be $100/yr non-refundable. So he was making $100 a pop from anybody buying into his shtick. Rickards is a doom-and-gloomer, way extreme for my tastes though some of the gentlemen in my finance group like him and think he’s on the money. Of course he’s been predicting the collapse of the economy for years now and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone that he hasn’t been right about anything yet. Imagine a class of otherwise intelligent people purporting to be serious investors and yet have missed out in the past eight years on the biggest bull market in history simply because they listen to people like Rickards who keep saying cataclysm is right around the corner.
Today
there was a rather significant event in the global markets. Deutsche Bank in Germany, which has been in
serious trouble for most of the last eight years, got bad news three weeks ago
when the U.S. Justice Department levied a $14 billion fine against them for
their rather substantial role in the subprime mortgage debacle that triggered
this Great Recession. Yesterday it hit
the fan when Angela Merkel made very clear that there would be no bailout for Deutsche. The market tumbled big as there were serious
doubts that Deutsche had the liquidity to survive a $14 billion hit. Hedge funds the world over started pulling
their money out of the big bank and this led to further fears that it would soon
snowball into other banks and the entire financial sector.
Today
it was announced that Deutsche had reached a settlement with the U.S. to lower
the fine to $5 billion dollars and thus the entire banking industry breathed an
enormous sigh of relief. Everyone was
confident that they could handle a $5 billion hit without going out of business
and it shot the market up big time today.
Sorry Jim! Not only was there no
collapse but the market ended up having one of its best days ever with all
three major indexes closing with three straight weeks of gains.
So no cataclysm
for September 30th, but then we already knew that. That’s the good thing that happened on a
global note. On a personal note, there
was also some very good news today on the “Ash Wednesday” front. As I said, ashes flew.
*****************************************************
I last
reported the great formatting debacle with the Fresh Voices contest. For some inexplicable reason, the scene on
page three repeated after about three paragraphs. If this had happened on page 103, no big
deal. But on page 3, I was very
concerned the judge would be so turned off that he or she would not read
further. It turned out to be no big
deal. The judge had not yet read the
script so they were happy to have me send a corrected copy and they would do a
simple substitution. What has happened
since then is that I got news of two additional contests, both of which
promised not one but two judges reports.
That would make a total of five new evaluations that would hopefully
produce some clarity for future polishing.
The two
contests in question are the Diverse Voices competition and the WeScreenplay
competition, both in L.A. About two
weeks ago, I got the first judge’s report from Diverse Voices. It was not very complimentary. Overall, I placed only in the 49 percentile. Most of my other grades were worse, only in
the 30 percentile range. For originality
I got a paltry 36 percentile. I did
better with dialogue, my big strength, pulling down a 50 percentile. I did best in writing style and character
development, both at 80 percentile.
But the
criticisms were not at all helpful. “How
did the villain expect to get away with the murders when they’re throwing and
breaking things? That would show a
definite sign of struggle to any investigator.” How do I respond to that? There is no scene in the script where the
villain throws and breaks things. Either
the judge only read it very quickly and superficially or he had my script
confused with someone else’s. He wanted
to know why the villain was fishing the body out of the pool at the end. Wouldn’t that just create more evidence? Again, I had a clear descriptive passage in
that scene that he had to fish the body out in order to dispose of the
evidence. Was the judge just reading
much too quickly and completely missed that?
Thus is the concern with these contests as many of the readers are
probably just newly minted grad students who are being paid all of $10 per
script to read and write a report. You
can bet they’re reading as quickly as they can for that kind of dough, which
makes the entire screenplay contest process very suspect.
But the
real zinger was that he felt my opening scene – the scene that everyone else
bar none considers the strongest part of the script, a terrific hook that pulls
the reader in and builds suspense throughout the story – as a huge mistake. He said that rather than building the
suspense, it killed it for him. He
actually had no interest in reading the rest of the screenplay after that
opening scene. So it was not at all a
good report which left me wondering whether I was just getting what I was
paying for. It was a mere $25 reading
fee compared to the $200 I paid Elizabeth Stevens for a far better report.
*************************************************
So
today, when report #1 from the WeScreenplay competition came in, I was almost
afraid to open it. I’ve been under the
weather since Wednesday and didn’t want to get depressed again. I was going to save it for a while but
curiosity finally got me and I opened it.
Wow! This report was absolutely glowing. Though most of my readers have loved the
script, the one major criticism I have received is that my story was breaking
the rules of suspense and thrillers.
Well, I was doing that on purpose.
What inspired this script to begin with was that I felt I had come up
with a fresh new way of telling a suspense story. I thought I was doing something unique that I
had never seen before and, for my efforts, was met with comments that I needed
to stick with the formula because what I had written did not fit any
category. They did not get what I was
going for. Would I have to rewrite it
and make it more conventional if I hoped to ever sell it?
This
particular judge got it, got it big!
This particular judge understood exactly what I was going for … and loved it! “To be honest, this is one of the strongest
scripts I’ve read in quite some time.”
And that was just the beginning of the praise fest.
“I was
drawn into the story immediately thanks to your inherent storytelling talents,
idiosyncratic dialogue which is on display right from the very beginning and
steals the show throughout, rich characters, and strong conflict.”
“There’s
an inherently strong concept in place, one that has a classical element to its
plot and structure and is easy to get drawn into thanks to the strength of the
characters and the originality of the hook.
The pacing is steady, the tone consistent, the characters rich, and the
dialogue more than rings true.”
“An
excellent draft that I believe is worthy of further development.”
And
there’s the kicker, for the prize for winning this contest is a trip to L.A. to
meet with agents and production executives in polishing the script for actual
sale and production. I dunno, this is
beyond my wildest dreams but it sounds like I might actually have a shot. I may not win but I’m beginning to think that
I have a chance to place. There are the
quarter-finals that come up in January, the semi-finals in the spring, the
finalists announced at the beginning of next summer and the winner at the end
of the summer. The winner goes to L.A. But I think even at the quarter-finals you
are guaranteed that your script will be sent to a bonafide agent for evaluation
and consideration. That would be
great! I’ll be so thrilled if I get just
that much. Actually, I’m already
thrilled enough.
His
final comment: “Again, this is an
incredibly strong, character-driven drama and I honestly believe it’s one of
the best and most original I’ve read in quite some time. Keep at it!
It will be well worth it.”
And the
grades:
Overall: 93 percentile
All of
the other categories were in the 90 percentile range. Writing style 93 percentile.
Originality: 99 percentile!
I have
written a new and refreshing kind of suspense thriller and he got that!
What a
difference a different judge makes. It
does all boil down to personal points of view so the lesson to be learned is
not to take the bumps in the road too seriously and to just keep submitting
until something clicks. Criticism is
fine as long as it’s constructive and makes sense. But when they find fault with something that’s
not even in the script, or worse, suggest that you put something in that’s
already there but they just missed it; that is not useful at all.
So
yes! Receiving this report today has had
me flying high, anxious to keep writing, get going on the next script and
continue to percolate on how to improve this one.
So that’s
how my week went. Not bad. And the economy did not collapse!
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