Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

[Hilander]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

My 12 year-old frickin' loves that movie. Well, mostly Oddball. And maybe I'm a bit de-sensitized anymore, but for a war movie with a body count in the dozens, it never felt violent . . . more like a "bang-bang-you're-dead" kinda thing.

Your kid has excellent taste

I agree about the violence, good and bad guys die along the way, but it's got a "Sorry, it's nothing personal" in the way they die. The heroes are not emotionless, it's just something that is. A good war movie for people who don't like war movies.

[Presto]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

I read the Nicholl Reader Comment Excerpts daily. I'm thankful that Greg and the Nicholl ship publish them. Sure, sometimes I feel "wow, how the hell do I compete with that" when I read one of the blistering good excerpts. But let's be honest, to win a Nicholl your script will have to be blistering good.

[iggy]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

I read the Nicholl Reader Comment Excerpts daily. I'm thankful that Greg and the Nicholl ship publish them. Sure, sometimes I feel "wow, how the hell do I compete with that" when I read one of the blistering good excerpts. But let's be honest, to win a Nicholl your script will have to be blistering good.

The daily reader comments remind me of the Hollywood round on American Idol. When I watch that week, I think, "Wow, there are so many talented singers still out there."

Then I see the top 24 perform and I can't believe some of these people got picked.

[nojustice]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

It's like cockroaches. Where ever you see one, you can be sure there are a thousand more close by. If a small number of writers are expressing distress, there are probably a lot more suffering.

I also don't think contest organizers should be deciding "what's good for writers". I find that a bit frightening. Entrants are from all over the world. There is no "one size fits all". And I certainly don't agree that they should be googling around to find out "what flaws their scripts might have".

But I'm not going to argue it.

what ever

peace

[ATB]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

It's like cockroaches. Where ever you see one, you can be sure there are a thousand more close by. If a small number of writers are expressing distress, there are probably a lot more suffering.

... What?

[MrZero]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

The daily reader comments remind me of the Hollywood round on American Idol. When I watch that week, I think, "Wow, there are so many talented singers still out there."

Then I see the top 24 perform and I can't believe some of these people got picked.

I wonder if the hyperbolic reader comments are merely an exaggerated response to finding something relatively good amidst all the garbage. That is, once you've read six awful scripts in a row, a just-okay script suddenly seems awesome.

[acquaformosa]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

I suddenly love the odds (6-to-1) of my script falling into the "just-okay" category, as opposed to the "awful" category.

Shoot for the stars, baby.

Message to the Academy:
I'm okay and you're okay. I'm "just-okay" and you like me. You really like me.

[gregbeal]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

FYI - over 2500 score sheets have been completed thus far in 2012. At this point comments from 20 of those score sheets have been excerpted on the Nicholl Facebook page.

[iggy]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

FYI - over 2500 score sheets have been completed thus far in 2012. At this point comments from 20 of those score sheets have been excerpted on the Nicholl Facebook page.

Of those 2500 scripts, how many would you say are eligible to have comments excerpted on Facebook?

Thanks!

[NikeeGoddess]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

iggy - they're ALL eligible.

[iggy]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

iggy - they're ALL eligible.

Nope.

[gregbeal]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

Of those 2500 scripts, how many would you say are eligible to have comments excerpted on Facebook?

Thanks!

About one-seventh of the entries will eventually be read three times in the first round, which nominally makes them "eligible" to have excerpts posted. Since we now have a better feel for how many excerpts will be posted overall, we've narrowed the search and are considering comments from fewer scripts.

[Anagram]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

Hi Greg this is just an idea but maybe you could also post comments that have constructive criticism.

This way it would be both interesting to read as well as educational to writers who haven't entered their script yet (like me ).

For example a comment that praises the story but also says something like "the writer introduced too many characters too fast" could help other writers refine their scripts.

We submit better scripts, you receive better scripts, everyone wins.

[figment]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

Uh, clearly, I'm not Greg, Anagram, but Greg already answered this concern/suggestion in post #192... read the last sentence of this first paragraph -- they already include some scripts that have negative first impressions, but the scripts won them over by the end of the read.

We decided to post comments in 2010 to allow entrants to experience the reactions of readers to individual scripts. It was an attempt to convey the excitement readers describe after encountering a great script. In addition, we wanted to show that Nicholl readers enjoy scripts of every genre, style and storytelling approach. We also found that the comment excerpts occasionally showed a reader overcoming a negative first impression to award a script a high score.


Why don't we post negative reactions to scripts as well as the positive?

We feel that lists of problems appearing in scripts can be found at numerous locations on the Web. Pretty much any problem ever described about a script has appeared in one or many of the over 100,000 scripts entered in the competition since 1986.

[Vertigo51]

Re: Nicholl Fellowship 2012 open for submissions

So you would count every single-space following a period as a formatting error? Not an intentional choice, but a mistake.

Sorry, but that's motherfvcking ridiculous. I hope the next big script doesn't fall in your lap.

I certainly dont need you to like the way I run things. If you, Greg or anyone else thinks that's motherfvkicking ridiculous, then more power to you.