Screenwriting is one of countless tasks that fall under the "it’s a marathon, not a sprint," analogy. (We all learn the meaning of that analogy through the parable of the tortoise and the hare; the best telling being the Bugs Bunny version, obviously. Don't @ me.)

Of course, we all want to be the writer who wins a competition, signs with a massive agency the next day, and within the week is running their own version of Shondaland. But that’s winning the lottery. That’s not reality. It’s not how Shonda got her own night of the week, and if you’re relying on this path to success, we have other things we need to discuss. I’m not saying you shouldn’t hope to win the lottery, just don’t bet the literal farm on it. 

In my personal experience with screenplay competitions — and the Final Draft Big Break Screenwriting Contest® specifically — there is a much better way to "win," but it’s slower, more painful, and still not foolproof. I wrote a script called SNOW in 2007. I did many drafts of it. I submitted it to handfuls of competitions over the years. Various drafts made quarterfinals, semifinals, "second rounder," and I received an email from Nicholl that said (serious paraphrasing here), "Congrats! You made the top 15%, but your journey ends here." This means I bought my lottery ticket but my numbers never came up. Or did they? 

SNOW, which was retitled Viral in 2009, wasn’t the only script I was submitting throughout the years. I submitted at least a dozen others. Some came back with placements, others came back with none, but guess which ones I picked up again for yet more rewrites. It was those that moved the needle! Maybe I didn’t win prize money or industry meetings or being listed in press releases, but these notifications were a sure sign that at the very least, someone out in the world picked up my script and didn’t hate it! These placements were validation! They put a Band-Aid on my figurative cuts and abrasions from failure after failure. Seeing the number of how many people had submitted in relation to what my percentile was helped me put back on my big-kid pants and start typing again. 

Fast forward to 2017: Blair Underwood asked if he could direct and star in Viral. Fast forward to 2019: we found a financier. Fast forward to 2021: I’m now in post-production on Viral as a producer and writer, and the movie stars Blair Underwood, Sarah Silverman, Jeanine Mason, and (pinch me) Alfre Woodard! And honestly, there is a pile of scripts that I never picked back up again because I never got the personal validation from a stranger script reader in a competition to keep going. 

I got many little injections of validation along the way. And for Viral, being a quarterfinalist in the 2014 Big Break competition was one of them. They were part of my journey and absolutely helped me keep my tank full so I could get the script "in the can."

Follow updates on Viral at @ViralMovieOfficial on Instagram and @ViralMovie on Twitter.