I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This

Well, I’m now into my third review screenplay for Project Greenlight, and I am not happy.

’Cause so far, they’re complete crap. Oh, one of the three actually had a halfway decent story at its core, but across the board, they were textbook examples of what not to do. Lead characters who were either complete idiots or unsympathetic slimeballs. Female characters straight out of an adolescent fantasy. Plot turns coming from out of the blue, with no setup whatsoever. Dozens of forgettable characters, all involved in action irrelevant to the main story. Rampant camera and directorial instructions. Paragraphs of narration giving background information that is never shown (folks, if it ain’t on screen, it doesn’t belong in a screenplay).

I thought the $30 entry fee was supposed to weed out those who really weren’t ready for prime time.

Of course, my first instinct was, “Great — mine’ll look like an Oscar winner by comparison.”

And then reality set in.

The first round of the screenplay competition is peer review. Which means that these folks — who haven’t got more than a rudimentary understanding of how to write a screenplay — are the ones critiquing my work.

If I knew Holding Pattern would be evaluated on its own merits, I could deal with its not making the cut — after all, competition is competition. But at this rate, it’ll be a miracle if anything of quality makes it through.

Not to mention that I’ve got to wait almost a month before I see what my critics have said. In the meantime, I can only hope that I start reading something to give me a little more confidence in this process.