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We have begun the search for the best short film scripts of 2010. The CSSC’s search begins with the launch of the official website redux and by issuing the renewed challenge to budding and seasoned scribes alike in the form of the competition’s mantra: “Short. Is. Better.” The CSSC will herald and reward the best and most successful writers of short film for the year with the ultimate prize: a professionally produced, live-action short film.

Literary hopefuls will have until midnight January 31st, 2011 to pen, proof and bullet-proof their masterpieces. The competition is a chance for screenwriters to flex their creative juices for the industry judges. Entered scripts will pass the eye balls and litmus tests of entertainment industry pros (including producers, literary agents, actors, film crew, broadcasters, distributors and former CSSC winning alums), increasing the emerging screenwriter’s visibility and exposure in an industry where breaking in is never out of style.

David Cormican, Producer and Founder of The Canadian Short Screenplay Competition, reminds that the competition is open to writers of any nationality, from any country across the world. And so far as themes for writing your scripts are concerned Cormican reminds, “the sky is the limit. We don’t want to restrict the subject matter of the entrants. Just keep it short. I’ve said it before and I’m going to continue to say it: We live in a digital age with waning attention spans; brevity truly is the soul of wit. As long as you find the story, we’ll find a winner”, says Cormican.

What’s unique about the Canadian Short Screenplay Competition is that there are many festivals dedicated to short films: their viewing, reading and work-shopping, but there are very few, if any, competitions that celebrate and reward the writers of these marvelous works with a fully realized production using professional crews and talent like the CSSC.
Cormican says “there is a unique function that the short film provides the entertainment industry, and it goes by the name: calling card”. The CSSC wants to give this brilliant introduction to the film industry to one lucky entrant. “What better ‘hello’ could a new writer hope for than their words living and breathing on the screen for producers, agents and film goers to see. The sad reality, though, is that a script is just a script until it is produced. That’s when it really crosses over and becomes a film. And that’s where the CSSC comes in to help create some cinematic magic. So, if you are still sitting around wondering if you should enter the competition or not, ask yourself the question: Do I want to be a part of the script industry, or the film industry? When you find your answer, we’ll be waiting”, says Cormican.

Top prize is $2,500.00 CASH, an Apple iPad, a produced short film based on your script with in-kind services totaling $40,000+, the Writer’s Block Crystal Award and accreditation to attend the Yorkton Film Festival and Golden Sheaf Awards Gala.

Competition hopefuls can enter online via the CSSC website using PayPal, Withoutabox or via hard copy and snail mail.

About The Canadian Short Screenplay Competition (CSSC)
The Canadian Short Screenplay Competition, administered by Year of the Skunk Productions (Regina), and established in 2008, is the premiere script contest for short film screenplays. CSSC is the single-most competitive, prestigious, short screenplay festival in Canada, a champion for screenwriters everywhere and a launching pad for writers’ professional careers.

But that’s not the way it works in my head aka the Cocoverse, so leaving that with you as an answer is likely the coward’s way out. Not that I’m against that completely, sometimes the coward’s way is best, but it’s only Blog the 4th so I want to put off any overt displays of creative cowardice on my part for at least a few more weeks.

I’ll try and give you a bit more to work with. Then back to my time ruminations (that’s your word for the week).

First off, when the character chatter gets going in my head and I have to decide whether the story idea is best expressed as a novel, short story, song, poem, play, short film, feature, TV series, webisode, game, etc. It’s kinda like a Broadway audition. Except that instead of yelling “Singers who can Dance stage left and Dancers who can Sing stage right!” I yell “Doers who can Talk in the green room and Talkers who can Do wait out in the house.” Hmmm, that last is going to be pretty cryptic to those of you who know nothing about theatre. If that is you, your homework for the week is to see a play, doesn’t matter what it is, or even if it’s any good. If you want to want to write for the screen you have to know not only what that is, but what it is not.

All that to say that if my characters are exploring ideas and the expression of those ideas through language, I start to frame the story as a play. On stage the play of language takes the place of a sweeping landscape shot or a close up of a cherry blossom falling. So the chatty Cathy’s who want to wallow in hyperbole get the stage.

If the conflict plays out in a place, or places, I start thinking film or TV. If the place is big enough and complex and important enough to the play of the story that it becomes a character in and of itself then I’m thinking feature. Whenever big sky or weather or rocky shoreline or acres of cracked concrete are key to making the story work, it’s a feature. But also to be a feature it has to meet a couple other criteria. Is the plot all of a piece? There needs to be a certain unity of story to make me believe in it, in that I have to at least sense the shape of the beginning, middle and end. As well, it had better be wildly interesting to me if I’m going to invest myself for months and months in the story landscape. For me too, a feature has to have a complexity of plot and action that exceeds the budget of a TV show. Features have scope, even low budget ones.

TV for me is more about complexity of character. Characters that tangle and untangle and re-tangle themselves around each other. As well, TV ideas for me don’t have crisp endings, being so character driven, a good ending of one TV episode is just a good beginning for the next. Feature endings need to come down more, to a place of greater quiet and rest. Maybe because the up part has to be of such scope and intensity that the great exhale at the ending needs to be longer and deeper. And in terms of investment? For a writer a TV series is a marriage while a feature is a fling, so if you don’t want to be married, careful about heading down the TV development road.

Do I really think about all this stuff before I start writing? Yah, sorta. Sometimes I’ll sketch out a few scenes and just ask myself what it feels like. If I produce an inciting incident and a lot of internal dialogue, I start thinking short story, if a new world or a series of events jumps in, I’ll start thinking novel.

Short films come to me quickly, within a space of hours I have a beginning, middle and end sorted out. Writing one is like planning a big party. I know the time commitment won’t be that great but it still needs to be one hell of a good time, so I try to make sure that I give it a tight container to fit in. I like my shorts to have a unity of time, place and/or action. I find setting limits or story parameters keeps it from spinning out of control. Whether it is limiting character number or location or theme, I limit something about the structure in order to stay focused. In the Cocoverse the short film is the one night stand of screenwriting, so I try and have fun and not take it too seriously.

Honestly though, here we are at the end and in truth, back at the beginning because I’m going to leave you with the thought that your story idea is a play, song, painting, graphic novel, short script, feature film, TV series – indeed all of the above. Your idea is all of these things and none of them until you choose. I think the only way you can choose is to actually have some knowledge about the different storytelling techniques that come into play with each format. That means read. Read short scripts, plays, novels, features, teleplays, novels and cereal boxes, and oh, yah, blogs. If you are a screenwriter writer you read every day. Sorry, but it is a non-negotiable. Watching short films on the web, your favorite TV show or a movie marathon, is negotiable. Reading is not. Best of all is to get a hold of the screenplay and a DVD of the film, read, watch, repeat, read, watch, repeat.
Time for me to go do all that right now. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, always a slot in my space-time continuum for a classic.

-Carolynne

First, how do I know what story to pursue from the snap crackle and pop of the firing of my neurons, through the language area and the motor cortex, down the arms and through the fingers, till finally it rests on the page as a series of marks, black on white, ready to be shared with all and sundry, providing that sundry can read English of course.

Well, I pursue the stories that pursue me. The ones that won’t leave me alone, that chase around in my head, sometimes buck-naked with their hair on fire screaming “Look it me! Look it me!” but often like a sore tooth or an itch that I can’t quite scratch or a faint pressure behind the eyes. Sometimes I’ll carry stories for years and years and years before they emerge, sometimes a few days, sometimes when my writing coach gives me a colour, an object and a verb and sets the timer for eight minutes, ready, set, story! Then it is only micro-seconds. But more usually, is a conversation in my head, a whisper or perhaps a scream, that kind of coalesces into first voice, then faces, then place and time, and BOOM it becomes a story idea.

Then for the thorny question of judgment – is it a good idea for a story? I run it through the gauntlet of “What If?” questions. What if she was a university professor? What if he wore cowboy boots? What if she were too busy to date? What if she needed love? What if he needed money? After about a half dozen “What If” questions are answered, the thought bubbles up, “Hmmm that would make a good story.”

And now I can see you scratching your head and saying, yes, Carolynne, but why would it make a good story. The answer is very simple, it would make a good story, because I am interested in it. Okay, enough with the italics already. It is a good story if I am curious to find out what happens. Do I want to ask another million What If? Questions? Yes? Then it is a good story because I care enough, am interested enough, to make it so.

Remember kids, ideas are a dime a dozen. Actually a dime for two dozen given the recent economic slowdown; it is the expression of the idea that matters. (Sorry, last use of italics for this post, I promise.) If I really care too, I should be able to make the tragedy of running out of coffee filters into a powerful melodrama that will have you crying in the aisles.

So hey, make it about you. You’re the one that is going to have to brave the dark places of The-Land-of-What-It-and-Maybe in order to bring it to the page. So choose what stories to write simply to amuse yourself. If you are curious and intrigued – good enough. While it is true that I’ve been known to pursue stories for the targeted amusement of a select few, I am first and foremost my most important audience. So, if I think I have a character, and a situation, and a theme that I want to chew over and get intimate with and cry over and laugh about, then regardless of the specifics of the substance of the idea, it is a good idea for a story.

Perhaps a reverse angle might help. I was once asked to write a feature on spec (which will be its own blog topic) – it was to be a thriller about a blog writer who gets cyber stalked by a crazy reader. I said no for a whole bunch of reasons but the one I could say out loud without hurting the guy’s feelings too much was that I wasn’t interested in telling a story about a people who sit in front of computers, I couldn’t see how to make it a visual story. Now, not to say it was a bad story idea, but it was a bad story idea for me. If he’d had a fist full of cash, I might have tried to love it, but writing is way, way too tough and too intimate to pimp yourself cheaply.

So there, that is my twofold advice for the week: if you are passionate about it, it is a good story, regardless of what anyone else says; if you’re gonna pimp yourself out, make ‘em pay through the nose.

Next week I promise fewer run on sentences and a ban on italics. Until then, dream big my beauties, and write well.

-Carolynne

(L to R): Kathy Para, Evan Jobb, David Cormican, Nick Andert, Judy Vann & Carolynne Ciceri

screenwriter finalists pre awards gala

Hope you enjoyed. We’d love to see your photos posted! See you all again next year in Yorkton for the Golden Sheaf gala.

The topic in question, or subject around which I got my butt kicked by the Welsh Grammar Nazi, Princess Gwenllian, was my habitual free-wheeling use of the semi colon. It had something to do with only being used in two cases, separating items in a list or separating equal related clauses. Course it would have made more sense if I’d paid better attention, as we were in the lunch room at the time and I was attempting a rather complicated bit of coffee making my full attention was not on the lesson at hand. Also might make more sense if I really actually understood what a clause was, or is, whatever.

For my defense I grabbed at a few straws and next thing you know I had woven quite a serviceable little shield. My straws numbered two and consisted of two facts: I am a creative writer who is in continual pursuit of a unique voice for myself and all of my myriad characters; the majority of my work is meant to be declaimed (that is your word for the week – look it up) by actors as well as inspiring all manner of creative professionals to bring their individual talents to bear on the full realization of my creative vision. Thus I argue, I am permitted to take almost unlimited license to punctuate as I will. And I do, so be fair warned if you are to be a regular reader of this blog. I punctuate the way I will, and devil take the hindmost.

You see, in particular with dialogue and creating character, while words may be the paint, the punctuation marks are the brush strokes. Yah okay, not the clearest of metaphors maybe but what I’m trying to get across that the use of punctuation is crucial to differentiating between character voices. One character may emulate one of my former co-workers and astonish by speaking only in paragraphs – always. Thus as a clue to the director and actor and wardrobe person and production designer, etc. I employ creative punctuation, or maybe none at all. When they read the script the multiple run-on sentences in the dialogue with no punctuation will inform them enormously as to what this character is like. If all of my characters were to speak with perfect grammar and punctuation, they would all sound the same. Not good. The way they sound would be deadly dull, as other than vocabulary there would be no overt or covert clues to bring in all the colours of personality.

And so I encourage you to experiment. Play it a bit fast and loose with your en–dashes and em—dashes and semi colons; mind you if the feedback is returned that what you’ve written is completely nonsensical you’ll have to pay some attention to that and of course spelling errors are no-one’s friend, but a little creative construction and punctuation would not be amiss. Go ahead. Write. One. Word. Sentences. If you are trying to illustrate a character who is having a hard time getting the thought out, but not stuttering either…stutt…stuttering can..uh, can call for a bbbbbbunch of eli-eli-ellipses. Leave out verbs, change tenses mid-sentence, write the way people talk. Of course some of your characters, like Princess Gwenllian, do indeed speak the way they write and write like they are supposed to. Which in their own way makes them just as colourful and incomprehensible as the rest of us.

In closing, I have already had one note that perhaps the expression Grammar Nazi is too harsh and should softened a bit, how a ’bout the Grammar Police? Nope, I mean the expression to pinch a bit, it’s part of my nefarious and elaborate campaign to train you into standing up for your writing and yourself. Grammar Nazi stays, if for no other reason than if you don’t like it, that’s good, let it remind you that words have power. Wield them well.

-Carolynne

P.S. in the drafting of this post I spelled “punctuation” 5 completely different ways. Maybe I shoulda left it like that, then it coulda been, like, an artistic statement.