Tag: Spec Scriptacular Contest

Getcher New York Television Festival Winners List Right Here

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by Team TVWriter™ Press Service

The 11th annual New York Television Festival wrapped last weekend with a full day of events for independent TV creators, industry executives and TV fans. This included four of the 34 educational sessions that took place this week, as well as the popular, annual late-night writers panel, a special live taping of the Vulture Podcast, and annual NYTVF Awards.

At the awards reception, NYTVF (www.nytvf.com) announced the winners of its flagship Independent Pilot Competition (IPC) in 13 categories, with “Best of the Fest” honors going to “The Katering Show” and “The Parker Tribe”, the latter of which was also recognized with the annual Critics Award. Recipients of development deals from the NYTVF’s network and studio partners were also announced. read article

The 10 Most Common Reasons Why Scripts Are Rejected

Time now to write about rejection. Because writing about it is so much better than feelin’ it. And, yeppers, learning is so much better than throwing our laptops into the freeway and screaming with frustration:

Need some virtual brads for your next virtual project? Look no further!
Need some virtual brads for your next virtual project? Look no further!

by Corey Mandell

Whenever a script is submitted in the industry, it is passed off to a reader for analysis. The reader will give the script a “recommend,” a “consider” or a “pass.” And unless it gets a recommend, probably no one else is going to look at it.

So how many scripts get a recommend? About two percent….which means roughly 98 percent of spec scripts are dead on arrival. Many of these scripts make the same mistakes. Here’s my take on the ten most common mistakes reported by the studio and network readers who recently visited my UCLA class: read article

The Law May Be An Ass, But So is ROSEWOOD

Usually Comic Mix’s Bob Ingersoll utilizes his legal expertise to write about liberties taken with the law in comic book Land. But last week he found errors so egregious on a certain new TV series that he just had to take a stand. And we here at TVWriter™ are very glad he did:

For a heart patient, MorrisChestnut's in pretty good shape, yeah?
For a heart patient, MorrisChestnut’s in pretty good shape, yeah?

by Bob Ingersoll

Seriously writers and producers of Rosewood, you don’t have to make it this easy for me.

Rosewood is a new TV series on Fox. It’s a police procedural; but to make it different from all the other procedurals it has a gimmick: the main character takes a drug that unlocks the full potential of his brain. No, wait, it’s that the main character is a naked amnesiac with tattoos all over her body. read article

Peggy Bechko’s 6 Tips for Getting Your Script – or Novel – Read

dogs_11by Peggy Bechko

…In Hollywood – or somewhere!

You’ve no doubt been told some of these things before – perhaps even here on TVWriter™, but it is worth bringing up again and reminding you of some things you should and most certainly should not do in order to get someone, somewhere to read what you’ve written.

You DO want to appear professional, don’t you? In fact I’ve no doubt you want to BE professional. So here goes. read article

Entertainment Weekly’s disgraceful decision puts “prestige” over paying writers

When is interacting with viewers and readers “audience participation,” and when is it “Hey, let’s get the punters to do our writing work for us for nothing?” This Salon.Com writer has an interesting perspective on the situation. Sure hope he got paid for it:

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by Daniel D’Addario

Entertainment Weekly, the venerable consumer-friendly magazine about movies and TV and the like, is under the same crunch as the rest of the media industry; its parent company, Time Inc., has recently gone through a series of layoffs. But the manner in which the magazine is attempting to build out its brand is the absolute worst-case scenario — bad for authors and for readers.

Lucia Moses at Digiday reports that Entertainment Weekly is to launch an online “contributor network” that is to feature readers as writers, particularly on “TV and eventually other areas […] staff reporters don’t cover deeply.” In other words, anyone can now write for Entertainment Weekly, but they shouldn’t expect a check. Per Digiday: read article