Welcome to Art Room 161

This blog was created as an extension of the dialogue that began in our classroom and the purpose is to share creative ideas, images, and critiscm. All posts should be appropriate for the high school classroom and critiscm should be helpful and positive.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Strictly Students Screenwriting Contest


This year the Strictly Students Festival will hold a Screenwriting Contest sponsored by Final Draft and just as a reminder the due date has been extended to December 21, 2012 because of the recent hurricane the deadline.  The screenplay should be 5-12 pages in standard format and in standard format.  Below are a few great writing tips from a terrific author Neil Gaiman who wrote Coraline  and The Sandman enjoy and best of luck!

Neil Gaiman's "8 Good Writing Practices"

• Write.


• Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

• Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

• Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

• Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

• Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

• Laugh at your own jokes.

• The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

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