MAKING MOVIES | Sequel to novel-writing month
MAKING MOVIES: Thousands of writers spending June writing 20,000-word screenplays. It’s not too late to join!
Thousands of writers are writing 20,000-word screenplays this month. It’s not too late to join!
By EDWARD M. EVELD
The Kansas City Star

Chris Baty, who grew up in Prairie Village, directs Script Frenzy from Oakland, Calif. Participants are challenged to write an original script for a movie or play by the end of June. No doubt you’ve been to the movies and, after two hours, said something like, “I could have done better.”

Here’s a chance to back up that statement with some furious keystroking under a severe deadline — June 30.

“Script Frenzy” is the latest brainchild of Chris Baty, a Shawnee Mission East graduate now living in Oakland, Calif. It’s a competition — although there are no writing judges — to finish a 20,000-word script by the end of the month.

“If you love movies, you should write a movie,” Baty said.

That has been the basic logic behind November’s National Novel Writing Month, or Nanowrimo, which Baty has shepherded for eight years. If you like novels, he posited, write one, rapidly, with a 50,000-word count as the goal. Last November 80,000 adults signed up and nearly 13,000 were “winners,” which meant they hit the word-count goal by deadline.

This is Script Frenzy’s inaugural year, and about 7,500 would-be screenwriters and playwrights have signed up. Baty noted that the number far outpaces Nanowrimo’s first year, when 21 people got involved.

Baty boasts, probably accurately, that Script Frenzy is “the largest screenwriting event in the history of planet Earth.” To be winners, participants need only to post their completed scripts. The Script Frenzy staff verifies the word count and issues a paperless certificate. No one judges, reviews or even reads the works.

Diane Dobson Barton of Humboldt, Kan., is a Nanowrimo veteran and decided to jump into Script Frenzy for the writing practice. She has never tried to write a movie before.

“I’m winging it,” said Barton, who works at the Chanute Public Library. She signed up to be the Script Frenzy “liaison” for Kansas and is in contact with about 35 other Script Frenzy writers.

Jessica Kinkade, who will be a senior this fall at St. Thomas Aquinas High School and lives in Overland Park, is a two-year Nanowrimo veteran. She loves to write but never attempted a script and settled on a “romantic comedy/chick flick” about dating in the workplace.

She acknowledges she’s doing more full-throttle writing than meticulous story planning.

“I have no idea how the story is going to end,” she said. “It’s like getting in my car and not knowing where I’m going. There is some sort of adventure-adrenaline released from all that.”

Proper use of a script format is an issue, so participants are encouraged to go to scriptfrenzy.org and take a look at some basic instructions and examples. Scripts are mostly dialogue, of course, and there are rules about how to present settings, action and characters’ names.

“It seems to involve a lot of CAPS,” said Baty, who acknowledges his lack of experience with the form. Fortunately, the Script Frenzy staff includes an award-winning playwright and a graduate of the UCLA film program.

In the movie business, script lengths typically are discussed in terms of pages, not words. But because paper size isn’t uniform around the world and Script Frenzy has participants abroad, Baty and company decided to set a word goal. The scripts of “American Beauty” and “American Pie,” very different movies, came to about 20,000 words, he said. The word count includes all the words on a page, not just the dialogue.

Unlike the novel-writing challenge, participants in Script Frenzy can sign up with a partner, a “commando writing unit,” Baty said. Teams are common in real-life script-writing.

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To reach Edward M. Eveld, features writer, call 816-234-4442 or e-mail eeveld @kcstar.com.